My Brush with Greatness — ReFind Design Jewelry

So, this post is half personal, half professional. Please bear with me - I might get a little gushy.

I am in love. With whom, you ask? With Jenny Lawson, aka The Bloggess. If you have not heard of her before, please take a minute to check out her website. (This is one of my favorite posts.) She published a book this year, which promptly went to the top of the NYT best-sellers list. She is outrageously funny and witty as well as deliciously strange.

Over the last few weeks she's been doing book tours to promote her book. The list of places for the first leg of the tour did not include Minnesota. I was depressed. The list of places for the second leg of the tour did not include Minnesota. I was despondent and melancholy and 100% convinced I would never get a chance to meet this amazing woman. Then the third leg of the tour was announced and, lo and behold, Minnesota was on the list!!! So on August 11th (coincidentally my father's birthday) I had a front row seat to a book reading from the Queen of Confidence Wigs herself, Miss Jenny Lawson.

I knew I wanted to give her something, to thank her for all of her work and to let her know how much I appreciate her sharing her life with so many strangers on a daily basis. If you read her blog you quickly realize she has a slight taxidermy addiction. I'm not talking mounted deer heads or anything like that. Her taxidermy leanings are a bit more...quirky. She prefers animals who have personality. LOTS of personality. And, usually, clothing and/or accessories. (And don't worry - they've all died of natural causes.) I decided that since she is traveling so much with the publication of her book that it would be nice if she could somehow bring her friends with her. So this is what I made:

It's a reversible scrabble tile necklace. On one side, the letters spell out Bloggess. On the other, I put small images of some of her animal friends.


From left to right: Hamlet Von Schnitzel, Juanita Weasel, Pegasus (no official name yet), Jefferson Peabody,Martin Van Buren, James Garfield, Jean-Louis, Copernicus the homicidal monkey Did I mention her friends have awesome names?

I thought the necklace could be used as a name tag for the many blogging events she has to attend (you know - because I'm resourceful like that). In between the letters I put red glass beads in honor of the Traveling Red Dress, which if you don't know about you really should check out. It's one of the reasons why I love the Bloggess so much - because besides being roll-on-the-floor-laughing-while-crying-your-eyes-out funny, she's also amazingly warm, honest, and inspirational as hell. And that's an amazing combination for any one woman to be. In person? She was just as hysterically funny, incredibly warm, approachable, and thoughtful as I hoped she would be. Best of all she complimented me on my hair, which is always nice to hear.