Nothing in particular

This is one of those bit-of-everything posts where I waffle on and on for no particular reason. I know my parents-in-law like reading my ramblings, though. *waves at Lynne and John*

I've had a very meh bead week output-wise, but I had the urge to make buttons yesterday. I've not made any buttons for about eight years so goodness knows why I suddenly decided some had to be made, but I did and they were. I made a few but the one at the top of this post is the best of them. It's not for sale as I'm not totally happy with it (bit of scum in the clear and a slight wonk) but I'm going to make more.

I also made a couple of cabochons. These are flat-backed, without a hole, and can be set in jewellery or seed-beaded around. They can also be turned into pendants and brooches with a bit of glue and some findings. This black and white cabochon is my favourite and I can just picture it set in a silver ring. So yes, expect more buttons and cabochons soon. Not strictly beads, I know, but never mind.

On Monday Chris and I went to the Cambridge University Botanic Garden. I took many photos but I'll not bore you with all of them. Here are a few of my favourites:

Bee going about his bee business

Aster

Honey bee on a purple tansy

Poppies

Groovy mullein moth caterpillar

Our gardens at home are coming along nicely too. We've had the front garden turfed—it was just gravel and weeds—and a couple of flowerbeds made. I'm going for a cottage garden look and have planted lupins, asters, poppies, white foxgloves, teasels and cornflowers so far. They're all sprouting well so we should have some colour out there soon. I've also planted a little French lavender bush and a yellow climbing rose. We have a round window in the side of our 'porch' and I'm hoping that the rose will climb up and around it.

Graham's first bloom

Raindrops on roses etc etc...

The rose is 'Graham Thomas' from David Austin Roses and he's already blooming. My mum absolutely loved yellow roses and I've been wanting to plant one since Chris and I bought the house, so I've got there eventually. Only took me seven years.

My study resumes on Monday. This time it's Later Prehistory (Iron Age and Bronze Age) and Classical Archaeology (ancient Greece and Rome). The textbooks for the latter look very dry, like drier than a dry Shredded Wheat in the Sahara on a particularly dry day dry, but hey, I wasn't too enthused by the prospect of the Early Prehistory module either and look how I enjoyed that. Oh, and I got my first two essay marks back. I passed! I got two 2.1s (upper second class) and on one of them I was only two marks away from a 1st. That'll do for me.

Enough of my chatter. Have a great weekend.

Flower power

*Monty Don face*

Welcome to the blog post where I bore you with news of my uninteresting garden. Don't worry, there are some beads too, but first, let me show you my munchkin pumpkin. (Oooh, Jeremy.)

I grew munchkin pumpkins for two reasons:

1. The name 'munchkin pumpkin' which I sing to the Oompa Loompa song as "Munchkin pumpkin, pump-a-di-doo"... obviously.
2. Because who can resist the idea of growing an actual tiny pumpkin?

The plant itself is like a triffid; massive leaves and curly-wurly tendrils aplenty. I was starting to think I would never get any pumpkins because it's done loads of flowers but those just wither, leaving no offspring behind (which I can totally identify with because that's how I'm living my life) but then I read about it and they have male and female flowers. Nature.

My sunflowers are an embarrassment. I couldn't get the same seeds that gave me the amazing ones I grew last year so I have eighteen weak and wimpy sunflowers that are no more than three feet high. I did intentionally grow micro sunflowers, though, (I'm clearly all about the miniature garden stuff this year) and they've turned out really well.

My favourite plants this summer have been my poppies. There's one at the top of this post and look, here are some more:

Poppies making the grotty fence look nice

Poppies refracted in raindrops

Raindroppy poppy

I've also grown chillies and tomatoes and wild strawberries and mint. All the mint. Mint-mint, peppermint, spearmint and watermelon mint. So. Much. Mint. Oh, and catnip, which I'm having to grow in hanging baskets out of Nigel's reach as he goes totally Renton for catnip.

Anyway, beads. These are flowery too.

I made these beads ages ago. I rescued them from a jam jar of odd beads I found in the cupboard under the sink. I don't know why I 'rejected' them. (See? That's how annoying my pernickety faff brain is; I can't even remember what I thought was wrong with them.) The only reason I can see is that a couple of them have small, harmless bubbles in the encasing but that's pretty normal for encased florals so I'm fine with that. For today, anyway. They're in the shop as I type.

I don't want to be a premature idiot, but I'm pretty sure I can smell a slight whiff of autumn. Something about the weather's mood has shifted and I like it. Don't get me wrong, I think there are some summery days left to come but there's something different about the morning light and the coolness of the breeze this week.

Now I must away to the shed where I will spend the day blowing glass bubbles and chair dancing and singing along to Lucius.

Have a great Friday! (Of course you will. It's Friday.)

Tapeley

While I was in Devon, Manda took me to Tapeley. This is a beautiful estate with Grade II listed gardens, and oh my, those are some gardens. Manda's lovely mum, Penny, came along too. Both Manda and Penny are brilliant proper camera photographers, whereas I'm an iPhoneographer, and the three of us had a lovely time wandering around the gardens taking pictures.

Agapanthus

Daisies and brick steps

Flower detail on a gate

Succulent flowers (flowers of succulents)

After a delicious lunch of smoked trout at the tea rooms, we wandered up to visit the pigs and chickens and then Penny suggested we take a look around the kitchen garden.

As we approached the garden, a sign told me it was a walled garden. My heart did an actual skippity-leap on learning this because I'm a massive fan of the old BBC Victorian Kitchen Garden series that starred Harry Dodson and Peter Thoday, so I found the idea of being in an actual factual old walled garden pretty thrilling, I can tell you.

Door in the wall of the walled garden

The garden was beautiful, and it's a working one so it was full of fruit and vegetables. There was a massive greenhouse along one of the walls and inside it grapes were growing. Back in the day, the greenhouse would have been heated by a system of cast iron pipes filled with hot water, warmed by a coal-fired furnace.

I loved the old things in the garden, like this Victorian glass cloche and the pretty cast iron grates.

There were also old varieties of apple and pear trees, as well as a patch of glorious purple-haired artichokes.

Moth on an artichoke flower

Artichoke flower macro

After lots more photography we left the garden and wandered back down, past the old Victorian ice house.

During the winter months, the ice house would have been packed with ice and snow and the building would have acted as a fridge and freezer.

Daisies on the ice house

Even the car park provided a final photo opportunity as it is next to a field of highland cattle.

Big thanks to Manda and Penny for a lovely day out at Tapeley. It was wonderful and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

And it was all yellow

The last couple of days have been sponsored by the colour yellow.

I bought a couple of bunches of daffodils on Saturday and I was expecting them to be bog standard, all-yellow, classic daffodils, but when they opened they had pale yellow petals and deep orange trumpets. Pretty!

I took a few photos of them using my Olloclip macro lenses.

Daffodil gubbins

There was a tiny little fly inside one of the daffodils.

I also took a photo of a bright yellow dandelion on the lawn.

Reminds me of fire

Then while I was putting glass rods away I found a rod of yellow Creation is Messy glass from a couple of testing bundles back. I don't quite know why I never got around to testing it, but I thought I'd give it a go because I need a new yellow for my Bumblebeads. I used to use CiM Hollandaise for them but that is long gone now, so this bee, the flowers and the yellow spacers in this set are made with CiM Goldenrod.

Goldenrod is a touch brighter than Hollandaise, which was a bit more mustard with a tad more orange about it. Goldenrod is a very yellow yellow, but not in an acid yellow kind of way. It's just a bright, happy yellow. It works well for my Bumblebeads as it's not streaky. Some opaque yellows get transparent streaks in them but Goldenrod is a nice 'flat' yellow. I've ordered some more so I can make a few more bees.

Randy doves, pink glitter, pasta and beads

I've had one of those weeks that never really gets going. Do you know what I mean? You start off on a Monday feeling ready to take on the world but all of a sudden it's Friday and you've not got much to show for it.

So what did I do with my week?

Well, amongst the whole not-feeling-very-beadish, I took a couple of photos. The one at the top of this post is a water droplet on a collared dove feather. We get so many collared doves in the garden and right now they are at peak randy. The man doves spend a large amount of their day doing that groovy, bob-up-and-down "Hello, lady dove, fancy a snog?" dance that they do. The lady doves never seem particularly interested, though, and when they do eventually go "Oh, alright Steve, just get on with it" there is much flappy wing flapping. This feather was left behind on the grass after said sexytime flappery.

Whilst I was grovelling about the place picking up feathers, I also took this photo of a daisy. Daisies are such simple flowers but they're just so lovely.

I'm into painting my nails at the moment. I go through phases of this. I cannot bear it when it gets chipped so I change it up quite often. At the weekend I got this bottle of Barry M glitter polish. I'm not usually a bright pink and glittery kind of person but something about this nail varnish made me go "Ooooh!" so I had to have it.

I think that's the thing I like about nail varnish. I don't wear very bright colours clothes-wise because I have zero fashion sense and I'm always worried I'll end up going full Timmy Mallett, but nails are a way to go a little bit colour crazy on a very small scale.

All three of those photos were taken with my iPhone and OlloClip. You can see more of my photos over on my iPhoneography Tumblr.

I did make beads this week, just not very many. I did a set of Luminobeads called 'Green Smoke' and these have been tumble-etched.

I finished them off with a light application of an olive oil and beeswax mixture to really bring out their soft 'glow'. This will eventually wear off but will be replenished by the natural oils of hands and skin during handling, or when the beads are worn.

As I type, 'Green Smoke' are still available to buy. There are also some bargains to be had in my SALE section.

I taught someone how to make beads this week. Kelly was a total beginner and she did so well. Just look at her beads.

I always say to beginner beadmakers that if they leave my shed having made a reasonably round bead with ends that won't injure anyone, then they'll have done really well. Kelly went beyond that and made some really lovely round frit beads and she even did some plunged bubble-dots. Top stuff!

If you'd like to come and learn how to make beads with me, I'm still taking bookings for one-to-one tuition in my shed here in Cambridge. There are only four places left on my two day course at MangoBeads in Devon in July so if you fancy that one, you'd best book a place; you can secure one with a £50.00 deposit.

I finished off the week with some nugget beads. These were made with a Vetrofond odd lot called 'Smoke Rings'. It's a filigrano - very pale amber-brown with an ivory core. I only had one rod of this now very rare glass, so this eight bead set is a one-off. These 'Wisp' Nuggets will be in my shop tonight.

Boy George is currently tumbling some more beads so I'll pop back and post a photo of the results later today.

Oh, I know - food highlight of the week - Chris and I cooked Antonio Carluccio's Penne Giardiniera, and my goodness it was so nice. We always have the Penne Giardiniera whenever we go to Carluccio's so being able to recreate it at home is a bonus. It was very quick to cook but seemed to use every cooking utensil, pot and pan we own, so washing up wasn't exactly fun-time central, but hey, it was worth it.

I think that's it. Not an awfully productive week beadwise, but sometimes my bead batteries go flat. I think they're recharging, though.

I was going to work today but it's a Bank Holiday and the sun is shining and the garden is a mess so I'm going to tidy it up. I've got some seeds to plant and some weeds to un-plant, so I reckon that's what I'll do with my day.

Have a Good Friday! (See what I did there?)