Unseasonal

I know, I know, it's the wrong end of the year for the Oak King, but it's taken me so damn long to get hold of a chain for this I couldn't wait to photograph it now I have. And yes, I shed like a dog and I managed to photograph one of my own hairs too, well done twiglet.

The pendant was bought at a silver shop in Glastonbury - apparently in the middle of it there is a bona fide skeleton oak leaf, which has been coated with silver and then with gold. I have *no* idea how you silver plate organic substances, but I suspect watered-down silver clay might have had something to do with it, on the grounds of it having some solidified-drip-looking bits around the edges. 

It's surprisingly heavy for its size, and also has a very handmade-looking bail with a fairly small aperture for the chain to go through; this means quite a few chains with round fastening loops on the end don't fit into it (unless you squash the loop with pliers, which one doesn't want to try out in the shop!). The first chain I tried it on - which in all fairness was very lightweight and I've had it a very long time - snapped inside half an hour. This one (ordered online) is not quite as chunky as I thought it'd be based on a chain of the same thickness seen in person, but so far it's holding up. Come next payday I may well just go and get the one I saw in person anyway (once it comes back into stock post Commercialmas). Gold pendants (preferably not the kind that are plated over silver, but all in good time) are something I plan to start a collection of, and that means I will likely want more than one chain to hang said collection on because I'm pernickety about things looking right. (Plus I like spiga chains, which are never what things come with when you buy them).