Massive Treasure & Good Friends

I have had friends in town for a few days, so I haven't had time to do much of anything jewelry related. But that's okay because we had a lot of fun - much unhealthy (but delicious) eating & drinking (remember, I live in New Orleans and as of tomorrow I'm back on salads and also I seem to be losing my voice), playing tourist at home, going out and staying up WAAAY too late. They left late this morning, and I was finally able to totally delve into the Big Box of Old Jewelry that another friend sent. It arrived on the same day as my visitors, and it was torture not to just dump it all out and start picking and sorting and disassembling. I looked through it a little bit over the course of the week, but for the last 5 or 6 hours, I've been seriously attacking it. Look:

I'm gonna have to buy several new sorty containers to deal with this! Good thing I added more shelves to my storage area a couple of weeks ago. My friend who sent me this buys vintage lots on ebay for one or two items, so she sends the rest to me. She's been saving up this medium sized priority mail box for months. And as a thank you, I sent her the bracelet from this post. She said it fit like it was made for her :)

I also have a little pile of goodies from Rebecca of Songbeads that was a little thank you she sent to  commenters on a particular blog entry.

There's some really good stuff from her as well, so I have to get it all somewhat organized before I can continue with jewelry making as usual. Otherwise, I'll have this constant feeling of dread and panic about allowing a huge mess to pile up.