I do hope you had a Happy Christmas and that your new year is starting off better than mine.

All those plans I had for new jewellery designs using PMC and new lampwork beads ... I had expected my blog to be cramful of photographs of all these new wonders by now. On New Year's Eve, I woke up with one of my two-dayer-headaches ... sigh, JUST as I was getting over that cold. I didn't see the new year in at all, I just grumped off to bed at 10pm. 

Unfortunately, DH has caught my cold (rather inevitable I suppose) and so 1 January 2009 was both of us feeling pathetic in front of the TV drinking lemsips (DH) and painkillers (me) and throwing (soft) things at the telly every time a presenter chirpily wished us a Happy New Year!

Neither of us were up for cooking - I couldn't even get into the kitchen because the fluorescent light was too bright for me with a headache. We - or rather Geoff - defrosted a pack of giant Tesco prawns, combined it with a bag of ready-washed leaf salad, cut some cherry tomatoes in half and served it with vinagrette dressing. Tasty and very healthy, but NOT the New Years Day dinner we had planned.

On the positive, all this feeling ill has curtailed my appetite for food and alcohol and I find I am lighter after Christmas than before ... this is a first and something to be very happy about!

Fortunately, I am feeling heaps better today. My sister and her boyfriend came round with our Christmas presents in the afternoon (which we missed last Sunday cos of my cold). They had this cold before Christmas so weren't bothered about catching our germs! One of our presents was a toasting fork and so we had toasted marshmallows in front of the fire which cheered Geoff up no end - I am hoping he will also feel better tomorrow.

All this illness is just a temporary set back to my glorious plans, and photographs WILL follow soon ... I promise!

I hope everyone has had a lovely Christmas, we were round my mum and dad's who live about an hour's drive away. Some of my brothers and sisters were there and we had a lovely day, my dad makes absolutely the BEST stuffing ever - delicious!

I got a portable MP3 player amongst my many presents which I have been hinting about  for a while - I figured I could listen to music whilst making beads without having to leave a radio in the studio as an additional security risk. So I have finally joined the 21st century with regards to the way we listen and download to music and I'm glad I did -it's really much easier than I imagined it would be!

I had been hoping to get out into the studio before now to try out some of the experiments I have been meaning to try for ages but the mad rush of Christmas-time got in the way. Unfortunately, I have succumbed to a cold - I woke up with it on Boxing Day and I have just wanted to stay in the warm in front of the fire!  

A couple of times during December, I got a tickly throat and thought it was on it's way then, I have been in contact with so many people with colds that it was kind of inevitable - sheer force of will and being far to busy to be ill managed to keep it at bay but as soon as I relaxed - BANG - it got me! It's not too bad, I don't have a temperature so it's not flu but I felt rough the last couple of days. On Sunday, I had to miss a family day with the sister we didn't see on Christmas day which I was looking forward to.

I am feeling much better today though and hoping to get out there tomorrow - keep eyes peeled for photographs of anything I like soon!

Today I have had my first proper day off in the whole of December so far. I have been doing two days a week at the Art & Craft Market in Cambridge and the rest of the time making stock. I love it but it is hard to keep up the pace so it was nice to relax today and catch up a bit.

At the moment, I cannot make as much as I am selling so stock is dwindling on a daily basis. January and February will be very slow sales-wise so I have to make hay whilst it's cold (I do hope people will know what I mean by that!) hence not taking any days off til now. When I read this back, it sounds a bit like I'm moaning cos I'm too busy but I'm not - I am happy tired!!! I am so priviledged not to have to do a "proper" job any more - I really love what I do so thank you so much to everyone who buys my jewellery and makes this possible - I hope you have a very happy christmas-time.

I have lots of ideas for new designs and things I want to make in the new year when it is quieter and so look out   - my blog is going to be red hot with photographs! My new years resolution is going to be to blog more regularly as well!

Tomorrow is going to be my last day at the market, I don't think I have enough stock left to make two days of it so I'll be back soon!

I have been meeting myself coming backwards for the past fortnight! I haven't had time to blog, take photographs of new items or update my website.

Christmas shopping has kicked in big time and so I have been busy making jewellery to restock my stall - many thanks to my customers, both regulars and new ones. I have been so lucky, my sales levels have remained higher than last year, I get commissions every week from people visiting my stall who want matching items for things they purchased in the summer, my web orders have sky rocketed, due I think to the many business cards which disappeared from my stall in October and November.

In case anyone is waiting for a web order, I am turning them round in about 3 days at the moment so your items will be with you very soon - I have four packages to send off today to various peeps.

During December, I am doing Fridays on the Art & Craft market as well as my usual Saturday and so I am down a day on creating beads and jewellery.

Yesterday was fairly typical, around this time of day, I turn on my kiln in the studio to heat up and then come back in the house to check and reply to any e-mails received. I do a couple of jobs round the house til 9am like cleaning doggy footprints out of the hall after Missy's morning walk with DH and wash up the breakfast things. The postman arrives shortly afterwards and I check the mail, sign for deliveries etc. Then I have to refill the bird feeders - they are going through the nuts in the two nut feeders every 4 days and the fat feeders (4 of them) need refilling every day now.

I get out into the studio at around 9.30am and with a couple of breaks for cups of tea, I make beads til around 2.00pm. I then make jewellery in the afternoon in the house, if DH isn't working from home, I take a half an hour to walk Missy before it gets dark and there are various tea drinking intervals. Usually I watch a DVD whilst I'm creating, yesterday it was four episodes of the fourth series of Charmed which I somehow managed to miss if it was ever aired in the UK - I love stuff about witches and sci fi etc.

DH has been cooking dinner all this week as I'm so rushed, bless him and he has been doing the washing up as well - love him to bits! So I eat dinner at around 6.30 to 7.00pm.

After dinner, I check e-mails again and do any ordering of materials that I need. I then collect the day's beads from the kiln and clean them in front of the television - last night I was watching that Catastrophe programme presented by the Baldrick guy who also does Time Team whose name escapes me.

I will be back blogging again regularly as soon as Christmas is over but in the meantime, I wish all my customers a very happy festive season!

I haven't any new beads to show you (yet) for this week; I have been making new jewellery items with beads that you have already seen, so these are the latest pieces of lampwork jewellery to be added to the website:

I have made some new very pretty new beads but the proto-types of them cracked the day after the came out of the kiln. I think I know what I did wrong, I let the base bead get too cool when I was adding some fine silver wire. Before I photograph them and let you see them, I want to be sure that the replacements (which I kept hotter this time!) won't crack so I'm leaving them a little while.

I have almost finished the commission that I told you about last month. We said about three weeks and I was going to e-mail her when it was finished. I have been making the beads for a while and the sterling silver beads I wanted to include in the piece only arrives on Thursday. With everything ready, I got to work today putting everything together but it was so late when I had to stop for dinner that she would've gone home from work.

I hope she turns up tomorrow at my stall so I can show her what I've done so far. It is the best piece of jewellery I have ever made; it's going to be marvellous when it's complete. When I calculate what I should be charging, I realise that I am undercharging by quite a bit but I always stick to a budget once I've given a quote.  I am so delighted with it, I don't really mind working for a bit less per hour. I really really hope she likes it but part of me hopes she doesn't so I can keep it!

It's only fair that she sees it before I photograph it for the website and blog so I will be publishing pictures of it next week.

The weather forecast for the weekend just gone by was dismal. Sunday certainly lived up to the billing of drizzle, showers and strong winds but on Saturday - in Cambridge - managed to dodge the worst of it. It was chucking it down when we left home but as we got to the City centre, it all just dried up! We just had one shower in the morning at around 10.00am (just when I was out getting my Big Issue!) The rest of the day was dry with a few gusts of wind and the long-awaited start of Christmas shopping finally arrived. Several customers were either buying for Christmas or getting ideas for Christmas.

I know most people don't like how quickly Christmas arrives but when you're selling items that make great christmas presents, it can't come soon enough!

My sales are still holding up quite nicely to last year's levels so thanks to all my customers, my regulars and people discovering my stall for the first time - all are welcome!

On Remembrance Sunday, DH and I and Missy went to see my mum and Dad and spent the day with them. My Dad was a gunner on Lancasters, and to mark the day, after a lovely lunch cooked by Dad, we had a ride out to Gamlingay, a village in Cambridge, where there is a memorial to a Lancaster Bomber plane which crashed during the Second World War. It's in the middle of a field and so you can't get all the way to it by car. We parked on the roadside and then walked the rest of the way - the weather was awful but fortunately the rain held off long enough so we didn't get soaked. The wind was actually a help to mum on the way back, it was blowing her along. She had problems with her replacement hip this year and she's still recovering from it - I was very impressed with how far she walked, bless her.

I am so sorry to anyone who came along to visit me in Cambridge's Art & Craft Market yesterday to find that I wasn't there. I'm afraid I woke up with a bad headache and I could hardly lift my head from the pillow. I had it all day on Friday too but it wasn't as bad as Saturday.

I had a miserable day, I was on my own most of the time because DH still went into Cambridge, he had to show an Estate Agent around the house that the builder is repairing for us as they are nearly finished. We are thinking about letting it out so we can continue renting where we are. We would love to sell the house to get rid of it but I don't think that will be possible in the current climate.

However, I am much better today and so will be back next Saturday with even more stock to show off (watch this space!)

I have updated the Sooz Jewels website with my latest creations. Note some are pink at last and there are a couple of new Frosty Morn products and a new style of Navy Storm bracelet.

There was another shoot today on the farm next to where we live. We like to stay out of the way when it's on (every fortnight) and we walk Missy well away from anywhere there will be shooting, not that I don't think they will be extremely careful, I just think we will muck things up for them, scare the birds the wrong way or something and the noise from the guns freaks me out a bit, let alone a little dog!

For a multitude of very boring reasons, we didn't get out and about on a day out like last time when we went to see that Elizabethan ruin, we just got a quick walk a few miles down the road. It rained in the afternoon and so we decided to have our first open log fire here at Gardener's Cottage. The cottage has this original fireplace with art deco tiles. We haven't lived in a house with a real fire for ages and DH loves them - when we have a holiday cottage with a fireplace, he's in his element - looking after it kind of becomes his hobby and I'm not allowed anywhere near it (suits me, I don't have to do any of the lighting or clearing up!)

We had the chimney swept about a month ago and so off DH disappeared in the car on a mission for logs, when he got back, this is the result - a lovely warming fire that made us forget that we didn't have a day out ... very restful to put one's feet up with a glass of wine in front of! DH is so chuffed that we're home on Sunday and it's forecast rain so we can stay in and have another fire!

My frit order arrived this morning from Glass Diversions - much excitement, 22 new frits and four little jars of glass shards - they are all such pretty colours.  I am very much looking forward to playing with them, it's gonna take me ages to try them all out ... I can't hang around here chatting!

I really wish I had taken my camera to the Art & Craft market yesterday. During the day, I have leave my stall from time to time to nip out to the ladies or to get something to eat (sometimes to buy a paper when there aren't many customers about ...)  Yesterday there was an extraordinary street artist on a tightrope playing a fiddle!

There are a lot of street artists who come to Cambridge, the guy with the collie dog was there singing away (with the dog punctuating with howls and woofs at appropriate places) and various guitar players. I love buskers playing music on the streets; makes the City feel so much more alive in my opinion. Sometimes we have buskers in the market as well and it always seems to give an extra feel-good factor to the whole lovely feel of the market. It is gorgous at this time of year with the leaves turning and the dropped off ones carpeting the gravel.

I got an exciting commission from a lady who gave me a realistic budget for a long necklace. We discussed the kind of things that she likes and a "lack of symmetry" was one of them. I am to use my white marble lampwork beads made into different shapes with bali style sterling silver beads. I've got a good idea of what she wants and am excited to be making it. I went to sleep last night with ideas drumming around my head!

I am in such a better place mentally now after the stress about the house. DH has told me that when the builder tries to hand the house back incomplete, he is getting quotes on all the jobs he doesn't think they are going to finish. We will get them done ourselves and sue the heck out of Countryside blooming Properties (please feel free to insert appropriate expletives instead of the polite words in italics!)

Fortunately, we have a nest egg saved away we can use to do the work. I am quite relaxed about using it for this as there's no judge in this land will not award us the money when they hear how Countryside Properties have treated us in the last two years. Plus we have an insurance policy with Zurich (kind of like a car warranty but on a house!) and they have confirmed we are covered for all the unfinished items so we might even be able to get them to pay direct and them do the suing to save us the trouble.

I know there's still no pink jewellery but it is coming, I promise!

Here are the new items that are going onto the website today:

My Kalera bead press arrived late morning so I am looking forward to playing with that.

I hope the weather stays nice for the market tomorrow!

I really must get myself in gear to make some jewellery soon but I am enjoying my beadmaking again. Here are photographs of some more of my bead experiments that I like, so I will probably make more of them.

Here are some beads that I have made using some silver leaf. These ones are quite large and are destined to be a winter-themed bracelet but I have made some smaller ones as well for earrings. When the silver leaf is encased, if you heat the bead enough so the casing layer become molten enough to move over the leaf, the dragging effect makes the leaf ball up into teeny little bundles of silver. These are very simple beads but often simple is the most effective; I am calling these Frost Morn beads.

Whenever I tried encasing silver leaf using clear glass when I was using my Hothead torch, the silver leaf always turned a funny yellow colour but with my dual fuel set up, it has stayed a bright fresh silver colour.

Here is my first go at a heart shaped bead (I am really into shapes this week!) I have added pendant fittings but I am not going to offer it for sale, this is just for me. It's not really perfect, one side is slightly bigger than the other and I really wanted to get the same effect with the silver leaf as the beads above.

When I showed DH, he said he thought I had bought yet another press and made it using that, but nope, this is all hand shaped. By the time Valentines day comes around, I should be well practiced enough to have something saleable.