September came and went in the blink of an eye, and I never blogged once.
At the start of September I went down to Southampton to celebrate my niece Robyn's 21st birthday (21!) and I was I picked up from the railway station by my nephew Dylan who is now driving and about four inches taller than me. Honestly, every time I see them I feel more and more like an aged old aunt.
We had a lovely weekend with pub shenanigans, a barbecue, cake and lots of laughter.
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| Obligatory sisters photo of me, Sal and Em |
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| Robyn lifting Em |
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| Smudgy lens photo of Dylan and me |
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| Enca, Sally's beautiful pussycat |
It was also my birthday in September which passed without fanfare or much ado. I struggle a bit with birthdays as I get closer to the age my mum was when she died. I woke up on my 48th birthday thinking "When Mum was 48 she didn't know she had just five years left" which I realise is a very morose and morbid thought but I am an eternal pessimist so it's pretty standard thinking material for me. I keep telling myself that when I make it to 53 years and ten days I'll have conquered this ridiculous mental barrier I've erected for myself which I know is no way to think about life but I just can't seem to help it. From what I can gather this is a pretty common thing in people who have lost parents or older siblings so if anyone else out there can relate – solidarity.
In glassy news...
I've been making acorns and oak leaves. I've made these on and off over the years, iterating and tweaking the design as I go and I think I reached peak faff with them this time. They are a true labour of love.
The glass components are shaped by hand, by which I mean I don't use a press or mould for them. Each oak leaf shape is painstakingly sculpted by building up the leaf one blob of molten glass at a time and shifting everything into place with a graphite paddle, a brass shaping knife, a razor blade and gravity.
In the past I've made my acorns and oak leaf headpins straight onto copper wire. For ages I've wanted to be able to make sterling silver ones but the amount of heat and reheating required to make the glass components means that sterling silver wire would melt in the flame, so for these ones I made the acorns and leaves on the end of a very thin mandrel which results in a glass channel in each piece. This is thoroughly cleaned and dried and then I use a very high-quality epoxy glue to firmly fix the sterling silver wires in place. Once everything is cured, cleaned up and polished, I assemble the necklaces.
Each necklace has a brown acorn and a transparent oak leaf the colour of caramelised sugar. These glass components are affixed to a soldered ring which is threaded onto an 18 inch (45cm) sterling silver belcher chain. All metal is sterling silver apart from the acorn cup bead cap which is high-quality .999 fine silver plated lead-free brass.
The acorn and oak leaf necklaces can be purchased in my shop.
And there's good news for my American customers - I can post things to you again. Hurrah! All you have to do is place your order as usual and the checkout will add the 10% import tax to your order. There is also a £1.20 handling fee per US order which is also added at checkout. In effect, you are paying the tax to me, which I then forward to the Royal Mail when I pay them for the postage for your order, and then Royal Mail will pass that on to Donny Trump's Postage Tax People further down the line. In effect, that should be it and you should have nothing else to pay and your parcel will hopefully reach you in a timely and smooth fashion. I have asked the two US customers I've posted to since the taxes came in to report back to me to let me know how the process went but alas, I've heard nothing back from them, so I'm hoping no news is good news.
In knitting news...
Fat chunky big knitting! Robyn asked me if I could knit her a blanket (aged old aunt skills) in really big chenille yarn.
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| It's like knitting with broom handles |
The needles are 25mm (ten times the size of sock knitting needles) and the yarn is like dressing gown cord and knitting with them makes me feel like a Borrower. It's coming on very quickly, though. I don't quite know how I'm going to deliver it to Robyn when it's done. I might have to pack it in one of those sucky-out-the-air vacuum bags? I'll worry about that later.
I think that's it for now. I'm flying to Belfast tomorrow to visit Emily for the weekend. I'm saying that like I'm really cool and blasé with travel but inside I'm nervous as heck. I'm getting the train to Gatwick (never been there before) and then I'm flying on my own (not done that for nineteen years) so I keep getting a flurry of butterflies every time I think about it but it'll be fine, won't it? I don't actually hate flying - it's all the getting there and the security and the waiting and all that guff that I stress about. It'll be fine. It will.
Have a good weekend and I shall see you soon.
