Tinner Hill Blues Festival is all this weekend!

The weather forecast for Saturday declares the sun will be out and we are joining the Tinner Hill Blues Festival fun with music, craft and sales!

Along side local area crafters, The Star Dust Dance Band will be playing from 10am to 2pm. The Star Dust Dance Band is made up of seven local musicians. The band began ten years ago with just two instruments and through the years has grown to its current make up. The band's basic library has always been the "Golden Oldies" of the big band era, but has recently expanded back to include tunes from the early Dixieland era, and forward to include the jazz form of the blues.

Together Stifel & Capra & local artist, Eileen O’Brien are donating 25% of all of the sales of her mixed media collage “Blue Note” to the Tinner Hill Heritage Foundation. The gallery is open 10 to 5 on Saturdays. For more details http://www.stifelandcapra.com/ or http://www.tinnerhill.org/ for full event schedule.

Book Signings TONIGHT!

I am looking over today's "to-do's" and realizing it will be a fun albeit LONG day. Local authors Duane Evans and Jean Watterson will be a Stifel and Capra this evening to sign copies of their current books. All details are in the link to the right. Hope to see you there!

Open the curtain!

Open the curtain! On the newly refurbished bath & dressing room at Stifel & Capra that is. Robyn McGarry of RSM Enterprises aka the Paint Diva has finished out funky dressing space. It made its public debut at June's FIRSTfriday. I LOVE IT and so did the rest of our guests that scoped it out. Robyn also has multiple sample boards on display in the upstairs hall showing just three of her many faux painting techniques. A portfolio is on the way. (Hopefully she will get hers done before mine, will I ever get to it?)

I had a productive day yesterday making two pillows out of vintage linen, finishing a collage, dragging seasonal items to the store and packing up a MOUNTAIN of clothes that my family has outgrown to donate to charity. My neighbor Julie just hosted a kid's clothing swap but as my 13 & almost 10 year old are already taller than the moms I think that we have "aged out" of that activity!

This morning consisted up being alternately impressed and terrified by the the thunder storm we had a dawn. It was amazing. Sound like the Broadway musical "Stomp" out there it was so loud. You may recall, last year at this time we lost three huge threes in our backyard so I am a little paranoid. AM not looking forward to going to the shop to bail out the basement....

Mark your calendars to come to the books launch on Thursday night from 6 to 9pm. Support your local authors!

The fine eye of Hazel Brutsche'

There is a reason I don't work Sundays, it has taken me this long to recover from our fun weekend (mostly my feet are KILLING me!). FIRSTfriday of Falls Church brought a nice crowd despite the threatening weather, our in house jewelry repair expert Hazel spent the first hour and a half consulting with clients about their repairs. If you didn't get a chance to come out on Friday do remember that Hazel pops in the shop weekly to pick and drop off custom work so if you have a some work for her to look at, bring it in during our normal shop hours and we will work up an estimate for you.

Other than fixing every broken piece of jewelry in my box, Hazel has earned my unending gratitude by reworking some of my pieces. The necklace at the top had an inadequate clasp. I hadn't worn it for YEARS because it would fall off withing 30 minutes of me getting dressed! the original necklace had a large center bead like a string of pearls (I called it my "June Cleaver on acid" necklace".) Tricky part was I don't wear suits much any more so I mentioned to Hazel that I would love a way to make the strings more wearable. It so happened that Hazel was on her way to a big bead show so she scouted and scored this awesome pendant that really worked well with the malachite.

If you know me you know I tend to wear larger (ok, gigantic) earrings. Hazel also took the bottom drops and worked them into something more lobe worthy! I especially like the green running thought the stone in the bottom photo. As the copper gains patina (and it will as I am NOT a big polisher) the combination looks better and better.

Take a peek in your jewelry box and think, "HHmmmmmm, wonder what Hazel could do with this?"