Just a little update

Hello beadpeople. I've been a bit quiet, haven't I? It's been over a week since I last blogged.

I was in Oxford on Thursday and Friday - I went to see my grandfather (Mum's dad) who is known as 'Herbie'. His name is Herbert and when I was a child I started calling him Herbie. I was Nannie and Herbie's first grandchild and all the other family and grandchildren followed suit and before long everybody started calling him Herbie and it just stuck. Anyway, I went to visit Herbie as he is very ill. I also saw Dad, Sally, Emily and Robyn and Dylan (my niece and nephew) so that was nice. It was also great to see Buster again. I do miss him.

Because of said family things going on last week I found it a bit hard to concentrate on my beads. I've just put some etched midnight blue beads in my Etsy shop and I'll try and add some more beads later on today.

I've been reading all about the wonders of gardening. We have two gardens that need some prettying up so I bought myself a copy of Alan Titchmarsh's 'The Complete How To Be A Gardener' which is an amazing book! I have learned a heck of a lot already just from dipping in and out of various chapters.

A few weeks back I ordered a composter for the garden and it arrived last week. Chris and I cleared a space for it and installed it on Saturday but not before Chris had hidden inside it. Unfortunately I ruined his joke as I saw him climbing into the composter before he could jump out and surprise me!

In knitting news, I do have a project on the needles. It's a multi-coloured scarf made out of all my oddments of sock yarn. Sounds horrible but it's actually looking really nice. Hang on, I'll take a picture .....

There you go. It will eventually lose the bright pink edge as that is just a provisional cast on. The scarf is knitted along the long edge. The pattern I'm using is a very simple slip stitch pattern which produces a flat, almost woven-looking fabric. More details about the pattern can be found here.

And finally, if you're a Twitter user you may be interested to know that I've re-signed up to the service. I used it for about three weeks a while back but stopped using it. I thought that I'd rejoin so I can keep you updated with Etsy listings and also because I was missing Peter Serafinowicz's witty tweets. My username is beadsbylaura (surprsing, huh?) so do follow me if you feel like it. There's a Twitter link over there on the right hand side of my blog.

That's enough of my waffle for now - I'm off down to the shed to make beads .....

Project De-Weed

Chris and I went and bought gardening gloves and de-weeding potion yesterday but the afternoon was way too hot for gardening activity so we tackled the front garden this morning instead.

The photo above shows the 'garden' before we started - just gravel and a bazillion weeds including dandelions, nettles and some fluffy lightweight green stuff.

Here's a picture of Chris in his gardening gloves - I never thought I'd ever see him in a pair of those!

About an hour later the garden looked like this :

Much better! Okay, it still has a few green bits but the weedkiller will take care of those. It looks much neater now. We think we'll grass the area eventually but for the time being it's nice to be in the kitchen and not be looking out at a mini jungle.

'Fruity'

These 'Fruity' beads and more will be for sale over on my website tonight at 9.00pm (UK time) tonight.

Cor blimey it's hot in my shed today! The last few days have been nice - not too sunny and a little overcast which makes for good beadmaking conditions. This enabled me to work from about 9am to 4pm but not today. I gave in about half an hour ago when the hotness and mugginess became pretty much unbearable. So now here I am talking to you while sitting on our brand new sofa. We ordered it a few days after we moved in and a week or so later we were informed that there was a delay but it finally arrived today! I can't say I'm sorry to say goodbye to Chris's old sofa - the thing was beyond dead and it was more comfortable to sit on the floor.

Going back to the subject of the shed, I had a couple of visitors today. Not human visitors but small, squeaky types. I was sat making beads when I heard a rustling noise and then a squeak. I turned around to see Martha and Jemima at the shed door.

Jemima was nosing around the bag of guinea pig hay that I use to prop the door open and Martha came into the shed, looked at me and uttered a few 'Mweeps!' as if to say "Oh! It's YOU in here! Fancy you being in our garden!"

As you can see from the photos I am literally working in a bare, no frills garden shed. Outside the door are a Laurel bush and two massive evergreen-type trees (I don't know exactly what they are yet but I will find out) that are around about the forty year old mark. When Dad was visiting the other day we measured the circumference of one of the trunks and with some mathematical jiggery pokery Dad calculated the tree age using some complex formula that he found online. The trees mean we have a whole host of birds in the garden which is wonderful. We have a couple of very tame collared doves, some sparrows, blackbirds, pigeons, thrushes and also a massive amount of starlings. I know that some people think of starlings as pesky birds but I like them. There was about thirty of them in the garden the other day eating some food that I'd put out for them.

Tomorrow Chris and I are going to tackle the front 'garden'. This is a gravelled area that is full of weeds. It looks a right old state so we're going to just pull the weeds up which should improve it no end and then we'll work out what we're going to eventually do with the area. So it'll be yet another trip to Homebase tomorrow morning to get some gardening gloves and some kind of magical anti-weed product. I'll let you know how Project De-Weed goes .....

'Summer Breeze'

These pretty pale lavender and light blue beads will be for sale over on my website at 8.30pm (UK time) tonight.

Not much to report here. I've just been quietly making beads and pottering around the house. It's odd adjusting to the quietness of it all. Chris is at work all day so I only have myself for company. I'm sure I'll get used to it soon, though.

Dad is visiting today so that'll be nice. I expect we'll take a trip to Homebase and Argos to get a few housey bits and pieces.

I will probably have some more beads for sale on Friday.

'St Clements'

Ooooh, it is nice to be blogging on my laptop again. We finally got our internet up and running on Wednesday night and I cannot tell you how much I've missed the old World Wide Web.

As you can see I've been busy making beads and there will be some for sale over on my website at 8.30pm tonight. I'm quite enjoying my new shed. It does get a bit warm in there in this weather but I'm looking forward to making it 'home'. It's very bare at the moment - just my bench, kiln and torch but in the coming months I'll give it a bit of a makeover.

Chris and I are settling in nicely here. It's very bizarre to think that this is our house! The guinea pigs are loving the big garden - we pig-proofed it so they can't escape and they've been spending their days roaming free. Brenda used to be The World's Laziest Guinea Pig but since we got here it's like she's got a brand new lease of life! I'm missing Buster terribly, though - it's so odd not having a cat about the place.

I'm gradually getting my bearings. I've told you before what an awful sense of direction I have. I actually got lost the first time I went to the postbox. What should have been a five minute walk there and back turned into a twenty minute one. I've got it sussed now though! Chris has marked all the local landmarks on GoogleMaps on my iPhone so if I get lost again I should be able to navigate my way home. Sad, or what?!

No Internet

Just thought I'd stop by and let you know that I am with shed, I am making beads and they will be for sale soon BUT we don't have a working landline or broadband connection yet. I may sell some beads via my blog at the weekend or just after so please stay tuned and I'll keep you updated.

Settling In

Hello! Chris and I are settling into our new home. It's all very strange and different and it hasn't really sunk in that it's our house yet but it's all good! My shed is arriving on Friday so I should be making beads very soon. We will also have broadband in the next few days and I'll be able to blog properly then. Just thought I'd stop by and say hello and tell you that all is well. See you soon!

Last Oxford Beads

The next beads will be Cambridge ones. I'm just about to set about packing up all my lampworking gear so I thought I'd blog now before time runs away with itself. It's going to be a busy day today but probably not as busy as tomorrow will be .....

I have no idea what's going to happen with internet capabilities but I do have my iPhone so I will try and update here when I can. We've got to organise me a shed (yes - I'll be back making beads in a shed) so there won't be any beads for a week or so but you will be the first to know as soon as I'm melting glass again.

Many thanks for all of your best wishes regarding the move. Have a great weekend and I will 'see' you all soon!

Beads & Boxes

I got up and started work early this morning so I could fit in beadmaking and box packing today. The day started well but then I noticed my stringer going all fuzzy on my bead and I realised that I'd run out of propane. Annoying. I'll have to go and get a refill in the morning.

So most of my day has been spent sorting stuff out and packing it away for the move on Friday. I'm getting there slowly - my bedroom is done, there are boxes in the loft that I never unpacked from the last move, my huge collection of CDs is now on my iPod and all the actual CDs are boxed up (in alphabetical order!), my books are all packed and now there's really just the not-so-small matter of my beadmaking setup to dismantle. I think I'll leave that until Thursday.

Anyway, my mind's a bit scatty at the moment and I don't know when I'll have beads for sale next. It will be sometime this week so do check here and on my website homepage for news.

Almost There

While I was travelling home from Cambridge yesterday I started doing some rough calculations in my head. Maths and I do not mix and we try and avoid each other as much as we can but I found myself working out a few train-related stats.

I have been travelling to see Chris every other weekend for almost three and a half years. That makes :

• About 90+ return train trips, not including random ones here and there
  
  
• Approximately 340 hours of travel
  
  

• About £3,100 in train fares (thank goodness for my Network Railcard!)

I have also consumed umpteen travel sandwiches, bottles of water and packets of Wine Gums while journeying. I have read many books on my travels too. I've got through two little wheely suitcases - a wheel fell off the first one and the second case is hanging on for dear life but I can't complain as it was only a tenner from Tesco.

I have also discovered that :

• A lot of people do not understand the concept of 'Keep Left' and 'Keep Right' when using the escalators and walkways around the London Underground.
  


• The idea of letting people off the train before you get on seems like a pretty simple one but it challenges many people.
  


• Some passengers on trains do like to sit and call everyone in their phone book and relay the same story over and over beginning each conversation with 'Yeah, I'm on the train' with no awareness that the person sitting next to them might not want to hear about their relationship woes or office-related talk. This is where I heartily thank Apple for inventing the iPod.
  


• It is actually quite satisfying to ask someone if you can sit in the seat next to them, upon which they have carefully arranged their bag, coat, laptop case or shopping in an attempt to stop anyone sitting next to them. Why do people do that? Everyone deserves a seat on the train. Stick your luggage up on the luggage rack and prepare to interact with fellow passengers - I've had some really good conversations with total strangers just because the seat next to me was free.

So what's with the calculations and train talk?

Well, pretty soon the regular train travel will stop.

Like, next month.

I feel that we're pretty much through all the niggly might-go-wrong stuff now so I can tell you that Chris and I have bought a house in Cambridge. Almost. All the big things are done and we're waiting for the solicitor and contract malarkey now. The survey, mortgage and other big scary things are all sorted and we're in that house-buying limbo. We put in our offer about ten weeks ago and I've managed to keep quiet about it all this time - I didn't want to jinx it, you see.

So that is why I was compelled to work out all that train stuff. Obviously I will be using trains to travel back to see Dad and everyone but not on a bi-weekly basis. I think I may have to make about two more Cambridge trips before the move and that is such a bizarre feeling, I can tell you. I'm almost there .....

Remember me?!

Well hello!

We've landed! The move went well and we've spent the past week unpacking things and finding them new homes. It's quite difficult to go from a big house to a small one. Square peg, round hole and all that.

The new house is lovely, the area is nice and the neighbours are great. Everyone around here is just so friendly! It's also really fab being a ten minute bike ride away from my grandparents. It felt very odd popping over there for lunch the other day when it used to take an hour-and-a-bit in the car to go and visit them!

I haven't got lost yet. Mind you, Dad did draw me a map that I've been taking out with me when I venture out on my bike. Yes - I really am that bad. Buster could have done with a map the other day. He went out early one morning and stayed out for seventeen hours which is unheard of! I was so worried about him. I thought he'd tried to do that thing that you hear of when cats try and return to their old home. Thankfully his cat-nav was working and at ten o'clock at night he appeared at the back door. Phew!

Dad and I spent Monday setting up my new work space - see photo above. It's very swish. My propane is outside in a little shed, I've got great light and ventilation, the conservatory is warm and spider-free and I've got my 'office' space next to my workbench. Beads By Laura Central, or what? Please ignore the masking tape that's holding my propane and oxygen hoses in place. I've got to get some clips for those. My desks are both very tidy at the moment - give it a week and I'm sure they'll look a bit different!

I've made beads today and I'll post a photograph of them tomorrow. Don't get too excited - they're just plain and simple lentils. Pretty, though. I made plain and simple beads for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I haven't made beads for about a fortnight so I've got to get back into the swing of things. Secondly, because the conservatory is so light and bright compared to my shed I had terrible trouble seeing the flame properly. To do my usual stringerwork I need to see exactly where the edge of the flame is. The flame is mainly blue and it doesn't help that my workbench is blue too. So I nipped to B&Q this afternoon (for about the tenth time in the past week) and got some black ceramic tiles to put on the bench in front of the torch. The flame shows up lovely now so I'll hopefully get some more complex beads made tomorrow.

Big thanks to everyone who has sent me 'new home' emails and cards - I'm going to sit down and set about answering those tonight. Now I'm all sorted the beadmaking and blogging will hopefully get back to some sort of normality!

My new lampworking space

When we move I'll be leaving my beloved shed behind. *Sob!*

But all is not lost .....

..... I'll be working in this lovely conservatory. My new beadmaking setup will be just there on the left. Dad and I are going to design and build a flash-and-swanky desk with a ventilation system and everything. It's going to be good!