Today felt like winter.

Photo copyright Aji, 2024; all rights reserved.

Looks like November now. Today, though? Today felt like winter.

Trickster wind at gale force, bitter, bone-deep cold slicing through everything. Exactly the kind of conditions that are dangerous for anyone without shelter. The local shelter has space for 40, they're already over capacity, and there are countless people who don't even bother to try, because they won't get a bed, won't leave their dog behind, etc., etc.

So fourteen of us met this morning at a local espresso bar [no coffee for me; I was masked the whole time], to try to figure out where we could put a dent in this mess. This was very introductory, but that was the point: figuring out what exists [very little] and what doesn't [nearly everything] and where we might be able to fill in a few of those gaps. I'll have more info in the days and weeks to come, but for now?  Go here, buy something, or several somethings, off the outreach group's wishlist, and you will literally be saving a life, probably more than one. It's not really possible to overstate how bad it is out there, nor how great the need is. I've sorted it in their Priority order, but they've given out so much stuff this week that they now also need stuff lower down on the list: the tarps, the duct tape, the safety stuff like flashlights and pepper spray; they also need large-size men's stuff, socks, and large- and extra-large-size dog stuff, like collars and harnesses and dog blankets.

And then there's my own actual work. As always at this time of year, I'm already putting in 12- to 16-hour days every day, 7 days a week, because the work won't wait, and for us, being able to help anyone else starts with us making sales, of course. I also a finding myself unexpectedly under the gun on another front; besides needing to bring in enough in seasonal sales to repay a big chunk on our '24 taxes, the election has made the need to replace my laptop NOW absolutely mandatory, before the end of the year, because the price, already hellish for the one I need, will skyrocket next year. So if you're contemplating buying? Now would be a really, really good time. Our laptop is our whole work, everything, and it fails me on the daily now.

Today's featured work is Wings's newest, completed only this afternoon, and it's extraordinary, a vintage-style cuff set with a truly phenomenal Skystone, here. So for today's inventory selections, it's two other Skytone cuffs in similar dual-strand design, but all of them are very distinctive, very different from each other:

• "Sweetgrass Sky," a dual-strand cuff of heavy-gauge sterling silver pattern wire with an Art Deco sensibility,set with an absolutely incredible giant cabochon of ultra-high-grade black -web Kingman turquoise, here; and
• "Stars Too Are Born of Water," also dual-strand, but of half-round wire stamped in 3D starburst symbols, set with a giant oval of cosmically beautiful natural Fox, here.

There's more on the way very soon; he's got something like four more cuffs [one potentially ready this evening], a couple of pendants, several new pairs of earrings [again, one, a small tiger iron pair, possibly ready by tonight], and eventually all the new coils he'll need for holiday inventory. And I need to sell them all, because I still need to make sales weekly for us to catch up on the year and cover all the stuff still in the pipeline that needs covering [roof next year, more medical, etc.]. So: GO BUY! Links are here:

• Sales here; 
• Testimonials here; 
• Amazon wishlist here (Priority is the liquid soaps and Amazon cards, probably most useful at this point); 
• Patreon here;
• Ko-fi here.

After such a grim year, this one already far worse than the last, we really need to get what's left of 2024 onto a better footing before it ends, so please share all of the links. 

All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2024; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.