IT'S JUST BEEN ONE OF THOSE WEEKS

Hello everyone

I hope your week has been good.  Mine started off well, then seemed to go a little down-hill towards the end.  


Early in the week we noticed that Jazz, our gorgeous tabby and white cat appeared to have something wrong with his left back leg.  It looked as though he had cut one of his toes and initially we were able to bathe it for him.  Towards the end of the week, he seemed to be in more pain and when I touched his paw he lashed out - very un-Jazz like, so we whipped him off to the vet.  We were amazed to find out that the problem was that Jazz has a flea-allergy - I know this is very common nowadays in cats - which has affected three of his toes!  Poor Jazz, no wonder he was in pain, but two injections, flea potions and a large bill later he is a much happier chap.  Daisy showed her support by being poorly today - however, she is also much better now.

As well as poorly cats, my computer has been misbehaving.  On Thursday I downloaded a programme from Serif that would enable me to design my own logo for my website and stationery.  Despite having numerous software programmes for firewall, anti-virus, the common cold, etc something called research.conduit.com downloaded - this is a search engine and while it may be completely safe (although I didn't want it on my computer) it caused numerous problems on email and Internet access.  Everything either froze, slowed down to zero speed or just gave up the ghost.  I removed all related progs and tried to remove conduit.com, also accessed and amended all system files, but still it is on my computer!  I have carried out all normal clean-ups and although the speed has increased, I still have the pesky search engine!  My post is courtesy of the laptop this evening, and back tomorrow trying to relieve my desktop computer of it irritating file.


Hopefully next week will see things back to the normal calm  life I lead (I wish).  As mentioned in my last two blog posts, from Friday, 3 February I am posting another blog post - not me this time, but you.  I already have one crafter posting on the first guest-blog date, so am now hoping to encourage other crafters to post on thefollowing Fridays.  Although I have a list of topics, it would be great to have suggested topics from fellow crafters - so if you are game to take part and want to talk about something, please do contact me on christmaspiecrafts@virginmedia.com - can you but guest blog post in the subject line?  My suggested topics are:


What inspires you to create
Do you still make (and  sell) the item(s) that set you on the road to being a professional crafts-person
How do you motivate yourself
Is blogging a good communication platform
What does handmade mean to you

500 - 600 words would be great, but please don't worry if that seems too much.  I am really looking forward to everyone taking part in this project - good publicity for both of us, so come and join in.

Back to the present time, it's Handmade Monday is it really a whole week since we last joined up for this?  Where on earth does the time go?  My make this week is another one of the gorgeous Moonlight Bay decoupage sheets - a lovely galleon on the high seas.  This will make a great card for a man - always hard to find a suitable card-topper.  I have lots of other Moonlight Bay decoupage sheets and will be posting the finished project on my blog over the next 2 - 3 weeks.  

Feet-up time as today (Sunday) has been spent being a nursemaid to cats and computers.  Don't forget to visit the other bloggers taking part in Handmade Monday - great posts and really great makes. 

See you on Wednesday.

Jill