july 3rd:

making the necklace was fun. i got into Hokitika on wednesday the 1st. the jade dude, steve, had to go to his accountant's at 12, so i couldn't start the necklace then. which kinda sucks, because i could have chilled at james' in greymouth. (james is a CS dude upon whoms couch i surfed).
so here i am in Hokitika on a wednesday morning and there aint shit to do.
my normal course of action for this scenario paid off again. i hit up the DOC office and found a sweet hike that was about 4 hours in to a hut. (rapid creek hut). the old lady at the desk said there was a scottish guy who had just come in and asked about the same walk. so maybe i'd have some company. fast forward to an hour later and sure enough. me and some crazy scottish guy (there are no other kinds of scottish guys) are walking through the woods up to this hut. he was a cool guy. i like being in the huts by myself, but it is also nice to have someone to talk to. the best part of the trek was the cable car bridge thing. angus (scott) took some killer pictures that he's going to email me sometime in the next few weeks.

anywho, i got back to Hoki too late to start the jade beatdown. i was bummed out, but it isn't the kind of thing that you can rush. so i headed to the pretty bad hostel that is above a really posh jade gallery. there were two guys (one japanese guy. one english guy) when i got there, but soon 4 americans came in. and, as it always goes with americans we went out. luckily i was able to get them to help me make some jade designs. one of the girls was a graphic designer, so she helped a lot. but the main design i did later by myself for sure.

i woke up early the next morning and got over to bonz + stonz to finally begin my masterpiece. it sucks that my camera is broken, b/c i could have chronicled the whole thing step by step. but here is a more boring text version:
- finalize the design on paper
- pick out a piece of jade. it came in slabs of all kinds
- trace the design with pencil then sharpie
- cut off the excess
- grind the corners down with a belt grinder
- use a hand dremel to cut and grind the fine points
- polish
- polish
-polish
-re-polish

put in box and mail to sister.



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i wrote that on july 3rd. josephine finally got the necklace a few days ago. never let anyone tell you that something from NZ will ready nacogdoches in 10 days.
the first set of pictures are from three girls you'll see who were there and nice enough to hook me up with some oddly angry looking pictures of me working. i don't know why i was so angry when i was carving, but maybe jade = green = hulk?
the second set are from Malcolm. ahhh Malcolm.

josephine's birthday present

jade necklace