Earlets

Hand-crafted Knot Jewelry:
Decorative Marlingspike Seamanship rendered in precious metal.

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I was much struck by the sight of a young lady with especially large piercings in her ears, and I asked her about them. "Earlets", she told me, and though she didn't elaborate, I am confident that it is an adaptation of the word "eyelet". A cylindrical earring, thrust directly through the earlobe, with a hollow core. I've seen very enlarged earlets on some Goths, a little beyond my own comfort zone, but in this particular case the size was proportional to the location and so the overall effect was interesting rather than off-putting.

Like I said: cylindrical. I started out with a nine-lead seven-bight knot, in order to have sufficient depth (length) to pass entirely through the earlobe. This was tied in exactly the same way as my chain links, and small stone settings, so it is really just a very small, very deep bezel. This particular knot has 56 crossings.

Here, you can see the flower on the end peeping out of a small brass tube. The tube keeps the outer diameter of the earlet from changing, and the brass rod inside holds it firmly and keeps it from distorting.

Here it is again, without the tube. You can see that the rod completely fills the inside of the knot, which is formed tightly around it.

Once the knot has been formed to its final shape and removed from the jigs, you can see that one end is flared out at right angles to the length of the knot, and the other end is just slightly expanded from the straight cylinder. The latter is done in order to give the earlet a better fit to the earlobe, making it less likely to fall out. I wanted to install it with a flower on each end, which would have made it effectively permanent, but she didn't think much of that idea.

...and, here's the flower. Sorry you don't get to see the rest of her, but you can take my word for it that she is quite lovely.

An interesting addendum to this story: the young lady's significant other has concluded that I pose a threat to their bond and has taken to sending me offensive and poorly written anonymous emails; apparently thinks the young lady is in danger of being swept off her feet by the charms of an overweight balding guy nearly three times her age. This would be very flattering if it weren't so bizarre.