Well it’s just about that time again, and we are getting ourselves ready for the Craft Market to be held in Via Garibaldi here in Venice at the end of this month. We have a fairly good stock of bits and pieces, but were surprised at the last market by just how many earrings went,…
Probably a slight exagerration as far as titles go as I really am just dipping my feet back in here to let friends know that I’m still alive and kicking! So briefly, arty stuff has been keeping me incredibly busy for the past 3 or so months…you can see some of what I have been…
I know that I am not alone in my desire to recycle/upcycle etc. as much as possible. In and around the home we have become pretty nifty at finding acceptable alternatives to substitute a lot of our less eco-friendly cleaning agents and so on – one of my favourites is my spray bottle filled with…
Taking a look around the various crafters’ (and not only) blogs, I see that one of the biggest problems a lot of us face is the storage. I am no different – having a small home with no built in storage such as cupboards and so on, I have had to invent ways to store…
Just in the process of doing some more Christmas cards and have used some of my lovely pure cotton prints for die-cut baubles. These cottons are all gorgeous Tyrolean type micro-patterns which I manage to pick up locally. Just love them. They bring to mind mountain chalets and big log fires – maybe even a…
I was thrilled to receive the silk covered bangles I had ordered from India a little while back…they actually arrived pretty quickly. What really caught my attention even before opening the little parcel was the fact that the outer wrapping was made of a sort of muslin or cotton which had been carefully stitched by…
So here is my wallet card. Now I have to find some stuff suitable for card making to tuck inside the two pockets on the front before swapping this with some good soul in the challenge group!! This handmade paper is very attractive, but not very easy to work with when you need precision cuts….
Well if ever rain stopped play, I can say with confidence that is exactly what happened today to put a stop to our last craft market of the year. Gale force winds, lashing rain and a particularly bad bout of high water just put us out of the game! Even if there had been no…
I find myself at that critical moment when I have written my couple of pieces of prose and have laid them before my peers for their considered critique. We are all more or less in the same boat, and probably at about the same level of writing ability. My prose has already been drafted, redrafted,…
There seems to be a mad rush going on in the course forum for all to join up for the next course. The natural evolution of an OU Creative Writer would probably be to move on to the Advanced Creative Writing course — at least, that certainly seems to be how a lot of the…
One of those useless titbits of information which floats around in cyberspace, and to which very few of us give much attention, has to do with the life span of a fridge. Ten years seems to be the general consensus of opinion — though whose opinion is not quite clear — and that same benchmark…
The weatherman tells us that the weather is going to be truly rotten from this evening for 24 hours or so. He tells us that we should expect torrential rain and hail, bad storms and even the occasional ‘tromba d’aria’ here and there. And if you are uncertain about those, they are tornadoes. So we…
Haiku in English is a development of the Japanese haiku poetic form in the English language. Contemporary haiku are written in many languages, but most poets outside of Japan are concentrated in the English-speaking countries. It is impossible to single out any current style, format, or subject matter as definitive. Some of the more common…
Couldn’t believe it — the whole of last week was absolutely glorious with brilliant sunny, even if not very warm, Spring days. Yesterday morning we woke up earlier than usual to get ready for the flea market and were frustrated to see that the wind had got up and was putting the whole day in…
Compared to a few years ago, the mosquito situation in Venice seems to have improved tremendously. I can well remember my early years here when I would get up in the morning covered in bites with a feeling of great fatigue after a night spent battling with these invisible, though noisy, enemies! Small consolation to…
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