Where did that 10 days go?

Answers on a postcard!

Truth is we've been rushing around behind the builders and plasterers - sweeping, cleaning and painting so that everything would be ready for yesterday - when the chap arrived to lay the kitchen floor and then he'll be fitting the kitchen ... HOORAY!!!! It seems to have taken soooooo long to get to the bit that we started the whole things for... a new kitchen! Still it's all starting to take shape now and it's looking lovely. AND the new cooker arrived yesterday... so have spend an inordinate amount of time stroking it... just need it all connecting up and I'll be cooking up a storm (probably!).

Have managed to do some beading in between sessions with the paint brush - these are on the website already.

This set features one of those orphan beads that I got the other day. Luckily I had some other lampwork beads that matched exactly! I have used Thai Hill Tribe silver beads in between the lampwork and the rest of the necklace is brown leather thong. I'm really pleased with the way this turned out.

These two bracelets feature some of my favourite components - Thai Hill Tribe Silver 'elbows'. They fit really neatly to the sides of your wrist. The first bracelet has pink coin and stick freshwater pearls and the second has lampwork beads in a gorgeously rich cobalt blue. I made some earrings to go with the cobalt bracelet:

Tassels R us!

After doing that repair and making the tassel, I'm hooked! Made another one:

It will be on the website in a couple of days... hopefully!

Building update: plasterers have finished in the kitchen/diner - so we'll be getting on with the painting so it's ready for the floor and the kitchen fitter on Monday. Still quite a bit of work to be done in the cloakroom, but hopefully that'll be done tomorrow and plastered on Wednesday... which is also the day the kitchen is being delivered... great excitement!

Some gorgeous beads arrived this morning:



They are some 'orphan' beads from Beads-on-Toast... My mind is already whirring with ideas - they're all so lovely!

The person who commissioned the aqua rondelles set saw them on Saturday and bought the second set shown. The other set will be on the website later this week.

I also finished a competition entry today. The piece had to be inspired by a holiday destination. My favourite place to visit is Southern Ireland - especially the south-west corner - and so I decided that my theme would be '40 shades of green'. I went for a charm bracelet:

There are 40 green charms on a Sterling Silver chain. The charms have been made with: New Jade, Freshwater Pearls, Green Tourmaline, Malacite, Serpentine, Green Quartz, Rhyolite, Tree Agate, Prehnite, Peridot, Fluorite, South Sea Jade, Aventurine, Swaros and Glass. The shamrock is Sterling and I love the fact that it should be green... and isn't!

We got the goldfish today! My daughter is a great Charmed fan and so they've been named Cole, Phoebe, Piper and Leo. She already has a (stuffed) rabbit named Paige. They're all different - black, black and gold, white and gold and all white - and pretty lively. Quite interesting... for goldfish!

Entertaining in Sodom and Gomorrah...

Been away from the blog for a few days as we've had friends come to stay. They live in Spain and as Marina is 6 month pregnant, I think they've come over to get away from the heat! However, I really don't know what they thought about staying with us as we'd got builders in one room and plasterers in another - dust, dirt, power tools and two different radio stations playing at full volume... It was like a scene from a disaster movie... To get to the kitchen we had to go out of the french doors in the lounge, across the patio (which looks more like a junk yard - full of wood, bricks, buckets, toilets and washbasins) and through the back door. That wasnt' too bad on Tuesday and Wednesday... but not so much fun yesterday when it was bucketing down with rain! Needless to say we spent most of the time out of the house!

Today it's back to the beads - plus going to buy the fish tank mentioned in Monday's blog.

I did repairs today - four necklaces that needed sorting. Some were an easy fix - others needed completely re-stringing. The most interesting was a necklace where it had a tassel that had come undone. I tried to fix it, but to no avail. So, I took it all apart and made a new tassel following the instructions from a wonderful seed beader on UKBeader forum. I'm really pleased with how it turned out!



We now have the fish tank and my daughter is currently going up and down the stairs filling it up with a jug... We should be getting the fish on Monday... watch this space!