On my bike

Tomorrow I am off to Stopnica, Poland, to check on the house and to come back with Stefan by car.
He has been going great guns, building a staircase for the first time in his life!  Nice job.
I have started one to one Polish classes which are making a huge difference. So many things remain a mystery (ever tried to get Polish grammar?) until you get the right teacher, who makes it simple!
I have continued with the back seat position re the work, however I can feel myself climbing slowly into the front again. Slowly, mind. Nothing too precipitous.
I will be putting together a package for WWF once I am back. The idea is they will market a new WWF collection of mine, and I will too, and we will see if we can drum up some business. I need to get out to find suitable shops to carry the paperweights and anything else. I just have to get on my bike!

Honest confessions

I've missed doing the blog a few times now. Missed in the sense not done it, not pined for it.  It is the time for a little of re-evaluation.
I took a weekend out last week and spent 3 days at a London hotel, Kensington Close Hotel, Ken. High St.  Stefan had gone to Poland to work on the house (stairs and the kitchen) and I needed some space from the parents.
So I had a neighbour check in each day to see they were still breathing and could find the food, and I escaped.
3 days alone, reading, walking, swimming in their pool AND a facial on the last day. Pretty good. I am very grateful I could do that, it was splendid luxury.   Now I am back.
The days are full with things like a new walking regime (hard and exhausting); a new series of 1-1 Polish lessons; taking care of parents as per, and sorting stuff. The house is full of stuff (crap, actually) that needs to be recycled, or thrown. That means daily trips to the Sally Army with books and clothes.
I am not making anything new.
If work comes, then good. But I am feeling ambivalent about it all. To be honest. I do not feel I have the time to invest, the years it could take waiting for it to catch on...... how long? Maybe I will feel differently if somebody actually commissions something, but till then there is too much else to do. Reading for example. Has anybody else out there discovered the wonders of A.C. Grayling?  And all the classics that must be read and read, again.   But I do need to get on my bike and find some shops that will take the paperweights at least SOMEBODY must want to stock them!

Delphine

My education at school was not fantastic. If I had had Latin, learning Polish would be very much easier.... so I am learning the genitive case at this late stage. But it can be done, no biggy.
So I will leave it at that. Maybe next week there will be more about 'work', maybe not. We shall see.

Exotic animals I never knew

IJL was well worth the visit, but I was wiped out! Piotr and I brainstormed after we estimated what jewellery was of the moment so watch this space.




Courtesy of Wikipedia, I have found from the International Union for Conservation of Nature, ICUN a few exotically named, and indeed exotic, examples from the following categories of extinction.

Extinct: gone

Blackfin cisco, fish; dusky seaside sparrow; Schomburgk's deer, native of Thailand

Extinct in the wild: captive individuals survive, but there is no free living, natural population.

Wyoming toad; Hawaiian crow; Père David's deer

Wyoming Toad

Critically endangered: faces an extremely high risk of extinction in the immediate future

Axolotl, Mexican walking fish; merganser, water fowl; gharial, crocodile

Axolotl

Endangered: faces a very high risk of extinction in the near future. Bonobo; pygmy chimpanzee dhole, Indian wild dog; Goliath frog, the largest known specimens can grow up to 33 cm (13 in) in length from snout to vent, and weighs up to 3 kg (7 lb)

Goliath Frog

Vulnerable: faces a high risk of extinction in the medium-term. Dugong, the only living representative of the once-diverse family Dugongidae, similar to a sea-cow; gaur, Indian bull; fossa, cat-like, carnivorous mammal endemic to Madagascar.

Dugong

Near threatened: may be considered threatened in the near future. Asian golden cat; blue-billed duck; white-eared pheasant

Least concern: no immediate threat to the survival of the species: brown rat, brown-throated sloth, common frog.  

Brown Throated Sloth

At least we can rest easy that this sloth, this rat and this frog will outlive us all.

Launch!

Thanks to Laura, who has dealt with the Gordian complexities of the internet over the last months admirably, we have done it. It is launched.
The drawings will soon turn into items (and a  lot clearer than these pencil notes) and there will be more pics.

 

Laura was on the telly last week, wearing her Bonnie pendant. She says:

'Why didn't I think of it - next week I am sending out the PR's and newsletter again and using Bonnie's pendant in the preamble in my email to say 'As seen on Channel Four's 'Dog's: Their Secret Lives' - Aggressive Dog's Session, Nash's owner, Laura...aired 26th August (available on 4OD until ....)' 
Bonnie was her previous family dog who she had for decades. This dog in the programme, Nash, is a little bit difficult (to put it mildly).

Bonnie

To International Jewellery show this weekend, at Olympia, IJL, to check it out. I will go with a young, ambitious Polish jeweller, Piotr, who has the sense to see he needs to expand into Europe. No money in Poland. He is preparing to launch himself at Inhorghenta, Munich, February next year (where I will share his stand).

He will see if he will come and show to IJL next year. We might do it together, who knows.

Keep bum on seat

Finally finally getting to the end of the massive publicity shove Laura and I have been doing (mostly Laura) newsletter, press releases and the website all to be launched at the same time. Takes a lot of prep. No way I could have done this without her, no way at all.  It (the baby has its own identity now, called ‘It’) will need constant attention but the worst must be over.

So, yesterday sat down to do some drawing after, I am ashamed to say, months. I must put the WWF collection together for Top Drawer, and then to give to them to show at the Olympia show, details to follow. Self imposed deadline but real enough. 

Need to make drawings of all the animals and to understand them before I work on the actual piece in gold. I started with the panda.

First day, had a terrible time with ADHD…. Anything will do to interrupt me and heaven knows there are enough things going on in this house.

2^nd day was tigers. They are murder, with all those stripes that are not stripes at all, but ‘random’ marks, for camouflage of course.

Half an hour into it and the phone rings. The police. Father was knocked over, nearby, on his way to getting the bus to swimming. He crosses the busy main road when the traffic stops for the lights, always at the same place. The crossing is further down and phased so it takes ages.

But he couldn’t see the bike, of course, and it knocked him over. Ambulance, the lot. It took 4 hours till I was sitting down at the desk again.

Today, looking forward to doing the blog and pressing on with the drawings. But dad’s leg wont work. Cant put any pressure on it….so: call doc to please come. She says we need an x-ray.  Fairly urgent as hip is damaged. Thing is, as soon as he is in bed, mother is helpless. So both need feeding, etc.  Oh joy.

Waiting for ambulance as I write.

But this is what I did get done and I will continue, if it kills me.

       

Thoughts on caring

It is a cool, damp London.
Last Saturday Stefan and I drove to the Red House Cone at Stourbridge, the glass centre, where I taught a class to six delightful students. It was run by Simon Bruntnell as part of his new venture up there. Excellent. What a lovely set up.
I have 2 students coming today, one of whom, M, came a few weeks ago and the poor dear had to be sent home.
My mother was having the vapours and we needed the ambulance etc and all hell was bursting forth. M was so good about it, and is back for another try today. Lets hope mother can hold it in till the end of the class.
It illustrates the struggle many of us carers have. We have to hang onto our lives, and not become subsumed into the caring stuff.

Mother and me c.1949

summer hols nearly over

Stefan and I have been in Poland since 6 July, and will return finally after a month.  The trip is coming to an end as I write, only 3 days to go and we leave for Warsaw (Stefan dentist); Vienna (quickie visit to my cousin, Stefan’s 1^st time to Austria); Garmisch Partenkirchen for 3 days to visit son and family, and finally London. It was not a conventional ‘holiday’.

This is the house. 100km from Krakow, Poland.

We now have a pavement and new rainwater pipes!

It is far enough along for us to sleep in, and cook, but is basic. Cement floors are difficult, and in the baking heat I take showers outside, in the mud patch, with the hose. Mud due to recent torrential rain.

But the visit has been very productive.  All sorts  of work have been done and continues.

Such progress has been made that I feel very much at home. Stefan’s  family as ever is most welcoming, and I have made a bit of a breakthrough with the language. Really nice at last not to feel totally outside it all.

Our first breakfast... exciting or what.

It took a while to shake off the bad conscience leaving the work behind, to say nothing of other domestic commitments, but in time I felt better. Laura and I have been keeping up a long distance dialogue. She too has had her adventures that had nothing to do with work, so we have both been dodging domestic events and sparse internet connections while finalizing the website and polishing the newsletter. Roaming charges are prohibitive, still, so communication when it works is precious. You certainly learn to be economical with the chat.

Once back there is spot of teaching in the Midlands, then I need to get stuck in well and good into the WWW collection, using the Fairmined gold leaf, and getting ready with anything new that is cooking for Top Drawer, mid September, Olympia.