A letter from a reader

I have shopped church bazaars for forty years. The best thing at this one was not for sale.

Six things I have noticed since a holiday bazaar in Cleburne, from a woman who has owned one good watch and not much else on her wrist most of her life, and never once wrote to a store about a bracelet.

Peggy Dalton · Customer · Austin, Texas · 5 min read

Before I tell you anything, you ought to know who is talking. I am Peggy, I am 63, and I live in Austin, Texas, with my husband Frank. My old friend Ruthie moved up to Cleburne a few years back to be near her grandbabies, and every October she ropes me into her church’s holiday bazaar. They hold it the third Saturday of the month so folks can get a start on Christmas. There are quilts on the back wall, a cake walk at two o’clock, and a long row of folding tables down the middle of the hall, every one of them covered in something somebody made by hand.

The bracelets I am writing about are the Constance and the Florence, from Iris and Nora, a small boutique here in Austin that has been quietly dressing women like us for a few years now. The Constance is the Western one, a silver-tone concho with a turquoise-blue stone in the middle and a row of turquoise, white and pink beads above it on brown cords. The Florence is the quiet one, a slim silver-tone cuff with three tan cords and one little daisy. When the boutique asked if they could put my letter up for other women to read, I said yes, as long as I could be completely honest in it.

I first saw them at the pepper jelly table. The woman running it, Reba, wore both on the same wrist, and every time she handed a jar across the tablecloth there they were, the turquoise one and the little daisy one side by side. I had them down as bazaar goods. Half that hall was jewelry somebody had strung at her kitchen table, so I picked up a jar of jalapeño jelly and asked her plainly what she wanted for the bracelets. Reba laughed out loud. She said, “Honey, these are not for sale, and I sure did not make them.” Read on.

Mine, a week later, on the same wrist in the same order. Ruthie took it at her own table and I asked her to leave my face out of it.

Here is what forty years of bazaars, craft fairs and Christmas shopping have taught me about bracelets. Most of us own one good watch, and maybe a thin gold bangle somebody gave us for an anniversary, and that is the whole of it. Everything else is either too young, too loud, or so dainty it disappears under a sweater sleeve by November. So the wrist stays bare, and we tell ourselves we are not bracelet people.

I had decided years ago that I was not a bracelet person. It turns out I just had not found the right two.

The morning they came. Both of them were on before Frank had finished his coffee.

I ordered both that night from Ruthie’s kitchen table, and I have worn them more in these few weeks than I have worn anything but my watch in ten years. Going by those weeks, it comes down to six things, and I will give them to you plainly.

1

The Constance looks like Texas

The middle of it is an oval silver-tone concho, the kind you would see on an old saddle or a belt at the stock show, with a sunflower pattern pressed all around it and one round turquoise-blue stone in the center. Above it runs a row of beads, turquoise, white, pink and turquoise again, and below it hangs one little silver leaf. It has a lot going on, I will grant you, but it all hangs together, and from across a church hall it reads as good Western jewelry rather than costume.

On my denim shirt at the kitchen table, so you can see the concho properly. Frank says it looks like something his grandmother would have worn to a dance.

★★★★★

That concho is the prettiest thing. I wore it to the rodeo with my jean jacket and three people asked where I got it.

Charlene P., Burleson

2

The Florence is the quiet one

Where the Constance makes conversation, the Florence keeps to itself. It is a slim silver-tone half cuff, smooth and plain, and the rest of the way around is three thin tan cords. At the end of the cuff sits one little daisy with five rounded petals, and the cords loop over that daisy to close it. There is a small filigree bead tied between two knots, and one short tail with two silver balls at the end. It is the sort of thing that looks like somebody chose it carefully, not like it came on a card at the drugstore.

On the front porch with my first cup, the morning after we got home from Cleburne.

★★★★★

The little daisy is just darling and so is the way the cord hooks over it. I have not taken it off in a month.

Wanda Sue H., Joshua

3

They look right together, and they look right apart

This is what stopped me at the jelly table. On their own, one is a little bold and one is a little shy. On the same wrist they settle each other down. The brown and turquoise of the Constance sits against the silver and tan of the Florence like they came as a pair, and I never once had to think about whether they matched. On a church morning I wear both. On a grocery-store Tuesday I wear the Florence alone and nobody would know it had a louder sister at home.

Where they live at night, in the white dish on my dresser that used to hold nothing but bobby pins.

★★★★★

I bought two from this collection to wear together and they look like a set. I get asked about them every single Sunday.

Nelda R., Alvarado

6

The easiest Christmas present I have bought in years

There is no size to guess and no color to agonize over, and they look like a good deal more than they cost. The boutique does twenty-eight designs in this collection, turquoise ones, stone ones, little fish and birds, so there is one for every woman on your list. My sister Sue’s is already wrapped in brown paper in my closet, and Ruthie went back the next week for the green stone one. Reba, for the record, now owns four.

Wrapping Sue’s at the kitchen table, with my own Constance on, because I could not help myself.

★★★★★

Ordered one for each of my daughters for Christmas and one for me. Nobody is getting theirs back.

Bobbie K., Grandview

The Constance and the Florence, against the bare wrist

You can keep telling yourself you are not a bracelet person, like I did. Here is the difference, laid out plainly.

About the price

Each of these is $29.95. They were $60.00. I will be honest, when I saw that I read the whole page twice looking for the catch, because I had just spent the morning at a bazaar where a hand-strung bracelet was going for forty dollars. I have not found one. They came with free shipping, they were the bracelets in the pictures, and they have been on my wrist most days since.

I will pass on what the boutique told me, which is that their fall jewelry comes in small runs and the turquoise pieces do not stay in stock long. Their words, not mine. What I can tell you from my side is that two of these together came to less than I have paid for one bracelet that went straight into the drawer, so it was an easy yes.

And I do not trust perfect scores, so I read the reviews before I ordered. Just over three hundred of them, sitting at 4.2 stars, which sounded like real women rather than robots. The same six things I have just walked you through come up in them, over and over, in other women’s words.

If your wrist has been bare since you decided you were not a bracelet person, this is where I would start. Take a look before this run sells through, because once it is gone, it is gone. And if you are ever at a church holiday bazaar in Cleburne and you see two women behind the pepper jelly with the same two bracelets on, one of them is Reba, and the other one is me.

Peggy

THE CONSTANCE & THE FLORENCE

★★★★☆ 4.2 out of 5 from 300+ reviews

$60.00 $29.95

• Constance: silver-tone concho with a turquoise-blue stone
• Turquoise, white and pink beads and a little silver leaf
• Florence: slim silver-tone cuff with a little daisy
• Wear them together or on their own
• Easy to put on, light enough for all day
• Twenty-eight designs in the collection
• Free shipping

See If It Is Still In Stock

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