Out with the old…..

Not doing a great job of keeping this up to date!!! I’m a bit of a multitasker, so only online for ickle snippets of my time. Well, just passing glances at the laptop as I shoot by….

Just taken a week off work. A MUCH needed week off. This past month has been a bit crazy but I’m just tying up loose ends in preparation for Christmas. Looking at things through very sensible eyes for a change and NOT running myself ragged trying to do a hundred things at once. I’ve completed (or NEARLY completed) my Christmas orders but I’m not cramming trying to restock my case at work. I have projects to start after Christmas is over so I intend to really enjoy myself without giving myself daft deadlines to stress over beforehand. I’m so organised this year, it’s unreal!! In fact I am scaring myself with my lack of usual chaos that I have become so familiar with! ( I have even set aside ME time, too! ‘ Me time’ used productively by going to the gym. May as well improve myself physically as well as mentally!! :D)  Buuuuuut…. my plans for next year are heading in a very different direction and I’m really excited and nervous about this new start. In my ‘proper’ job at Cumbria Crystal, things are just as exciting. We are getting two new furnaces in the new year which will be amazing, but the chaos installing them will be immense! Hopefully they will make life a bit easier, since the furnaces we have at the moment are over 20 years old!! I say “20 years” but think Only Fools And Horses, and Trigger’s broom. He had the same broom for 20 years but it had had 17 new heads and 14 new handles, although he insisted it was still the same broom. Well, that’s kind of the story of our furnaces. Not too sure which parts of them are still original, if any, but we haven’t had new ones in 20 years. 😀 So. My 2013 is jam-packed, because aside from work, my daughter Sian is doing her GCSE’s, we’ll have her prom dress to sort out just after Crimbo, but the biggest thing for next year is moving house! I want ours on the market BEFORE christmas, and hopefully things will happen quickly after that. We’ve set our heart on a beautiful house in another local village, one Nick always loved as a child, and after going to a viewing, I love it too. I know we’d be happy there, and with 6 bedrooms, I would have plenty of space for my artwork. So much space for entertaining too!! I just have a really good feeling about next year….. Out with the old, in with the new!! New me, new projects, new beginnings…. 🙂

Kisses.
A
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Happiness is not a sin!!! A smile costs nothing!!!! :D

“I am fed up of you being so bloody happy all the time!!!! It’s not normal!!” – Paul, colleague. I love him! He is the most miserable, grumbly, scroogey, nowty, sarcastic sod you could ever hope to meet, with the most twisted outlook on life of anyone I know. But he will always go out of his way for anyone. It is my duty in life to inflict my happiness on him. 🙂 I’m always happy. I can’t help it. I have a lot to be happy about. I was even introduced to the apprentices as: “This is our Adzii. She is always the bright and cheerful one, even at 8:20am when everyone else is still half asleep and wanting to be anywhere else but here. In fact you can hear her before you can see her.” Aww!! 🙂 So Paul has decided to wage a bet. That he can get me to lose my temper before our Xmas do, and if I do, I’ll buy all the drinks. If not, HE does. That was really silly on his part and I think he is now panicking. Haha!! You see, it is impossible to get me to lose my temper. I don’t think anyone, (bar Nick and the kids) ever has! I mean REALLY lose it. But we shall see…… 😉

It’s been a  weird but lovely day. I agreed to some overtime to help out a colleague in my old job in the showroom, and it was actually really nice, as a ONE off!!! 😀 When you just make the glass, you forget how beautiful the finished product is until you see it on display, sparkling away and you think, yep, we are bloody clever!! 🙂 It was fab to have a good natter to customers and yes, brag and boast about how amazing we are. Haha!! 😀 But there’s no hiding the fact that Cumbria Crystal is impeccable. I don’t lie to people. We have a chokka full order book at the moment, just need new furnaces!! Also sold three pendants, possibly because I was in there at the time, and it helps to be able to talk about what I do and what the process involves. People are genuinely mesmerised. It’s lovely. It makes me happy. 🙂 I thought I’d be bored rigid, but thankfully I had a steady stream of familiar faces who popped in to say “Hi.” One was a mate of Nick’s who just came in to moan how his brand new Bently Continental convertible was costing him over £150  a week in fuel!! He is the biggest show-off!!! 😀 This is someone who recently sold his Ferrari because of ridiculous fuel bills!! Will he ever learn?? God love him. Wanted a massive discount off me, mind!! 🙂 So my day has FLOWN!! Looking forward to tomorrow so I can show off the paperweights I made on Friday!! WOOHOO!!! 🙂 Now off to sort my accounts and receipts to enter into my spreadsheets and send off  to accountant. Hope she can make more sense of them than I can!!

Work, play, and family time….

I am such an accident prone moo. I’m used to getting burns on a daily basis, this last week I had red-hot glass landing on my arm from crack off, which just stick to your skin and there is NOTHING you can do about it, because you can’t drop the piece of glass you are holding in the fork on the way to the lehr to anneal. You just have to look like a plonker cursing and flapping until you get the glass safely on the kiln shelf, by which time the damage is done. I’m used to that happening. And threads from casting-on wrapping around my ankle. Molten strands that have an uncanny knack of finding the tiny bit of bare skin at the bottom of my leggings or whatever I am wearing! They sting! Not to mention general burns from the furnace, general getting hold of things too close to the burny end, etc…etc… That’s part and parcel of my job. You just get on with it. Today though I managed to take a sizeable chunk of flesh off my finger. Coldworking is just as lethal as hot! In fact everything in our factory has the potential to maim or kill! It was the diamond saw’s fault! Well, my carelessness really, cutting tiny bits of glass on a massive sharp wheel. I am an amputation waiting to happen! I spent a few hours in work today because I am running really behind. I really needed last week to just concentrate on me, and stay at home in the evenings, but it has proved to me that it’s just not realistic. I had another email this week about my bowl I sold in the exhibition the other week, and I now have a waiting list for them. Also I have to find the time somewhere to pop down to an interior design company who want a look at them, in London. It’s all gone a bit crazy. My world has turned into a pile of crystal pyramids!! Whilst I’m putting my heart and soul into those, my jewellery display case is looking sparce, yet Christmas orders are rolling in. PLUS I want to crack on with making decorations. Going to be a problem if I keep injuring myself though!! I know a few people think I’m just focused on the money, but it’s never been like that for me. The bowls however have been a real eyeopener pricing wise. I never even dared believe that people would pay that sort of money for my work. I wouldn’t have ever priced them so high if I hadn’t followed the advice from a high profile glass designer, who made me see that this wasn’t like when I make jewellery, these are works of art and because they are so unique, people are more than happy to pay a premium for them. The interior design company is going to be interesting though, and that dreaded word, ‘exclusivity’ has been mentioned again which I hate, but have started to understand a little more. It’s all very exciting, but a shed load of hard work is looming…. I’m really proud of myself right now. Unashamedly. We have just showcased a range of our product at the LDF and hopefully one day I’ll get to showcase my own there! I can even visualise my stand. It’s all a dream, but you know me and dreams, don’t dream, DO!! 🙂

I only stayed in work from about 8.00am til noon, because I wanted to do some work in the hallway at home. Trying to do jobs that need doing before we can put the house on the market. It’s a bad time to sell at the moment, so we want it up for sale sooner rather than later. My house is full of Nick’s tools! I keep tripping over them! Been endless trips to B&Q, but for some reason, today’s outing to get some more filler ended up in a drive over to Hawkshead and Near Sawrey, where Beatrix Potter’s home Hilltop is. It was a bit grey and damp, but it was just amazing. Our area looks great in any weather. Today the streams and waterfalls were powerful torrents. Forgot my camera though, since I was only intending to buy plaster! Found some new little pubs to try out one evening up there too! Just went with Nick and a whingey Corey. Sian refuses to come out with us anymore and hasn’t for years. Too old! We see that little of her now that we make Sunday evening family time round the dining table. It is so important to sit together and catch up and I am so proud of my family. Sian is 15 and is a lot more mature than I was at 15. (More mature than me now!) She’s getting so grown up, taller than her old mum now, too! When did that happen? When did little me, the silly happy-go-lucky girl who looks at the world through her silly, kooky, starry eyes end up with a grown up daughter? One that I can have adult conversations with? Blimey. And little Corey. Who has to be the cutest cheeky chops ever. Sitting stuffing his face with roast dinner and announcing nonchalantly that he has broken his toe.  Another complete fabrication I hasten to add, but one of his ways of getting everyone to talk about him instead of Sian. We were discussing university. She is unbelievably clever and I know she will be a massive success in whatever she chooses as a career. She is a worrier though, and I worry for her. It’s really not easy being a parent, and it doesn’t get any easier. It’s my duty to try and advise the best I can. It’s when I have to put on my ‘grown-up head,’ for a change and just be Mum. We have her parent’s evening on Wednesday so it will be an interesting one. Gosh. Can’t believe she is in her final school year. The next two years will fly by then we will be waving off our beautiful adult daughter to uni, and the start of her new life. Scary and sad. Parenthood has to be the hardest job of all, but it’s one I think I’m pretty good at really. Sian and Corey are proof. 🙂

See it, love it, now go home!!! :)

The valley over Hardknott

Well, we were going to go for a windy walk on the beach at St Bees, since it is just such a beautiful drive up the coast there, but instead we opted to go over both Hardknott and Wrynose passes, my favourite places. We drove the WRONG way over them, because the views are so much more dramatic. Had to laugh at Nick, on setting off, he was on about his driving course he had to attend last week, for work purposes. Basically to see how safe he was, and give advice. HA! Give Nick advice?? 😀 Anyway, he said that since his course (where he was certified “Safe”)  he has become noticeably less aggressive whilst driving. “See? I haven’t shouted at any other drivers yet.” I hasten to add, that lasted until we reached Birker Fell, where every man and his dog had decided to venture out, just to annoy Nick it seems. So after a lengthy tirade of verbal abuse and rude gestures to other motorists, I had to give my tuppence worth, “Yup. Worked wonders that course, honey. Like a new man!” 😀 In all seriousness though, Nick is the most accomplished driver I have ever met. Despite his bad temper towards other drivers, I feel safest in a car with him behind the wheel. I class myself as a pretty confident driver, but even I couldn’t hoik the car round those steep hairpins up Hardknott at speed like he does. I love being taken out for drives, so being married to someone who would love to drive 24/7 works quite well. 🙂 The scenery up there is out of this world. Amazing craggy hills and deep valleys carved out by the glacier. We both share the same passion for the beautiful area that is literally on our doorstep. I never ever get bored of looking at it. They are views that you want to fold up and put in your pocket, then you can get them out and look at them as often as you like. Every beautiful little Lakeland stone cottage is picture perfect, unique with it’s own quaint little characteristics. It’s a place to retire to though. Not very practical if you have to travel a bit for your job. Plus you are fairly cut off in winter, which isn’t a problem if you are proper country folk. Can’t wait for winter. The whole Lake District takes on a different character in winter. It is the most beautiful thing to witness. Everyone should pay it a visit on a crisp, clear, blue day. Just stand and take a deep breath of the cleanest air you will ever experience. The air round here just seems to taste different. But don’t move here. Lol! It’s starting to get crowded!! 😀 You know what? Just imagine the most beautiful, breathtaking place you have ever visited in the world. Yes? Well, you don’t love it as much as I love where I live. 🙂 I’m a lucky girl…. xx

Friday. :)

New start at work this weekend. Throwing myself back into making jewellery. I haven’t been in ONCE this week in the evenings. But I am really low on stock again and I need to get an early start on Christmas orders since this year I am doing a range of Christmas decorations too. I might even have to get Nick to come in with me and give me a hand with some polishing, but to be honest the break has been nice. After working flat out for so long, to be able to just snuggle up with him on the sofa in the evenings and watch silly stuff on the TV has actually been really lovely. 🙂 Spent the day playing with colour again. As fun as it has been, we really need to get some product out next week, before we fall behind. But with pure cullet fills in both furnaces this weekend, I can’t see it being much different. Cullet fills are great for big items, but for wine glasses it’s a nightmare because the glass is so stiff. There’s no flow to it, it barely moves off the iron. Including a bit of batch makes it that little bit runnier, better for those little gathers for stemware. If the glass is too stiff, people just ask us, well, why don’t you turn up the temperature? It doesn’t make any difference. It’s just the nature of pure cullet fills. Although it doesn’t help when people turn the temperature down on the furnace without telling anyone either…  Whilst working, I think it’s important to make the time to talk to visitors. Some people stay for over an hour or so, totally mesmerised, so they appreciate a natter about the process involved. One today said what he loved most was watching the hilarious banter between us and how we looked like we just love what we do, and it’s true! I was being particularly cheeky today mind, playfully bickering and chastising the others, but sometimes it’s a good job the visitors CAN’T hear what we are saying! 😀  Was a bit embarrassed though, after doing something I haven’t done in a long, long time, which was I managed to stick a gather to the pot mouth as I brought it out. Always plenty of spectators when you do something like that, then you also have to put up with the heckling from the others. Grr!! Like they don’t do things like that!!! 😀  I love Fridays. I love the ladling out of the furnaces at the end of the day, ready for filling with fresh glass on Saturday.. It’s really lovely to watch, (hard work to do) huge iron ladles which weigh enough whilst empty, never mind loaded with molten glass, emptying the furnace into a barrow of water. I love the way the water instantly boils over with each ladle sending steam absolutely billowing up to the roof. The glass bubbles as the steam gets inside, until they burst sending wafer thin flakes of glass fluttering around in the factory coming down like shiny snowflakes. The heat is tremendous on that stage and you can feel your shoes melting onto the metal platform, it really gets that hot. LOVE IT!!  🙂

Another icky glass day…

Some more developments in my ‘super secret’ project today. I still refuse to commit to anything though. I’m more than satisfied that someone very influential has managed to get hold of my name at the moment. I’m not an idiot and I’m not about to make a plonker of myself, if I really don’t think I’m up to the job, I will let it go because where one door closes, another is being opened. I aim for perfection, and if I can’t reach my own standards, I won’t even consider attempting it. I’ve had to keep a lid on my excitement for various reasons and people who know me, know how bloody hard that is for me. I’m excitable at the best of times, so getting amazing news and having to keep it under wraps makes me feel like exploding. I admit I have confided in three closest confidants though, but I trust them not to breathe a word….. 😉

BUT…. enough of that. 🙂  Today has been another icky glass day. Full of stone, cord, blisters… where on earth is it coming from?? The sooner we get the new furnaces installed, the better. Not sure if it’s the batch, the cullet, or the pot. Really frustrating. Yesterday for instance. Making icicles on a Wednesday is wrong! Making paperweights on a Tuesday is even worse!! We should be knocking out stemware! Icicles and paperweights is a Friday afternoon job. Although I do love it, and I did some really bright colourful icicles since we have only made clear ones in the past, and they all sold by lunchtime!!! Guess what I’ll be doing all day tomorrow…… Should also be getting the money from the sale of my bowl tomorrow, so I might treat Nick. He deserves it. After watching him this morning trying to get into his pants one handed whilst on the phone trying to sort out a problem at his Gateshead concrete plant!! 😀  He’s constantly on the phone. I love listening to him, because it’s so obvious why he has the respect of every one of his employees. So proud of him and I know I don’t show it enough. He puts up with a lot from me. I admit I’m not the easiest person in the world to be married to. I live my life in a very chaotic manner where I use up every spare minute I have either at work or tinkering with glass at home. This is why this week I had promised to just stop and relax. Especially since I am also on call-out this week. In other words I could get a call from the furnaces at any time of night to tell me they have gone out and I have to go in and fire them back up. If it’s a powercut they need hooking up to the generator. If it happens, it means taking in all my makeup and hairstraighteners, just incase I’m still there in the morning!!
Now how can I treat my hubby….? 🙂

It’s fun to stay at the Y….M….C….A…..!!

Well, fun for my little munchkin, armed with more luggage than I take on a weekend away!! He has gone to the YMCA camp near Finsthwaite and has been so excited about it. The house feels really strange without him. I know he stays at his grandparents a lot, but he is always on the other end of the phone. This is the first time I won’t have any contact with him for nearly three days and it’s a bit weird. Corey is 7, and a bit of a handful, so not too sure how his teachers will be coping. In fact I think I’m more worried about them than him!! Mind you, knowing Corey, he’s probably done one of his disappearing acts and they are probably out searching the woods for him by torchlight as we speak! As much of a pain in the bum as he is, I do miss him when he’s not here. I know he’ll be absolutely loving it though. He’s an adventurer. Apparently he’d phoned everyone last night to say goodbye to them as though he was going for weeks! The first I’d heard was after speaking to people tonight who told me Corey had rung them. No wonder my phone bill is always massive! He’s a bugger for that. Always on the phone when I’m not around. His telephone manner could do with some attention though especially when answering  to cold-callers which is a bit embarrassing, but funny: “Hello? Who? What do you want? Look. I don’t know who you are so I’m not talking to you. Bye.” Or, (phone in hand): “MUM!!!!! THERE’S A MAN ON THE PHONE ASKING FOR YOU!! HE TALKS REALLY FUNNY AND I CAN’T TELL WHAT HE’S SAYING!!!!” One thing’s certain though, tomorrow morning will be a lot less stressful! Getting Corey to get ready for school is like pulling teeth. The more I rush, the more he delays proceedings. For example, one morning I was running late and yelling at him to get a move on. He was doing his old trick of moving like a sloth just to annoy me. I’m practically screaming at him to get a wriggle on and get dressed, and he shouts from the lounge, “I AM dressed!!”
“What? Uniform? Shoes…?”
“Yes, and my coat.”
“Thank goodness, get in the car, I’m late!!” He walks into the hallway and he has EVERY single item of clothing on back to front. From his underwear to coat and shoes. “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU PLAYING AT, COREY!!!”
“Well you told me to get dressed. You didn’t say I had to put my clothes on the right way round.”

So good luck to his teachers….

Why can’t everyone be as happy as me?

There is some very good perks to being me. (apart from being lucky enough to get paid actual money for having fun..)  For instance, I usually get my own way. For some weird reason. In any situation. The lads at work have learned the hard way that it is much less hassle to just give in to me if I want to do something, instead of listening to me mither and mither, until eventually I drive them mad. They say they can’t remember what it was like before I crashed into their glassmaking-world. 🙂 Quieter, I expect! I’m certainly no quitter. In my job I’m a little bit like a kid in a sweetshop. Surrounded by everything I need in life to make me happy.  I love making beautiful things. Our crystal product is luxurious, contemporary, high class… but what I love most is being able to play! Which is basically what I have done most of the day. Being given the freedom of the furnace and a load of colour and told to just make what I want. I get paid for this you know! Working alongside Nick and Steve, I impressed even myself! I think I have a hidden talent for making paperweights. Had a bit of a sulk this morning because I hadn’t broken a sweat for over a day, which I hate. I was cross with a fellow glassmaker who had taken it upon himself to take over MY role yesterday and this morning. THEN he insulted me by stating, “You’ve had it quite easy today, haven’t you, Adzii? :)”
“NO!! I DON’T LIKE EASY DAYS!!!!!! I LIKE TO SWEAT, TO FEEL LIKE I’VE ACTUALLY DONE SOMETHING!!!!” I don’t take too kindly to ‘job-stealers’ …..BUT I let it go because I’m nice like that. 🙂  I think it was picked up on though, because to appease me they put paperweights on this afternoon. And possibly because of the constant, “Let’s make paperweights. Can we make paperweights? I think paperweights would be a good idea. The glass is crap? Paperweights….”
Our working stage looked like this: Nick sitting with his head in his hands, Steve, rolling his eyes, shaking his head and stifling laughs, me with a glass ‘thing’ on the end of my iron, holding it aloft as though I have just pulled Excaliber from it’s stone, with a Cheshire Cat grin across my face. 😀 Goodness only knows what the tourists must have thought as our afternoon descended into ‘Adele’s Creative Chaos’! I get extremely excitable when I’ve got coloured powder to play with. “Oh my goodness!!! We HAVE to mix this pink and green!! Now lets add some black and yellow!! Oh what the Hell, lets put blue and purple in there too!!” The viewing public get as immersed in my enthusiasm as I do, and the more people turn up, the more crazy we get. 😀 Ooooh, used some of my copper oxide too!!! I’ll post some pics of my weird and wonderful twisted creations tomorrow. 🙂 Always love it when there’s only two or three of us in the glasshouse. I know me and Nick (hubby Nick, not glassmaker Nick) have talked a lot lately about moving abroad, Nick was given an option to transfer to New Zealand, but I can’t tear myself away from here. To leave the best job ever? Not yet. I would cry solidly for months! My job, my beautiful Lake District, the country I love so much? I know this will keep cropping up and I’ll have to keep considering a big move away, which I would do for Nick, but for the moment, I’m having WAY too much fun. Cumbria Crystal is in my blood. (literally)  x

Chaos? Me? No idea what you mean….

I keep TELLING people my life is never boring. That’s because it isn’t. Sometimes I wish it was. Just to see what happens, when NOTHING happens. Well, usual chaos resumed on Monday evening when I returned home from work. Nick had come home early and was already cosy on the sofa, infront of his PS3 and a nicely roaring fire. In fact, it was the first time we had lit the stove since last winter. He said he thought he’d surprise me by lighting a fire and getting the lounge all nice and warm for me for when I got home. Bless him. 🙂 Anyway, I said I had to just pop through to Tesco before I got comfy for the night, so it should be REALLY warm and snuggly when I came back from there. So off I went with Corey in tow, wishing I could have plonked myself on the sofa with a large G&T and just chilled in front of the fire. I must have been in the supermarket for all of two minutes when my mobile rang. A strangely cool, calm and collected Nick:
“Adele, I think the chimney is on fire.”
“What do you mean you ‘think the chimney is on fire?'”
“I mean I think I am going to have to call out the fire brigade. Adele, get home NOW!!”
I must have stood just gazing at my phone for ages. Hmmm. Surely he’s overreacting. Should I just carry on shopping, because he’s bound to ring back and tell me it’s ok, he’s sorted it….. Meanwhile Corey: “The chimey’s on fire??? Dad’s set the house on fire??? COOL!!!! Will there be fire engines?? Will the firemen let me have a go in a fire engine??”  So with one large trolley containing one nailpolish (Fire Engine Red ironically…) and one over excited 7 year old, I paid and left abruptly but still a bit confused. (“If I get home and it’s a false alarm, setting the house on fire will be the LEAST of his worries!!!) As I came down the road into Lindal I expected to see black smoke billowing out of our chimney, but actually, it wasn’t too bad! (“I will kill him….”) Turned into our road, and oh the shame! Street full of blue flashing lights and every inhabitant of London Road stood out on the pavement. *sigh*  I got out of the car to find smoke belching out of our front door, firemen with breathing apparatus going in, and they wouldn’t let me enter. “Erm, do you HAVE to keep the blue flashing lights on? It’s kind of attracting the whole of the village’s attention.”
“Yes.”
“Oh. Ok.”
Nick and Sian were also told to get out. Sian (still in her bedroom): “In a sec, I’m on Facetime with Emma!”
“Sian, NOW!!!!”
“Oh my god, Dad!!  I’ll be down in a MINUTE!!” Sian’s sense of urgency will be her downfall one day. Since the fire had got under the floorboards in our bedroom, and the thermal imaging camera showed the heat was spreading, they told us that they would have to call in the BIG fire engine. Great. Two fire engines and a fire car.
We had to go up to my parents until they called us to let us know the coast was clear. Typically, the first thing I asked Nick was, “Did you make sure the house was tidy before you dialled 999?” Can’t bear the thought of people in my house if it is a mess, even if it IS the emergency services! Especially in our bedroom, too! :-s Thankfully he had. Well trained, that one. 😉  Apparently after I had left for Tesco, there was smoke filling the lounge, coming up through the floorboards upstairs, through the plaster on the chimney breast and green smoke absolutely billowing from the chimney stack. Poor Nick had thrown water on the fire in the stove, but worryingly could still hear it roaring inside the chimney which is why he called them out.
We were up at my folks for about an hour before we got the call to come back, and to be honest, I wasn’t prepared for the mess that I was met with. 😦 My beautiful (newly decorated) home. 😦  The stove had been taken to pieces. There was soot EVERYWHERE. All over my cream carpet, my gorgeous new wallpaper, my new sofas, (the ones we had to dismantle the house to get in when we bought them) all the way up the stairs (cream carpet again) the walls up the stairs where they had dragged the hose, the floorboards and carpet had been ripped up in our bedroom (again, cream, beginning to think it’s not a very practical colour…), plaster hammered off the wall around the chimney breast, skirting boards removed. and the smell!! I don’t think we’ll ever get rid of the smell of soot! 😦 The firemen were actually really lovely. One asked if he could sit down so he could write a report, I wanted to yell, NOT ON MY NEW SOFAS!!!!! but they were covered in soot anyway. We were told that the chimney is full of cracks that need repairing urgently, and the fire was caused by two large birds nests just above the fireplace in the chimney. Damn birds!! I hope they were in them when the fire took hold!! Incidently, we DO have smoke alarms, but not one of them went off!! The kids stayed with my parents overnight, and me and Nick spent into the early hours trying too clear up as best we could then camped down in the dining room in sleeping bags for the night. Phew!! You think the worst was over, right? Wrong!!! What could possibly be worse? Hmmmm….. discovering next day that you have no insurance, perhaps…? That was our next shock. finding out our insurers who we had used since 2001 and had automatically renewed our policy every year had been taken over by another company and failed to renew our direct debits. Our fault in a way for not checking our statements, but so, so cross with them. But in all of this, in typical Adele fashion, I have looked at the positives. It COULD have been much worse. We could have been asleep in bed, we could have been out somewhere because I often light a fire and go out, there could have been more damage and THEN we could have discovered we weren’t insured, but as it stands, it is mostly cosmetic. we are not allowed to use the fire again until the chimney has got a new flue liner and the cracks repaired which will only cost about £1500ish and we spent about £400 on cleaning and new floorboards etc… so we have got off fairly lightly. It’s also made me get rid of a load of unwanted junk I have accumulated, which may have taken me longer to throw out otherwise. Nick has been amazing. He put new floorboards in, relaid the carpet, new skirting, looks as good as new! I’ve managed to put together the woodburner again, clean most of the soot from the new wallpaper, and shampooed every carpet. Even the sofas aren’t looking so bad. Still a bit to go but we are getting there slowly. Once upon a time I would have been a panicky, doom and gloom mess, but life is too short to worry about material things. Incidents like this just serve to prove that me and Nick are a perfect team. We worked really hard together and made sure that everything was put right in a calm methodical manner over a few days. Thngs could have been so much worse, but we are just forever thankful they weren’t. In fact the worst part for me was having to take a couple of days off work! And as someone who plays with fire for a living, I suppose I had to expect some ribbing from workmates. They’ve been absolute sweethearts though. I owe many, many thanks to all my lovely friends and family for keeping me smiley and happy with their support and help through a once, pontentially meltdowny Adele situation….. 😉

The best compliment…..

My glass bowl. “Frozen”

I am getting increasingly infuriated with myself over my silly shyness and embarassment when it comes to showing certain people my work. I was giddy over finally finishing my bowl and had made everyone at work give me their opinion…. EXCEPT my line manager, the head glassmaker, only because I was terrified it wouldn’t be good enough and I possibly wouldn’t take criticism from him so well, which is daft because all criticism is constructive, right? I’ve always had nothing but utmost respect for David because I’ve been in awe of him since I first started working at Cumbria Crystal nearly 13 years ago. His skills are unsurpassable. I honestly don’t think there is another glassmaker, in the UK at least, that can do the kind of work he does. 40 years in the trade and HE is the one to impress. The glassmaker that ALL glassmakers aspire to be. So today when he actually went and looked for himself, I was astounded when he came back and paid me the greatest compliment I could have imagined. “Adele. That is f**king stunning. Honestly. Absolutely superb.”  It is lovely to have fab feedback from friends and family, but I always think they are biased, but coming from someone with his talent just means so much more. I thrive on encouragement, and today has given me the biggest boost. Even more so when I was also informed they could have sold the bowl over and over. I think I may just have found my niche and a new path. I now want my jewellery to become my sideline and concentrate on sculptural yet functional objects. This is the beginning of a new chapter. It was just a bit of fun for me to make at first, but I honestly didn’t think it would attract that much attention. So this afternoon I actually got to work alongside David for a change, and just talked glass for hours. So one of my better days..  🙂