Dream Country Chat

GATES

I have a thing about gates. It's right up there with my thing about French door handles and shutters.

There is so much character to be seen in the old gates and bits and pieces the farmers use to cobble them together round here.

Rusty old metal like cottage roofs perched on top to protect the post.

Tied up with blue baling twine of course.

Or orange twine just for a change. This tones in well with the nice rusty effect on the metal.

Rust, verdi gris and just plain rot, all have a patina, a tone, texture and colour. they are outdoor artwork in their own right.

Yellow twine, not so different, I think it is just faded orange twine! Old rusty chains, the original fasteners. They are sometimes still there, sometimes not. The best have a huge old hook at one end and a big ring at the other.

A frame to the farm yard within.

Farmers are great penny pinchers, they have to save money wherever they can. The old gates last a lifetime or two round here, they are patched and repaired, have their own line in fashionable coloured twine ties added every year, hinges reworked with wire and rope and a general air of use, reuse and use all over again.

We don't just have field gates round here, oh no, we even have a this stunningly beautiful old gateway that hides the old farm house up the lane.

I love these worn old gates, they have SO much character and charm.

The peeling paint shows the years of wear. How many times were they painted?

The wood itself is old and worn. The couple who own the house like to 'improve' things. If you look carefully at the beautiful house in the background through the gates you can just make out their latest 'improvement', shiny new white plastic windows. How out of place on such a graceful old lady. I dread the day that they cast their eye on the old gates and no doubt replace them with something bold, modern and cold.

Why all the gate photos today? Apart from my aforementioned gate/shutters/door handles fixation, there is another reason.

This week it was Bill Gates birthday. Whether you love him or hate him, this man brought us Microsoft and through that millions of people to the world wide web. He brought me to this blog space and you to it too. He brought us together to share our thoughts, fears, loves, lives and joys.

He gave us a gateway to sharing.

Dear Mr Gates, Happy Birthday.

Karon x

BOAT BUILDING

This rose is for you, if I could pick it and place it upon your hand I would. i would say two words as I handed it to you, 'Thank you'.

I cannot thank you enough for all the comments, emails and calls I received yesterday. You have lifted my heart from a place it has never been before.  I know the post was maybe a bit too personal for some,  and many might thought I was being self- indulgent, well so be it. Sometimes you just have to pour it all out, what better place to do it when you are among friends.

Yesterday was rough I will grant you that. I think I have cried more these past few days than in my entire life all put together, and let me tell you, when it comes to tears I am a bit of an expert.

Tears are funny things really. Some people cry easily (me), some find it very difficult to cry. We cry with sadness, with frustration, with anger, with pain. All those bad things bring forth the sea of tears. Strangely though, we also cry with joy, with laughter and with love. Our sea of tears wells up and overflows with emotions both good and bad. We must find a raft, better still a boat (yacht, dingy, ocean liner, barge - you choose) to sail on over the sea of tears. When they are good tears we can stand on our boat and wave and sing, making the most of the moment. When they are the bad tears we can cling on to our boat and know that we will get over the sea of tears and get to the other side, sometime, soon we hope.

Yesterday you all helped me to build my boat. Mine is like a Greek fishing boat. It is red and blue with white trim and a little sail. It isn't fancy, it bobs on the water and the sail flutters in the breeze, it will not cross the Atlantic, but hopefully it will cross this sea and take me to the other side.

With the rose I give you Madelaines, sweet little cakes from France. Let us sit together eating cake, drinking tea and talking of  the boats that will sail us out of the sea of tears.

Thank you again for helping me to build my boat. What boat would you have?

Karon x

A WORKY WEEKEND

Panic not my friends, I am not turning into a dreaded 'business blogger' with a 'buy it now' button at the end of the post. Far from it, I just want to show you what I have been up to this weekend and to shout from the rooftops 'I've done it!', I've filled all the trade orders I got at the Stirling fair two weeks ago.

I must admit to be a tad stressed (who, moi?) on this one. I was determined to get all the trade stuff out of the way by the this week. In fact i had set myself a goal. I had to have it all finished and boxed up by 'close of play' on Friday. Now whether this 'closure' would be in the middle of the night didn't really matter, it just had to be done. Anyway I did it by 1pm on Friday and then celebrated by sweeping up HQ and finding the floor again.  Half the orders hit the post office, and now just waiting for payment for the rest. Phew, relief!

 Keeping up the working momentum I even managed to hit the web site and finally updated it by putting Leviche de Landes on line at last. Did pix of my Christmas stuff, so that will be going up next week.

Yesterday I took Idgy and Mr X to the station. They are off to London for a few days to see the dinosaurs (yet again) at the Natural history Museum. They had decided to travel by train rather than flying as Idgy has never been on a long train journey before. The fact that the train cost way more than flying is ridiculous really. Anyway our  Idgy was most impressed that there were no luggage restrictions and you could take your own juice with you. They went rather over the top on this score, it looked like the teddy bears picnic with the amount of food they had in their extra bag.

I came home and headed out to HQ. It does look strange when you can see the floor and don't have to climb over piles of stuff just to get in there. Armed with a mug of coffee, a bar of chocolate and Michel Thomas teaching me French, I settled down to a day of painting Christmas gift bags. Four hours later, all food and drink devoured, M.Thomas played out twice (and no words remembered) and hundreds of gift bags painted and hung up to dry.

Into the house for a quiet evening in front of the fire sewing Christmas robins with a glass of wine and my furry friends for company.Quite a nice weekend really. How about you?

Karon x

MELTDOWN MOMENTS (how not to behave if you are meant to be a grown-up)

This is my HQ angel, she is calm, she is serine and she looks down on me as I beaver away sewing my scenty things and listening to radio 2. She almost raised an eyebrow yesterday.

Yesterday I was not calm, oh no, I was stressed, hyper and I am ashamed to say I went into complete melt-down. The cause (does there need to be one these days?) was my streamline machine that does the business credit card payments. For months now it has been a tad temperamental. Sometimes it works okay and other times it just stops and you have to start all over again, and again, and again. Well on Monday it gave up the ghost completely and threw up its little wires in surrender. I phoned streamline and they said it was just old (know the feeling) and an engineer would be out on Tuesday to replace it. Yesterday  morning said engineer dutifully arrived, and within a matter of minutes had whipped out the old machine and plugged in a shiny new one. He leaves.An hour later my friend Fi phones to ask me to email a photo to her. No probs, scamper into house and go on line. Well try to go on line, no internet. Check everything, no broadband coming through. Phone internet supplier, all okay their end. Their phone person asks  if anything in the phone area has changed today. Oh no, my heart sinks, the card machine. He suggests maybe the engineer has taken my filter on end of his wire on old machine. Phone steamline, after the usual assault course of pressing the appropriate buttons before you are permitted to speak to a real human and got just a tad stressed in the process, I ask if the guy had my broadband filter. 'We'll find out' they say.Hours pass, nobody phones back, I phone them again. Argument arises re filters, wires, broadband in general, me in particular and they can't find their engineer. Meanwhile my lovely Fi phones me back and is a real brick, she does not utter those dreaded words 'calm down', no, she makes suggestions, backs me up, agrees  they are all morons and goes off to try to find out if we can get another filter. It is at this point that a shop I have returned a top to two weeks ago, phones to say they haven't got it and I can't get my refund. Did I send it registered, of course not, I was in a rush and sent it out with normal post. 'Ah well we can't do anything it is your own loss'. This is all too much, I have had enough, I feel lump in throat and realise I am stressed out beyond endurance. A computer problem, a lost package/money and I am over the top. Things I should be able to deal with have got the better of me. I know it is the work situation/life etc that is causing this and I am powerless to help myself. I feel I have to grit teeth and just get through the next 3 months til Christmas, I am looking to Christmas as a child awaits santa, only I await the peace of filled orders, finished fairs and hopefully (oh please hopefully) all bills paid and some money for me. In the meantime it is meltdown in HQ and my stone (well looks like stone anyway) angel looks at me with pity in her dead eyes, why does this silly human shriek, shout, swear and sob? Ah, it is the four S of stress, we angels know nothing of that, she goes back to sleep.

Engineer phones. At last, I am gibbering now. He assures me that there is no extra box thing on his wire and that my broadband should work. I give up all pretense at normality and he hears me sob. 'I'll be over as soon as I finish this job' he says. What a hero.5pm, my hero arrives. He shows me the old machine, there is no filter box or anything attached, can't be that. He unplugs the phone, fiddles with wires, uses tester machines and generally gets right in there. He then notices that I have an extension on my phone socket and my netgear box plugged in elsewhere. 'Lets try moving the box' okay we do, it works. Seems that in changing the machine over, the old machine must have had the last laugh and somehow knocked out the power within the wiring thus killing broadband. A sort of 'get rid of me and I'll kill your computer' type thing.My joy knows no bounds, engineer backs off swiftly when offered coffee, think he thinks this is complete mad house and best to quit while ahead.I celebrate by emailing Fi and sending the long awaited photo she asked for. Idgy brings her mum a glass of wine.Back to 'normal'.

Karon  x

CROWNING GLORY

I love these crowns. I bought them when I visited Blair Athol in August for the horse trials. I've seen them in lots of photographs, mostly in French and Danish antique settings. When I saw them on  a trade stand at Blair I just had to have them.

I always have an excuse for buying these sorts of things - what a great display prop! Now I have used this excuse for years now and have fairly amassed a batch of totally useless and unused items that never see the light of day far less the lens of a camera or the glories of a show/fair.
Such items that fall into this sorry category include an antique collapsible traveling baby cot, amazingly made in cream metal and string. Oh yes, I had an idea for this one (of course) to display cushions at fairs. Have I used it, alas no, it just takes up space in HQ.
There is also that ever-so-useful cream metal work (are you seeing a theme here) screen I bought four years ago, because I thought I could hang sale goodies cunningly along it's panels. Did it work, alas no. this one hasn't even made it to HQ to masquerade as anything else.

But the crowns, having been bought on the pretext of working props they have actually been used. Keen bloggers will recognise them from my Stirling trade stand last weekend. I used the smaller one to display my Leviche de Landes bathing salts. Wow the amount of comments I got on it. Pity I wasn't selling the damn crowns!

For once I have managed to find and use my own props to advantage. I always admire trade/display stands that are well propped. As you can imagine from this ramble post, I haven't always been successful in my prop purchasing/choices.

My biggest prop error was the flower sellers barrow I bought five years ago. Authentic, the real McCoy, looked great at Country Living fair etc. Alas I very soon discovered just why these things have been superseded by other display arrangements - storage has something to do with it, where on earth do you keep the damn thing, and weight, a tad difficult to move about. No wonder florists use collapsible shelving and plastic buckets. Antique flower cart now for sale!

This year I have changed my propping completely. At Harrogate I used my old folding painters table with red cloth over it, the console table from my living room and a simple shelf above. It was easy to move, looked effective and worked. I'm going to use the same set up for all the fairs this Christmas. Wow, after all those prop buying missions and trial and error, I have ended up back at square one with a folding table and coloured cloth.

Sometimes simple works best. Must resist those 'prop moments'. What's your failing?

Karon x

HOW NOT TO BUSINESS BLOG

Once upon a time, quite a while ago, in a land far far away, well here actually, a friend suggested I should start a business blog. I did not know what a blog was, far less a business blog. Apparently this would be a platform for my business, it would guide people to my web site and be instrumental in putting me on the financial map etc.

What a marvelous idea I thought and started forthwith.

Hmmmm yes, believe it or not this was once a business blog. I am pleased to say it failed miserably as a business blog as I just couldn't face the flag waving, in your face-ness that goes with the whole business blogging thing.

My blog seems to have morphed over the past year and a half into a chat page, a diary of nothing and of everything. Things happen, things don't. I love taking photos and I love that blogging allows me to share those photos with other people. Sometimes I put up photos of things I have made and have for sale on the web site, things I am excited about. But I know  I'm not doing it 'properly', I know I am not writing a 'business blog' and getting my point across to an adoring public.

I'm glad, I look at those sites and the part of me that wishes I could write/blog like that, be the cold blooded business person reeling people into their selling world, well that part of me gets smaller all the time. Instead it is replaced by the part that says 'To hell with that, here's me, my life, my photos, funny stories, sad moments, recipes and maybe even a giveaway or two'. The business blog, no far from it.

A few weeks ago a fellow blogger emailed and asked me what I did. I had mentioned cutting my herbs so she asked what I was doing with them. I was thrilled by this, to me it was proof that I had drifted so far off course from 'business blogging' that people just didn't know what I did at all and read the blog for the stories etc. Good.

I'm glad I'm a failed business blogger.

Karon x

HAPPINESS IS.....

Images of joy, happiness in whatever guise it takes. A sudden burst of news that puts the biggest ever smile on your face.

All sorts of things make us happy.

Moments snatched from everyday life.

Some more calorie laden than others....

Last night my snippet of joy came from a phone call from my two bestest friends to say they had some fabulous long awaited good news.  We fairly whooped and shouted, you could see the grins on all our faces even across the miles, we were all in that snippet of joy.

Sheer uplifting great news joy. It wasn't my moment, it was theirs, but my joy was in the sharing, it was wonderful.

So Martin and Ann, well done guys, TOTALLY thrilled for you. Hope you have champagne hangovers this morning, fuzzy headed but happy as larks.

I am still smiling at your good news.

Karon x

FIELDS OF GOLD

You'll remember me when the west wind moves
Among the fields of barley
You can tell the sun in his jealous sky
When we walked in fields of gold

So she took her love for to gaze awhile
Among the fields of barley
In his arms she fell as her hair came down
Among the fields of gold

Will you stay with me will you be my love
Among the fields of barley
And you can tell the sun in his jealous sky
When we walked in fields of gold

I never made promises lightly
And there have been some that I've broken
But I swear in the days still left
We will walk in fields of gold
We'll walk in fields of gold

I never made promises lightly
And there have been some that I've broken
But I swear in the days still left
We will walk in fields of gold
We'll walk in fields of gold

Many years have passed since those summer days
Among the fields of barley
See the children run as the sun goes down
As you lie in fields of gold

You'll remember me when the west wind moves
Among the fields of barley
You can tell the sun in his jealous sky
When we walked in fields of gold
When we walked in fields of gold
When we walked in fields of gold

Lyrics from 'Fields of gold' by Eva Cassidy. I have been watching the field next door all summer, the field of gold, winter barley. Yesterday it was cut, last photo shows the 'after' and I am the shadow in the corner.

Thanks SO much for your emails and comments yesterday, it means a lot that you are there.

What song makes you cry?

Karon x

HIGH SPEED WEEKEND

Good morning Monday!  I had a real doing stuff weekend, a non-stop weekend, and I never left home. A combination of great weather (oh WHAT a joy!) and Idgy having friends up and also going out with her Dad, meant that I was free to GET THINGS DONE. Well, dear reader, I am proud to say that I did actually get things done and used every minute.

Christmas gift bags, first 120 now painted. Lovely to sit on the deck painting these, okay the novelty had worn off after fifty, but what the hell, just got to keep going.

 

A mega washing. Strip beds and even hand wash those bits and pieces that have been lurking in the laundry basket for months  (eeek that sounds bad) waiting for 'the right weather' to hand wash and hang out. Well all done and empty basket.

Fill gingham hearts by the dozen. Spend evening watching X factor and sewing them up.

Major herb harvesting offensive. house and HQ now groaning under weight of hanging herbs. Smells great tho'. Garden now looking a tad bald.

More jelly making. This time rowan berry, recipe later this week.

Labels and lunch.

I remember thinking way back when I started this blog,'Oh Lord I don't want to be one of those bores who blogs about what they had for lunch'. Oh well in for a penny, in for a pound, above you see the lunch!

Work on book, and actually come up with the subtitle - HUGE step forward!

Took photos.

So that's it, my weekend. I don't normally get this much done, must have been on overdrive or something.

What did you do?

Karon x

BLUE SCREEN DEATH

The title says it all really.

This is my day yesterday.

All was well in my little Dream Acres corner of the world. I spent the day sewing in HQ and generally building stock for Christmas. Nothing exciting there.

At 5.15pm I came into the house and thought I would start getting tea ready for Idgy. Switch on the laptop while I am pottering about. Then horrors, and I mean HORRORS!

The screen is blue and covered in writing. I cannot get it to clear. I cannot switch off the laptop.

Do I panic? Does a fish swim? Remember I come from a long line of over-reactors, now is one of my moments to prove this.

Phone Dell and the kindly gentleman from the other side of the world informs me that they call this 'Blue Screen Death'.  'wwwwwwwwwhaaat'  squeaked I.  Apparently this is the 'technical' term for this hellish screen that can actually mean anything from a virus has just eaten your computer, the hard-drive is knackered or hopefully something less drastic.

Nice man on Dell had me taking out battery, unplugging, pressing buttons and tweaking keys. The only thing we didn't do was play the okay kokay. Anyway he then says I will have to be passed on the the software dept which will cost me money. Groan audibly.

Passed on to software guy who is in another part of the world. how exciting I am getting a tour of the further reaches of the globe while my laptop practically simmers in front of me. Anyway this call is now in the expensive bracket. Nice man will have to log into my computer and 'sort it out'. 'Can you actually fix it' I muttered, oh yes he could. First off he told me to hang up as I had already been on the phone for almost an hour, was it the whimpering in my voice that made him take pity?  He called me right back. I am now into  second glass of wine (stress) as I sit watching my computer flashing through tests and doing everything remotely. It looked so strange.

Anyway after two full hours of all this panic and pratting about, and wine consumption on my part (stress again) the laptop is fixed, it has been sorted, tweaked and cleaned out . Unfortunately so have I, this little episode has cost me over £100, but at least I now have a working laptop, new cleaning system for a once a week tune up and a year of  Dell backup should I be unfortunate enough to require it again.

So the cause of the 'Blue Screen Death', my computer was apparently trying to start up with loads of different systems or something all trying to work at once. They overloaded the system and computer said 'NO'. Thank goodness it wasn't a killer virus or anything like that. We have survived the laptop and I. Well laptop is fine, I have a hangover........................

Karon x