I'm so jealous! M is on holiday this week and so he's lazing about. He has an interview on Tuesday (his work is changing contracts and he wants to stay with the original company, so he's applied to stay with them - long story.) Then on Wednesday he's going to Manchester to watch the Cup Final on the big screens at ManU's stadium. The game itself is being played in Moscow, even though both teams playing are from England. How ridiculous is that? It's made it financially unviable for most supporters to go to, so for M, this is the next best thing.

This morning was fairly bright (usual British weather, sunny and overcast) so we went to a car boot sale - the first of the season. I didn't really see much that I wanted and thought I'd be going home empty handed, then I spotted a black bag lurking on the grass next to a stall, filled to the brim with yarn with a £3 label on it!! Wow! There must be about 10 big balls here in this gorgeous magenta, and it's an aran or chunky weight by the look of it. No ball band, so I have no idea what it is, but there's loads! I mean that burgundy ball there is a 100gm ball and the pink ones dwarf it. What a bargain!

As part of the mushroom swap I've been doing, I whipped up these little beauties to make a pair of earrings with. I partially mixed a brown with a copper to give an almost mokume gane like appearance. The stalk is translucent clay. I made the bails and pushed them in before I fired them, so they're nice and snug!

And at the same time I made some beads and covered a pen. For a change I decided not to try to make the holes in the beads pre-baking, but to try drilling them after. Sometimes with small beads, they split as you're making the holes, and I thought that firing them might avoid that. The drill bit I have is just a little bit too big for these beads though, so I'm going to get some smaller bits and have another go at these.

Unfortunately the pen didn't survive though. It's a shame, it looked lovely before it was fired. I think it's because I used a clear Bic pen, I hear that the opaque pens have a higher melting point and are much more successful for covering with polyclay. I just can't seem to find the opaque pens anywhere local though. Maybe I should have a hunt round the office supply places.

I finally got round to making a necklace with the beads I made at my friends a few weeks ago. I mixed the lamp-worked beads that I made with some lamp-worked beads purchased at Hobbycraft and some purple cats eye beads. There are some seed beads with them too to stop it being really heavy.

The clear rose beads are the purchased ones and I discovered something really cool about them last night. The little speckly bits actually glow in the dark! Really! I thought my eyes were deceiving me when I first noticed, but it's true!

I finally got around to weighting my hula hoop. I bought a kids hoop from Tescos for a couple of quid (well, if I had money to burn, I might have treated myself to an adult one, but hey, who's got twenty quid to waste on a hula hoop eh?) Anyway, I picked out the largest one there which is about 32 inches in diameter (pretty much adult size anyway) and apart from the fact that it's filled with little plastic beads that sort of swoosh as you spin (kinda annoying at first, but you get used to it) it was purple and was covered with this really groovy holographic tape. The downside is that it's a little on the light side and this makes it harder for spinning. So I bought these heavy duty nuts from a DIY shop and hot glued them on. It just gives my hoop a bit more weight and makes it easier to spin. :-)

I've finished all my OWS packages and have them ready to post tomorrow. I forot to take final photos of the animal eared pantas, but I think we can use our imagination there. Karan's package is all done and I'll post piccies of that after she's received it, and the other thing was this candle burner for Sajona. I hope she likes it.

Okay, I'm off now to decide what to knit with my newly acquired stash. Hopefully the weather'll be a little nicer this week; I want the sun back!