Busy, busy

I'm a busy little bee. Taco Maya is reopening soon after a month away, Robin will be back soon and I am champing at the bit to use my new beads. So I have been on a non stop jewelry making binge. I found a store in Merida that has great buys on crystals. A 16" string of 5 mm cubes is 18 pesos...about $1.35. They aren't Swarowski, but at that price I can cull the imperfect ones out with no problema! I am not that thrilled with their metal components; I haven't been able to find a good source for them down here, but Fire Mountain Gems is a mouse click away and there is always somebody who will bring them down for me. There is a store called Mineralia that has beautiful pearls, turquoise and other gemstones and some other cool stuff. I found some beautiful electric blue glass with silver foil cubes about 1/2 inch square for just a few pesos each. I hope I can get more; they made a fabulous necklace (for me!) I am so happy to be playing with beads and looking out across the beautiful Gulf of Mexico. What's not to like? And if I sell some, I get to buy more beads!

The price tags are made from a sheet of Loteria cards. Loteria is the national craze in Mexico. It's kind of like bingo...you can even gamble on Loteria in a roulette kind of way at the little street fairs. These cards are a special version for the Yucatan and are really neat with local pictures and Mayan words. The original version is very cool as well. Everybody, and I mean everybody, plays this game. The family who comes to the house next to us plays it at midnight. The 10 year old kid who reads the cards sounds like an announcer. Hilarious, especially after midnight.