Something completely different

I've neglected him for so long.  All we really needed was a quiet night together.  But once I started, I couldn't stop, and before I knew it, I had three of them sat there, eager to be seen:

Before I restarted knitting, I tried jewellery-making.  The centre necklace used to be my favourite, 6mm peridot chunks and 4mm hematite.  It came loose from the wire well over a year ago and I carefully put it aside, meaning to repair it someday.  The one on the left is 6mm Tiger's Eye, newly made last night.  The one on the right has a story behind it.

When Hubby and I arrived in St Louis, an older lady in church decided to adopt us and be our American Mom.  Probably four years ago, I wanted to make something special for her birthday.  She had a Czech maiden name, and I found some blue vintage Czech satin glass beads online to make her a necklace.  I ordered enough for both of us and made one each, but mine was looking sad.  The spacer beads were tarnished, the two ends weren't well done, and the wire wasn't aging well.  Now I've got mine looking all spiffy, I can get the other one in for a "service" and fix it up.  I switched out the old silver-plated spacer beads for hematite, which won't tarnish.

(For future reference, the definition of frustration is looking for a 2mm dark shiny bead on dark green carpeting, wondering what the effect of hematite is on a cat's digestive system.  And I found both lost beads.)