New vintage venture!

Yes, I'm still alive!!! I cannot believe just how long it's been since I've blogged ... life feels to have whizzed on apace recently and left me in its wake. Hopefully I'm getting back on an even keel now, fingers crossed...

And I am totally amazed and thrilled to find that in so many months I haven't lost any followers, you are all wonderful!!

Well, for better or for worse, I've gone mad and opened a second shop on Etsy:

http://www.etsy.com/shop/LindenTreeVintage





The jewellery category on Etsy is very full and I figured it may be a good idea all round to open another shop in a less saturated category.

We have a ton of broken old books, relics of the days when Roger was bulk buying them to re-sell on FeeBay. They're not re-bindable as each one has some pages damaged beyond repair and some missing altogether. And obviously I check that none of them are at all rare, either.

So I've decided to de-construct them and offer them for sale in the Etsy vintage section for all the altered art/collage/decoupage artists and scrapbookers out there who I fondly imagine are waiting to snap them up.

De-constructing books is actually great fun! Even though, as a part time librarian, I should be considering it a crime... (Having tackled my oldest item, a very battered dictionary, I can confirm that 18th century bookbinding string was pretty tough stuff!)

At the moment I just have a few variety packs of whole pages listed, plus some cut outs from colour plates that came from an equally battered 1869 edition of Mrs Beeton.




The Mrs Beeton illustrations and recipes are amazing - lamb cutlets with green peas sounds very appetizing but I'm not at all sure about calf's ears a la financiere?! I've some more to list and they include some positively architectural desserts. The lengths people went to to make even simple food look elaborate in Victorian times were amazing.

If there's any of you out there who have a fancy for vintage and would like to offer any suggestions I'd be deeply grateful. I did post on the Etsy forums a few times and got some good hints but any further thoughts will be very welcome indeed - thanks!

Not drowning but waving - oink, oink?

Well, here I am after what has felt like an eternity away from blogging, managing to stay afloat now and even wave at everyone. And I'm looking forward to catching up with all my tags and awards, this all looks great fun, thanks folks for choosing me!! In the interim here's a bit about what's been going on.....

My first reason for being absent is that I spent most of June sinking a huge amount of effort into my shops, not all of which is apparent as yet because there are still lots of photos to replace and titles and descriptions to tweak and new items to list. (Well, to be more precise the Folksy shop's pretty much been "done" but there's still a way to go with the Etsy shop.)

My second reason is that four weeks ago I succumbed to an extremely unpleasant virus which with the benefit of hindsight and the input of our practise nurse I now realise was very possibly swine flu. I certainly didn't clock it as such at the time, especially as it started with what I put down to being a combination of asthma and a panic attack. Over the next week I experienced diarrhoea such as I've never had before and a fever that took a couple of days to subside, plus a cough, chest pains, nausea and resulting total lack of appetite, aching in every limb and a seriously nasty headache. I also felt (still do, to a certain extent) totally and absolutely exhausted. I still didn't twig what it might be, though, until I spoke to our practise nurse about it this week, when I went to get a new peak flow meter to replace the one that fell apart on me.

I think I was thinking "I don't have a sore throat so it can't be swine flu!" And of course it may not have been swine flu, only a blood test would tell and that's not going to happen! But I literally felt so ill, particularly when I had the fever, that I thought I was dying. I can still remember the shock when I first took my temperature and the seriously unpleasant feeling of lying in bed and feeling perspiration running all over me.

I went to the doctor after the asthma/panic attack but before the other symptoms appeared and then again when I was feeling better but both times we spoke more about my concerns regarding my wildly fluctuating blood sugar levels and how best to manage my asthma and panic attacks than about the virus I'd had. I think I was just fixated on the possibility of something in my system being permanently out of kilter, fortunately the blood tests have all come back fine - I'm not anaemic, I don't have hypoglaecemia and I don't have thyroid problems, hooray!!

One day I remember thinking, "I'll have a poke around in the forums and see if that makes me feel any better" but I didn't get very far, I just sat staring at the screen felling sick and shaky and with perspiration literally pouring down me, so much so that when I'd managed to cool my self down a little bit with wet flannels I had to change every single thing I was wearing. Yuck and double yuck.

Roger didn't catch it from me, thank goodness, but then we very rarely catch things from each other. We must have mutually exclusive immune systems, lol!

Well, whatever it was I'm extremely glad it's gone, I just wish I could stop feeling so very tired. I'm trying to pace myself but I'm getting impatient now, I've so many things I want to be doing!! But it is good each day to be feeling a little bit better.

I don't think I've any photos of piggies in my huge collection but here are a couple of interesting Whitby photos!

We call this the Bates Motel - it's a view from the West Beach of an early twentieth century house that used to be called Viking Lodge and which at one time was a hotel. We found a lovely drawing of it in a nineteen-thirties guidebook.












This is the view from Hudson's Folly on the West Cliff across to the best pub in Whitby, the Duke of York. I can't believe it's five years since we were there, I really do hope it's still in the same hands and is still as good. You want haddock and chips? They do great chips and they have haddocks that are so huge they loll over the side of your plate just begging to be eaten!

And Roger says the beer is great (I don't do beer, only Chardonnay but that's good, too!)

Busy busy busy!

I suppose you could best describe this is a "look how I'm displaying what I've made for my Folksy and Etsy shops and tell me what you think, please" post!

It's said so often in the forums on both sites that when you can't see and handle a piece of jewellery the photographs and descriptions have to work super hard for you. That's why any of you who look regularly at either of my shops will have seen twentysix different photographs of most of my pieces - and still counting.....

And I'm also posting so that all you lovely people who are following my blog don't think I'm dead or something..... This last couple of weeks has seen a mighty push in terms of a) making jewellery, b) photographing it and c) starting the long process of photo editing and listing. Both on Folksy and on Etsy and all of course in addition to the day jobs. Phew!

I was very fortunate indeed in being able to do my photo shoot out of doors on Monday this week. (Oh boy was it hot, several tubes of Factor 30 later, lol!)

I'm pretty pleased with my current set up so I'll just give you a few examples of the results. The piece of driftwood is one that we used in dim ages past at craft fairs; Roger cleaned it and rubbed some gilt cream into it and varnished it. The shells are ones we've acquired over the years. The white lacy fabric in the background is a crochet shawl that was a present from a friend. And I'm using smoked glass over paper that I've drawn on for a base.

Any comments on the setup would be very welcome, thanks in advance, I'm aiming for continual improvement here, folks!
The piece of paper under the glass in this picture has a kind of abstracty blue and yellow sea and sand scrawl on it!










Yawwwwwn! It's 5.15 a.m. and I can't sleep, been awake since 3.30. (Just thought I'd throw that in, I'm not usually an insomniac, rather totally the opposite!) So I've got up to finsh this post.

Here's the driftwood in all its glory. The gilt cream and matt varnish pick out the texture really well, I think.

At craft fairs we used to drape several necklaces over this and they often sold before the ones on the display board.
And here's the "anatomically correct overview shot" (as opposed to the "come on in and look some more" shot) - can you see the linden leaves I've drawn for the background?

I think this one's a bit on the dark side, actually, I need to brighten it before I load it.






Since we only get three photograph slots on Folksy I have decided to stick to this formula - the first and second thumbnails will be the aforesaid "come on in and look some more" and "anatomically correct overview" and the third will be either the necklace on a dummy or earrings hanging from a glass or cup.
I haven't got the colours right on this one yet and I also need to Photoshop out the irritating label (since there's no way on this earth I can get it off!)










I picked out several different coloured mugs for displaying the earrings.

Quite a few of the earrings I shot on a couple of colours to see which looked best.







The only thing that still has me somewhat perplexed is displaying stud earrings and bracelets.

For studs I think I'm going to have to use our display stand (dense foam covered in velvet) and hope they hold in long enough for me to photograph them!

Bracelets are tricky, I've not cracked displaying them properly yet. I don't want to model them, as I know I wouldn't want to buy anything that's been modelled. I think I just need to go and buy a bracelet display form and photograph it in a similar way to the necklaces.

Well it's now 6.05 and the alarm will be going off in 25 minutes so there's no point in going back to bed - think I'll just go and make another cup of tea!!

Catching up, slowly...

Well, we are as back to normal as we can be since the burglary and a big thank you to everyone who's posted condolences, they're much appreciated.

"Back to normal" - erm, that's to say the repairs are all done but if I'm in the house alone I still jump out of my skin at the slightest unusual noise. (Crikey, it's not as if it even happened when we were at home, am I just a total wuss or what?!)

So I'll soon be catching up on all my blog reading/commenting and I'll soon be posting something more interesting here than a running commentary on our woes, plus I'll be catching up with all the comments on here too.....

We have actually been able to sit out on our patio for one and a half whole days this holiday weekend, it's been brilliant! OK it's raining now but who cares. Let's hope that the promise of a heatwave summer is true, we need it after the last couple of years here.

If you've read what I've said in my bio, well, I have to say the anal spreadsheet side of me has truly come out this evening as I've just spent a couple of hours trawling websites and (actual paper!) catalogues to get the best price for my current jewellery making shopping list and have cut something like £35.00 off a potentially £90 order by doing the comparison thing. I'm feeling suitably smug!!

I leave you with a random image of yours truly paddling on Holkham beach in October last year - chilly but fun.....

A waiting game.

This is now the second day I've spent at home trying to sort out the aftermath of our burglary (Rog and I are taking it in turns!) Things are progressing but I just don't feel I can settle to anything. Today its the glazier I'm waiting for, I know he will definitely be here sometime this afternoon but I don't know when.

So to while away the time I'm going to post some of our huge collection of Norfolk Broads photographs. This is one that epitomises the wide open spaces feel of Norfolk that we love so much.

We've been on two Broads boating holidays (a hired cabin cruiser, not a yacht, we're not "real" sailors). While they were immensely enjoyable they were also extremely hard work in some respects, especially the first one when we were still "learning the ropes". It's the little things that catch you out, like not knowing which direction to moor up in vis a vis the tide.....doing it wrong was a hair raising experience and we are eternally grateful to the big, muscular pair of men that came to our assistance!

Our boat - the Silver Myth. She was magnificent, extremely spacious and very well appointed.

Blimey, I've been in small terraced houses with almost less space!






Breakfast time, chaps! This cheeky bird was tapping furiously at the window to gain our attention and the others were swimming across to us as if their lives depended on it.

It was rather obvious they'd done this before...





The beauty of the Broads on a misty morning.

The atmosphere of the Broads is really hard to describe to anyone who hasn't been there. For a landscape that is essentially man made there is a very ancient feel to it.

This was not far from How Hill, probably one of our favourite parts of the Broads, on the lovely winding River Ant.


View from How Hill.

I love these old Norfolk windmills. When I was a child I had a fantasy about living in one but must admit that as an adult living in something circular has sort of lost its appeal!





Don't you go down in the woods tonight! When we were moored up at the beautiful How Hill we thought, it's a lovely warm evening, lets go for a stroll in the woods...

Not a good idea so soon after having watched Blair Witch Project. A twig cracked when we were only a short way into the woods and we were back in that boat likes streaks of greased lightning.



Gunnera - I'm not exactly sure where we saw these, I think it might have been in FairhavenWoodland and Water Garden. I don't know why but Rog finds it amusing that I find gunnera amusing. Well, don't you think something that looks like a giant rhubarb has an a bit of a giggle factor?!


Hmmm, well, I started this at 2.00 p.m. and it's now 2.50 p.m. He said "just after lunch" so I'm wondering, do I call or what? Perhaps I'll just go and do the washing up and then he might arrive...

Burgled!

Well, yesterday I was planning a great evening catching up with all my on-line activities. my blog reading list alone is getting really long and I'm very aware that people might be beginning to think I've lost my "voice" due to the lack of any recent comments from this direction...and I've hardly stepped into a forum for what feels like an aeon.

None of this was to be, however, just as I was winding down ready to make my way from work to Sainsbury's yesterday I got a phone call from Roger to say we'd been burgled. Aaaaargh!!

We have been fortunate in that not much was taken - our DVD player, a few DVDs, Roger's Play Station and his guitar and - for some bizarre reason - the base unit for the phone. My computer had been toppled over but is working fine, thank goodness.

The Play Station had Grand Theft Auto in it but they'd dropped the memory card, so when Rog gets a replacement he'll be able to carry on building up his huge scores!!

It must have been a very small burglar because he/she entered after having smashed a pane of glass in the front door. They clearly thought they'd be able to open the door that way - not so, it's deadlocked. And the alarm would have been going off nineteen to the dozen so they'd just have been grabbing what they could in the shortest space of time.

Well, that's it for now, loads to do as you can imagine. And we'll see just how accurate those Lloyds TSB ads are that promise a super fast insurance claims service for customers who bank with them...!

I'll be back when the dust has settled.

Snap! Well, sort of...

There's nearly always some discussions going on in both the Folksy and the Etsy forums on the subject of copying and an awful lot of paranoia can be generated in these threads. I thought I'd post this as an illustration of how similar creations can arise totally genuinely and independently of each other!

The necklace below is for sale in my Etsy shop, I made it a month or so ago but only listed it very recently. The other day I bought my regular copy of Bead, a brilliant UK magazine that mainly features beadweaving but also includes some wirework and polymer clay projects. Right at the end there's a project called Tubular Belles, which is strikingly similar in in construction to my necklace but which must have been submitted a good few months ago!! So clearly neither of us can possibly have been even subconsciously influenced by the other.

Here's my necklace, I can't show you the similar one but see below for a full description of it and some more details...











If you are a subscriber to Bead's bead.tv you can log on to see the similar necklace, which is designed by the talented Jo Porter. (If you have the latest edition of Bead, it's on page 104.) Her necklace uses very different colours to mine and is made with translucent seed beads rather than with matt ones. She also uses different peyote stitch patterns for each beaded tube whereas I've used the same pattern for each, plus the distance between the peyote tube and round bead sections is longer and the whole necklace is long enough to not need a clasp.

Given that the beaded peyote tube is commonly taught and that there are, after all, only so many different colours, finishes and sizes of seed beads to make them with, only so many different ways creating pattern in them and only so many different ways of arranging the end results then similarities such as this are bound occasionally to arise. So please everyone, let's not be paranoid about copying! There is obviously individual creativity at work both in Jo Porter's creation and in mine.

I'm going to send a photo of my necklace to Jean Powers, Bead's editor, as they do ask for readers' work and are interested in what people have created as a response to patterns published in the magazine. But I'll also mention that I made it before I even opened the magazine!

An interesting thought is that originally I was going to arrange the peyote tubes in a completely different way, with them all in one central section with a length of thong on either side. I did it and it didn't look right, so I changed the arrangement to how it is in the photo!

10th wedding anniversary tomorrow!

Just a quick post to say I won't be blogging or hanging around in the Folksy or Etsy forums for a couple of days as it's our tenth wedding anniversary tomorrow and we're taking some quality time out to re-vitalise ourselves!

Here are some more photos, this time of Whitby, to entertain you while I'm gone...

Moody, atmospheric shot of the graveyard of St Mary's, the parish church, with the Abbey looming mysteriously behind.








Greedy seagulls who just love to attack unsuspecting tourists eating their fish and chips! Talk about cheeky...








The Huntrodd Memorial - in St Mary's graveyard - an unbelievable (?) set of coincidences...

I've finally done it!

Yes, after ages of deliberation I've finally set up shop on Etsy. Only three pieces listed so far but "great oaks from little acorns grow" as they say! Here I am: http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=7316923 And I had one person heart my shop and one person heart an item within half an hour of introducing my self in the forums, so I'm feeling pretty hopeful.

Loads more listing to do, both on Folksy and on Etsy, but I'm having a break for a couple of days to relax and do the garden! Let's hope the weather bucks up a little, it's been odd here today, sunny and then cloudy in quick succession.

A few flower pics :

These irises in our garden just get better and better each year!












Breathtaking delphiniums at Temple Newsam, near Leeds. I can still remember the fantastic shock of turning a corner and totally unexpectedly seeing these!







I'm not entirely sure what these are, I think they are a variety of primula. These beauties are at Harlow Carr, the RHS garden near Harrogate.








Will be back and blogging again in a few days, happy MayDay holiday to all!

Just a quickie!

Well, thanks to the (mainly) lovely weather yesterday we managed an outdoor product shoot. Now I have hours and hours and hours of photo editing, listing and listing editing to do so I'm not going to be blogging for the next few days!!

I will be back when it's all done but till I blog again I'll entertain you with some shots we took yesterday of Stanzi up her favourite tree, an ash that when it was younger we mistakenly thought was a rowan and wondered why it never bore berries...duh!


And also some lovely shots of our lime tree, destined to play a part in my new shop banners (yes, banners in the plural, some of the pieces we photographed yesterday will end up on Etsy, not on Folksy; I've finally decided to take the plunge!)