Summertime and the living is easy...

We are now back at my parents house after 10 days spent camping on a farm in a remote valley in Drôme provençale, surrounded by goats, lavender, walnut trees and mountain rivers.

I am not in a great writing mood so I have stuck a few pictures below.

We will be heading to Zeebruggen on Monday to catch our ferry back to Scotland after our long summer holiday. I wonder if I still know how to make beads?!!

Postcard from France where it is hot, hot, hot!

We have now been in France for two weeks and the weather has been hot with the occasional thunderstorm.

We are staying out of the sun under the trees, usually in a long reclining chair apart from the day on the pictures below when we had some more energetic fun.

I hope you are all having a lovely summer!

Thieving magpie and suncatcher

The magpie

Here is a little story that happened to me last week while I was photographing beads in the garden to make the most of a nice sunny day.

I set up all my equipment in the garden (background, camera on my tripod...) and displayed my first set of beads to be photographed on the background, a lovely Achreamie sunset little set which I was very proud of.

I then had to go back inside the house for a couple of minutes, came back out just in time to see a big magpie standing on my background.

It looked at me!!!!

I looked at it!!!...... and then in a split second it grabbed my set of beads and flew to the top of a Rowan tree in our garden.

I chased it and started climbing the first few branches of the tree while the snide bird was having a laugh looking at me...so I gave up and the thief flew far, far away in another garden with my beads.


The suncatcher

My children's wonderful teacher is retiring this year. I wanted to make something for her but she does not seem to be wearing very much jewellery...so I decided to make a suncatcher for her with some of my beads.


Below are a few pictures that I took yesterday (I did watch for the magpie!)

Stourbridge no more and tonnes of beads for sale on my website!

I have had to cancel my attendance at the Stourbridge Bead Fair!

I have mixed feelings about this! I was really looking forward to go there but I was getting quite stressed at the same time trying to juggle all my commitments in the summer.

As a result, I now have masses of beads for sale.
I loaded the first batch (23 sets!) on my website yesterday. Quite a few of them have sold already (which makes me very happy!) but I have many more coming up next week including a few orphans lots.

You are welcome to let me know (by commenting or email) which type of beads you would prefer to see on my website as I might not have time to load everything before my holiday in three weeks time.

Sports day and the winner is ...

Sports day:

It was the annual sports day at my kids school, last Wednesday.

The weather was sunny and warm, it was a lovely day!

Téo took part in various races and what a difference a tonsils and ears operation make in a boy!

Last year (and the year before), he did not seem to really care, daydreaming, missing the start of each race...

This year, however, he was much more focussed and had a competitiveness that I had not seen in him before...and It was nice because I think this is because he feels better.

Here's a picture of him doing the sack race.

and Juliette who had great fun doing the potato race (she laughed her head off each time she was dropping the potato).

I ran the mum's race! I love it! It's just like being back at school and I think all the mums should line up in the playground and race every week!

Now that I have bored you to death with my kiddies stories, let's move on to more exciting things:

The prize draw:

I have put all the names of the people who either left a comment or sent me an email in a hat and picked one out.

The winner is ...Sara!

I don't speak spanish so I have to trust the google translater on this one (and hope that I am not going to say something terribly rude!)

El ganador es...Sara!

Beads, beads and beads

I just would like to show some of the beads I have made in the last couple of weeks. Most are destined to the Stourbridge bead fair in August. A few of them have been inspired by my recent class with Andrea Guarino.

Wow...What a week!!! (My yearly escape)

Photo by Sarah Bedwell

I booked my course back in November as soon as I found out that American glass artist Andrea Guarino was teaching in the UK.

I had been coveting this class for a loooong time!

I organised childcare, booked my B&B and plane ticket ...and then a volcano in Iceland erupted...

Andrea had to fly all the way from Seattle and for a few days, I resolved myself to the fact that this course was probably not going to happen but then Heathrow re-opened and Andrea valiantly made it through the ash cloud and customs (but that is another story).

I ,on another hand, renounced my plane ticket (I don't like ash clouds) and travelled down by train to Rochester on Monday.

The course was fantastic! Andrea was a brilliant, funny and generous teacher and her beads are magic. They have got secrets all to do with glass alchemy and reactions and I had a lot of 'Oooh Aaaaah!' moments during the two days course.

The fact that the group of beadmakers (many of whom I had never met before) were a lovely, friendly bunch also contributed to the success of this escape.

I learned a lot, laughed a lot, ate a lot.

I came back home on the train on Thursday, refreshed, buzzing with new ideas wondering how 2 days can pass so quickly.

I cannot wait until my next yearly escape (which might be before next year!)

Photo by Andrea Guarino