Made this necklace today for Nigelle-Ann who (with her family) is leaving to go and live/work in the UK soon. Her farewell party is tomorrow night at bookclub. Will miss her so much :( She is one fo those really genuine people who will go out of her way to do anything for a friend. She also has a wicjed sense of humour and we have always got on great together. I'm really sad....

Anyway I hope she likes the necklace - it is a gorgeous blue colour. Tempted to keep it myself but no lol!

Yesterday Mel from NC came over with her two kids. James had a ball playing with Seb and Laila and Ollie scoped each other out hehe! Mel took a gorgeous pic of Laila while she was here.

Just after Mel's camera batteries died Laila produced ten tonnes of smiles! Typical!!

On Friday another NC-er Tanja dropped over too as we had swaps to exchange. Was lovely to meet her and her two lovely kids too.

Not much else to report. Laila is a fraction away from crawling. Is getting up on her knees and rocking and scooting backwards. Amazing! I can't remember the exact time when James crawled. Terrible isn't it how the memory gets blurry over the years? James is loving playing with her so much more now that she can sit up and interact. He loves tipping the entire Duplo box out on the floor for "her" to play with ;)

Well after that long post - time for a cup of tea and some Lindt Chilli Dark Chocolate I think :)

Finally finished the bookmarks. Unfortunately the place I got my blood drop beads from in the U.S. only had 299 in stock when I ordered 350. Then when they got here about 20 of them were broken (being czech glass) :( So the grand total I have done is 273. Today Keith and I punched the holes and attached the tails to the carded bookmark thus --->

Pic doesn't show them up as nicely as they look in real life. The blood droplet is a deep garnet red.

I was saying to Keith they are lucky I am charging per bookmark and not by the hour lol! Would have cost them several thousands haha! ANyhoo I'm so glad they are finished and I can't wait to jump into some other craft projects that I am keen to try - namely appliques on tshirts and fleece pants for Laila, dyeing wool and some other general sewing things I'd like to try.

Going to take the finished bookmarks to Bookclub tomorrow night then hopefully Fiona (aka Lauren Crow) can pass them on to the Burnside Library for distribution.

Quiet

All quiet in the house (except for me coughing still). James and Laila are in bed and Keith is at work. Should be finishing soon though.
Update on the bookmark job - we've whittled it down to 300 now. I had to order one particular bead from the U.S. and get it Fed-Ex-ed across here because I have so little time to get them done. The shipping cost more than the 350 beads I bought eek! Oh well - I did factor that into the cost when I gave them my price. Yeah so hopefully they will be here in 3 to 5 days and I can get cracking!!!
Argh this cough is driving me NUTS!
Better get off here as I have washing to fold and wet washing to hang on the drying rack. FUN ha!

Cold :(

So the cold finally caught me! Thought I was going to escape it but nooo. Of course I got it worse than the rest of the family - typical.



Have been freaking out about the bookmark beading job. Trying to source the right beads is proving next to impossible and now looks like the closets to what I want will have to be sourced from the U.S. argh. This means added time taken up for shipping it out here and doesn't leave much time for the actual work. I am going to have to committ to significatly less than they want although I can't imagine why a library wants 2000. Especially when they find out the cost!



Anyway it is stressing me out a bit.



Today Keith has taken James and Laila out shopping to give me a bit of time to myself. Bless him :) So far I haven't done anything except eat honeycomb yoghurt and drink tea (and browse online). I've been looking at wool dying links. Would love to have a play with that sometime!



Trying my hand at some fleece pants for Laila at the moment too. Not sure how they will turn out lol!



Ok I need another cuppa again ;)

OMG

I really should post here more oops.

Today I had amazing news! My author friend Fiona McIntosh emailed me with another bookmark order.

Harper Collins commisioned me to make 100 jewelled bookmark tails for her last fantasy book "Goddess" which everyone loved.

Now she has lined up a job from Burnside library for me wanting bookmarks for her new crime novel coming out later in the year (August?).

The catch this time is that they are talking numbers around 1000 or even 2000. Eeeeek.

Not really sure I can cope with that amount but there is room for discussions. Now I'm off out tomorrow to look at suitable beads and pricing to give a quote. Scary but exciting :)

In other news Laila slept in her cot for the first time alst night and went 10:30pm til 7am. So lets hope that keeps up lol! She's sitting here chewing her sock as I type. Time to start tea. Apricot chicken mmmmmm.