Sometimes when I do not want to do work I browse Etsy and dream of having the disposable income to buy many frivolous and pleasing things.

I haven’t worn jewelry regularly in years, but over the course of graduate school I’ve been trying to convert my wardrobe into something more compatible with looking like an adult and maybe even a professional, competent adult, and I’m thinking my new life of doing more than grabbing a pair of jeans and whatever silly printed t-shirt is nearest ought to include some jewelry. But I want my jewelry to be expressive of who I am, so what I want is nerdy jewelry. Ideally, a kind of “stealth” nerd jewelry that is attractive in its own right, and that would mainly be recognizable to other nerds in the know. Currently I have a pair of earrings made from recycled printed circuit board that fit the bill ok (most people up close recognize it as PCB, but they’re also just cute earrings from a bit of a distance), but I want more!

And what better place to find unconventional nerd jewelry than Etsy? (if you know a better place, point me there because that would be awesome.) I added a bunch of stuff to my favorites and thought maybe I’d try to make a treasury, but they limit the number of treasuries existing at one time and you have to like camp out and wait until there’s an opportunity to make new ones, and who has time for that?

So decided to make a blog post instead.

Brain earrings! A nod to my former life as a psychology major. I can’t really tell if other people would find these gross or not, I think they’re quite tasteful but then sometimes I have trouble understanding what other people find gross. I dissected a sheep’s brain in my physiological psych class and that was really cool. And when we did dissection in 9th grade biology out of a group of three boys and me, I was the only one willing to saw open the rat’s chest to get to the heart. Rotting things are gross, but well-preserved and clean dead things? Super interesting!

But I digress. I like these earrings.

More circuit board earrings, I like the unusual color on these. I feel more legitimate wearing electronic components like this now that I’ve actually put together circuits and soldered things. I’ve never really been interested in the hardware of the computers I use, but building little toys with Arduino is fun.

I LOVE THESE EARRINGS. Theobromine is my friend. I have become a connoisseur of fancy dark chocolate, and theobromine makes me feel pretty good. And here we have found a way to make chocolate nerdy. Perfect. I’m pretty sure I’m going to buy these in the future. Perhaps to celebrate my first paycheck if I ever manage to get a job. Unless of course someone who loves me buys them for me as a present or something first. ;)

Probably not something I would actually wear, for one thing I have wee slender wrists and bracelets never seem to work out well, for another I would never stop fiddling with it, even if it did fit in better with my overall “look” such as it is, but I heart it nevertheless.

The previous caveats about bracelets apply equally here, but I think this is just gorgeous. Would absolutely wear it if it fit and weren’t a constant distraction.

Not so much hidden nerd meaning here, but the whole thing is very geometric and mathy and this pleases me. I kept looking for pieces with some kind of secret algorithm basis, and this was the closest I could find. I don’t think I’m very close to a place in my life where I can spend $140 on a necklace, though.

Perhaps less “stealth” than I was hoping for, but awfully cute. I do not really have any sort of claim to be a chemistry nerd, but I love science, and knowing things about science, and I had one of those children’s chemistry sets when I was a youngun and I liked it.

Math nerd jewelry! I’m pretty sure everyone learns recursive programming by generating the Fibonacci sequence somewhere along the line. I get into almost as much trouble fiddling with rings as with bracelets, but, math nerd! and so pretty! The design is available in plenty of other stones, but the carnelian is my favorite. I always think deep red and silver looks so elegant.

Again, not “stealth” in the sense of being mistakable for something that is just pretty and not a geeky thing (even someone who has no knowledge of Harry Potter would probably find radish earrings a little weird) but Luna Lovegood is one of my all-time favorite fictional characters. I kind of like her better than all of the other students in Harry Potter.

It’s actually been quite some time since I went searching through etsy, so there may be a lot of new stuff I missed, but a quick perusal didn’t turn up much except for the radishes so you’ll just have to deal with the things that I’ve had in my favorites for ages.