Kendal

It was a glorious day after a rainy start yesterday which was just as well or I'd have come home to two bedraggled pusscats - they went out at 6.30am and refused to come back in so I had to set off for the station and leave them to their own devices. As it was I still got told off by them when I got home of course!

I met up with Sarah and Esther on the train at Preston, so we travelled the rest of the way together having a catch up.We'd no sooner just about got our tables set up when people started arriving to go to the workshops and watch the demos - there were over twenty demonstrators, so lots to see. Here's Sarah with just one of her beautiful samples made with new Sizzix dies and matching stamps. Not quite sure what the joke was but here are Esther and Sheila posing by Esther's table, full of lovely samples made with dies and the Cuttlebug. You can see a basket of flowers on Esther's table and we were all given one of these by Janet which was a really nice surprise. And here's me, pulling an odd face as usual (actually, I've decided it's just my normal face really!!!) and, also as usual, with the messiest table in the whole shop! I was using Personal Impressions stamps, Tim Holtz dies and Distress inks. Andy Skinner's "Winter's Tale" stamp set was a big hit and they all sold out within fifteen minutes - I'd been looking forward to doing lots of Christmas Trees too!
In the afternoon, Sarah and I had the very nice job of presenting prizes and certificates to some of the prize winners in the card competition that Janet had organised to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Paper Warehouse shop. We were giving the prizes from PI and the winning cards were all brilliant - top prize was a Grand Calibur...wow! Well done to all the winners.
It was good to see so many familiar faces and old friends, as well as new people, all filled with a shared enthusiasm that made for a great atmosphere. Hope everyone enjoys their new purchases and don't forget to email me if you do get a memory block on what I was doing with Glue n Seal or anything else! Also, check out my older posts - you can click on any of the key words in the "Labels" list in the left column and you'll find more examples as well as some step by steps for various techniques. Just click either the name of the product, or "step by step" - I hope to add some more of these soon.
I had a quiet evening when I got home - jim jams on and lounging on the sofa basically! This morning I've been to St Chad's and spent some time after the service sitting on one of the benches in the churchyard, just contemplating things and reliving memories. Then it was coffee and a bacon sandwich in the village cafe before walking home in the drizzly rain. Once I've posted this I'll be planning a Crafts Beautiful project and working on some drawings that I've got sketched out in pencil.
Tomorrow morning I'm popping to Blackpool town centre to do some shopping for Heather's birthday on Friday, but, ssshhhhh, don't tell her! Not sure what we're going to do for her birthday yet, it depends on the weather really, but the zoo has been mentioned - there are giant anteaters and a pack of wolves as new additions there now. Blackpool zoo does a great deal of conservation work and the animals are really well cared for. Heather brought me a cutting from the local paper a few weeks ago as it was the zoo's anniversary and there were pictures from the very first day that it opened. They showed Johnny Morris riding in on a young elephant....you couldn't see in the picture but I wasn't far behind him! A long story that I won't bore you with, but I was in the same paper ** years ago as I'd been sent the very first ticket after something that I did "touched the heart" of someone at the newspaper! It made me feel very old seeing the black and white photos and reading that the original cost of a ticket was 18p!!! It's now £15.50....I think that's a bit more than inflation can account for!
Well, that's my weekend. I have to get some more mortar to finish my little wall before I can get the last big patch of the garden finished with weed control mesh and bark. I've got some steel rods to fix the bird table firmly into the ground and lots of bulbs to plant as well - I even won some last week but they haven't arrived yet! So,I'm hoping for a few dry days next week so I can get jobs done in between my real work. Speaking of which, I'll be at Cutting Edge Crafts in Skegness on the 1st September. This will be my first trip to Skegness, but I won't get a lot of time to look round as it's a long train journey and, even setting off nice and early I won't arrive till late afternoon. Still, I should be able to get a stroll along the prom if it's a nice day. So, hope to see you there if it's near your patch.