Floss tagged me!

Thank goodness it is quite an easy one this time. This is what I have to do ( straight quote from her blog, cos I am lazy, lol ) -

This one is charmingly different and easy:
1-Collect the book that you have most handy
2-Turn to page 161
3-Find the 5th complete sentence
4-Cite the sentence on your blog
5-Pass it on to five other blogger friends
Well, it did seem easy at first glance, but then I realised that my desk is in front of a bookshelf, with hundreds of paperbacks! The photo only shows the top three shelves, the middle shelf has all my soap business paperwork on it, and the bottom three shelves are full of sci-fi and fantasy books as well.

Hmmm, I decided that the shelf right behind the monitor was the one with nearest access to books, and the top of the pile sort of next to the monitor was probably the most handy. And that book was -
Terry Goodkind - Confessor. This is the concluding novel in the utterly fabulous and unmissable Sword of Truth series. I can't praise that series enough. Every time a new book came out, I re-read the whole series again right from the start

Right, lets turn to page 161 then.
and the fifth complete sentence is.......
" Rikka looked disappointed "
Waaahh, how disappointing is that? Such a boring, short sentence. Not fair, when there were lovely long, interesting sentences just before and just after. Well, humph.
Ah well, it doesn't really tease your imagination and it probably won't have made you rush out and buy the book, lol, but honestly, if you like very well written fantasy, get into this Sword of Truth series.
So now I need to nominate 5 others, right, hmmmm. Well
Sarah, from Red Gingham is my first choice, although the only book she is likely to pick up over the next month or so is the (probably very hefty) instruction manual for her new sewing machine
Joy, from Hippy News is next, come on Madame Cowpat, stop thinking about your new fella and do this little thing for me ( oh, before you all think the worst, her new fella is a gorgeous horse )
JJ, from The Diary of a Croaper, has no excuse not to do this, as the prodigal friend has finally returned from Portugal and has computer access again, yay.
Charlie, from Figs and Lemons might be able to find the time to pick up a book, unless she gets more invitations from strange men to sushi parties, in the middle of the night.
Amy, from During Quiet Time, she is busy busy busy all the time with all sorts of things, but I still think she is either Superwoman or has a time machine stashed away in the basement, so she will surely be able to find the time to pick up a book.....
There, all done, that wasn't too bad. Oh, no, not all done, now I have to tell them all they have been tagged, lol.
And now for something completely different. Last night my beloved little Sony digital camera, an ancient 2.1mb , but very handy little thing, starting dying on me after many years of very excellent service. Not good timing, because the standard lens on my Nikon D40 also bit the dust for some reason ( it locked up ), which left me with just the telephoto lens on the D40. I do love the Nikon, but its bulky, and sometimes I just need a little camera to take with me to fairs, on holiday etc, you know the sort of thing. So when I was in the shop this morning getting the lens sent off for repair, I also looked for a new little camera as backup and for general use. After much deliberation and pretty sound advice from the guy in the shop, I settled on a Fuji Finepix F60, which seems to be quite a nifty little thing and not too expensive either. I have only just unpacked it and taken a few pics indoors with it, but it seems to be coping well with close up text ( on the label ), which is important to me. What do you think of the pic quality? Passable for a dinky little cam? Don't judge them on the contents, lol, I couldn't be bothered to move, just snapped from my chair

I am going to have a play with it at the fair tomorrow, I think there will be loads of fab things to photograph.
Right, I am off now to tell all those lovely people above that they have been tagged!
xx

JJ - Back to Lalaland UK division

Well, I'm back (boohoo). It's going to take me forever to catch up with all the posts etc on here and other blogs so forgive me for being slow at replying to things (Liz, you'll just have to be patient. Yes, I know you have to look it up in the dictionary ......)

A few little weeks hiding away in the hills in Portugal was fab. It's definitely time to come back though when the temperature in the sun yesterday was about 46C and a mere 34C degrees in the house. The sensor we'd put directly in the sun was reading 57.6C. Yuk. Oh, and we started to hear English voices coming from a house over the hill - time to escape back to Blighty when you can hear screaming and shouting in English. What a cheek! - how dare they appear in the hills. I may be a Brit but everything inside me shrivels up and wants to run like mad when I can hear fellow Brits carrying on in the unique way of bellowing we seem to have.

Anyhow, today I'm rather cool (in fact I think my toes are blue) which is lovely. I'm going to spend a couple of days with my Mum & Dad before I go home so certain impatient persons may have to wait for pics of things I may or may not have been up to while supervising Lalaland Portugal Division. :-)

A morning on the beach

It was a beautiful morning yesterday, gorgeous blue skies, warm sunshine, not too much wind, just a nice gentle breeze, and the tide was going out. The dogs were going stir crazy at home, so we took them to the beach. Oh boy, did they go nuts! They raced through the surf at what seemed like 100 miles an hour, chasing each other in turn, Poppy plowing through the waves, and Hector jumping them like a gazelle. Well, more like Tigger actually, lolol, it was quite hilarious to watch, he seemed vertically airborne for such a very long time.

What a difference to when we first got Hector. Poppy had always loved the beach and the water, she is a real waterbaby, but Hector was scared stiff when we took him the first time. He almost bolted when we took him over the pebbles, the noise scared him so much! But we persevered and he got better and better, started dipping his toes into the water, then chasing Poppy through the shallow bits and finally, finally throwing himself in with joyful abandon.

I only had my little ancient camera with me yesterday, so the photos are pretty awful, but I hope they still convey the sheer and utter bliss the doggies experienced on the beach -


Of course, the lovely weather didn't last, it got quite grey in the afternoon, and in the evening it was chucking it down. Still, as long as we have a couple of hours to take the doggies out, I don't mind. Its pretty grey again right now, I just hope the weather improves for the weekend, I have a two-day outdoor event. Keep your fingers crossed for me, please. xx

I am still around, honestly

I can't believe how long its been since I last wrote a post for this blog, almost a whole week. So whats my excuse? Well, I am doing loads of fairs at the moment, and that takes quite a lot of time to prepare for. Saturday's was really quite excellent, I had such a fab time and sold loads as well. You can read about it here. The soaps all sold really well, but quite predictably, the Lavendine lavender soap was the outright winner again. Second most popular was probably the hair soap, I still can't quite believe how many people out there suffer with scalp problems.

Because I was sharing a large outside space with three other girls, I had taken a few vintage bits with me as well. Do you remember this gorgeous Eiderdown I bought a while ago?


It was bought by a lovely lady who wanted it for her daughter's bedroom. She was so very enthusiastic about it and obviously really loved it. I find it very hard to part with things like this, but it was pretty clear that it was going to a very good home and would be much loved, so I was really happy to let go of it.

The crocheted flower brooches were ever so well received, too. You know what amazes me? On Saturday, I put a tiny drop of rose FO onto the brooch I was wearing. I put it on this lunchtime when I went into town and the scent was still so strong on the brooch! Wny do fragrances stay so much longer on fabrics/wools than they do on the skin, sigh. Still, that might be another nice thing to do, offer customers the option of having their flower brooch scented. IF I remember to take some fragrance oils with me, that is, lol.

SUNDAY WAS A VERY SPECIAL DAY INDEED. Our granddaughter Grace was baptised. The Christening was in a beautiful old church in Pevensey and I was allowed to take some photos, alas without flash, so they are not the sharpest pics. It was beautiful, Grace looked so lovely in her dress, like a little angel, and she was as good as gold. She is such a precious little darling. My almost-daughter-in-law had done a lovely job preparing a function room for the party afterwards, and friends and family all had a terrific time. I tried to keep a photographic record of the whole day, oh boy, yesterday I really wished I hadn't! I had taken soooooooooo many pictures, it took me all day yesterday to go through them, delete the really iffy ones, edit and photoshop others, and upload the 170 that were left to photobucket. Here are just a very few photos -

The church, St. Nicholas, in Pevensey -

( photo courtesy of www.pevenseychurches.org.uk ) because I was so intent on taking pics of all the people, I totally forgot to take a photo of the church

The Christening -


The proud parents with Grace -

Grandmother (on mother's side) and greatgrandmother (on daddy's side)


Grace with her godmother ( mummy's lovely younger sister )


Grace with her godfather ( my youngest son, daddy's brother )


Greatgrandfather ( on daddy's side )


The top of the beautiful Christening cake


It was a very beautiful day.

Housework?

Well, I loaded the dishwasher, I put the laundry into the washing machine, errrmmm, I straightened the beds, I vacumned the family room, although why I bother doing that I don't know, 5 mins after I have done it, it looks exactly like it did before, thank you, doggies! I looked at the floor brush, I studied the furniture polish and duster, I contemplated tidying up the shoe racks, I wrote a shopping list............... and then I couldn't resist the temptation any longer, I had to finish putting the final touches to a couple of flower brooches and then put them all onto large tags. But the tags looked too bare, so I tea stained a couple of pieces of paper and printed the La Croix Rosion name onto those, and stuck them on the front of the tags. I am quite happy with the results. I hadn't realised quite how many brooches I hade made, and how sweet and colourful they looked all together in a big basket -


These are the new ones I made over the last few days -


I have a whole lot of other flowers, little ones, big ones, medium ones, lol, which are destined to be sewn onto a couple of cushions/pillows, errrmm, sometime soon. When oh when will I be able to stop? Maybe I have to accidently on purpose lose the crochet hooks, or ask my DS to hide the wools, or focus on something else............

Finally, finally, finally

I had the bestest ever news today. After so many years of gutwrenching disappointments, ups and downs, coming so close and then having to cope with heartbreaking upsets, the almost-miracle has finally happened and our dearest friends Will and Theresa are finally united with their daughter Mae, which at long last they have been able to adopt in China. We had all given up hope until very recently, when totally out of the blue they received the news which they had thought they would never get. I have just seen the first photos of them with their beautiful little girl and just burst into tears. God knows what they must be feeling. I can't wait for them to get back from China so that I can give their daughter a huge welcome hug.

Here she is, with Theresa and Will, looking very serious and curious, but also very calm and relaxed -


You can read a bit more about their recent history here - Long Journey to China and our Child

Nothing much

Well, it wasn't a particularly good weekend. I had stalls booked for both days, and both events were, well, piss poor really. All I managed to do was cover my costs, and that was it. Still, better than making a loss, I suppose. But all that time, sigh, which I could have spent at home with my family, my doggies.........

Saturday was an outdoor event. Oh boy, it was blowing a gale. The first sight which greeted us when we got to the venue was a very sorry looking broken and tangled gazebo, lying in heap in the corner of a fence. Oh heck, that doesn't bode well, I thought. The whole affair was so badly organised as well, it was a shambles really. Ah well, not to be put off, we spent 1 1/2 hours trying to put the gazebo up, with Nick holding on for dear life, while I was trying to tie things down, and then me hanging on to the side poles ( teehee, I am such a shortass, I have trouble reaching the top bars, lolol ) and Nick trying to peg it all down. We gave it another half hour or so, hanging on to the gazebo whilst trying to put out the stock, but it was just impossible, other stallholders were taking down their gazebo as well, so we decided to do the same. Of course, then the sun came out despite the galeforce winds, just what I wanted for my bathmelts and balms etc, NOT!!! So, we had horrendous winds all, day and alternatively sunshine and bits of spitty rain.

Sunday was indoors, in a huge sports hall, but most definitely not the 30odd stalls which should have been there according to the leaflets. A few cancellations, the organiser said, hmm, a FEW?? There were perhaps a dozen stalls, the only positive thing was that we could really spread out ( along the walls with a VERY large empty space in the middle ) and have TWO tables. But, people were not bashing each other over the head in order to get through the doors. Sigh, severe lack of decent advertising. The organiser went out to hand out leaflets on the seafront in the afternoon, as did my son to help her out, if it hadn't been for that, it would have been like a graveyard. I can't tell you how many times I heard - OMG, I LOVE ALL THESE THINGS! I HAD NO IDEA THIS WAS HERE, IF IT HADN'T BEEN FOR THE LEAFLET HAND OUT ON THE SEAFRONT JUST NOW, I WOULDN'T HAVE KNOWN, I WAS ONLY OUT FOR A STROLL, DONT HAVE ANYTHING WITH ME, NO MONEY OR CHEQUEBOOK. I WOULD LOVE TO GET BLA BLA BLA BLA... Thats just the most frustrating thing ever.

Alright, moaning session is over, lol. On to more positive things. I didn't have any time really to go through charity shops last week, only once when I had to get some shopping which involved passing two. Nothing much there, and no bootfairs, because I was working, but a couple of things is still better than none at all.

I adore lovely shiny shimmery vintage curtains from the 40s and 50s, I have a few in my fabric collection, and I couldn't resist buying these -


Just look at those fabulous colours, the gorgeous deep duckegg blue, the pretty pink and the fresh green, just luverly, don't you think?

I also found a little crochet leaflet, which had the cutest baby things in it, AND a really pretty blanket as well. I would love to give that pattern a go -


Isn't this the cutest little, errmmm, whatever you want to call it?


This tablecloth took my fancy as well, the colours are so fresh and springlike, really happy and smiley -


The little blocks of flowers are so pretty, see that there are two different lots of yellow flowers in the centre arrangement?


Oh, and staying with the flowery theme, I found a huge lot of silk flower bits. I have no idea yet what I am going to do with all those blooms, but they are so pretty, especially the large roses, and those tiny tiny little flowers -


I also bought a couple of old books and a very lovely little cut glass vase, but I forgot to take pics of those earlier, and now its getting dark, so no pics of those, sorry. I'll try and remember tomorrow.

I did make a few more flower brooches whilst not doing very much at the fairs. I love using little lucite flowers and beads for the middle -






I can't stop myself making them at the moment, I tend to spend half hour here and there making one at a time until I have three or four, then spend the odd few minutes sewing in the bits, and then relax in the evenings listening to the tv and decorating them with lucite flowers and beads. I hope this obsession stops soon, lol, I am getting quite a collection of them.