Follow Me!

You may have noticed the 'Follow Me' thing over on the right hand side of my blog. This new 'Follower' gadget allows you to keep track of blogs that you read. It also adds a thumbnail of your profile photo to my sidebar. I'm a nosy blogger and whenever I see one of those thumbnails on someone else's blog I'll click and have a read of their profile. This normally leads to me reading their blog. I've found some really good ones since Blogger introduced the Follower gadget!

When you log into the dashboard of your Blogger account there's a new panel titled 'Blogs I'm Following'. Just click the 'add' button and follow the instructions to make a list of all the blogs you like to keep up to date with. Blogs thrive on links and comments and the Follower gadget boosts that - we all join cyber-hands and create some blog traffic. Yeah!

Talking of links, I've cleaned up my links list and removed some blogs that haven't been updated for a long while. That's nothing against the writers of the blogs, it's just a tidying up thing. If you're one of those people and you get blogging again, give me a nudge and I'll stick you back on the list. I'm just trying to keep things organised. I'm going to be having a link clear-up on my actual website soon too.

I'll probably be quiet for the next few days. Lots going on. Packing to do. I've made my last beads in the shed and now I've got to empty it. *Sniff!*

Have a good weekend whatever you're up to!

Birthdayness

It was my birthday yesterday and what a lovely day I had!

I met up with my little sister Emily in town and we had cocktails and lunch. I took a snap of the cocktails with my phone camera as I was so taken with the colours of them. Emily's 'Apple Passion' ranged from bright green through to that wonderful aqua (Blue Curaçao) at the bottom. It tasted even better than it looked! My 'Summer Peach' was yellow with swirls of cranberry. It should have been orange with swirls of cranberry but the bartender was all out of orange sherbet so I had lemon instead. It tasted lush!

Em came home with me and then Sally, Paul and the little'uns came over for pizza and birthday cake in the evening.

I'm going to make a slight diversion here but stick with me and it'll all tie in.

The other day I decided to wash the pillows off my bed and give them a freshen-up. They're just feather pillows from M&S and the label on them said to stick them in the washing machine on a 40° wash and then tumble dry them. So I did just that. But for some odd and bizarre reason they came out of the tumble drier smelling of what I can only describe as wet dog. You know the smell - dog-hair-grease mingled with river water. Musty, damp and rank. I stuck the pillows in the airing cupboard thinking that they just needed a good old air, but no, after ten hours they still stank of wet dog. I Googled it and apparently even if the label on your feather pillow says you can wash it, you shouldn't. Great. So new pillows were called for. I decided to grab a lift with Dad when he dropped Em off at Southampton train station last night (she's living in Bournemouth at the moment) so that I could go to the 24 hour Tesco on the way home to buy myself some nice-smelling pillows.

Right, that was the diversion so now we're back on track.

Just as we were driving into town we saw swarms of Southampton FC supporters all over the place. The traffic was awful because of the the football match that had just finished and getting to the station would have been a nightmare so Dad decided that he was going to give Emily a lift home ..... all the way to Bournemouth! So we had a bit of a road trip there. Em (who has a much better sense of direction than me) directed Dad to her boyfriend's house via all these back roads and shortcuts. This was all very well and good but when we'd dropped her off Dad was a bit disoriented. I won't say lost because he's normally got a killer sense of direction and is like a human GPS system. Dad did have to give in (after we'd passed the same bingo hall and dry cleaners twice) and use his actual GPS on his phone to direct us out of Bournemouth and we were eventually on our way home. We got to Tesco at midnight and I bought two fresh-smelling pillows. Huzzah! At least I didn't have to spend another night feeling as if I was resting my head on a smelly damp dachshund.

Anyway, bead stuff. I posted on my website that there would be beads for sale tonight. Slight change of plan - it will now be at nine o'clock Friday morning instead.

'Orange & Blackcurrant'

I know things have been quiet on the bead front and rest assured I have been melting glass - I just haven't been producing decent beads! I was giving Chris earache on the phone the other night whinging to him that 'I've made beads but they're rubbish!' and he said 'Yeah, but I know what your idea of rubbish is. Are they really that rubbish?'. He has a point. Sometimes I make a bead and put it to one side because I think it's got something wrong with it only to pick it up a few days later, study it and not be able to see why I discarded it in the first place. I admit it - I do suffer from occasional bouts of Bead Dysmorphic Disorder but honestly, these past few days I've made some seriously heinous beads.

So I was mighty pleased when this batch came out of the kiln today. A strand of orange and deep pinky-purple loveliness! And no, your eyes don't deceive you. Some of them - the ones with the bumps - are actually, shock horror, asymmetric! That mucks with my mind, I can tell you. My eyes say 'Hey - they look nice like that, Laura!' but the bead department of my brain screams 'Aargh! The designs are all lopsided and not matchy! What the hell were you thinking, woman?!'. Well, I'm going to ignore the bead voices in my head because I like their lopsidedness. (Yes - I hear bead voices in my head. I know, I'm odd.)

What became of the heinous beads? Well, after Chris's are-they-really-that-rubbish question I sorted through them and no, not all were as fugly as I first thought. As a result the not-so-bad ones are now hanging around in the Lonelies jar waiting for more to join them and the oh-so-bad ones ended up in Robyn's bead bag. She loves to sort through my reject beads, thread them together to make necklaces and bracelets, unthread them and then sort them out all over again. My sisters and I used to do exactly the same thing with the contents of Mum's button jar. A love for shiny, sparkly beads and buttons must run in the family!

Winner

I've just this minute drawn a name from my big spherical vase thing (yes, a vase. I don't possess a hat - hats look ridiculous on me) and that name was Mei-lin Tan. Congratulations, Mei-lin! Your bead will be winging its way to you in tomorrow's post.

Big thanks to all who entered. I'll do another draw soon!

On My Bike

At last we finally have a moving date - the 24th of September.

Ever since we decided to move to Oxford I've had this thing in my head about getting a bike so I can ride into town and also pop over and visit my Grandparents and other relatives. Plus, it's Oxford - everyone rides bikes!

So here she is. Caprice. I didn't name her, that's the model name but seeing as it's got 'Caprice' written on it the name is going to stick. You can't really see in the photo but she's got pretty pink and purple flowers dotted here and there on the frame.

Dad just dropped me off at Cycleworld so I could collect the bike and ride it home. A simple task, but this is me we're talking about and simple tasks are never that simple where I'm concerned. The man in the shop adjusted the saddle for me. That's always an odd moment - a man assessing the height of your nethers while you stand, slightly embarrassed, in the middle of a shop. I never quite know where to look. Awkward.

Anyway, he adjusted the saddle and I left the shop and started to cycle home. Now, you may know that I'm not a fan of roads. If I was, I'd have a car or I'd still have my Vespa. I knew that there was an underpass that would take me under the main road but could I find the thing? No. I have no sense of direction at all so I had to call Dad and get directions and then I was on my way again.

I was happily cycling along when all of a sudden I hit a bump and the saddle shifted dramatically which nearly did me a serious feminine mischief! It was a bit of a shock, I can tell you! Obviously the man in the shop hadn't tightened the saddle properly after he'd adjusted it. I returned the saddle to a horizontal position and carried on my way, sat in a slightly peculiar fashion so as not to induce any more saddle surprises! When I reached the village it started to rain. Typical.

I saw two of the many Hedge End village characters on my way home. The first was the Don't-Look-At-My-Garden Lady who always shouts 'Don't look at my garden!' whenever you go past. True to form, as I cycled by she told me in no uncertain terms not to look at her garden. A bit further on I encountered Alright Anne. She says 'Alright?' to everyone she meets. You have to say 'Alright?' back to her or she gets angry. You can't say 'Hi!' or 'Hello!' or 'Morning!'. That just won't do. It has to be 'Alright?'. Once she said 'Alright?' to my sister and when Sally replied incorrectly with 'Yes thanks. You?' Anne slapped her! Hilarious!

So all-in-all it was an eventful bike ride home from Cycleworld. Do you see what I mean about me and simple tasks? How can so many things happen during a fifteen minute bicycle ride?! I finally made it home, rained-upon but generally very pleased with my new bike. And yes, Dad's put the saddle right for me .....