This project started out as a gift I was working on for a new business. I don’t know the business owners, all I know about them is that they carry my favorite kind of donut and Korean hot dogs, but they have been completely EMPTY each time I went in. It’s a great location, but the entrance is very easy to pass without realizing what is there.
It’s so empty that tonight when I went, I saw a sign saying they were not going to serve my donut anymore due to lack of sales/interest, and I only discovered them two days ago.
Anyways, my visit a couple days ago made me think if they had something interesting in the window, it would attract all the college students who walk past it. One thing led to another, then I turned what I was working on for them into earrings.
So, here are my lucky cat earrings, modeled after our home maneki neko (beckoning cat) statue …oh…just now I felt an earthquake…sorry, got side tracked.
I hope the earthquake was small. I hope the shop owner appreciates your efforts on their behalf. I hope they rethink the donut decision. I love the earrings!
Very cute, but thanks for the background story. That makes it.
I once made my wife a gold broach with a sky blue topaz featured and matching earrings - I neglected to mirror them. Symmetry is a thing.
Way back in the '19’s, it was "OK, you need to make one that is opposite. Now there’s a button in the software for that.
I think it was small, just made my chair jump and the floor vibrated a bit back and forth. I noticed that the fish tank water made a splash. The internet says is was a 4.4, so not too bad. I can’t usually feel anything unless it’s over 3.5.
I wanted to mirror them for a reason in this case.
When the left paw is raised, the cat is beckoning customers in, and when the right paw is raised, it’s for more money. So you often see these near the entrance of a business (most of the time only one paw is up…but the one in my house has both up).
They are all over the Japanese businesses here, and the one in our home is over 20 years old. My husband’s aunt sent my husband to this country with it.
The cats are usually holding an old gold coin, so that isn’t mirrored, since I didn’t want to mess up the writing on the coin.
Me too. I wrote them a good Google review, I was the only review, so I was pretty surprised, for this town, it means no one knows about them. Going to share them on our local “loves food” page in hopes of getting some more business in there so they will bring back the donuts. Not kidding, I love mochi mochi Donuts (pon de ring donut)
Ten years ago, I was begging my husband to fly to Japan to get a donut from Mr. Donuts. He was like, that’s a 4500 dollar donut (that much airfare for a family of 4 for an 80 cent snack)…I told him…totally worth it… yeah… it was several years before I got my donut again…
In the last year, that donut has come to Southern California, however, the closest shop is a 20 minute drive away. So having this one down the street…well… maybe it’s a good thing they aren’t selling them…I’ll need bigger clothes and more money. My only complaint is that all the new shops here don’t have a plain glazed one like in Japan. Maybe they’ll make me one if I try to bring in more customers
Weird enough, they don’t freak me out. After a couple of years of panicking and shoving my kids under tables and counters, I have grown too used to the small ones.
Fortunately for us, we were out of the country in the last big one. I heard that was a rolling earthquake. My friends said it felt like the ground was water with all the “waves.”
A couple of these she got as a child when her father was stationed in Japan, the rest we bought on our subsequent tours. So my wife is 29(? Ha ha) so some are 50+ years old and the others date black to 1989. The wooden one we got in Hawaii circa 2019 at the aloha bowl flea market.
The photo is a picture she took of a store window in Tokyo that she entered into US Embassy’s photo contest and got an honorable mention. The photos were auctioned off for charity, and required the original negative (back in the heyday of film. So I had to buy the dang thing so she could have one. And it wasn’t cheap.
As a child playing in the back yard in NC one passed and knocked me off my feet. I felt it coming, roll under me and pass. It only lasted a couple of seconds but is the strangest feeling I ever experienced to feel 3 sine waves ripple under my feet.
I can’t imagine trying to evacuate a building when you can’t even stand up.
