From pears to pairs

First of all, here's a picture of some pears growing on the West wall of our cottage. This is our third summer here, the first year, we didn't get any at all because whoever pruned it before we arrived, did it at the wrong time of year and cut off the flowering branches. Last year we got lots of teeny weeny pears which we left to the wasps. There are fewer this year but they look far more promising (which they have no right to do at all as I haven't done anything to the plant at all!)
So ... clever link coming up here, from pears to pairs (of earrings!) These are the earrings that I made for my sister and I to match our pendants, Sandy has already seen the photograph, though she hasn't got her jewellery yet (soon, Sandy, I promise!)

I wasn't going to blog about these at all as they won't be for sale on my stall however, the earrings have a new component that I'm introducing to my work which I realised today I haven't told you about - the little silver bit at all top is made from PMC. The idea behind this design is that the earring is a stylised flower. The PMC silver bit at the top is the covering of the flower bud reflexed back after the flower opened. The two glass beads together are the flower, the closest flower I can think of shape-wise would be a fuchsia (though the colour is way off!!) and then the trailing bits of silver chain hanging down are the stamens.

I liked the shallow reflexed item a lot but thought it would be a lot more dramatic with lots of petals and more finely divided so I some eight petalled versions but unfortunately, at the greenware stage whilst I was refining edges and sanding out minor blemishes, this happened - I have four like this! All attempts at repairing them at the greenware stage have ended in frustration and the broken ones now look much worse than the picture - they will be recycled into PMC paste I think.
Out of six, I did manage to get two made without breaking them and here's the result on a pear (ha!) of earrings made with a couple of my orange/red plasma doughnut nuggets and some 8mm carnelian rounds. I clearly need more practice in being gentle with PMC at the unfired fragile biscuit/greenware stage. Fortunately, once it's fired, its indistinguishable from normal fine silver and can be handled normally.