I've kept delaying posting because I was waiting for a sunny day to take photos. These days, the sun hasn't yet come up when I leave for work, and it always seems to be a bit dull outside when I get home. I have a report on my attempts to make felt (fun, easy, neat), but I can't get enough light to take a picture of the finished projects. So, instead, Bakewell tarts:

They look nice, and they taste fine too, but I've had tastier treats which were much easier to make. The tarts in the photo above are the result of my second attempt. The first time, I foolishly followed a recipe which told me to mix the eggs with the sugar first, and then add in the butter. I didn't think there was any way the butter would actually mix in, and, of course, it didn't. So much for trusting my fellow (wo)man.

The second time around, I used the crust recipe from my lemon tart and followed a different recipe for the filling as well, this time mixing the butter and sugar together like a sensible person. The result was perfectly-formed mini Bakewell tarts, but I don't think I'll bother making them again.

I think I'll use the rest of the crust to make jam tarts, which are what I wanted in the first place. Yum.

New fabric for a new quilt. I asked my mom to place an order for this fabric (which I originally bought sample squares of at the Knitting and Stitching Show), as it was half the price in the States compared to the UK. It's arrived here pleasingly quickly, and is now washed, dried, ironed, and ready to cut. I'm going with simple squares for this one, though I have to resist the temptation to try something fancier. The fabric is lovely enough that a plain patchwork should be beautiful all on its own.

Oops. Somebody spent five days in Frankfurt without remembering to say she was going. Anyway, the book fair this year can be counted as a success for us.

Who makes such lovely books? Don't you wish your books looked so nice?

The graphic arts hall (Hall 4) was amazing and was where I spent a lot of me free time, trying to soak up inspiration. I'm working on convincing everybody that we need a letter press in office, to print covers for our hand bound proofs. If we don't get one for the office, I'll have to add it to my ever-growing wish list for 'some day.'

I did a little buying in Hall 4, including The Utterly Pointless Counting Book ('There are 3 coats of paint on a wall.') and a few amazing paper projects. The man selling the DIY paper machine-y things was great; he'd obviously spent hours and hours thinking up ways to draw and assemble the little moving parts, and he was proud of them but perhaps realized other people might think it was a silly use of time. I wouldn't agree with that, of course; I thought they were excellent.

The letter-pressed exhibition poster and the actual letter blocks came from two different people, but I had to speak German to both. Having studied German for seven years (and then not studying it for the last four or five) has left me with surprisingly little vocabulary, but I was able to find enough words to get my questions understood. I was rather impressed with my own ability to understand what was being said around me (and to me -- wherever I go, people always ask me for directions). I hadn't been to Germany since I was fifteen; I guess I've learned and retained a bit more of the language since then.

And now, lying around all day, waiting to get my vim back.

WHEW. I thought I was excited about the Knitting and Stitching show before I arrived, but that was nothing compared to the actual excitement of being there. So many things to buy! And I wanted it all! From the moment we entered the main hall to the second I left, my brain was screaming.

'AHHHHHHHHHH!!!' it said, with short bursts of, 'EEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!' Now it's settled down and is trying to recover and sounds more like, 'Wom, wom, wom, wom.'

I didn't even mind that there were too many hundreds of people, which would usually set me on edge. I waited patiently for my turn to look at things and then leapt when I got the chance. My loot:

Fat quarters were the way forward for me -- more variety for money spent. Click the image to enlarge, because there's a lot there. Eight fat quarters of Liberty prints (I couldn't stop once I'd found them -- such lovely prints), four fat quarters of reproduction-esque prints, and twenty squares for patchwork, which are all lovely. A half metre of a corduroy print, a half metre of excellent green/gold Indian silk, as well as a fat quarter of blue/magenta. Two squares of hand-dyed felt, ten 'tops' of wool for felting, and a bag of silk threads, for use in said felting.

After I'd spent what I decided was my limit, I wandered around, exhausted, clutching a two pound coin. Once I spent that, I had to leave. I found the little cloisonne jointed fish, just like I'd been looking for a couple weeks ago. I dug another coin out of my purse, bought it, and left. Eventually.

I went with three excellent friends, though we split up as soon as we got into the main hall. It was immediately obvious that solitary prowling was the only way to shop. We met up again after an hour and a half and spent the same chatting over tea. I'm so glad I was able to go with them, as it just wouldn't have been the same if I had nobody to share the experience with (and it would have been a disaster to take a non-crafty person).

I had been planning to leave after we had our tea, but I couldn't resist the temptation to take another twenty pounds from the ATM to do just a little bit more shopping (resulting in the Liberty prints and the fish). I felt like a gambler -- I didn't really want to spend the money, but I wanted the rush that came with buying such desirable things.

In fact, it all seemed a little bit too good. Once or twice, I was truly afraid I would wake up (Do other people have shopping spree dreams? What does it say about me that I do?). I didn't want to leave, and I really wish I could go every weekend. On the other hand, thank GOD I can't -- I'd quickly be in poverty.

So that was the show. . . . also, all I've had to eat today are cakes and cookies. Eeeee!

I spent a long while making cookies yesterday (or, rather, I spent short periods of time spread over a long while), and I decorated a few specially, for a friend's birthday.

I finished packaging them up right before we left and tried to take a hurried picture in the evening light, which didn't work so well. They were more pastel than they look here, and very pretty (if I do say so myself), with pearly sugar sprinkles, etc, etc.

I have to now get ready so I can leave on time for the Knitting and Stitching Show at Ally Pally. I'm much more excited than I thought I'd be -- it's the thought of all the fabric available for purchase, I guess. Mmm.

So, the shop's up. . . a little bit. Sorta. There's one thing. What is it?

Tapirs! A herd of them! Run away! Er, no. Tapir patches. Why tapirs? I don't know; sometimes you just can't fight the muse, no matter how much you doubt it. At any rate, they're very cheap, so you might as well buy one. Go on, then.

And now, to make cookies.

Hey, a new design!

I'd been pretty happy with the old one for, erm, however long it was up -- months, if not a year by now. It was clean, but it didn't actually give a first impression except 'I'm boring.' That may be true, but I should be able to keep that a secret at least until people start reading, right?

I think it'll take a me a little while to get used to having a graphic in the design again. When I visit other people's sites, they never seem cluttered by images, but that's always how I feel about my own (not including photos in the actual posts -- I find them to be the number one interesting thing about blogs).

Anyway, here it is. And I uploaded it before I even went to work. Yawn.

I had an idea to slowly work on getting the archives back in action, but it's just overwhelming. I think it's great that a person can plug their old entries in MT, but it seems like quite the task -- much more work than I'm prepared to undertake. If anybody has any tips or tricks for the process, I'd be glad to hear them. As I understand it, one has to go through each entry and weed out the important bits and format it anew. Bah.

I started trying to hammer the old Greymatter posts into something resembling archives, and I've got one month done (linked on the Archives page, along with the first three months of twelve22 -- I used to be in university!). Several things are taking the wind out of my sails.

1) I want to redesign the site sometime in the next month or two, which would mean pulling out the important bits from each entry and plugging them into new HTML (I'm not so CSS reliant that I can change the design without changing the HTML, after all). If I'm going to do that, I might as well enter them into MT.

2) I don't have one big folder for the images I've uploaded to twelve22 over the months. They usually go in a folder related to the subject matter -- if I'm lucky. I could easily spend hours trying to track down all the photos linked to on twelve22, and some won't even exist on this computer or my laptop. On my parents' computer? Gone forever? Nobody knows.

3) Thingsivemade.com apparently expired in the last month (which I would have noticed if my old hosting company hadn't given me the boot), and some group swooped up and bought it. I can only imagine there are 'companies' which get a list of domains which have expired that day -- companies which then buy up the domains in the hope that the 'rightful owner' will come along and pay them a million quid to buy it back. So not only will I have to abandon the name 'Things I've Made,' but I have to go through every post to look for images linked to that domain.

4) People suck.

And that's about that. Time to find some bunnies or chocolate to cheer me up.

Phew, back in sunny old England. Well, partly cloudy old England.

I never did find any shops selling fabric, which was a slight disappointment in an otherwise fabulous holiday. We went to a couple art stores, though, where I bought various pens (I left my waterproof drawing pen at work, I think -- who only has one favourite drawing pen?) and the above notepads. Hooray recycled materials!

I had to stop myself from buying up the store's entire stock of the Sodica notepads. The largest one is coloured paper, perhaps for a project in the planning stages. The two A4 are ruled -- one with lines and the other with grid (I love graph paper). The smallest is a lined notebook. The orange thing is made (I think) of recycled rubber; it has pockets for business cards and notes and holds a notepad inside (with graph paper!).

I did a bit of drawing in Portugal, and the sketches above and below are my favourites. (Click the dog to see entire drawing.)

And one last thing -- a funny bird we spotted outside the kitchen window a couple of times. It's a Hoopoe -- in the same order as Kingfishers, but not as cute and blue. An interesting change from river birds, though.

Mmm, Portugal's finest. Pictured with glass and opener (not necessary).

Even though neither Rob nor I drink, I couldn't resist buying this juice box of wine at the store last night. I know Europe is more relaxed about under-age drinking, but this seems a bit much! Perfect for long car trips, though.

Okay, well, since it didn't come with a straw, there's the possibility that it's not actually meant for the kids, but for penny-pinching adults not willing to splash out for an entire bottle of cheap wine. At any rate, when I saw it, I immediately thought of Whit, as it was with her that I discovered wine in a can. I'll send it to Whit!

But then I had another think. Who loves booze AND juice boxes? Why, Erin, of course! I'll send it to her. Now I just can't decide.

Oh, sure, I could go back to the store and buy another, but that's not very imaginative. Instead, I shall challenge them to a race. Whoever (between Whit and Erin) contacts me first, promising to provide me with a review of the wine box and a picture of herself enjoying it -- whoever that person is, she shall be the recipient of this high-grade wine delight.

If neither of them cares enough to take me up on what could possibly be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, then I'll have to think of something else to do with it. If only I knew some children.

A few shots from around the villa. Rob's folks went home yesterday, so we can now seriously commit outselves to the task of lying in the sun all day. I've also added 'float in the pool' to my agenda, so the schedule's pretty packed.

On Monday morning, Rob's dad observed that it was looking a bit dull outside, even though we'd been promised bright sunny skies during our stay. Realizing it was an eclipse, not a cloud, we went to the roof and took turns looking at it through five pairs of sunglasses. I manged the above shot by turning the shutter speed to its fastest and the aperture to its smallest. The sky was still blue, of course, but the camera couldn't capture that AND the outline of the sun.

Lemons in the yard. They're not quite ripe yet, which is a shame, as one could have made another tart, this time from home grown produce. Or lemonade. They've got four days to ripen. Go, lemons, go!

A nice, purple-grey, papery daisy. I used MS Photo-something to resize these photos, but I obviously can't correct the levels, etc, the way I can in Photoshop (the trial would have taken hours to download). I might have to readjust all these photos when I get to the home computer this weekend, but it's nice to have something to show.

This is what I've been up to.

My apologies for the massive image; Rob amazingly doesn't have Photoshop on his laptop, and I didn't bring mine, as I didn't think we'd have internet access. As it is, we found a wireless network somewhere in the neighbourhood which we're sneakily piggy-backing off of at the moment.

Portugal seems to be all sun and water and delicious lunches at fancy restaurants. I wish I knew if there were any fabric shops in the area, though -- I suppose I can find out with the power of stolen internet!

Boa noite!

One last post while I'm trying to wrangle things together for the trip. You didn't think I could leave without sharing some photos of the new guitar, did you? Since there's no way to smell the guitar through the internet, you aren't getting the full experience. It's the most amazing scent.

Mmm, Martin-y.

The finches have gone off to stay with the Mermaid Princess while we're away. It was strange to wake up this morning and have no birds to greet; I've had to sing their squeaky songs for them, so we won't forget.

Right, have to pack the camera and the guitar. . . anything else?