When I opened my mother's jewelry box, I wasn't expecting to find myself in it.
But there it was — a tiny ring, made from glass seed beads and crochet cotton. I made it when I was five or six years old. I had forgotten it existed. She never told me she'd kept it. She just had.
The ring is lost now. But the image of it sitting in her jewelry box — that I carry in my mind's eye. I will never forget it. And I don't need a photograph. Some things are kept in a place no one can lose them.
It was her jewelry box — her pieces, her treasures — that first sparked the idea for Katt's Stuff. Going through her things, holding jewelry that had stories attached to it, I started to understand what made a piece worth keeping. Not just the materials. The meaning behind it.
And then I found that ring.
She knew something I wouldn't figure out until I was 61.
I am a jewelry maker.
It didn't happen the way callings usually do in stories — no dramatic moment, no formal training. Just a dining room table that became a studio, a bead collection that keeps growing, and a pair of hands that finally found what they were always meant to do.
The beads look different now. Mother of Pearl carved from sea shells. Cat's eye in deep royal blue. Gold-plated rhinestone rondelles that catch the light like tiny chandeliers. But the feeling is exactly the same as it was with that crochet cotton and those glass seed beads at age five.
I still can't stop.
Welcome to Katt's Stuff. Every piece is one of a kind — just like the story behind it.