The Whispering Beadmaker

I'm not talking much today, MTM and I went to see Rival Sons again last night in Sheffield with fellow rock fans Steve and Gary. Brilliant night, support act were the Graveltones, wow, they get a great sound with only two musicians. The guitarist is a one-man orchestra!

Due to shouting and hollering my approval after every track of both acts, I am rather hoarse today and so forgive me for not doing much talking about the concert or these new lampwork beads I'm showing you.

They're very similar to my Glitter on the Highway beads which I made some time ago but this time in a blue colourway using bluestone instead of goldstone. I had to come up with another name and as they're blue which suggests water ... I therefore present to you, Lustre on the Babbling Brook beads available in my Etsy shop now.

Hope everyone is having a lovely weekend!

Steampunks and mushrooms in Cambridge

I've been meaning to get back to Cambridge for a day out for ages. Last time as we whizzed by in the car, I spotted these unusual mushrooms sprouting out of wrought iron railings outside a school on Trumpington Road. This time, I had to stop for some pics; aren't they just amazing?!

The perfect opportunity for this came last Saturday, my sister, Sharon and her partner, Martin were arranging one of their Steampunk events at the Cambridge Museum of Technology.

Steampunks are an eccentric bunch, they like dressing up, have tea duals, drink gin and eat cake ...

They're especially fond of their hats, mustn't forget the hats, they even motorise them and have races ... a strange lot! :-)

The museum is brilliant, great staff and most importantly is dog friendly and so Missy was able to come along with us and on the way back into town, we stumbled upon a pub with river views ...

It would be rude not to stop really! 

Have half of shandy and boat watch.

Must go back soon, Cambridge is lovely, sometimes I miss trading there on Saturdays!

Five a day vegetable seeds

Yesterday, I sowed some vegetable seeds for the first time since 2007!

The topsoil has been shovelled into the new raised beds, a joint effort by MTM and myself though I have to say, he did do more than I. I gave it a week to settle down. Really it should have some organic matter like compost or well rotted stable manure dug in, however the time for that is Autumn through Winter.

But I'm in a hurry, I want to grow something now! It's already too late this year me to grow crops that need a long growing season like onions, parsnips and leeks. So, to increase fertility I'm relying on chemicals, albeit organic ones, a dressing of dried fish, blood and bone has been hoed into the surface and then fast maturing root crops seeds have been planted into shallow pre-watered drills, yesterday it was carrots, beetroot, radishes, turnips and kohlrabi.

Today, I'm doing peas, and three varieties of lettuce, I like to start these off in pots and then plant them out to grow on. I'm also sowing coriander micro leaves; I've only grown conventional coriander before so am interested to see how that works out.

Mustn't hang around, like I said I'm in a hurry!

Vegetable gardening begins ... almost!

The top soil arrived for my vegetable garden today! Here it is being delivered by Len Kirk in big heaps over the low fence into the back garden.

All we've got to do now is shovel it into the newly built raised beds.

It's MTM's birthday tomorrow, I'm sure he'd like nothing better than to spend it dealing with his piles (of soil that is)!

(Click on any picture to get a closer view of MTM's piles).

I used to play tennis

The Scheepjes crochet-a-long is progressing well. We're up to week 4, I'm crocheting the latest motifs during my break for lunch and I've realised the colours are VERY Wimbledon! I wonder if that was by design or a happy coincidence. 

I'm going back to "work" in a minute but as I'm self-employed, I can choose what I do when. It's too hot for bead making so I'm indoors cleaning yesterday's beads while waiting for Heather Watson to come onto court no. 1 on the telly. The advantage of living in a stone house is the thick walls keep the interior nice and cool.

The tennis racket you see in the picture is one of three that my sisters and I used to play with out on the street when we were kids, so it's very old! I collected it from mum and dad's house when we were there for Father's Day, mum was going to chuck them out. I decided to save one of them for the happy memories it holds. Mum says she can remember me running back from school to watch Jimmy Connors, Bjorn Borg (swoon, yes of course I had a massive crush!) and Virginia Wade.

#scheepjeswol #scheepjes2015CAL