A Very Wet Christmas Ahead

Will It Ever Stop ?

   What a few weeks we have had here in the fens, rain, rain and yet more rain, this morning we again wake to the sound of rain lashing down over the lands of East Anglia, dyke's are full, fields are under water and water meadows are, well just a inland sea for as far as the eye can see, so all in all one very wet Christmas it will be.
   For us a quiet Christmas is in one way a very welcome one, a day or so off work  (tho I'm sure I'll still find something to do in the barn), but in another way I wish it was a family Christmas, holding a nice family get together like those when we were kids would be a special way to spend the festive season, uncles and aunts sitting telling tales of Christmas's past and kids playing with new toys, to sit and watch this happen again would make this bead maker a happy one.
   But this year those dreams still lay a year or two away and it's just time to recharge the batteries, today I'm sorting beads in my etsy store and adding more new sets, a good tidy up is needed which is becoming a regular job for me this time of year.
   It's funny really, I've never been the sort of person who can just sit around at Christmas, I can't spend hours watching tv and eating, I guess I still carry that excited little child around with me who loves Christmas so much and although it's not happening for us at the moment, he still wants to run around opening gifts and wants to smell that cigar smoke as uncles sit chatting about the past year, he wants to watch his mum making Christmas sweets and I think most of all he wants to be out riding that new chopper bike around the lanes of Ashwell again with that huge smile on his face, maybe that's why the many Christmas films just don't do it for me.
   Well, I have had a little fun baking gluten free sausage rolls and mince pies this year, so one up on last year and even if I say so myself they taste ok. I remember the first gluten free pastry I made in the summer, boy was it hard, I made a few jam tarts and I swear if you had dropped one it would have cracked any kitchen floor tile, but now I really have managed to produce soft buttery pastry that I'd be happy to serve to any visitor.
   I have lots of clay ideas to try this holiday and have lots of mugs awaiting glaze as I write, I even have my first teapot sitting drying, god knows how it will look when finished, but it's all a new experience and one that I'm enjoying.
   Well I guess I better get these beads listed and sorted, then I need to get my work bench in the barn in a more tidy state, how I get it into such a mess I'll never know, glass ends everywhere, tools and trial beads all over the shop and reams of paper with bead idea scribbled on, oh for the life of a bead maker.