Geography 101

Here's a trick question...What do New Zealand and Wyoming have in common?

Not much, that I know of, until a customer asked me to create a pendant for him.

A friend at work came to me out of desperation one day, her husband who comes from this little collection of islands know to all of us as New Zealand needed help with a stone pendant. It seems his Maori stone began to unwind itself and she needed help getting it restrung. Being my usual self and not knowing anything about this stone (or culture) I dove into a week of research. (Let this be a warning to all of you about my ways of completing projects.) Well I took to this little task and begun reading...way more than I needed too!

After 3 long weeks of trying to find just the right cord and testing the patterns, leave it to Jeff to figure it out in about 1 hour! Upon returning the stone to it's rightful owner...all were happy...and me, a tad more geographied!

Since I usually don't take payments for "simple" repairs the happy couple came to my booth at the Farmers Market and my friend purchased a necklace from me that she had been eyeing. I let her husband peruse though my box of stones and he selected a large Turritella Agate that I had just received that week from Mike at Gemcutter to be set for himself!

Upon setting the stone I really wanted to do something special on the back and after about an hour of looking at other Maori patterns I decided to simply cut the 3 (main) islands into the back of the base...here is the result:

So if you are ever presented with the question; "What do New Zealand and Wyoming have in common?" you can simply answer "Two Bee's Designs" and know that you are correct!