In the autumn my mum and I visit the fruit orchard at my uncle's farm, which used to belong to my grandparents. There was an abundance of apples this year - we timed it just right with the blackberries, and we managed to pick a lovely warm, sunny day too.
As well as pears, lots of different varieties of eating apples, cooking apples, blackberries and rose-hips, earlier on in the year there are plums, damsons, crab apples and elderberries. I was lucky enough to grow up in the same village - helping out on the farm sometimes collecting eggs, picking potatoes, or riding on the trailer stacked high with hay bails ( I fell off it once - or rather the bails did, with me sat on top of them! Amazingly I came away with just scratches...).
I remember my dad went through a stage of making home-made wine, he used to pay us for every pound of elderberries we could collect. That included using a fork to get all the little berries off the stalks - it took us forever. Talk about slave labour! When I was old enough to drink it though, I did appreciate the wine ;-)
These earrings I've made with both sterling silver and gold-filled beads - I'm really liking the look of mixed metals at the moment. The tassel is made up of citrine, tsavorite, and tiny freshwater pearls, with gorgeous beer quartz briolettes at the bottom. Apples, pears, and sunshine :)
