ZOMBIE WEEKEND

This was the weekend after Citi hit $3.71 (or was it $3.88?) and the newspapers were full of dire articles about its fate. And I became a, well, zombie.

I called a couple of people and told them I was wiped out. Then I started to worry about my pension. Then I sat down and added up all the money it would take for me to stay in my apartment. Then I thought of all those people in 1929. I always wondered what that felt like.

Then I went back into denial.

Technique for return to denial: contact a lot of people who know more than you do; like, people who still work at Citi, people who majored in economics, lawyers who know the laws about pensions, etc. Tell them your woeful tale and signal slyly what you wish you'd hear back from them. They will, for the most part, read your signals and tell you what you long to hear. Find them credible. And voila, you are back on the couch knitting and watching tv and thinking you really won't have to give up your apartment and move in with your mother after all.

But it's a good thing I have all those Hermes scarves. The only investment that hasn't lost its value. Go Hermes!

LIBERAL ANXIETY... or, HOW I GOT THROUGH THE ELECTION

Our long national nightmare is over! Lord be praised! Our rogue state can rejoin the world. I can start talking to Republicans again (well, maybe) and maybe get to sleep before 2:30 a.m. (Also maybe).

For us serial obsessives, that means fewer long nights with Nate Silver's brilliant http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/ and more time looking at the Hermes scarves I can no longer afford (alas) or knitting blogs, my latest obsession.

I swear Nate Silver got me through the election. I must have checked that site ten times a day. Every night I'd say to myself, 'OK, I'll just have a quick look" and the next thing I knew it was 2 a.m. Whenever I got had a conversation with an anxious liberal - like, five times a day - I'd send them to fivethirtyeight.com. (Nate, you owe me!) Nah, not really - I owe you. You got me through the election.

...AND ALL THAT GOLD

I'm a goldsmith and a jewelery designer and maker. In fact I am starting this blog because hey, you out there, I want you to buy my jewelry!

I work directly in gold, fabricating pieces directly out of the metal. As in: melt the gold, alloy it, mill it, make sheet, make wire, make your jewelry. This is the way the ancients made their jewelry - as in the Greeks, Romans, Etruscans. A good site to see some of this glorious legacy of gold is Ancient Roman Jewelry. The Metropolitan Museum also has stunning examples of classical jewelry, and their shop has many reproductions.

Nowadays jewelers like Reinstein & Ross and Mallary Marks (you can find her jewelry at Barneys ) create jewelry using these classical techniques. So if you like what they do, you'll like what I do. Only I'm way cheaper.

I studied classical jewelry with master goldsmith Cecelia Bauer, who teaches here in New York. If you've ever had a hankering to learn this arcane but glorious art, contact Cecelia and sign up for one of her wonderful classes.

I also carve models in wax. This is an entirely different process which lets you create very different designs. I think of it this way: working in metal is kind of 'engineering' - you have a certain creative vocabulary. Carving wax is more like sculpture - it's freer, with fewer constraints. A piece of wax is kind of like a blank canvas. (Okay I'm mixing my metaphors, but you get the idea.) In wax you can carve intricate bas relief (check out my VENICE bracelet ). My teacher, Boris Goynatsky, originally studied engineering in his native Ukraine (he was a poet, too!) and his work is masterful.

I also like to work in glass - I make glass beads and fused glass pieces - but it's hard to pursue glass in New York. I gave Urban Glass a whirl but it was very expensive and frankly, not very gemutlich. So now I only do glass when I find some fabulous workshop in some fabulous location - Kristina Logan's class in Provence, and a bead class in a wonderful town in Le Marche, Italy, called Coldigiocco. Kristina Logan is an extraordinary glass bead artist (her work is in the Smithsonian). Kristina teaches all over the US and overseas as well.

And I'm an enamalist. (Enameling? what's enameling?) Enamel is glass on metal. We work with finely powdered glass which we use as a painter would use oils. We can make enamel paintings - check out the Frick Museum if you want to see some breathtaking masterpieces of enamel portraiture - but we also can create jewelry and objects. Enamel techniques include cloiosonne enamel, where you use fine wires to create small cells and fill the cells with enamel; and champs l'evee ('raised fields', I believe is the translation) where you have lowered areas in the metal which are then filled with enamel. Check out The Enamelist Society to find out more about this simply extraordinary art. The Aaron Faber Gallery in New York carries some beautiful examples of contemporary enamel artists.

ABOUT THOSE SCARVES

So it turns out being obsessive about Hermes scarves isn't such a bad thing.

My stock portfolio went south... way way south.... like Antarctica south.... but my Hermes scarves retain their value. Why buy a T-bill when you can wear your liquid assets around your neck?

When you stop working (I was 'bridged to retirement' but really, I just lost my job, and couldn't find another) what you end up doing is kind of 'cobbling together' a living. One of the ways I do this is by selling my Hermes scarves. They retain their value, even as the economy tanks. I was selling my scarves on ebay (http://www.ebay.com/) but ebay just put limits on the sale of some brand items. Apparently this is supposed to address the problem of fakes. I don't see how exactly the limits accomplish that, and queries to ebay bring only the canned responses about the 'buyer's experience.' (Huh?) So we scarf hunters are looking for other venues. A couple of new sites are looking to fill the void. Try http://www.what2wear411.com/