Playing with flowers and silver

So, where the frickin' Dickens are these days going right now? Speeding down the highway leaving nothing but dust and a slight sway in my step apparantly.

But my days have been full:

* Birthday celebrations, my 14 year old daughter baked me a chocolate cake with chequerboard sponge inside - CHEQUERBOARD - I know! she is a baking genius. :)

*Playing with flowers for friends who kindly but firmly insisted on Wild Acre bouquets for Mothers' Day despite me having no more than mud and the odd hellebore and patches of snowdrops in the garden. So I looked to Holland for help, and Holland bestowed me with fine tulips. It is odd to me making bouquets with flowers I haven't grown, but it was lovely to play with blooms and twine and badly behaved craft paper again.

* Making commissions of aquamarine rings, and delicate new pieces featuring little hornbeam twigs. I am busy making a collection for Cambridge Contemporary Crafts, one of my favourite galleries - exciting!

The detail of the buds is pretty accurate, and I love how they remind me of the tree boundary of my garden and the neighbouring fields, a gorgeous spot where the hammock gets slung every summer! I have been known to fall asleep there under the dappled shade of the hornbeam branches!

Those summer days seem a long way off, I watched my youngest son play a football match in the snow today. Sigh. Come on Spring!