The other month, I saw some earrings made from vintage lace, suspended simply from a delicate gold wire. And what happened next is what always happens to me: I didn’t buy them (my mother’s mantra from growing up looping in my head, oh you could make something like that). And now I can’t find the artist who made them to show you all.

But when it came time to craft up a birthday present for my older sister, I remembered the lace. I foraged through my stuffed craft drawers and also came up with this shell, and this glistening little bead.

I trotted out the little bit of jewelry making that I know, and assembled this necklace. I can’t tell if it’s weird to give your sister a shell-berry-lace necklace (and weirder still to show it off here), but there’s something of nature in this piece that really appeals to me. It feels like a seascape in miniature, with the lace standing in for foamy waves, and the berry something you might find growing nearby in salty, scrubby brush.

And it makes me think of my grandmother, and the enduring image I have of her: barefoot in a bathing suit and sun hat, bent at the waist, combing the surf for treasures that she always managed to find.

I love most of all that she always knew there was something worthy, waiting to be discovered.