I have beads .....

..... but seeing as they're clear and white beads I'll have to photograph them in natural daylight tomorrow. I'll do that and post them in the morning.

One down, one to go

Here's half a pair of the Dead Simple Lace socks that I mentioned in my last post. Better get on and knit the other sock or I'll have one warm foot and one chilly one!

No real news today so I thought I'd share a couple of photos with you. The one above is a shot of a gorgeous daffodil (I just mis-typed that as dafoodil - ha!) which is part of a huge bunch that Veryan kindly gave me.

And the picture below is Jemima and Martha enjoying some newly-laid turf. Aw!

I'm off up to Cambridge to see Chris this afternoon. Fingers crossed that when I come back I'll have some beadmaking ability. Have a great weekend!

Docs & Socks

Still miffed by the lack of beads? Yeah, so am I.

Thing is, I'm not myself. Well I'm me, but I'm not right health-wise, if you see what I mean. I hate going to see the doctor. I have an if-it-ain't-broke-don't-fix-it attitude to life and I always worry that they'll find more wrong with you than you think there is, so I tend to avoid health professionals as much as I can.

But lately I've had to accept that there's something not quite right with me. I went to the doctor early this morning and she is slightly baffled by my symptoms. These are too boring and numerous to list but let's just say that they're lady problems. Not actual ladypart problems but hormone-related ones. (Oh dear - is that too much information?) Doctorlady has narrowed it down to three possibilities. As such, I had to go back a bit later for blood tests so they can get more of an idea of what's wrong. I'll have to wait a couple of weeks for the results.

I was going to make beads today but all the to-ing and fro-ing with the doctor thing has put the kibosh on those plans so instead I'm knitting. A sock. And yes, I know I started a separate blog for the knitting but I couldn't be arsed with two different blogs so you'll have to put up with the occasional knitting-related post here!

I got a new book the other day called Socks From The Toe Up which is written by Wendy D. Johnson of Wendy Knits. She is an awesome sock knitter who writes about her work on her blog. One of my fave web reads. Anyway, the sock I'm working on is a pattern from the book and it's called 'Dead Simple Lace'. I'm knitting with a gorgeous pinky-purple cotton yarn. I'm looking forward to wearing these ones. I think they'll be nice and comfy.

I'll let you know if a miracle occurs and I create some un-cake-shaped beads .....

They're everywhere!

Now I can even adorn my earlobes with cupcakes courtesy of the fantastically talented Helen Prole of Beady Bugs. Aren't these fine silver earrings just so sweet? Helen made them for me and I love them - they are so small and perfect. And so very very shiny. I've been wearing them all weekend. Thanks HP! Helen is a fellow perfectionist and her work always makes me gasp in wonderment. If you've never had the pleasure of seeing her magnificent animal beads and superb jewellery then do head on over to her website and have a virtual wander through her galleries. You're in for a treat!

I've had another action-packed weekend. I seem to spend most of my life on trains at the moment. I travelled down Winchester way on Friday night and stayed with my friend Elaine for the weekend. I haven't seen her since I moved so we had a good old natter, ate lots of pudding, did some shopping and basically had a great time. We went and saw Lesley and David, some of Mum's friends, on Saturday evening and we had a fabulous dinner aboard their boat, Nautibuoy. It was such a lovely night.

Then yesterday evening before I caught my train home I made a flying visit to see Helen and James who again I hadn't seen for six months. I'll sound like an old person when I say this, but I can't believe how much their children, Ben and Emily, have grown! We had tea and cake (Helen knows me too well) and a very quick play of Guitar Hero on the Wii. I tell you, I am totally pathetic at that game. I selected Weezer's My Name Is Jonas as I know it inside out and back to front, but no, I was thoroughly useless. It's official - I absolutely suck at Guitar Hero. What made me laugh was that little three-year-old Emily knew all the words to the Weezer tune. That child has taste!

Yep, I'm still making Cupcakes!

Here's a shot of a whole bunch of them. Lots of glassy, cakey goodness .....

Ha ha! Technology, I win!

As you can see I got there in the end with the phone photos. This is me with a Stormtrooper at the O2 on Friday night. Mr Stormtrooper is aiming his blaster at Chris who is taking the photo. This is because Chris was having a spot of bother with my phone camera, hence the blurry picture. But hey, it's yours truly with a Stormtrooper nonetheless.

I've been to many a venue for gigs and concerts over the years but I have to say that I was really taken aback by how amazing the O2 is. It's absolutely ginormously big and such a bright and lively place. In fact, like some kind of old person, I actually described it as 'happening' which made Chris laugh and he told me that I should write all about the 'Happening O2 Place' on my blog.

I'm still in the process of sorting out my laptop. I've just put iTunes on it (it used to be on the desktop PC) and now Sirius (my iPod) has a severe lack of music until I import my library. I've got all the purchased music but none of the hundreds of tunes from my CD collection. Why oh why am I even boring you with this ..... ?

I'm going to go and see if I can get the camera to behave now. May well be back soon!

Technology hates me right now

So did you have a good Easter?

I had a nice weekend off and Star Wars : A Musical Journey was amazing - like truly astounding. I do have photos but the techno-trauma continues and my phone software has decided to act up so I can't actually get the pictures off the phone. I'll try again tomorrow. Also, I did have some bead pictures for you but my camera batteries are flat and I have no charged ones so I'm waiting for the charger to do its thing.

I'm off to knit a sock .....

Colin

Yesterday was The Day Of Unexpected Post and two of the deliveries I received were cupcake-related. Firstly, my friend Helen in Southampton (whom I miss terribly) sent me a gorgeous ceramic cupcake pot for Easter and secondly Caroline from Uniqart posted me a cute amigurumi cupcake! I've named him Colin and he's living next to Bridget Blobite and all the other little nice-to-look-at things on my desk. Isn't he just so sweet? I can never get over how creative Caroline is - she's always making wonderful things. In fact, she's kindly agreed to be my next interviewee so look out for that interview next week.

I'm travelling up to London this afternoon because tonight Chris and I are going to the O2 to see Star Wars : A Musical Journey which should be good, then I'll be spending Easter weekend in Cambridge.

I hope you all have an ace weekend. Make sure that you eat far too much chocolate!

Easter Giveaway Winner

I've just this minute done the draw for the egg pendant and the winner is Anita! Well done to you - please email me with your address and I'll get your prize in the post. Thanks to all who entered the draw. There will be another one soon.

Fabulous news on the Sonya front! I think she's better. I'm very virus-paranoid now and have run about seven scans today but so far so good. Phew - she really had me worried there!

Oh Dear

I am currently experiencing major techo-trauma.

My beautiful pink Sony Vaio laptop, Sonya, is very sick. It would appear that she has a nasty virus. Said virus hacked into my website and added some nasty code to every page that made my site dirty and scary to anti virus software. A few people emailed me telling me they were getting pop-ups and warning bars when they visited my website. After a couple of days of speaking with my hosting company they tracked down the malicious code and yesterday I removed it from every page of my site making Beads By Laura clean, shiny and user-friendly again. So that's a good thing.

But .....

I decided to format Sonya to make sure that any virus she had was obliterated. After that I ran my anti virus and it found a horrid evil Trojan so at 1am this morning I was trying to put things right. This morning everything appeared to be well but when I tried to install Windows service pack three (I'm still on XP - I don't like Vista!) it didn't want to play ball. I'm having another go (this makes attempt number five) and I shall see what happens.

Problem is, my desktop PC broke about four weeks ago so my only computer is Sonya. I hope I can make her better. Without a computer I'm in trouble.

So this post is to tell you that I'm unable to update the website at the moment. The Strawberry Ice Cream beads are sold. The Vanilla ones are currently available. If you'd like them, please email me or leave me a comment.

I'll be back later to tell you how Sonya's doing. Please keep your fingers crossed for her.

'Ice Cream'

Oooh - I like these! Strawberry and Vanilla beads cased in a thin layer of transparent and decorated with random white dots. The encasing gives such depth and the dots appear to 'float' on the surface of the beads. Yummayumma!

Egg Pendant

I've just added this egg-shaped pendant to my Etsy shop. Easter prettiness!

I'll post again later with beads .....

Slowly Un-Funking

Thanks for all the 'welcome back' comments on the Easter Giveaway post. They're very much appreciated.

There is a reason as to why my bead production levels have been virtually sub-zero recently but it's far too boring and yawny to explain so I'll just say that I've been getting back into making beads this weekend and I will have a few for sale on my website tonight. They're nothing exciting but hey, they're beads. That heart focal up there is one of tonight's offerings.

Just so you know, from now on all 'normal' Freshly Baked Beads will be sold on my website and any lonelies, jewellery and spare Cupcake beads will be available over in my Etsy shop. Why Etsy? Because number one, I like it, number two, I can add things whenever which means I spread the bead love about a bit and number three, it enables me to reach a wider audience with my work. And I know things are priced in US dollars but if you pay by PayPal it does all the conversion for you.

I'm going to go off and knit now before I work on the site update. I've got two Christmas present projects on the go at the moment and they're coming along nicely. And it may surprise you to hear that they're not socks .....

Easter Giveaway

We're just a week away from Easter weekend so I thought I'd do a little draw for this egg-shaped bead. You can't really see from the picture but the bead is many different shades of blue and green but its metallic sheen makes it tricky to photograph. I've turned the bead into a pendant with the addition of some sterling silver. All the winner will need to do is slip it on to a chain.

To be in with a chance of winning this pendant, please leave a comment on this post (or email me if you prefer) and at 8.00pm on Thursday April 9th I will draw a winner at random. Simple as that.

Good luck!