May 9th

Woke up at 3am, bloody jet lag! Read for an hour then back to bed. J-Me slept like a baby.

Finally woke up, ate breakfast and hit the road. Did a little business with a glass vase factory just down the road from our apartment.

 

 

 Then we drove on to a metal filigree factory that was purchased from the old Jablonex three years ago but when we stopped in to see them back then they were not ready to sell us anything. Now they are ready. We will be doing a factory tour here on Friday. Most of the molds are 50 to 60 years old with some being over 100. They have over 16,000 stamping mold shapes. We are very excited to do business with them! The factory floor was very loud working busily with machinery stamping non-stop, people running around with tools and metal sheets. This will be an exciting addition to our tour.

Here is a close up of one of the sample cards, Guy is browsing thru them.  They have a 16,000 card catalog. It will take months to see all of them. And years to have them all take photos of.                              I think we need some of these Howling Wind God.   

After that we drove to visit an old glass bead company that we used to buy from for many years, before they went bankrupt and vanished for about 2 years. Then they re-emerged as a new company but with a lot of the same old molds and a lot of new ones. Some of our most favorite molds are not available anymore. Bummer! Did a little business here, and plan on going back tomorrow to finish up.

Took a little nap in afternoon, as we were still exhausted from jet lag.

Walked around Janov and took pictures of this very scenic little town. They do not do justice for how beautiful it is.

The weather has been beautiful, not to hot, not to cold. It just started to sprinkle as we walked around town. This old road is bordering on a very old cemetery.

 

This lovely old house is at least 150 years old and native to this area in the mountains. 

And take a look at this great Art Nouveau facade. Just lovely to see. They were working on restoring the building.

Ended the day with more grocery shopping for our daily fresh bread. Love the bread and the beer. Got to remember to save some of our money for beads.

J-Me and Guy are the owners of Wild Things Beads, a small family run import business specializing in Czech glass beads and buttons and finding the unusual to bring to their warehouse. They also run working bead tours to Jablonec and Hong Kong. Their warehouse is located deep in the Sierra Nevada foothills of Northern California, and can be reached by phone at (530)743 1339 or on the web at www.wildthingsbeads.com. They are also open by appointment at their warehouse.