Coming home

It feels like a long time since I last posted after something of an unintended blogging break...being poorly for what felt like forever and then a holiday have kept me away. We have been staying in the most wonderful cottage with my parents which was perfect in every way (except for a strange abundance of blown light bulbs) near West Wittering in East Sussex. We spent chilly days wrapped up on the beach, collecting seashells, walking, talking, watching a strange sea sport involving a board and a kite. We had lovely food, lots of wine and sat watching utterly addictive DVDs of the BBC drama State of Play around a toasty fire in the evenings. We had a lovely lunch at The Foresters Arms in Graffham, and a happy afternoon wandering around the harbour and church at Bosham. The beach huts above were photographed at West Wittering...I think you might be able to guess which one I would like to store my sandy towels in...and the photograph below of some shells stuck together reminded me a little of my stripy meringues!

But down to business....in the weeks before our holiday I had suddenly realised that we would be in striking distance of one of my favourite shops for internet browsing. I broke this news to Ian in the car on the way to our holiday cottage (I was driving, which prevented any possibility of u-turns or erratic lane changes in response) and negotiated a ten minute pitstop in The Eternal Maker for the following day...but somehow our watches tick to a different time and Ian is adamant that this bite-size piece of fun overran by 17 minutes (but when he saw how pleased I was with my fabrics he did offer to take me back again the next day... somehow I managed to muster the good grace to decline). The shop was even more lovely than I had imagined it might be and had bolt upon bolt of gorgeous fabrics, and I was even asked whether I wanted my fat quarter cuts with or without wonderful colourful selvedges...a small thing, but one that made me wish that I could shop there every day...for they seem to understand the love of fabric in a way that (surprisingly!) so many shops don't.

I was also pleased with this ribbon...I have no idea what I might use it for, but I love the colours.

I came home to two lovely custom orders (one of which is large and requires research into previously unchartered territory regarding strange fabrics and supplies...creating the requested items will involve my first attempt at sewing with stretch fabrics which I have managed to studiously avoid so far, I will post pictures when they are finished - and no, Jo, Lisa & Helen...this has absolutely nothing to do with making knickers). I also finally put some items onto Etsy last night, so I now have my own shop and a slightly less well stocked shop on Etsy too, which can be found here. I was really impressed by how easy it is to upload everything and set it all up...and now I'm wondering why I put off doing it for so long.

The bedrest (of the darkened room variety, rather than the laptop in bed variety) and my holiday means that I have 2,500 posts in my bloglines, which is both lovely and daunting...my head tells me that the sensible thing is to mark all as 'read' and start again, but somehow I can't do this just in case I miss something lovely (and with that many posts I know that I definitely would), but as it is still half-term and I have small ones wanting to do things other than watch their mummy gazing at the computer screen, I think I may have to let that number climb a little higher before I can begin a prolonged reading session. Wishing you all a lovely week in the crisp sunshineyness...perfect half-term weather. x