Dreaming of a life in the country

Well my dears!! How are things with you? I hope life is good and all is well. The weather has been so beautiful here the last few weeks - so unlike the UK!! But every day even though it should really be the middle of winter - the sky is blue and it is gloriously sunny with just a bite in the air.

I had a wonderful drive out to Derbyshire last Friday to get Jen's arwork printed onto the leather for the corset for the exhibition. And it just looks better than I had even imagined!! The colours are so divine (there will be progress photographs in the next couple of days I promise!!). At first I couldn't decide between a beautiful aged creamy leather or a darker leather but in the end decided on a pale glove leather which just makes the colours sing out and makes it so true to the original piece which Jen emailed to me. Now I just have to make the corset!!

After the leather shop I went to Cauldwell's Mill which is in the Peak District and is a working Mill with coffee shop, gift centre and artists workshops. This fellow above is there to greet any arrival to the coffee shop - and I treated myself to what has to be the most gorgeous home made soup and cake in the county!!! Just have a look at this!

It is such an old fashioned place filled with history and I would really love to read more about them. I am sure there are many tales and adventures to discover about the history of the places and the people. It is our dream to eventually buy and old stone cottage there with maybe enough land to build a studio in the gardern for me. I would love to have a few ducks and a river or a stream at the end of the garden - just how divine would this be!! Of course who knows how possible that would be - prices are prohibitively expensive and it is only the city dwellers who are rich enough to have second homes or holiday dwellings who can really afford this - but a girl can dream!! I mean who wouldn't want to wake up to these views every morning!

Saturday morning we drove out to a farmers market and bought so much food!! All fresh vegetable and glorious bread and other tasty delights. I think this just shows that we are really country bumpkins at heart - forced through finances to live the city life for now - but we will get where we want to be - I am ever hopeful!!

Poor Mark - I do feel bad for him. He is on holiday this week from work but as luck would have it, or bad planning, or just the way life works - I of course am really busy preparing for the exhibition. This always seems to happen when he is on holiday. I have some other thing going on and cannot really take time off. And even worse than that (although I am sure he would try to deny it!!) is the fact that our main PC seems to have picked up some life threatening illness and is just sitting in the corner of the room a big hunk of useless metal. So Marks dreams of a week playing World of Warcraft or whatever it called have had to be abandoned. So he is feeling a wee bit sorry for himself. Of course I have tried the 'life could be worse dear' words of wisdom which haven't gone down too well!! So the droopy petulant bottom lip continues. Poor dear.

We did decide that maybe we could go away for an overnight trip up to the historical city of York and eat out and have coffee and be tourists for 2 days at the weekend but at the moment it is dependant on how I get on with my work this week. And knowing my complete inability to judge my time and how long it takes me to complete tasks I have to say that I not too hopeful!! But how do I break it to him?? Oh dear - to have to be the bearer of bad news. Any other time I would have been able to have worked day and night to get my work done so we could go away but alas I am not sure my back is up to it at the moment. I shall just have to put out a wee advert for some fairies or elves who can work at some handstitching whilst I am sleeping - just like that wonderful fairy tale of the elves and the shoemaker that I so loved as a child!! Oh but where to find them??

I have discovered so many beautiful and wonderful blogs and inspiring creators on the internet the past few weeks. I am so dying to highlight them here - maybe when I have a little bit less on my plate then I shall trawl through the bookmarked pages to show you!! I am still such a slow bunny on the internet - when will i ever get used to links and html and all these things that are so foreign to me!!

No artwork to show you today. But I did sell 'Sophia' the same day I listed her last week (she is on my last blog post) so was over the moon. After the exhibiton I am so looking forward to working on loads more pieces of small art for my etsy shop. I have a couple more ACEO's to list but that may have to wait till tomorrow!! It will give me a reason to update my day on here again - I so want to get into the habit of saying hello much more regularly as it is the highlight of my day reading all of your posts and thoughts and seeing your work.

Ok my lovelies - back off the spare room for me - there is work to be done!!! Have a wonderful day wherever you are!!