365 Days of Earrings

Saturday, December 31, 2011

Yearring's End, and a New Beginning

Today I have come full circle through the year. 365 pair of earrings, one for each of the 365 days of 2011.

Why 365? Because that's how many days it takes for planet Earth to travel around its sun. 365.242, really. It's one of those numbers we can't control.

Nature is full of patterns and numbers. Humans have puzzled over them and created a myriad of patterns of our own.

For millenia, such patterns have been part of human worship, like this lotus mandala used in Buddhist practice. 

One pattern found in nature came to dominate our number system: ten fingers. A logical decimal system, base 10. I'm grateful that people around the world embraced this system: in Egypt, China, and India. Cultures using base 12 and base 60 lost out.

Many other ancient systems remain in use. 24 hours in a day. 360 degrees in a circle. 12 inches in a foot. 4 quarts in a gallon. All had their origins in nature. All have served us well.

But just as cultures all over the world adopted the Base Ten Decimal System, in the last 100 years they have also adopted the Metric system which applies Base Ten to measurement.

We Americans are stuck in the past, using systems that do not serve science, industry, technology, or even cooking well. Our educational system wastes valuable time teaching children how to compute the myriads of conversions.

Today, I wore these lovely hand-crafted flowers that my husband John bought for me at the DC Holiday Market.

Ten-petaled earrings. My final pair for 2011. A bridge to my project for 2012, an exploration that I'm calling Penny Wise and Pound Foolish. I'll be blogging at http://arkametric.blogspot.com/ starting on January 1, 2012. 

But I'll be enjoying my 365 pairs of earrings (and the 20 or so that I never wore) for years to come. With thanks to the makers and to the givers for my yearring.

2 comments:

Käthe said...

I'm mourning the end of the Yearring... it was such an integral part of my daily routine. Thanks for the journey- it's been wonderful. I look forward to following your next adventure!

M. Kasch said...

Me, too. I really enjoyed your blog. Can't wait for the next one!
PS- I love the earrings and necklace that you made for me. Thank you so much! ( the neck warmer is great too, but I have 't had the chance to wear it yet. . . )