A day off .................

On Saturday I decided to have a day to myself, no sewing, gardening or dreaded housework. I took the train down to London and spent a glorious afternoon with little Victoria. She is growing so quickly and is full of smiles.........

Our bird restaurant is in full swing with lots of new babies who have perhaps become a little too tame, don't know if it is a good thing. The squirrels have their own food and feed box but would rather eat all the bird food first. The birds find the squirrel food quite delicious, so it is a case of whoever gets here first has the choice pickings. There is a new young squirrel visiting our garden who has learnt to raid the hanging feeders by hanging upside down from the tree and pulling the seed out with his tiny hands. The feeder eventually falls down onto the ground and he then empties it out and eats the lot! He has also learnt that the peanuts are in a similar type of container and this weekend we spotted him rolling the feeder around on the ground trying to get at the contents. Unfortunately the plastic has hardened after two years out in all sorts of weather and had to be replaced. Amazon have a very nice squirrel feeder which might solve the problem if our garden squirrels can work out how to open the lid!
Having found a rather sad smashed little egg and a continual scattering of branches under the plum tree I discovered that two wood pigeons are trying to make a nest. Don't know if they are young and this is their first attempt and they definitely do not have much skill in nest building. The selection of twigs is quite interesting, they even use bits from the fir tree with small cones still attached! This morning I noticed that the female has finally settled down in the rather patchy nest but it still looks rather precarious.
I am still busy working on bears, the on line show is next month and I also have several new orders to complete. I finally made my first pair of baby shoes after months of looking through boxes for suitable fabrics, finding the bonding fabric, wool felt etc. I am not very happy with the result so changes to the pattern and finishing, hope to have a pair complete and ready to be photographed soon. I would love to start some new bead work but there are really not enough hours in the day at the moment. The bears help to pay the rent so they are first on the list and my other creativity has to be slotted into whatever extra time I have available. After many years of being self employed I still find it hard achieve the fine balance needed to find sufficient time to enjoy all the creative pursuits which I love. Of course I am an incurable bookworm, give me a good book to read and I can be lost to the world for hours. Then there is also the problem of too many hours spent on the computer........... 

Finally some graffiti to make you smile. This is painted on an old barn next to the motorway, unfortunately there is no safe place to stop and take a photograph so thanks Megan for taking a picture from the car as we drove past!

You must have been warned against letting the golden hours slip by; but some of them are golden only because we let them slip by ~James Matthew Barrie