Some good news ..........................

The good news is that my dear husband is now home again. He has an extensive supply of medication and will have to take things carefully for some time. As this was the first time in his life that he has spent any time in hospital I don't think he wishes to repeat the experience. We are all so relieved that he has recovered sufficiently to now convalesce in a more peaceful environment. Thank you to all you special people who wrote offering support and prayers, I really appreciate your care and concern.
My work schedule is now totally in disarray and I very much doubt that I will manage to complete any new bears for the Stratford show in Sunday, unless I go without sleep that is!

Our garden has become a haven for birds. There have been so many different parents and babies and it has been so wonderful to watch them progress from fluffy balls to carbon copies of the adult birds. The funniest hatchlings were the starlings. The parents discovered a small hole in the fascia by the upstairs bathroom window just enough to give them access to a nice warm nesting place. They seemed to have produced a large number of babies who were taken for their first outing into our garden during last week. Nearly the same size as the parents and the most raucous group of babies imaginable, they caused total havoc, eating every available bit of seed and most of the suet balls. One managed to find its way into the glass house and screamed blue murder when I finally managed to catch him. Thank goodness they only spent one day in the garden, don't know where they have all disappeared to but I am sure all the other birds were glad to see the back of them. I have noticed a lot of nesting swans and spotted a family on the river not too happy to have their pictures taken and rather far away. The ducks seem to have enormous families, some with up to twelve babies, not sure how many actually reach adulthood as the mothers battle to cope with such a large number.

 As mentioned in my previous blog we visited an 'open garden' this past weekend. I took a wide variety of pictures of the amazing secret garden areas, various plants and of course the beautiful building, still have to edit all of these to share but I found this little concrete bear hidden under a fig tree! 

The boot markets are up and running each weekend now that the weather is a little kinder and having found such wonderful stuff at the markets in France I had up until recently been rather disappointed to find few old sewing items at the UK markets. However, this is what we found at our local market, wonderful stuff and at bargain prices.

The glass jars are something Megan has wanted for some time. Perfect to store all the vintage threads that we have collected over many years including the latest finds........

The tiny frames are perfect for cross stitch and the box of old threads quite a good find for a few pence, purely decorative of course but very collectible.

Some vintage and not so vintage lace, pretty pastel silk embroidery threads and brass handles for boxes........

  

My final find, a tiny old key, bits of vintage jewellery, buttons and old bi-cone beads. The watch is perfect to take apart for all the little inside workings. The yin-yang ring has beautiful carved butterflies on the side to use as a mould for art clay and the other items are well just pretty to be used for something special when an idea strikes. The good thing is that they take up very little space!

 I had managed to complete some bears before all the wheels fell off once again in my life and I have listed a panda called Candytuft on e-bay today. Once again I have used a piece of Megan's beautiful tatted lace to trim this bear adding beautiful vintage velvet flowers. 

Until next time...................

Every tomorrow has two handles.  We can take hold of it by the handle of anxiety, or by the handle of faith.  ~Author Unknown