Two special necklaces

I have mentioned my parents before.  I made a great choice there.  My dad is a thinker and a passionate nature lover who shares his belief that we are primed to be friends with nature and allowing that friendship with nature to flourish brings all sorts of psychological and social benefits.  He immerses himself in the bush and encourages others to do the same thing in his book, A Day in the Bush, and and in his blog Our Green Genes.My mum is a thinker who makes beautiful art with textiles and fabrics.  She plays (in her words).  We play together and have a slowly growing sisterhood of fabric/ polymer ladies scattered across the state.Recently when we had a bit of time together, mum was talking about qualities that she reflects on and tries to develop.   She talked about these all being underpinned by forgiveness - being able to forgive your self when you don't quite make it and forgiving others when they don't.  They resonated so much for me and made me think of the Guideposts Brene Brown talks about in The Gifts of Imperfection.Mum's ten Cs were:Calm, courage, compassion, concentration/ clarity, connectedness, creativity, having a cosmic perspective, recognising choice, being able to make changes that were of benefit to others and being able to identify and meet a challenge in tough situations.Even as she spoke, I could see the necklace.  I wanted to honour her thoughtfulness and recognise the wisdom of those choices.  The notion of each 'C' being represented by a faux ivory shard was immediate and I wanted to explore using very basic symbols to represent (if only to me) each of those things.And that is how necklaces #35 and #36 came about.  Ideas from the Africa Adorned book, particularly the necklaces from Mali and Ethiopia, and from wistfully perusing the Dorje Designs website merged.  I still have enough shards to make one more necklace so will do that.  But for now, here are some photos of the 'Ten Cs Necklaces glimpsed in the last post.I just wish Dad wore jewellery.  But he is a fan and even featured one of MY pieces in his blog here!  What a man.