Sarah Downton Beads and Jewellery

Saturday evening

Phew it’s been a busy day, but very enjoyable. I’ve had 2 lovely ladies for a one day beginners course (waves 😉 ) and now it’s time for me to put my feet up. It’s Saturday night and I’m home alone as Rick has taken our daughter out for the afternoon and evening so it looks like it’s up to me to decide what I eat tonight, yay! I hear a pizza beconing cos it’s easy, hmmmmm, and it means I can watch BBC1’s zanny Comic Relief idea of getting celebs to do famous iconic dances. Last weeks Flashdance by Robert Webb was hilarious, I wonder if anyone else will come close to his performance. Then later when his nibs gets back I hope to kick off my shoes and watch this week’s Lost…

You know, I’m going to clamber onto my soapbox and have a quick winge about Sky. Why do they always knick the best shows from terestrial TV and prevent other channels from showing them, I mean, I know it’s business, but it really annoys me that they don’t have the guts to try out new series, they wait for terrestrial TV to try something out then if it’s a hit they nab it. They should have the guts to try things out for themselves and stop creaming off the best. I realise that it’s also a way to get more subscribers, but I think it’s way mean. I really miss 24, that was another quality series that was snatched away.  Rant over.

Tuesday morning

All wrapped up and ready to go down to my studio and make beads. It’s a healthy 8 deg C in my studio today so I may well swelter in my head to toe thermals and jeans that are now almost around my ankles now I’ve shrunk so much. I have my trusty list of things to make and new ideas to try, so I should be in for a fun day. Outside is feeling much nicer, people are out there doing things, by that I mean that outside jobs are being attempted again, rather than everyone hiding inside from the bitter cold.

I spent some time last Friday updating my events page and removing last years do’s, and I now have a good list of events that I will be attending this year, the next being a new bead fair at Dorking Halls at the end of May. This is where The Craft Kit company started their successful bead fairs and is a return to that venue by popular request.

Another thing that’s come around again is LOST! woo hoo. So it looks like I’m due more late nights. Man that show is so addictive, I just don’t know how they do it. They really have an amazing team of writers to keep the suspense going. So far this season has got off to a good start, with us going ‘doh!’ at the end of every episode, how do they do that? You hear the twang and the crack noise and it’s all over for another week. My favourite quote this week was Jack Shepherd talking to Ben Linus on flight 316…….Jack….. ‘How can you read?’………….Ben….. ‘My mother  taught me’.

Thursday afternoon

Woops, I didn’t mean to leave it that long! It’s officially half term, and as my daughter noted this morning, we’re nearly at the end. I’ve been having this week off work more than a usual half term to keep her company and do things, although to be fair we’ve not not done that much, only several appointments that I lined up for this week, which meant that we’ve spent a couple of afternoons in Horsham, visiting the shops and generally smooching around. We were also due to have a fellow beadmaker around to try one of my torches, but she very unfortunately broke down a few roads away and ended up being towed back home to London. We walked round to see her and took emergency rations of a Kit Kat in case she was hungry, and had a good chat before she left.

So I’m sat here on one of our arm chairs, watching kids TV, next to our daughter, who is sporting her new glasses, well, actually her first ever pair of specs, and they look so cool, she can’t wait to show her friends and really loves them. I would have loved to be able to wear glasses like that as a kid, instead I had the frightfully hideous NHS round wire ones in pale pink to start with, then progressed to the transparent plastic ones with springy ear hooks when they came in. Lovely. I couldnt wait to get contact lenses.

And what’s on? Well, we’ve just finished watching Da Dick and Dom Diaries, a marvelous mix of snipits from their Bungalow series. These 2 blokes are just so funny, and it’s great to watch them at work, they obviously love what they do. I was sad to see D & D in the Bugalow finish, but now we have the splendid Legend of Dick and Dom on in the afternoons, it’s so sureal and very Pythonesque.  I’m a bit of a fan of some childrens TV, we often make time to sit together and watch something that we both like. I’d better go and hang the washing up now. TTFN.

Thursday evening

I have restocked my shop! There are 8 new beautiful sets of beads for you to buy, 4 with a distinct pink Valentines theme going on, especially the dotty heart set. You can email me to buy and I’ll send you a Paypal invoice in return, and the good news is that you don’t need to have a Paypal account to shop this way. I also opened a Flickr account this week and have already started uploading my hugely ginormous back catalogue of sold and unsold bead photos to my album. There’s lots of work to do there as I only have a measly 9 photos in so far, but I may well get his geekness involved in helping me here since he loves doing this sorta thang so much.

As for the photos of snow on my mobile that I was going to upload here on Monday, well, it’s official, it’s not techno-fear. Rick tried for several hours to get them off my phone card but to no avail, they’s really gotten stuck! It would appear to be a problem with Picasa so we now have that to fix also. Honestly there’s so many things here that need doing or fixing, but at least I’m starting to succeed a little way with my new years resolutions, one of those was to update my shop more regularly, and ta da, I’ve done it once this year! Another was to put more photos in my beadlog here, well you can’t say I haven’t tried.  So to make up for the lack of snow pics I’ll stuff in a couple of bead pics instead to give you a taster of what’s new in my shop.

Monday lunchtime

I’m stuck at home, well, not really stuck, but I decided to stay in today instead of venturing around the M25 on this very snowy day. Maybe I would have got to my destination, but would I have made it home again,  especially since traffic has been brought to a standstill today slap bang along the section that I would be coming home along? So I’ve had a leisurely morning, pottering around in my lovely new snugly pink fleece dressing gown (I’m dressed now BTW) and generally getting over the weekend. I have to admit to being rather distracted today, probably because I’m shattered again, and maybe because of the snow. I was expecting to get a call from school to go and collect my daughter, but they’ve obviously got enough teachers in today, what a shame, I think they should have been let off to enjoy the snow! I couldn’t really keep her home because of the weather as we only live 5 minutes walk away, I think they’d have twigged what was going on.

I was about to upload a couple of quick snow snaps but I was challenged by that awful red error box that came up twice as I tried to put them on Picassa, so you’ll have to wait until Rick gets home, so there you will. Also I hope to be updating my shop in the next few days, adding a few Valentine themed beads and some gorgeous blue Double Helix sets. We’re meant to be practising music this evening with some friends, but if the weather gets in the way of this then it may well be sooner rather than later 😉