Weather with you

The weather here in Oxfordshire is being really strange of late, when I go out I don't know what to wear as I have absolutely no idea what weather is coming. This was perfectly illustrated this morning, before I got up it was a torrential downpour but this afternoon when I was doing some very necessary digging putting in the redcurrant which I just didn't have the strength to dig a hole for the other day, see rain isn't all bad) it was gorgeous. We have also had quite strong winds to contend with, I'm still fighting off my cold s I'm not enjoying these very much but the countryfile has predicted that these will drop before the end of next week. Hurrah.

Yesterday despite the weather refusing to make up its mind we hit the charity shops of Abingdon. There are many charity shops around here and most are an absolute goldmine as its quite an affluent are and some really awesome stuff ends up being donated. Amongst my haul was a vintage book on beekeeping, its leather bound with marbled edging, as well as being (no pun intended) beautiful, I'm also very interested to hear what old advice it will give me and see if apiary has moved on that much). I also found a green man face/mask , although he has a little chip taken out of him his eyes are so expressive, he will join my cast of other masks/green men on the stairs. I also got a fantastic book which contains poems/tunes and recipes for the various events throughout the year. A very good haul indeed. Adam was with me and he picked up Suzanna Clark's excellent Jonathan strange & Mr Norrell (which I think he will enjoy muchly as its brilliant).

I was awake pretty early on Saturday morning despite being awake till 1am the previous night at a friends leaving work party. It was however well worth the effort as I had an appointment to meet Claire from the Wallingford players. We were meeting to discuss the possibility in me lending a hand with the costumes for their next production, Peter Pan. Claire had mentioned to me some time ago that she was thinking of letting have a go at the costume for Captain Hook, and sure enough that was what was decided. I'd done some idea drawings, some research and a mood board and we compared these with the director original sketches. We managed to find a pattern in the fabulous Mason's fabric store (sadly though we've had to order it so I can't start work on it just yet) and we bought the material for the jacket (we guesstimated the amount as alas we had no pattern, I hope its enough). The pattern should be arriving sometime this week & I'll get to work on it as soon as I can (things are going to get hectic round here, I'm looking after some neighbours cats as well as Trish's chickens AND I'm out of the office for 2 days so that will make work deadline's even tighter. This morning Trish & I hit the garden centre's, I swear I was only going for some catus compost as I'm trying to breed from some of my current crop, but I ended up bring several new types home with me (they were really just too bargainous! Right should probably get an earlish night so I can tackle work with full force tomorrow. Will write again as soon as I can, have just looked at my diary and its looking like a film tomorrow night and I'm going to see Patrick Wolf on Tuesday (I'm so excited!).