The story of the solstice and the completion of the ring of wheat grass

In the spring of 2023, an old dear friend came to me with the wish to have a ring made with a stone. The stone came from a pair of earrings, one of which had gone missing. The stone is a **sultanite** — a fairly sizable gem, about 5 mm in diameter. It’s a fascinating mineral, with known deposits in Asia. What makes this stone so unique is its remarkable color range: under certain lighting, it reflects green, red, purple, brown, and yellow. With a hardness of 6.5, it’s also well-suited as a ring gemstone.

So, my friend Evelyn gave me complete freedom with the design, and I was able to let my creativity soar a bit. Since the sketching happened around the summer solstice, bristlegrass somehow made its way into my design — a carefree, widely spreading plant that grows almost everywhere. It immediately brought back childhood memories: placing a bristlegrass leaf between your thumbs to make a loud whistle, and the one who could whistle the loudest was the coolest. The little leaf was also twisted around the finger, counting the twists to see how many one could make. From this playful memory came the idea of creating a ring shaped like a bristlegrass leaf wrapped around the finger, reflecting freedom and lightness.

We decided to make the ring from a slightly higher-karat gold, specifically **750 alloy in yellow gold**. That’s 75% gold, offering a completely different luster compared to 585 alloy.

During the ring-making process, I felt the need to show it to Evelyn midway. The ring was still without the stone, but I just felt I had to share it with her. We met, looked at the ring together, and my friend said: *“Does it really need the stone? It already feels so complete and interesting without it.”* That’s when I realized why I had that strong urge to show her the ring. Intuition is often much wiser and more aware than decisions made purely with the mind.

And so the bristlegrass ring was completed for my dear childhood friend Evelyn, with entirely different plans for the stone in the future. Once, when Marita Lumi asked me in an interview for A-Galerii, “Do your jewelry pieces ever change during the making process? — it seems to me that this happens all the time, especially when guided by intuition. Intuition is a fascinating character, one you often only fully understand later.

Wishing you a beautiful and peaceful winter solstice today!