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!
Dad took me to Oxford today. I've been there before but I was really young and don't remember much about it. Mum and Dad were both born in Oxford and grew up here so wandering around the city with Dad was like wandering around with some kind of personal tour guide! I took these pictures with my mobile phone camera. Next time I'll take my proper camera with me and I'll get some better shots. The picture above shows the Radcliffe Camera. This used to house books but is now used as a reading room for the nearby Bodleian Library. The photo below is of Hertford Bridge which is more commonly known as the 'Bridge Of Sighs' because of its similarity to the 'Ponte Dei Sospiri' in Venice. Apparently Cambridge has a Bridge Of Sighs too. I'm going to try and find it when I visit Chris next weekend.
I can't believe how big Oxford is compared to Cambridge. Some of the buildings are similar although the ones in Oxford seem taller. There are many fabulous shops - all the usual chain store suspects but they're mixed in with lots of independent shops and boutiques. There's also a wonderful covered market.
It's amazing how some of the shops look really small from the outside but seem to have some kind of Tardis technology that makes them ginormous on the inside. A good example of this is Blackwell's bookshop, pictured above. This is just a tiny part of it, but look - so many books upon so many shelves for as far as the eye can see!
