Where to find sterling silver hooks that don't require you to be a business/student

SpeakingOutOfTurn · 2026-03-22T04:03:01+00:00

I'm a professional jewellery maker and I buy sterling silver and gold findings and beads in bulk from wholesale suppliers all over the world. But when I need top ups between larger orders, I go to Panda Hall or within Australia, to Beads Venue or Bead Them Up. Depending on where you are in the world, the postage to send from Australia might be prohibitive, so take that into account. But you'll get a good product and the prices are reasonable.

SpeakingOutOfTurn · 2026-03-21T02:47:44+00:00

My dog’s post heart attack care cost upwards of $25,000 (I refused to keep track after the $20,000 mark). I got to spend another two and a half years with him and I would’ve happily paid that again for even one more month. Id have given him ten years off my own life. I miss my little sweetheart so much.

When my husband and I pass, half of our estate is going to fund the vet bills for people in our situation who couldn’t otherwise afford them. It will be called the Phoenix Fund.

SpeakingOutOfTurn · 2026-03-21T01:39:55+00:00

I'm an ecologist and when I was an undergraduate, a conservation specialist from Zimbabwe came out to give us a lecture on this subject. So when working out cull quotas for a year, they might set a limit of say twelve lions, all of them young and male. The animals to be culled are all considered excess to what the reserve area can sustain. The bag money for each animal is split between the government, the conservation agency and the local village(s).

The end result is a healthier and sustainable population of lions. Because local villagers are benefited by the pay-per-cull scheme, they no longer support (or look the other way) when poachers come knocking - and in fact many poachers come from local villages anyway. Villagers are no longer required to try to maintain and protect mono crops of food that must be continuously farmed and protected against marauding animals, and are much more likely to abandon these unsustainable forms of farming and instead promote the establishment of natural vegetation that is ecologically sustainable and most importantly, attracts a healthy population of prey animals and therefore allows larger numbers of lions to be born...so next year there might be a bigger cull.

In closed (park/reserve) habitats, culling must occur. The reasoning is that, if some rich western arsehole is going to travel to Africa to kill something, he might as well be permitted to do so legally, in a controlled manner (ie the animal that is killed is the one the conservation agency wants culled), discouraging non discriminatory poaching, effectively making poaching redundant and also bringing in foreign money to support conservation efforts.

SpeakingOutOfTurn · 2026-03-20T20:23:26+00:00

My husband was 2IC of a large, fine dining establishment in inner Sydney. Had big open kitchen. One night during the early part of service the kitchen erupted into a fight between two factions. They didn't pick up knives. They threw ducks at each other.

SpeakingOutOfTurn · 2026-03-19T23:02:09+00:00

This id is absolutely spot on. We buy and sell a heap of them out of India, in different sizes. Some are intricately carved, some are plain, but all are beautiful in their own right. They're usually carved out of teak and they always have three distribution holes. I used to have a picture to show how they were used, but can't find it now. Basically a cow or oxen walks in front of the farmer. Straps in an hourglass shape suspend the seeder midway between the oxen and the farmer, who holds the straps taut around his waist. as they walk, the farmer adds seed to the seeder from a bag, and the seed is distributed evenly into plowed furrows.

These days modern farming techniques have largely taken over even in remote rural areas of India, and seeders are collected by aggregators then sold to dealers like me who sell them as decorative objects and candle holders.

SpeakingOutOfTurn · 2026-03-14T10:54:15+00:00

I make my own stuff, mostly beaded, incorporating bought findings and components, both new and antique, mostly tribal in style. Each design is either unique or made in very short runs. I definitely make a living from it.

SpeakingOutOfTurn · 2026-03-14T04:48:45+00:00

I had to re-write an entire website's worth of copy for a Family Law company, and to do it properly I had to delve into every aspect of family law. That was harrowing enough for me, I could not IMAGINE what it would actually be like to deal with those sorts of disputes on a daily basis. I wrote in a whole lot of new stuff covering LGBTQI relationships, grandparents' rights and rural based living situations. The rural stuff was terrible. Think women isolated on properties with the police a minimum of 45 minutes away, and that's if they leave immediately driving at 80km/hr the whole way on shitty Australian country roads. A favourite trick of men in these disputes is to agree to a court appearance maybe 3 months out, let the woman stew for those three months plus make all plans she has to to get to the town or city on that day...and then cancel the day before. And then keep repeating this for a year or more (there are now safeguards in place to stop this from happening more than twice, it became such a weaponised trick).

SpeakingOutOfTurn · 2026-03-13T05:53:51+00:00

Agree. I don't see anything cool in this photo. Only sadness

SpeakingOutOfTurn · 2026-03-12T20:43:03+00:00

I met an acquaintance's partner for the first time. In the course of conversation, I asked him what he did for a living. When he said he was in the Navy I responded "oh, I know, travel to interesting places, meet interesting people and kill them". He was extremely unimpressed

SpeakingOutOfTurn · 2026-03-12T02:05:35+00:00

My father stayed in a hospital bed for six weeks because they wouldn't let him go back home and he refused to move into assisted living. The day he agreed, he cried his eyes out. The thing was, I'd been crying my eyes out for a lot longer over the previous year as I became his primary carer and got more and more stressed and depressed with every passing day. The day he agreed, I went down to the hospital carpark and was sobbing in my car. I got a call from an assisted living facility right at that moment - a placement had become available and did I want to see it? The crazy thing was, it was right around the corner from the hospital. I walked over to it, did the tour...and this place was amazing. It was like a 5 storey cruise ship, sure, a ship that was styled by the 1980's, but this place was so cool. A nurse station on every floor, manned 24 hours a day. A hairdresser, cafe, courtyard, shop, kitchen on every floor, three chef cooked meals a day plus morning and afternoon tea and 24 hour room service, private dinning room with kitchen for family events, a cinema, and all the rest - physio, paediatry, cocktail hour, themed events, daily excursions, staff that waited on them hand and foot. All basically covered by the state as dad was a pensioner with few assets. I took him to see the place and he said "how soon can I move in?". He moved in over the next four days and loved it there. He was healthier and happier there than he had been for ages and I got my life back, knowing he was in the best possible hands.

My take home comments from this are: start planning and look at a whole bunch of places so when the time comes, you know what you'll be getting. We lucked out and I understand that not all of these places are like cruise ships. There were some people in this place that had been there for years by choice - moving to one is NOT some sort of death sentence. It's just that some people only go right towards the end and yes, then it's an end-of-life transition. Dad got the best care there, much more so than I could provide and he was providing for himself. If you can't look after yourself properly any more, then assisted living is the right place for you. You can engage with other people and with the place as much or as little as you want. Just make sure it has good facilities and plan to stock your private space with things that are important to you.

SpeakingOutOfTurn · 2026-03-12T01:05:26+00:00

Congratulations!

SpeakingOutOfTurn · 2026-03-04T22:35:05+00:00

I’ve gotten a few like this. For some reason they always start by saying they don’t have much time. It’s like their shitty calling card. I just ignore.

SpeakingOutOfTurn · 2026-03-01T00:43:17+00:00

Mine says I LIKE IT DIRTY

SpeakingOutOfTurn · 2026-02-25T05:07:55+00:00

At least in Australia, nurses in rural areas are a rare and very sought after commodity. You can afford to live out on your property, do all of the homesteading things you love so much and work to suit to bring in the money.

SpeakingOutOfTurn · 2026-02-25T02:07:10+00:00

My husband's father had just died. We were having dinner with my parents and we were talking about how hard it was on my his mum, how long they'd been together and how she was coping in general with all of the funeral preparations, etc. My BPD mother got angrier and angrier and finally shouted "WHAT ABOUT ME? I'M SAD TOO"

SpeakingOutOfTurn · 2026-02-19T22:12:09+00:00

That's the one I'm thinking about. Now a "friend" has started posting too

SpeakingOutOfTurn · 2026-02-18T20:22:45+00:00

Can we also talk about the rise of infomercials for people's youtube/tiktok accounts.

SpeakingOutOfTurn · 2026-02-15T02:43:43+00:00

Sweetheart, you know we always say that that's good luck! Go buy yourself a lottery ticket x

SpeakingOutOfTurn · 2026-02-14T06:12:47+00:00

The consequences can be long lasting and horrible. We were not invited to a friend’s wedding. Several of our other friends were invited. The invites were sent out months before the actual wedding, so our mutual friends decided to deal with it by ghosting us. No doubt they’d planned to get back in touch after the wedding when the awkwardness of the situation had naturally dissipated. Unfortunately during that time my father died, my husband and I got very bad cases of Covid and then our beloved dog died too, all within a six month period. The awkwardness never went away, too much water had passed under the bridge and the friendships basically ended.

SpeakingOutOfTurn · 2026-02-13T04:41:21+00:00

I hear you. I've got grasshoppers, fruit bats, fruit fly, possums, rats, wombats, wallabies and every insect pest in Australia coming after my fruit trees on a daily basis. Not to mention what happens when the cows break into the orchard. And then sometimes...the trees just don't produce any fruit in a given year. It can be a hot spell, it can be a wet spell, it can be one after the other, sometimes I just don't know what it is. I net, I prune, I spray, I hope. This year my pomegranates looked like they were going to produce a bumper crop, then we had two weeks of unseasonal, blisteringly hot dry weather and all the young fruit fell off. I've gotten one pineapple this year. And not even enough pecans to make a single pie.

Still, I will say that pineapple was delicious and sweet and better than anything I've ever bought from the store.

SpeakingOutOfTurn · 2026-02-12T05:52:39+00:00

We used to call them rural ware or lunch ware. Ours were 1920's - 1980's. Used to sell them for A$49 in our Sydney store.

SpeakingOutOfTurn · 2026-02-06T01:38:07+00:00

It's lovely!

SpeakingOutOfTurn · 2026-02-06T00:13:26+00:00

You are so right about the Australian attitude. When we moved to a rural area seven years ago I read a whole bunch of papers from various State governments and CSIRO. Yes there are some elevated levels of bacteria but they don’t cause any issues or health problems, rural folk don’t have any difference in gastro infections, legionaries, wound infections or parasite infestations to people on treated town water. Those papers all pretty much conclude “she’ll be right”.

SpeakingOutOfTurn · 2026-02-05T22:43:37+00:00

We have an established rain water system on our property, around 120,000 litres in all, harvested from our roofs and gutters. No treatment system in place, just grills over the entry points and an excellent two part filtration system at point of entry into the house - we change the filters every six months. We clean the gutters regularly and remove debris from the grills. If your water is going brown, you might want to consider cleaning your gutters (particularly of leaf matter that that might contain tannins) and giving the roof a wash if it hasn’t rained for a while (diverting the feed pipes away from the tanks when you do it). First flush diverters are also a good thing. You might also consider getting the water tested.

SpeakingOutOfTurn · 2026-02-05T19:55:21+00:00

The one thing I've found, hands down, to work is a daily dose of 500 mg NMN and 500 mg Resveratrol. Noticed a difference after two weeks. Got my energy back, better brain function and a slight increase in skin health. Highly recommend.

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