Saturday 22nd September

Now, in my everlasting search for the perfect opening sentence for a blog entry, I've been trying to think up lots of let's grab hold of my audience!!!

And yes, you're right, I couldn't come up with anything. Nothing has actually been happening - except what seems to have been an unending day after day of work - if it's not getting up first thing to go to work, it's getting up to go to work in the middle of the night. And now I have a few days off, do I have any money to go and do anything on my days off, even so much as go visit the family? Of course not, not until Monday at any rate. Aha.. come Monday though..!

So what am I going to write about? Well I could go off on another of my Amazon crusades, but I'm sure that everyone has their own little Amazon gripe. So excuse me if I duck out of exposing my Amazon gripe to the nation, it's ultimately very boring.
Actually I'll admit I'm not feeling too bright today. I slept late, and even when I got up firstly, I felt headachey, and then secondly I felt sleepy. I even went back to sleep, a sure sign that yep, I ain't feeling 100%. So if this is a totally dull blog, forgive me. Come back next week, it might have improved!!!

I do have one thing to write about which is really interesting. I was sent this link to a new group on Flickr, The Monthly Scavenger Hunt. (Link is: http://www.flickr.com/groups/monthlyscavengerhunt/ )
and it's fantastic! Every month they publish a list, and you get to go off and photograph stuff on it, and then make a montage out of the photo's and post it to the group. It's so random, you've got to love random. The lists have things like 'heirloom', and 'Black Object', so open to interpretation, which I just love.

I really admire people who can put this sort of randomness together and make you look at a few objects and think, wow, that's great. A few weeks back I saw some wonderful photos in the photostream of one of my contacts, PaperFlowerGirl.
(Link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/paper-flower-girl/ ) She had photographed what appeared to be a random collection of items on her desk, in colour matching groups and they are really fantastic photos. I did a sort of frankly poor homage photo's, well I'm interested in this kind of thing, but I'm no master of it ok, and I was quite pleased with my photo's. I'd paste them but I'm using this live writer Beta thingy, and frankly if I want to post a photo, I have to cut and paste and use the real bloger poster. So why not? I'm fed up with not putting enough photo's up.

. The idea is that the top bit is gold, the middle bit is green and the bottom section is red.

Heck, I hope that comes out a bit bigger on the blog than it is here!

These are really things off my desk. My desk is a mess, it's always a mess and frankly it's always likely to be a mess, which sort of leaves me with lots of things to choose from to make photo's like this. That's life as they say.

Anyhow what else have I been up to? Not a lot as I said. I could write a thesis about the bus service in Bristol right now, the amount of time I've been spending waiting for them to turn up, and of course the numbers of times a bus turns up on time in this city you could count on the fingers of one hand. Less than that. I have been doing a lot of work - jewellery wise that is, making the final downhill run into the big Xmas sales. These are a few of the things that I've been putting together:

I've been doing a lot of these metal and single bead type bag charms - not everyone wants a bag charm loaded down with beads!

This one is a bit less 'beady' than

the Bagcharms I normally do - but it's got some

lovely peachy crackleglass beads, and a big agate

donut at the bottom.

Anyhow, these are the things I've been up to - boring, but then that's average life for you! All of the bagcharms can be found in my Ebay shop over the next week or so - these are going on sale then.

Sunday September 9th.

Well here we are, mid September already - what a horrible thought. This year seems to be going by so awfully fast!!!
Now.. what to write about. Goodness only knows, because frankly, I haven't been doing anything that's worth writing about. Except for a curious incident yesterday evening.
I had a telephone call from one of those absurd machines that dials you up, and tells you you've won something. Well I was a bit bored at the time, so I called it back - to be honest I'm a bit of a sucker for those 'you have won' type lines. I know I shouldn't be - I really do know that, I know no one ever wins on these things, but I have that sort of everlasting hope about them. I'd love to be the unexpected recipient of a large cheque. Well who wouldn't?
So as I said, I phoned the thing. I put in the neverending series of numbers , press this button for that etc - that's how they make their money of course, by keeping you hanging on to a premium charge telephone number. But in a way I sort of feel that's what makes me believe in them - at some point, they have to hand something over to someone, in order to be within the law. Anyway having pressed all these buttons, the machine finally told me I'd won a holiday - I was pretty much expecting this, I never 'win' anything that I'm really interested in. Only this time, of course, it is. Promising me something interesting that is, it's telling me I've won a holiday in Venice.
Venice. One of the places I've always wanted to go to! So against my better judgement I'm investigating this a bit further. I'll write off and send them the 'standard sized envelope' (they very cleverly don't tell me what a standard sized envelope actually is, so if nothing turns up, well that's their get out clause right there) and they promise they'll send me the details. It's bound to be that I have to take it probably before the end of April 08, because I haven't enough annual leave to take a week off before then, or there'll be some other catch with this. There has to be because people like me don't win things like a free holiday in Venice. I mean just imagine wandering around St Marks, or the Doge's Palace - and more than that, simply the back streets. All those opportunities to take photo's of fabulous architecture - I'm not quite so sure about the gondolas. I'm not really built for a gondola!
Anyhow, I'll keep you posted as to what happens next. What the eventual get out clause they have that will prevent me from seizing this by the teeth and pocketing it!
Anyhow, on top of all this, I've been busy working away. Lots of extra hours here and there, extra shifts when I can fit them in to my rota - which isn't often. I have to make do with a few hours here and there. But I've been doing my own work too - I had some simply lovely extra big bookmarks arrive from my supplier in Australia. Great big squiggle shaped one's, six inches long!

There you go, doesn't it look good? The big black circle there is haematite, with a nice silvertone metal oval it can hang from.

This one's a standard sized silver tone metal bookmark, with a wonderful bronze flower charm hanging off it, with two fabulous leaf charms - also bronze tone, and with wonderful veining. I got them from Etsy a while back, part of a whole pack of leaf charms I got. Excellent for bookmarks!

This is a long chain necklace, with haematite circles - I think it makes a great everyday wear jewellery! All of the bookmarks, and this necklace are on sale in my Ebay shop now, or over the next couple of days!

These are fabulous earrings - big drops of blueberry quartz, with small bicones of Swarovski crystal hung over the top.

This is a fantastic necklace that I'm aiming to put onto Ebay in the run up to Xmas - its made from fantastic handcrafted beads from one of my favourite Etsy sellers, Chickadee Beads. These are just fabulous mottled purple blue glass beads, hung on silver plate chain with a dangle of small Swarovski Crystal bicones.

Well that's it for now - more in due course!