My Wedding Ring

I have to say... this not having a computer that's memory card reader has not malfunctioned (my own at home and several at work??) has really got me annoyed. I have so many pictures that I've taken recently that I want to share and no way to do it. It's a huge blogging buzz-kill.

I am heading to Houston this weekend for a wedding so I'm thinking I might go ahead and buy our new laptop while I'm there at Best Buy (not at Apple even though there is one in Clear Lake, because if I need to take it back for some reason, there is a Best Buy in Lubbock). So hopefully by then, I will have freedom again!

So since I can only use iPhone pictures that I can upload to my Dropbox, I was going through my pictures and found one that I had taken a while back to show you my Shellac on my nails and noticing my ring, I realized that the story of my ring would be a fun thing to share with yall!

My ring is completely a creation of Kanyon's and a China man in the early 1900's....

Let me explain  : )

My mom's parents, Charles and LoRee Stubbs started dating during WWII. While back in Oklahoma for a short leave back in Oklahoma, he proposed to my grandmother. He didn't have a ring at the time and definitely didn't have money to buy one. So when he was sent back overseas, she didn't have a ring yet.

While in China during the War, (update: my mom and aunt talked about it and are pretty sure he got this ring on his tour in North Africa) my grandfather bought her a ruby with a teeny diamond in the middle, the one you see above. It was on a simple band with a small amount of scroll work on it. Rubies were very inexpensive at the time in the area and he now had a ring to put on my grandmother's finger when he came back to her in Oklahoma.

Later on, I think, he bought her a wedding band to go with it with eight little diamonds and eight little rubies on it.

Fast forward 50 or so years. When Sara, Emily, Bethany, and I (LoRee's four granddaughters) were in middle school and high school, our two mothers divided up Grandma's wedding band for the four of us, each with two diamonds and two rubies. I think Bethany still wears her's and maybe the other girls do, but mine has gotten too small for me. I really need to get it re-sized but for now its in my jewelry case.

My grandmother no longer wore her original ruby engagement ring because Papa had gotten her another one at some point during their marriage so my Mom had inherited her ring. I always thought it was so beautiful.

I really cannot tell you the time I decided I wanted to wear Grandma's ring as my own. For some reason, it seems like I always have... I really cannot draw up one memory of me realizing that is what I wanted.

Kanyon and I knew pretty early on that we intended to marry each other in our dating relationship and so I made sure he and my mom knew that was what I wanted when the time came. The only thing I requested was that he make sure and put it on a new band since the original one was so thin from wear by the time Mom inherited it. Other than that, it was up to him.

Kanyon had a job at a cowboy hat and leather shop in college and spending time in the shop making people's orders all day caused Kanyon to realize that he had a real artistic talent. I think this is what led him to decide he wanted to put his own creativity in my ring as well.

I obviously knew nothing of this and was completely surprised the day he proposed to me with the ring.

It is truly a masterpiece. He knew I liked the scroll work on the original ring and he had a desire to add some more diamonds to the ring. So he redesigned that part with a local jeweler in Brownfield and placed the teardrop diamonds in it. The funny thing is the jeweler really didn't think that would look good together and that it would look thrown together but Kanyon was adamant and the jeweler ended up loving it.

Again, the ruby and the diamond in the middle of it is original. I get a real kick out of picturing a Chinese man in the early 20th century painstakingly placing that teeny diamond in its place.

The band was made at the same time as the ring so it would conform to the ring and would be able to be sautered right before the wedding.

I love my ring and I love that there is no other ring in the world that matches it. And even if there was, no other ring would have been picked out by my grandfather and designed by Kanyon later on for me. I sincerely hope that one day one of my granddaughters will want to wear it as her own as well.