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.

Here are some photographs of the pink beads I was talking moaning about yesterday. In actual fact I have found two experiments that I am happy with and will go into production with.

The first bead above shows a round pink bead made with Twilight frit from Glass Diversions but note when I made a set of lentil shaped ones which turned out to be unusable because the size isn't consistent, there are some black lines in it which aren't evident in the round one. I guess it was just a fluke when I made the round one that I didn't pick up any of the black bits before, I quite like both beads but prefer it without the black lines and so I will have to go through the frit and pick out all the black bits when I want to make some of these!

You can see from the photograph of the jar of frit that there are black bits in there but isn't it amazing how this frit (which gives more of an impression of turquoise) produced such a pink bead? My jewellery customers often find it puzzling when I tell them that the colour of glass before it's heated and annealed in the kiln is sometimes very different from what comes out!

This bead is from my crystal press. I have had this press for some time which I purchased from Tuffnell Glass. I need to do more with it but I think this is definitely a success and so I shall be making more of these as well.

I have this evening ordered another press called the Kalera triple press which makes rectangular pillows. It should come on Friday so that's something else to look forward to. The week is picking up!

Here are the as promised photographs of new necklaces which I am about to put up on the website.

I have been doing a load of experimentation the last few days, particularly with pink glass but have only come up with one new type of bead that I am happy with. So I made a set of lentils but they are all different sizes!

We are having some stress again with the builder for the last 2-3 weeks. They are nearly finished repairing all the faults to our house in Cambridgeshire and they have mucked up the bannister and they haven't done the exhaustive investigation into why the party wall vibrates every time next door put on their washing machine.

There is probably more that DH isn't telling me about, I think he knows how badly stress affects me and he tries to deal with it himself without getting me involved (bless). Oh well, it will soon all be over (I hope). My excema has started back up again and the stress is probably why my creative juices are somewhat lacking.

This morning, pink glass and I fell out big time. Usually I am looking forward to seeing what has come out the kiln but .... well, I have come away from the torch as it's just not happening for me today.

What I need to cheer me up is my frit order to arrive from Glass Diversions!

Do you know the worse thing about making the recycled lampwork beads for my jewellery? It's getting the flipping labels off the bottles! Many are stuck on with something akin to the stuff that holds the heat shields onto the shuttle!

Mostly I just soak them overnight in a bowl of water with a squirt of fairy liquid and the water based labels then just float off in the morning or maybe take a little bit of nail picking before they come off. Occasionally they leave a sticky residue behind which requires removing with nail polish remover or petrol. Some of the wine bottles are the worst, so I was pleasantly surprised with this bottle of Cianti - they came off a treat!

So far I have only made a few beads using wine bottles. I was previously of the opinion that the colour of their glass isn't nearly as nice as the Perrier bottles and so I didn't make any jewellery out of them. I was telling a customer about this the other day and I was saying "well, the colour of wine bottle glass seems a muddy green in the main and it's not that nice". And then I noticed that she was wearing a sweater in a muddy green colour ... and it looked absolutely lovely.

So I started to take note of the greens that people are wearing this season and I think this um .... sagey green (I am going to call it that as it sounds nicer) is in at the moment because someone else had a scarf on and there was a lady in a gorgeous corduroy jacket the same colour. (I have to have a corduroy jacket ...)

So I am planning on doing some sagey green recycled beads next.

We had a lovely day out yesterday whilst the farm had their shoot. We took a picnic to Lyveden New Bield, a National Trust property with grounds and as it's a "ruin" with grounds, dogs are allowed as long as they are on leads so we were able to take Missy along.

The weather was a lovely autumn day, a bit of a cold wind but bright, sunny and the leaves were starting to turn.

There is a slideshow of more of our photographs here.

We got back at around 3pm so there was just enough time to finish painting the paddock fence before it got dark. I am glad that job is out of the way, the blue tits can stop swearing at me now!

Busy busy week on the beadmaking front. I am making a lot of the types of beads that I have made before. This is because I want to make some nice necklaces to match the bracelets and earrings I have in stock at the moment.

Often when people ask for necklaces, they do like the pendants (which is just one lampwork bead and a couple of other beads top and bottom with a silver bail and chain. I do sell quite a few of them, but sometimes customers are looking for something a bit more elaborate. With Christmas parties coming up, I want to be able to give the choice between pendants and something a bit more dressy so there aren't any new beads to show at the moment but when I've finishing making the necklaces, there will be photographs of those and I'll put them up on the website.

I'll be getting into new bead making when my frits arrive from Glass Diversions.

I sent an enquiry yesterday to Robin Koza at Glass Diversions. This company supplies the most wonderful frit blends for melting into lampwork glass beads. I got some frit blends from her company earlier in the year when I was at my last house (gosh, that seems a long time ago, now!) I was really pleased with the frits I got and I'd like some more. I'd also like to try out some larger glass shards too. As the company is in the US, I e-mailed to ask how much shipping would cost and while writing, I sent a couple of photographs of the latest jewellery created with beads made using the Sea Breeze frit blend (bracelet and earrings).

This morning there was an e-mail response from Robin saying that she'd like to use the photographs in their Artists Gallery. Well, I was totally delighted and of course replied "Yes!" (and placed another order! I can't wait for the new frits and shards to arrive!)

The settled Autumn weather has continued this weekend. Sales were reasonable on Saturday in our shaded corner of All Saints Garden. October is usually quite quiet - we're currently inbetween the tourist/summer visitors and the Christmas rush. I've not really noticed the credit crunch affecting my business as yet (fingers crossed that it's all sorted out before it does ...)

Today, I have been outside adding a coat of preservative to my studio, the fence of the paddock to keep Missy in and the cotinas that carry my power cable. All three are different shades of brown and soon they will all be a unified colour of mid-Oak and also protected against the wet and wind of winter in the UK. I got the shed and the two cotinas done and a bit of the fence but it (as usual) took longer than I thought and I had to stop for dinner and now it's dark! 

I am having Thursday off this week as the farm next door to where I live is having one of their shooting days and I like to keep out of the way so DH and I are taking Missy for a walk somewhere else in the car. If the weather stays fine, I will hopefully have time to finish the fence and I can take a photo.

All the time I was painting, I took down the half coconut bird feeders that hang from the outside of my studio and attract great quantities of blue tits. Wow - did they complain at me from the nearby hedge (I am persona non grata in bird-land at the moment!)

Hiya, I have only posted two new products this week, don't know where all the time has gone this week!

Sorry, they are blue again, but I have placed an order for some glass and I should have some new pink coming so I will endeavour to make some pink jewellery for next week

I have electricity in my studio! Tom and Ryan came yesterday to do the work; fortunately it was a dry day as they were working outside a lot on my cotina.

	So here's a picture of the consumer unit and sockets, I suppose it isn't that exciting news but as it saves me walking up and down the garden with the extension lead, I am very grateful!
And here's a picture of my Cortina cotina which carries the cable and saves burying it underground. I have hung a bird feeder from the hook at the top but you can't see it very well, I didn't notice when I took the picture that it is kind of merging into the background of next door's chimney. It was only up 10 minutes and the blue tits found it, but they fly away every time I get my camera out!

Ryan and Tom left around 4pm and by 4.30pm (after I had put everything back exactly as I wanted it), I was making beads in it! I only did about an hour and a half, but it was getting dark and it was great to have my new 4ft fluorescent light tube as I could keep working so now, round the clock beadmaking is possible!