Ahhh - thanks guys !!

Thank you all so much for your lovely comments and "shed envy" !!

I found out that I was featured on a website called http://www.shedworking.co.uk/ the other day and from that, was contacted by http://www.readersheds.co.uk/ and asked to submit photos to their site for inclusion in their "shed of the year" award which is apparently judged by Sarah Beeney (of Property Ladder fame). How exciting !! I have to admit now that I have become slightly obsessed with "shedworking" and may even admit to being a "sheddie". In my extensive (!) research of shedworking I came across this lady - can you believe she covered her shed in fabric ?? Probably not very practical, but what a cool idea. I don't think my new shedquarters (as Minky Magic commented in the last post) will get to be covered in fabric, but things are certainly starting to come together.

Sunday afternoon saw me (and what seemed like a million other people) traipsing around Ikea. After one of the ever so helpful Ikea staff informed me that I couldn't actually order all the stuff I wanted and told me that I would have to load it all onto my trolley (I'm on my own), pay for it at the checkout and then take it all to customer services and pay £85 for it to be delivered (I live about 15 miles from Ikea), I gave that up as a bad job and came home empty handed.

However, once I got home I decided to start painting the inside of the studio. I was in there until 10.30pm white "washing" the walls (as Ana suggested last time). So the grain of the wood still shows through and you still get that shabby chic log cabin look, but without all the natural pine colour. ( I know Richard - I'm sorry, but I didn't think I'd be able to live with all that wood.) I really can't face doing the mezzanines or ceiling though, so they will stay as they are.

I managed to get the whole of the back wall done on Sunday and then spent Tuesday doing some more - that strange man is my Dad very kindly painting the window frames for me - thanks Dad! That strange child is my daughter showing me her ballet and that strange lady is me, showing off how lovely bright colours look against a white background. You see, I can't even have a plain black jacket - it had to be lime green !!

Yesterday Paul worked from home so we borrowed a van and quickly went to Ikea (again) and this time, had a far more successful trip.

So far, the Expedit has been constructed and manouvered into place (boy - that thing's heavy !!)
and the 3 Lack bookcases, 2 Lack bookshelves, 1 x desk lamp, 2 x chairs (which will duly be painted - 1 pink and 1 blue), 1 x stepstool (so that I can reach the sweetie jars on the top shelves), 1 x filing cabinet (to keep all my packing supplies in) and 3 floating shelves (just because I've always wanted some of them and they don't "go" in our 250 year old farmhouse !) are all waiting patiently in their boxes for their turn to be put together.

Hopefully, the carpenter is coming tomorrow to make the decking step into the studio because at the moment there is a huge drop down onto the grass and I can't be doing with that ! And I'm hoping that he will also bring the samples for my workbench so that I can decide for sure which one I want. The electrician is on the case with a storage heater because it's a bit nippy down there at the moment and I'm hoping that both the workbench and heater will be done next week and then ...................................................... I CAN MOVE IN !!!

I'm getting butterflies in my stomach just thinking about it . Sadly, I found out today that my huge felt supplies delivery is sitting at Stansted Airport waiting to be released by customs. Apparently my supplier forgot to include the "Certificate of Origin" with the boxes and our lovely customs people won't, therefore, release the boxes until they receive the original certificate (that means they won't accept a faxed or emailed copy). So all of my lovely shelves are likely to stay a little bit empty until my delivery arrives - I am VERY CROSS !

But that's enough from me for the moment. I've had loads of deliveries of new stock, but with all the excitement of the studio, haven't been able to tell you about them. But if you click here, you'll see them at the top of the "Just Arrived" section. There's some photos of some of the new stock over there ... on the left of the page. More new stock is waiting to be photographed and I will try and show you photos next time. And to just totally fill what little space I have left in my brain, whilst I was painting the studio I had rather a lot of ideas popping into my head for new Blooming Felt kits, so I'm hoping they will come to fruition soon as well.

Until next time xx