I'm an utter fan of George R. R. Martin's works. I first read the Wild Cards, in the nineties, as a friend recommended then. Then A Song of Ice and Fire (which have been lately published in Finnish by Kirjava as Tulen ja jään laulut) have been keeping me on the edge for almost a decade now. I also lovelovelove "Windhaven", Martin's early collaboration with Lisa Tuttle, and "Drream Songs" the retrospective of Martin's life's work, which includes many otherwise hard-to-find short stories.

So one day, as I was re-reading "A Game of Thrones" for the second time, inspiration struck. Weirwood heart tree. I need to get me one. Sterling for the eerie white tree, and tumbled garnet chips for the red leaves and and haunting red dried sap eyes. I've done "Tree of Life" pendants before, so I know how to make one, but of course the design needed to be extraordinary, weirwoodlike.

I read the books for descriptions of the trees, here's the first one, p. 23 of "A Game of Thrones" (Bantam Spectra, 2005): "At the center of the grove an ancient weirwood brooded over a small pool where the waters were black and cold. "The heart tree," Ned called it. The weirwood's bark was white as bone, it's leaves dark red, like a thousand bloodstained hands. A face had been carved in the trunk of the great tree, its features long and melancholy, the deep-cut eyes red with dried sap and strangely watchful. They were old, those eye;s older than Winterfell itself. They had seen Brandon the Builder set the first stone, if the tales were true; they had watched the castle's granite walls rise around them. It was said that the children of the forest had carved the faces in the trees during the dawn centuries before the coming of the First Men across the narrow sea."

Then I googled for inspirational, yet natural shapes. Let the idea brew and take shape quietly in my subconscious for a half a year or so.

Then, I realised GRRM was coming to appear as a Guest of Honor to Finncon, the biggest Finnish SF and Fantasy convention. I simply had to give him one, as he has given me so much, and I wanted to thank somehow. Thus, materialization time.

Mine is the one on the left, it's a pendant I made as a test version. The oval pendant shape was so feminine, that I decided to make a round pin for GRRM instead. It's always very awkward for me to give any of my trinkets to anyone, and I pretty much fled the scene in an agony of timidity and greatfulness after I handed my version of a weirwood heart tree over, but I later found out he and his companion-in-life both liked it very much. In fact, on Sunday he had pinned it on his hat as a cockade, which I found amaizingly smashing.

It's definitely been one of the greatest weekends I'll ever live through.