Highs and very low Lows

It seems so much longer than 8 days since my last post. So much has happened and to be honest it's been an emotional rollercoaster. I think I'd better start at the beginning....

Sunday
We travelled up to Suffolk for a family wedding on Monday afternoon. We left an hour later than planned and for once that was not my fault! Katie, one of my closest friends, called to say that her waters had broken and she was sending her husband over to collect a few bits. She didn't actually need them for a few weeks at least, but what a woman in labour wants, she gets!!
When we got to Suffolk we called in to see my Grandma for lunch, another high, and then continued onto another very close friend, Kate, as we were staying with them. It had been far too long since I had seen her last and it was so fantastic to see her. Her little boy is 7 months younger than our B, and has the same name! They got on brilliantly together.

There was another high on Sunday too -a friend that Kate and I went to 6th form with came over with her husband. Their first baby is due in December after a long long battle to get pregnant.

Monday
A lovely lazy morning then the boys (2 dads and 2 Bs) went to the park while Kate and I sorted lunch and wedding presents etc. The wedding was wonderful. Very small and low key and intimate and fun. We actually introduced Debbie and Marcus, but for once I hadn't been trying to match make, just inviting lots of people round for Sunday lunch! I used to work with Debbie and Marcus, to borrow a phrase his brother uses, is my sort of cousin. Our Dads were each other's best men, they've known each other since they were teenagers, that kind of thing. My parents were obviously at the wedding too, which B loved! I forgot to take my camera to the wedding but as soon as Dad emails me some photos I'll add one here!

So, another day of highs with one slightly worrying low - Katie's labour hadn't progressed and she was now due to be induced Tuesday morning.



Tuesday
We wanted to be able to stay longer in Suffolk but T had to be on the Isle of Wight for work in the evening so we had to leave after lunch. We decided to take the boys to Felixstowe, though, and have a run on the beach and have lunch there. They loved it, as you can tell from the big grins! We did have to bribe them with chocolate, though, to get them to stay long enough for the photo! I am so pleased that the boys got on as well as their Mums do. Little B was apparently really upset when Kate packed the bed that my B had slept on, and my B keeps asking when little B is coming to his house to play. We're not leaving it nearly so long this time, February halfterm hopefully.


So another day of highs with a couple of small lows - saying goodbye to Kate and her family, and worrying about how Katie's induction was going.




Wednesday and the rest
I can honestly say that Wednesday and Thursday felt like the longest and lowest days of my life so far. I hadn't slept well, partly as T was away and partly as I was worrying that I hadn't heard from Tim, Katie's husband and was imagining the worst. You know how everything seems worse at night!

Tim phoned at just gone 9am with the news that I'd been dreading. Everything had been going really well until the last ten minutes. To cut a very long story short, the baby was oxygen deprived and had to be resuscitated twice and then rushed to neonatal. Tim was initially told that she may not survive. By the time he started making phone calls Gracie was nearly 9 hours old and improving by the hour, and things have been getting better and better since then. Thank you so much to those of you who knew what was going on and were praying for Gracie! Katie has now been able to hold and feed Gracie, and I've been into see them twice so far. As I said, it's been a long and initially very low few days, but as they say, things can now only get better! Gracie is a big full term baby, and she's got everything going in her favour.


So, that's been our week. Sorry for the long gap between posts, but I hope that you can understand why!

Pretty Pictures

Oh I do love my new camera! I don't think I had realised how basic my old one was until I tried some others. Mind you, the old one did me well. The photos it took in lovely natural light were good, some so good that magazines accepted them for step-by-step projects pictures, but it just couldn't do inside photos.

Anyway, these are some of the earrings I've made this week. I've revived an old design and given it a new twist. The original design had discs made from silver art clay and were flat, but this time I've used discs cut from sterling silver and hammered and domed them. The design is on the inside of the discs and picks up the colour of the beads beautifully. I've used garnet, amethyst and Swarovski crystals so far, and I expect that more variations will follow! I've just added them to the website.

The Lavant show was a good one today, and I've got some more Christmas orders to work on. We're off to a family wedding in Suffolk first thing tomorrow morning, though, so I going to give myself a day or so break!

P.S. Sorry that I'm not replying to comments at the moment - I don't mean to be rude but Blogger won't let me leave comments on anyone's blog at the moment, not even mine! I'm hoping that it'll resolve itself while we're in Suffolk. I do read all the comments though!

P.S. I Love You

For once I didn't feel much like going into the shed to work yesterday while B was at his childminders. I guess I was just feeling a bit washed out after the busy weekend and after teaching a 3 hour workshop Wednesday evening. I hadn't spent an afternoon beading in front of the television for months, so when the postman delivered "P.S. I Love You" from Lovefilm, I decided to get out the materials for a couple of necklaces I'd planned and indulge myself!

The 2 necklaces I made use lampwork (the purple by Izzy Anderson and the black by Caroline), Swarovski crystals and some lovely silver twisted tubes. It's been a while since I made necklaces that didn't involved sawing, hammering or soldering, but these were very relaxing to make and I'm really pleased with how they turned out. They took a lot longer than I expected though as I ended up needing a lot of tissues as I watched the film! I always cry at sad bits in films, and I've got even worse since having B! T is away for a couple of nights next week, so I think I'm going to hang on to the film for another week and curl up on the sofa with some more tissues and some chocolate and watch it again!

The necklaces will be going on my website tomorrow evening after my craft show at Lavant. I've been really bad at uploading new products lately, sorry. It's partly because I've been so busy with commissions and work for galleries, partly because I've sold quite a few bits before I've had a chance to put them on the site, but alot to do with my appalling camera. It was great for taking photos outside in perfect light, but not for inside, and let's face it, perfect sunny light isn't exactly reliable in this country. I have finally got a new camera, so I've spent this evening taking lots of photos with the view of uploading as much as I can tomorrow evening. I'm really pleased with my new camera - for one thing it's got a far better macro setting than my old one - just look at the close up of one of Izzy's beads!

You're It...

It seems that I've been tagged 3 times (by Lesley, Alison and Tina) by the "Seven Random Things" game that's been doing the rounds on blogs recently. Now, coming up with random facts isn't going to be hard, but trying to come up with seven people to tag is going to be a tricky one as the people I first thought of have all been tagged already!

So, the easy bit first,

1. When I was pregnant with B I had two cravings - fajitas (one of the few things that overpowered the horrible metallic taste I had in my mouth for much of my pregnancy) and a chocolate, chocolate and more chocolate ice cream from the co-op. T was on standing orders to buy a couple of tubs of the ice cream whenever he saw it as it wasn't in the shop very often!


2. As any visitor to our house will know, we have a few cows in the house - the picture below shows a couple of the ones that I allow in the kitchen. Picture frames full of postcards, crockery, the ironing board cover etc etc. Children of friends like to try and count them but soon give up after the first 100 - no, I'm not joking. It started when T and a friend started swapping postcards as a joke, and then all our family and friends got involved. It really started getting out of hand when people started giving them to me as well. There is now a strict policy on cow-giving and I try to keep most of them in just one part of the house!



3. Two of my 3 Grandads are buried in the same church yard. Yes, 2 of 3. My Dad's Mum remarried a couple of years after my Grandad died before I was born. Not only are both my Dad's Dad and step-Dad buried in the same church yard, but they shared the same birthday, died of the same thing and (obviously) married the same woman - and before you start getting strange ideas about my lovely nearly 91 year old Grandma, yes they did die of natural causes!


4. We used to have a valium-taking, vegetarian, epileptic dog. He developed epilepsy when he was about 2 and I was in the house on my own when he had his first fit, right under the hot iron sitting on the ironing board. I was jumping up and down screaming at him to stop as I was so scared - poor animal! We had to give him valium after a fit and we told that a vegetarian diet might help.


5. Talking of valium, my aforementioned lovely sweet nearly 91 year old Grandma offered me one before my driving test to calm my nerves. She said that it had worked for her!


6. I resat my A-levels. I passed them the first time round but not nearly the grades I was expected to get or needed for the uni course I wanted. My mum blamed moving house three times during 6th form and both my Grandads (Mum's mum and Dad's step-dad) dying the winter before the exams. Spending too much time with my first boyfriend might also have had something to do with it! Anyway, I'm glad that I did have to resit. It made me a better teacher as I'd never done badly at anything academic before so it definitely made me more understanding. And I never would have met T if I hadn't resat as I would otherwise have gone to a different uni and not gone into teaching. Which brings me to....


7. T and I met while we were teaching. I remember him clearly from my interview. Spending time together on Duke of Edinburgh award weekends and A level geography field trips was a strange courtship, but it obviously worked as we've been together for 11 years now!

Right, now for the difficult bit! I think that instead of tagging I'm going to list the people who I would have tagged if they hadn't had been tagged already and the three who tagged me - go and read their blogs and see what they've been up to!

1. Nicky at Sparkly Treasures


2. Laura at Beads by Laura


3. Kerry at Kab's Creative Concepts


4. Alison at BeaDangles Jewellery


5. Tina at So What's New Today?


6. Lesley at Coburg Crafts


7. Izzy at Adventures in Glass

On the catwalk

Last night was the Sophie's Appeal Fashion Show. It was a busy night with about 350 tickets sold and lots of bidding on auction prizes, so I think a lot of money was raised for the charity. It was also a fun experience being behind the scenes of the show when the models were rushing in and changing between scenes - at one point there were three of us helping one girl get changed! If you fancy reading more about it then have a look at the Daily Echo's website here, and photos of my jewellery being worn during the fashion show here. The piece you can see most clearly in the photos is the necklace shown above and the matching bracelet.

I am very tired today though! I knew that I'd need a good range of bigger pieces of jewellery and Lin (Sophie's mum) had asked me to make a couple of pieces in certain lengths/colours. As my working time during the day has been taken up with teaching silversmithing recently (far more enjoyable than teaching GCSEs at school!) the last pieces of jewellery making were done at night. So it's a soak in the bath and an early night for me tonight! And I bet Lin and Sarah Beattie (the organisers of the show) slept well last night!

Photos at last!

Nicky let me use her camera when she popped over this morning and it has made such a difference! The camera that I have been using so far has been great for taking photos in natural daylight outside, but I've come to realise that it's not up to the job of taking photos indoors, and let's face it, living in the UK I need to be able to take my jewellery photos inside! If any of my family are reading this - I think I know what I'd like for Christmas!

Anyway, these are some of the photos I took this morning, and they are a sneak preview of the new collection of jewellery I will be uploading to the website at the beginning of next week. I've hinted a couple of times over the last couple of months that I've been designing a new range of jewellery, partly in preparation for taking on more wholesale work, and partly because I had a sketch book full of ideas that needed a new material. And that new material is resin.

I have to admit that I had looked at resin jewellery years ago and was not that impressed, but after a lot of experimentation I love the combination of the beautiful range of colours I can produce (I colour the resin myself using a range of different pigments) with sterling silver, and that customers will be able to order specific colours. And the ideas for new designs and variations on a theme keep coming! The blue earrings in the blog competition last week were a preview, but here are a couple of other pieces. The blue pendant is mine (sorry!) as I've worn it every day since making it, but a couple of others in different colours will be on the website soon, as will several pairs of earrings and a few other bits and pieces that I'll show you over the next few days.

Let me know what you think!

My talented graphic designer!

The very talented graphic designer who designed my lovely logo for me is one of only 19 finalists in a competition to design the first in a line of unique designer coats - please visit Vaute Couture before Monday to vote for her and find out more - hers is the mustard-coloured coat at the bottom right of the page. Be sure to visit her bio page too by clicking on the coat - I love the picture she's drawn on there!