TizDuster

The truth about e-books - am I right?

The insidious truth about e-books suddenly struck me last night. How it is in the interest of online booksellers like Amazon to promote these items either to download onto their own brand Kindle or other e-readers such as the iPad etc.

I'd been seriously considering getting one as it would be easier to transport reading matter and I would no longer have a pile of books by my bed. But then I realised I could no longer pass on books to friends when I had finished with them.

The life of a book is varied and long. It is bought, read and often loaned. It can go to a charity shop or it can be resold. But there is just one initial purchase from the publisher. An ebook can only be read by the purchaser, it can't be loaned to a friend. Therefore there will be more downloads and more money to be made by publisher and online bookseller.

And then even worse as a friend of mine pointed out. You never actually own the e-book. If a government ever wanted to censor reading, all they would have to do is delete the e-book from existence and poof it would be gone from your e-reader. Frightening eh?

So I think I'll hold out for a while longer and continue reading books the traditional way so I can share amongst my friends and family.

Too hot to garden

I started to dig out a bed that has got sadly overgrown and suffered some plant loss over the winter.

But it was too hot. I gave up at this point....

I'll try again next weekend.

Repair work traumas

Every now and again someone asks me to repair something for them. I do look carefully at the original item and work out if it is possible without doing any damage but it still is a leap of faith to blast someone's piece of precious piece of jewellery with a blow torch!

This happened recently when some friends asked me to repair their neice's ring. I've shown it here below after repair.

The problem was that the jump rings holding on the charms weren't soldered so they kept catching on things, pulling open and she was in danger of loosing the charms.

I knew there was a danger of the rings soldering themselves to the hoops and yes that is exactly what happened! Probably why the original maker didn't solder in the first place. 

But undeterred I got cracking with the blow torch, managed to unsolder the jump rings and charms. Then I resoldered with slightly bigger jump rings and hey presto all done.

There is a bit of a blob of solder on the T charm if you look carefully as that fell off its jump ring in the process but luckily that gave me the idea of replacing them.

All in all I think it's turn out well and also gave my heart a good bit of exercise along the way!

Forward planning

As our Aldborough Creative event was such as success we have decided to have another one in mid-November.

This time I will remember to take better photos - here's all I managed to take.

It's not at all representative of how the event looked and doesn't event show my work off particularly well. I'll try and get some from my friend Claire who is much better than I at taking photos.

Meanwhile I push on with the clearing my of mother's house. Her tablecloths did come in useful for all the covering all the tea tables on the Sunday. They looked really pretty as I'm sure Gill over on Dosie Rosie will attest. She dropped by to meet me and enjoy some tea and cake.

I'm hoping to get it finished this weekend so I can get back to my felt and silver work and tackle the weeds that are springing up in the garden.

But a summer of fun beckons....Lounge on the Farm is next. Only a couple of weeks away. Must get the tent out.

Weird scissors

Sorting through my mother's sewing box and trying to combine it with mine I came across these scissors.

They must have a purpose to have that rectangular cut out on their blades.

Any ideas?

No rain but new rain jacket

We haven't really had any appreciable rain here in North Norfolk since the beginning of April. But in anticipation of the downpours that must be on their way I treated myself to this new rain jacket.

I just could't resist it when I spotted it hanging up in the shop. It'll be great for Lounge on the Farm at the beginning of July.

I still haven't decided what to do with the napkins (see previous post). I like the idea of trying to make a bag of some kind. But I'm not good at making up patterns so I'll have to wait to find a good one somewhere.

Meanwhile on with the rehearsals for Hay Fever. We start the performances proper tomorrow night - the nerves are kicking in.

 

Napkins - what do you do with them?

I don't know where time is going at the moment and I've been neglecting my blog.

Our Aldborough Creative show was a brilliant success, so we're thinking of doing another one in November. 

I've also been busy clearing out my mother's house. It's quite hard deconstructing someone's life. I wasn't very close to my mother (she was a real bully), so it isn't upsetting, just a damn hard slog, tinged with a bit of sadness for what might have been.

I opened a drawer and found all these table napkins. I don't want to throw them out but I will never use them.

Have any of you clever crafty people any idea of what I could do with them?