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My little sister and brother-in-law

Held an intervention for @Hawks mustache. It garnered a lot of support.

2 years later, terrorizing the neighborhood

an article about our shop transitioning to allow us to have a life besides work::

The original Cape Cod bracelet is famously hard to get. Now it’s going online-only, ending a longtime tradition.
“The money, the exposure, the TikTok videos, I could care less about all of that,” said the owner of Eden Hand Arts, who dislikes the viral popularity of her family’s iconic bracelet.
By Steph Machado Globe Staff,Updated June 13, 2025, 1 hour ago

The original Cape Cod bracelet with its screwball closure created by Eden Hand Arts in Dennis, Mass.COURTESY OF EDEN HAND ARTS

The original Cape Cod bracelet is famously hard to get. Now it’s going online-only, ending a longtime tradition.
“The money, the exposure, the TikTok videos, I could care less about all of that,” said the owner of Eden Hand Arts, who dislikes the viral popularity of her family’s iconic bracelet.
By Steph Machado Globe Staff,Updated June 13, 2025, 1 hour ago

The original Cape Cod bracelet with its screwball closure created by Eden Hand Arts in Dennis, Mass.
The original Cape Cod bracelet with its screwball closure created by Eden Hand Arts in Dennis, Mass.COURTESY OF EDEN HAND ARTS
For some, getting a reservation to go inside the shop that created the original Cape Cod bracelet rivaled scoring tickets to a Taylor Swift concert.
“It was like the hunger games,” said Kristin O’Toole, a teacher from Wilmington who has five bracelets purchased over many years of Cape trips. “It was survival of the fittest.”
Unlike most stores, you couldn’t just walk into Eden Hand Arts in Dennis to buy the iconic “screwball” Cape Cod bracelet — a sterling silver bangle with a silver or gold ball **** it together — and other jewelry. The tiny family-owned shop off of Route 6A required tickets to get inside — free, but hard to snag — a system put in place after the demand for the bracelet skyrocketed beyond the artists’ abilities to handmake them fast enough.

Neighbors and customers complained. Some people figured out how to get around the ticket system. And the store couldn’t keep up.
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So this summer, the iconic shop won’t open for jewelry sales on the Cape at all. Starting July 2, the hard-to-get bracelet and other jewelry will be available on Etsy, the first time it’s ever been sold online.
“It was really clear we couldn’t go on like this,” the owner, Rachel Carey-Harper, told the Globe. “We’re a tiny little business.”
The announcement by the shop last week, which cited “intense dislike” for the ticketing system, prompted a flurry of reaction online. Out-of-towners who have dreamed of owning an original screwball were thrilled at the prospect of buying one remotely.

But for longtime shoppers, the elusiveness was the point. Securing a ticket weeks in advance, going to Dennis, waiting in line, bringing enough cash, getting your wrist measured. It took effort. With no online catalog, Capegoers shopped each other’s wrists, writing down the names of pieces so they could ask for them at the shop or in the “onesie” line outside, where you could buy one specific piece of jewelry without even seeing it.
Copycats are widely available from other jewelers, but the mystique of securing an original was part of the adventure, longtime customers said. Many people never take them off.
“Everybody who has the real Eden bracelets, you feel like a special club,” O’Toole said. She brought her 8-year-old niece to get her first screwball bracelet last summer, after waking up at 5 a.m. to stalk the website for tickets in advance. She’s been going to the Cape for 15 summers, and her whole family makes a day out of her Eden trip, going to the lake across the street on the day of the reservation.
Eden urges customers not to purchase the many copycats, noting that their bracelets are made in one-eighth increments to ensure a custom fit. The screwball name is trademarked, but the family tried and failed to secure a patent to stop others from copying the design, Carey-Harper said. The authentic bracelets come with a small dangling tag with an apple symbol on it.
On the shop’s Facebook announcement about not reopening to in-person jewelry sales, hundreds of commenters left messages with memories of visiting Dennis to buy a bracelet with their mom, their daughter, their grandmother.
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“Rather than fighting those visiting the Cape for tickets we will be fighting resellers worldwide,” one commenter said. Another celebrated, writing she’d been waiting “years” to buy a bracelet since she lives in Michigan.
It was never the owners’ intention to make the bracelet so exclusive.
Once a hidden gem spread by word-of-mouth, the shop was overrun after “The Bachelorette” contestant Chris Lambton gave one of the Eden bracelets to bachelorette Ali Fedotowsky as a gift on the hit ABC franchise in 2010.
“I pleaded with him not to give it,” said Carey-Harper, whose family knew the Lambtons from Dennis. “But he didn’t listen.”
"Eden Hand Arts in Dennis, Mass., won’t sell jewelry in-person at its store this year, but will offer pottery and other art.

Plenty of small businesses would be thrilled by the national exposure. But Carey-Harper said she almost closed the shop, one of several times it almost shuttered since it opened in the early 1960s. The store has never advertised, and Carey-Harper rarely does interviews, aiming to avoid publicity.
Eden Hand Arts in Dennis, Mass., won’t sell jewelry in-person at its store this year, but will offer pottery and other art.
Eden Hand Arts in Dennis, Mass., won’t sell jewelry in-person at its store this year, but will offer pottery and other art.COURTESY OF EDEN HAND ARTS
She wishes it was not so popular, and cringes at the overconsumption of it all.
“The money, the exposure, the TikTok videos, I could care less about all of that,” Carey-Harper said. “Obviously you want to make enough to pay the bills, but beyond that, how much do you need?”
Carey-Harper estimates the demand compared to the supply is “a thousand to one.” Since every bracelet is handmade by her husband and other jewelers, they would never be able to keep up — “unless we turn it into a factory, which is not who we are.”
She also didn’t want to address demand by jacking up the price of a $250 bracelet to $2,000. “I want it to be accessible,” she said. “I don’t want our art to be elitist.”

Congratulations Edward! @silvermouse
I hope we both enjoy our semi retirement! Monday will be my first day of no work! It’s going to be an adjournment for sure!

Found this in the zamboni garage.