Sarah Downton Beads and Jewellery

Monday morning

Hi guys! I had to blog again about out CD delivery! Mainly to say that the problems with delivery were nothing to do with Graham at Cyclone, but were down to the couriers that the CD production company used, again both the CD company and the couriers have nothing to do with Graham (or Ash as we fondly call him).

Rick was so desperate last week that he’d miss the couriers (he worked from home Thursday to receive the CD’s that didn’t come) that he left this message on the door when he went to collect our daughter from school…..

To the courier delivering here

I have had to collect my daughter from school.

I will be back in < 10 minutes DO NOT leave without dropping off the delivery THIS IS A VERY IMPORTANT DELIVERY It's sods law you arrive in the only 10 minutes that I have not been here to collect it in the last 4 days! Please wait for me to return I have been waiting for it for 4 days 10 mins is all I ask!!

I also ought to add that the CDs did arrive safely in the end at the conference centre in time for the conference. Woo hoo.

Friday morning

Well after 4 days waiting at home, guess where the delivery of CD’s is….Cardiff. That’s a fat lot of use since we live about 30 miles from the Sussex south coast and the conference that we ordered them for starts this evening in Hertfordshire.

Apparently there was a mix up, no kidding. They’d mucked up on the post code, but instead of being honest about it, knowing full well that they wouldn’t be delivering here for the last FOUR days they let us stay in waiting. It wasn’t even like they could just stick it through the letter box or send it to the post office, we’re talking a pallet load here, probably 15 boxes each a foot cubed.

I have to say I don’t mind there being problems, and I appreciate that mistakes do happen, that’s life. BUT at least be courteous to your clients and honest. Keep them informed of the situation and don’t lie. I can’t even begin to tell you how furious I am about this last week, 3 days lost work for me, and Rick had to work from home yesterday.  I can’t make beads that take half an hour or more in the studio at the end of the garden if the doorbell is going to ring and I’ve got 30 seconds to get to the door before they run off.

But, lets cheer up now, I have to spend the day tidying the house, eeek. We have a kids party here this afternoon and I’ve got all that stuff to finish preparing. I suppose it’s payback for never doing housework because I prefer making beads, or doing anything else for that matter!

Wednesday morning

So here I am, third day running, waiting for the delivery of the CDs we were working on. All the time I wait I cannot get on in my studio because I would never get to the door on time. Talk about frustrated, not to mention stressed and increasingly annoyed.

This leads me nicely to courier companies and British companies who lie about when goods are despatched because they think you’ll be impressed (or fooled) that the goods have gone when they’re actually sat in a corner. Or who can’t be bothered to let you know when in the day your goods will arrive ‘Oh, anytime up to 4.30pm love’. Or who haven’t got the courtesy to tell you that even though you’ve been stuck in the house all day waiting, that actually they’ll be delivered sometime the next day….if you’re lucky.

I just don’t understand what harm a little thought for the customers would do, and surely they have some idea what time of day you’ll get your stuff, after all couriers normally have a roughly set route that they follow, eg Guildford, then Cranleigh, then Horsham and Brighton usually at the end of the day.

The only good side of this is that I’ve spent some time working on my shop pages, so hopefully we’ll have a shop here soon. (That’s got to be the 3rd or 4th time i’ve said this! and no, I’m not trying to be like the couriers!!! I’ve sorted the very boring page with delivery costs ‘n stuff, and now have the fun bit to do.)

Monday afternoon

Spring is sprung! It’s a lovely sunny day today down ‘ere in t’t south. I’ve just felt inspired to tidy up today………Rick faints to the ground in surpirse. Actually I think it’s more the impending kids party on Friday that’s turning my thoughts to moving anything fragile! And the Christmas cards came down today, trouble is you don’t notice them when you see them for such a long time (oops, I’m using one of Ricks excuses for not seeing the mess here), and I’ve moved one of our card hanging strips to the other side of the room to cover the annoying column of holes in the wall that were left when the previous owner removed his shelves 6 years ago. It looks better in a strange way. Of course the problem is the holes are even less likely to get filled now you can’t see ’em. Darn it!

Friday morning

Hello there. Did you miss me????? It’s been a very unproductive week that started with Monday off due to an Inset day. I had my first proper Acupuncture session Monday, well weird!

After that it all went downhill with me brewing a cold at the torch on Tuesday, sleeping all morning on Wednesday, and doing nothing all day yesterday. Now it seems I may have Conjunctivitis, why I mon (this has to be said in a Newcastle accent). So definately no torching for me at the moment.

The big news this week however is that Rick and I officially launched the new GBUK website that we have been working on. For a little peekie go to GBUK.org All this work on other stuff is why I still haven’t got anything up for sale here…………..

Ah it’s good to be able to make beads again during the day again, what with half term being over.

I had a couple of days out with my daughter last week, the aim of our trips, subconsciously is to have as much fun for as little money as possible. We were having roaring success last Friday, we packed sandwiches and headed off to Horsham for the ice skating which had come to town. Unfortunately when we arrived the ‘ice-rink’ was a tiddly rectangular thing with synthetic ice, ie. plastic, so we decided to give it a miss and went to munch our sarnies. After a bit of shopping we thought we’d check out Horsham museum in the Causeway, and boy, what a place! It was excellent, full of old bikes, Horshams first fire engine, lots of farm equipment, and all sorts of old bits and pieces. The museum was like the Tardis, small on the outside but huge on the inside, and FREE! woo hoo. Well, I was wittering on to my daughter about how cheap our day had been, then got stung for £10 parking in Sainsburys carpark. Rats. Rats. Rats.

Here’s a picture of the Causeway in Horsham, one of my favourite views, taken with my daughters very cheap digital camera.

Monday afternoon

AAhhhh, I feel strange man. I returned home from my first taste of Acupuncture this morning, and oh I feel weird. Good weird, a bit spaced out and amazed at how good it was. It remains to be seen whether the course I’m about to embark on will make any difference to me, but at least I get to lie still and relax during the day instead of having to work or do housework, LOL.

It’s half term this week so no beady making for me unfortunately, I suppose I could go out in the evening but just can’t face the cold! I’m still working on dates and details of my courses, things are starting to come together so more news soon I hope.

Late Friday evening

Oooo I’m tired. It’s all happening at once here. We’ve just finished this evenings session of mixing music for the CD Rick and I are producing, the one we had evening recording sessions for in October. We’ve had 2 girlies singing sessions in the last fortnight and the men came and sang Tuesday evening this week. We’re now manically trying to fit in the mixing and it’s not as easy as I first thought. We’ve 3 pairs of speakers and they’re all different, giving different tones to the music!

As well as that I’ve been working on getting my shop page ready to sell some pendants and beads. We started compiling the page and sorting the style this evening. So hopefully in the next few days I should have some goodies for you to buy. Watch this space……..

Monday evening

I think I have post Christmas blues.  I’m dying to get out to my torch and make some beads, but alas there’s so much else to do at the moment.  I spent the day tidying up for my sparkie friend, and researching ventilation and other bits on the net.  I’ve found this superdooper site called The Art Glass Forums where they appear to specialise in safety, or at least they have several of the well informed safety bods here.  Very useful and of special interest to me having worked in Health and Safety for several years with Gas Detection and Safety Systems.

Friday evening…..

Hello my beady buddies, or not so beady buddies (hi Peter, thanks for the link from your front page).

It’s already 6th January, and I haven’t yet made it out to my studio.  I have my lovely tax to do next week, but the good news is that I have a wonderful electrician friend coming to do my studio electrics on Monday, at last I can stop using candles and the clockwork radio (LOL).  Rick cybergeek extaordinaire (CE, haven’t used that name in a while) is very capable of doing the wiring thang but with the change in the law he’s not allowed anymore.  I knew he should have moved my studio 2 years ago!

I’ve had a lovely trip down memory lane this week, seeing 4 of my old haunt pubs on telly.  Three of them were on Thursday in ‘Three men in a boat’ with Griff Rhys Jones, namely The Barleymow at Clifton Hampdon, The Head of the River in Oxford, and The Old Anchor Inn on St Helens Wharf in Abingdon where I used to live (in Abingdon, not the pub….. or the wharf!).

The last was The Eagle and Child in Oxford, where I used to sit in the booths where Tolkein, CS Lewis and their friends used to meet and discuss their latest books.  Oh well, I shall sit and dream of Oxfords spires.

So where is it then?  It appears to be anywhere but here, where I live.  I can’t say I’m disappointed, well maybe just a little bit, I love the look of the snow, but am terrified of falling over….what a wus.

Back in the land of Lost, what a corker.  We watched both episodes again last night, doh, and now it looks like we have to wait two weeks for the season finale.  The up side is that C4 are doing a 6 hour back to back fest called Lost in Lost so at least we get to see the first episodes that we missed before we got hooked, yipee.

I’m not sure when I shall get to play with glass again, it may be next year, but hey, that’s next week.  It’s funny how the phrase ‘next year’ sounds such an age away normally, but as we race to the new year it’s only just around the corner.  I suppose we have to endure the look back at the year we’re leaving stuff now and listen to the usual list celebrities who’ve died this year, how jolly.

Best wishes for a Happy New Year. 

Well that just takes the biscuit….I can’t write anything without him passing comment…….and by the way, I’m not picky but discerning (hah) when it comes to visual stuff.  Take that.  And as for little boxes, it’s not small, and thank goodness they didn’t have the one he wanted to buy, it was humungous!

Saturday night

The marvels of modern technology delivered my shopping on time but didn’t quite stetch to bringing it in the house and putting it all away.  It was however a lot easier than the weekend we’ve had so far which has comprised 2 craft fairs and a mad trip to Ikea to buy new table coverings for my stand.  We also hoped to buy some furniture to house the TV but after much deliberation and hair pulling trying to decide exactly what we wanted, found that they were out of stock of our choice, tchh.  So we cheered ourselves up with some cool battery operated fairy lights to Christmassefy my display (and avoid more PAT testing) and an opaque white plastic storage box to experiment further with our bead photography.

We’ll have a good rest tommorrow I hope, ready for another action packed week and the beginning of December (eeek).  So much for my plans to get ahead with Christmas preparations, I can see the day looming up faster than the earth does when you land with a parachute (or should that be without one!).

Thursday evening

Isn’t technology marvelous!  I’ve just finished doing my grocery shopping from the comfort of my armchair in front of the telly – and who said I can’t multitask?  It’s so cool being able to sit wireless and cableless, and be able to print documents, surf the net and do ones shopping.  It beats trawling around the supermarket, especially at the moment when I’m sooooooo busy.  All I have to do is sit back and wait for it to arrive (and put it away obviously).  I just hope I don’t get any daft substitutions, they sure don’t think about them very well, that’s my only complaint.  For example, once I ordered 2 different variations of a breakfast cereal, one wasn’t available, but hey, they didn’t give me 2 of the one of my choices that was available, no, they chose something completely different!  Maybe the shopper thought I needed a new taste experience and what I’d chosen was too boring.

I do most of my glass shopping on the net.  Lots of good glass, frit and tools are availalable from the States, so I just have to do it that way.  I love getting my parcels through the post, especially when it’s dinky jars of frit (crushed glass) individually wrapped in pink or orange tissue paper, although one order I did with a sample pack of 18 jars had 3 or 4 pieces of sticky tape on each jar and took forever to unpack (you do the maths!).  I must admit I was getting a tad impatient to see all my purchses as the minutes ticked away and the pile of sticky tape strips grew.

I’m off to get another mug of coffee now and look at my Chihuly tome.  TTFN.

Wednesday evening

Brrrrrrrrrrrr it’s cold out there.  Minus 1 deg C this morning in the studio.  I had to don my thermals again – oh yes!  It was so cold that I didn’t fancy going out again after lunch, but I was glad I did, you just can’t beat that feeling of melting glass, I find it so relaxing and theraputic, even if it was to do beads I had to do rather than play.

Oh that was too funny, the ending of Lost this week with the profiles of people sitting on the beach.  I was determined not to get drawn in, but ya know how it goes!  I’m still mourning the loss of Frasier and haven’t found anything that gets anywhere near the wit of that show (although Green Wing came pretty close – I’m a bit of a Tamsin Greig fan).  Friday night used to be good for comedy, but it just doesn’t hit the spot at the moment.  Oh well, more time to make beads.

Tuesday afternoon….

Hellooo.  I had a lovely steaming hot mug of tea in bed this morning, looks like my hint worked.  I also had pressies to unwrap, one of which said ‘Nah, not in here!’, and there I was thinking I might have Jamie Cullum’s new CD in my hot mitts.  Instead I received a cool book about making silver chains, and best of all a beautiful book about Chihuly and his glass.

Tuesday evening….

It’s been a lovely day.  We went down to Brighton today and popped in on Judith to collect my beads that had been to Newmarket.  We had a lovely chat and coffee and proceeded to Brighton for lunch.  We found this lovely juice bar and deli called Pulp Kitchen this time last November and decided to go there for lunch.  It’s lovely to have a break from the usual run of the mill Tuesday.  I’ve had a brilliant days holiday.   Pulp Kitchen, 31 Bond Street, North Laines, Brighton.

Monday evening

Wow it’s suddenly got real cold, and it’s all foggy outside.  I did brush off my thermals last Friday to wear while making beads in the studio…and yes I do wear jeans and T-shirt over the top…and yay I did get to make some snowmen and penguins.

I’m franticaly trying to top up my stock levels of jewellery to sell, it gets very manic at this time of year.  I am constantly trying to balance lampwork with making up jewellery and going out selling and trying to get a life.  It’s my birthday tommorrow so I may just take the day off.

Did anyone catch Peter Andre and Katie Price on Children in Need last Friday.  I’m not a fan of Jordan or her life, and wondered what on earth they were on this fundraiser for, but boy, as far as I was concerned they stole the show.   Katie sings really well, and I think they outshone even Madonna that night.

And so ….to bed (I wonder if I’ll get any pressies tommorrow, I don’t think I deserve any from Rick, cos I completely forgot to do the wrapped up pressy bit for him from our daughter or me).  He’ll either do tit-for-tat, or lavish me with pressies and attention to make me feel bad (I wish!)……although a mug of tea in bed in the morning would be nice, hint hint.

Rick found this very cool website today…….The Interesting thoughts of Edward Monkton

I had more to put here, but lost it twice so I decided it wasn’t meant to be written in any detail. It was to do with a lunchtime conversation I had with my fellow jewellery students on my adult education course. One of the retired class members posed the question of whether we thought some evil people were just born that way. Suffice it to say the conversation went to seedier matters and several unsavory characters were discussed. The words ‘Dr, moors, patios and Acid’ come to mind. It was all very bizare.