Melting

I was over in the jewelry district the other day, sourcing raw materials, and noticed how many people were going into the "WE BUY GOLD" places with little bags in their hands (full, I'm assuming, of their relationships gone awry in the midst of their personal financial chaos). It inspired me, and in the true spirit of the recession, I stepped foot into a pawn shop for the first time ever today, and I sold a few of my old ugly rings for the gold. The rest of my old ugly jewelry is in a storage locker in the valley, but I realized that I shouldn't have sold the metal, I should have saved it to melt down for myself so I can work with it! I definitely have the amount of ugly jewelry needed to make quite a few pieces, and I've been wanting to learn metalsmithing.

My next project will be to root through that storage locker and find all that crap. Yet another step one in the brilliant game of "becoming hippie" in which I'm currently partaking: spending time putting in the effort to utilize the stuff I have instead of spending time making more money to buy more stuff I won't use. What's the point of having stuff with value sitting in a big hot orange and purple building outside of L.A. where you're not even allowed inside after 5 PM?! Melting.