Apologies

I am a truly dreadful blogger. So sorry for my absence; it's not that nothing's happening in my life (not that it's exactly bursting with excitement, you understand), just that I don't always have the urge to spend an hour a day writing about it. 

And yes, it does take me that long to write a post. By the time I've taken pictures and uploaded them and then written and edited and rewritten and re-edited a dozen times, an hour at least has usually passed. I'm really anal about my posts looking just right and trying not to post anything with spelling or grammar mistakes. I hate when I re-read something I've written a few days later and see that, despite my attentiveness, an error or two still slipped by me. I'm the same when I'm writing anything else, even emails. I tend to go and correct all those underlined bits in a Word document as I go along rather than leaving it until the end. I simply don't feel comfortable moving forward with the next sentence if I can see a glaring error staring out of the screen at me. I know this probably stunts my creative writing abilities as one school of thought is to simply write away with whatever comes into your head and correct later, but my head would be so obsessed with the mistakes I couldn't think of anything else until they were fixed. 

And now everyone who reads this is going to be looking out for those errors I missed!

So, that's my little peculiarity; what's yours?

This post did not in any way start out to be about my writing style, so on to a brief overview of what's happening with me at the moment.

DD2's wedding preparations are still her main topic of conversation, but she's also having issues at work as they're all having to reapply for their jobs. I do not understand how organisations expect workers to do their best when there is so little job security nowadays, and when perfectly good workers have to reapply for the jobs they've been doing well for ages. Do they not want to retain their workforce? DD2 is a good, well-educated, consciencious worker who mostly enjoys her job in the Patient Experience Department of the NHS, but she is applying for other jobs because she's fed up with the politics and insecurity of her current position. I know they have to weedle out unsatisfactory employees, but they do observations and regular reviews anyway. Doesn't make sense to me.

Wow, that was a rant I also hadn't intended.

Other news is DS2 moves back home this weekend. He could stay in his student accomodation until the end of next month, but his flatmates are moving out soon so he'd rather come home. I've had to quickly buy another bed and curtains as DD3 and BF took theirs with them when they moved out, and I thought I had an extra month to prepare for his return. We have a spare mattress so I ordered this wooden bedstead from Amazon at the weekend.

I expected it to take a week or so to arrive and for him to have to sleep on the mattress on the floor for a few days, but it was delivered yesterday so it can be assembled at the weekend. He's also singing with his college band at another gig in the Student Union bar tonight. We're going over to see him, but unfortunately his band is on last so we won't be home until around 11.30. 

Next week is a bank holiday and half term and DH is taking four days off to give him the full week's holiday. College lecturers down here get an allowance of holiday rather than the full school holidays so he tries to combine time off with bank holidays to give himself a longer break. On Tuesday we're off on the ferry as foot passengers to Calais for the day. There was an offer for online booking in the local paper and it's only costing us £3 each. Even though we live in Dover we don't go across the Channel often. It's probably been 2 years since the last time so we're really looking forward to it. Just hoping the weather's fine.

As for me, well, I haven't made any more bags lately but I did sell another one on Ebay, although I've had to reduce the prices. I guess people look on Ebay for a bargain rather than hand crafted goods. I also sold a lot of other bits and pieces and earned enough to treat myself to one of these:-

And some of these:-

I'll use them for both my card making and for applique on bags and cushion covers. The 4 inch square will be for when I finally get around to doing more patchwork.

I used a £15 gift code that I earned from Swagbucks to buy the machine from Amazon, and the dies were purchased online from Hobbycraft using a 15% discount code for signing up to their email reminders.

This is a flower I put together using my dies. 

I used bondaweb to adhere two fabrics together before putting it through the die cutting machine, so hopefully the edges won't fray and it also makes the petals and leaves doublesided. I also bought a large 15.5 inch square acylic ruler from Create and Craft using my £10 voucher for joining their club. It's the perfect size for cutting out the main bag and lining pieces without me having to keep measuring (and making mistakes in my calculations). I'm aiming on making some plain, lined bags and embellishing them with applique. Using calico for the outside and a charity shop pillowcase or something similar for the lining I can keep the fabric costs low but still produce a lovely sturdy bag.

Right, that's your lot for today. Sorry again for the long delay between posts. I hope this epic has made up for that a little and I haven't sent you all into a coma with my ramblings.

Have a great day everyone. Love and hugs, Helen x