En Route for daphne

About seven years ago, when I was still a teacher teaching English in Japan and had as yet to pick up a pair of flat-nosed pliers, I was talking to a student after class when she mentioned that she was planning to start an online site selling jewelry. I wished her luck.

Several years later, she takes me to a huge jewelry supply shop in Harajuku, where I spend the rest of the day with stars in my eyes and a burning conviction that I need to spend the rest of my life surrounded by these sparkly sparkly gems and metals.

Fast forward again and I'm two years into running my own jewelry line, En Route. I am in California on vacation, shopping at a mall when I come upon a store selling the most sublime silk ribbon in vibrant hues of turquoise and pink. I'll get some of that, I think, I might be able to incorporate them into necklaces. The next day I receive an email from my old friend, with an invitation to make a collection for her online shop, daphne.

So here we are, all these years later, and my first collection for daphne, a collection based on that Californian ribbon, is debuting in a matter of hours.
One thing, it would seem, leads to another...