What do Hong Kong and Bing Crosby have in common? Well, me and some new fans of the crooner. A mention of the Kowloon district of Ho Hum got me singing the Road to Hong Kong song, which lead to websites, video of Crosby singing and general appreciation of his marvelous voice and an interruption in the pearl selecting.

Yesterday was the first day of pearl finding and it went very very well. One highlight was finding four pairs of metallic 12mm (yes 12mm) round, smooth metallic white pearls.

Stunning all nacre 12mm white metallic AAA rounds white pearls. Can you see that some are even more metallic than others?

This photo also gives a clue as to how I go about selecting as perfect as can be matches. First select the best of the pearls available and then see if any of those make pairs. You can see that here I have four possibles and one pair. Eventually I made four pairs. It helps to check sizes too. When you’re scrutinising so closely what looks like a massive sie difference turns out to be a fraction of a mm, and with a head in between the pearls hopefully people will appreciate the amazingness of an almost perfectly round matched pair with a fractional size differnence

Happily there seem to be more good undrilled and half drilled natural colour and black pearls this time, so I’ve already scooped some.With this many available I didn’t attempt to make pairs, just picked out the shiniest. I can made pairs later.

It’s Chinese New Year here, and another highlight was coming across a happy yellow dragon in the street,  dancing to a heavy drum beat. No-one seems sure if it is a year of the goat or the ram but happy and prosperous year of the small milk giving mammal with horns to you all!

Now I’ve just got to get Ho hum…ho ho ho ho hum ‘ by Crosby out of my head!