Mordor, Middle Earth, and being a nerd

All that is gold does not glitter,

Not all those who wander are lost;

The old that is strong does not wither,

Deep roots are not reached by frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,

A light from the shadows shall spring;

Renewed shall be blade that was broken:

The crownless again shall be king.

~J.R.R. Tolkein.

Just wrapped up this ring, in casting class.

Stone-in-place casting is kinda scary, the possibility

of messing up is pretty huge.

Cross your fingers kind of project.

I am pretty excited that this ring made it in the kiln....

I can't help but think about the Lord of the Rings trilogy when I think about this ring. It just LOOKS like it came from the depths of Mordor, out of some high fantasy world of Tolkein. I guess even wikipedia says "Tolkeinesque" is a real word. It belongs on an elvin finger, or some woodland creature. Green Tourmaline is also called Verdelite, which, to me, sounds much more Elvin anyways.....

For a bit of background: I am a big 'ol LTR nerd. I don't speak or write Elvin, but I know plenty of folks who do....In high school, I ran with the "magic cards in the cafeteria" crowd, ate a lot of my lunches in the Art Department, or the Band room, and periodically recieved notes from friends in calligraphy, and sometimes, Elvin. Yup. I read all the books, camped out at the movie theatre when the trilogy came out, and probably even wore some LTR attire whilst enjoying the movie on the big screen. I can do a mean impression of golam/smiegel, I had nightmares about The Eye of Sauron for weeks after the movie came out, and I was secretly in love with Elija Wood....He played such a good Hobbit.

But here's my rebuttal.

We are all nerds.

Big ones.

The sooner you fess up, the better off you are.

(Mordor Ring just listed in Etsy-Land today)