Lots of little things I've been wanting to add here, and it just hasn't happened. Off to Germany tomorrow to visit Deborah (!!!!), so have been packing, watering the plants (with a bit of help from the rain:)) etc in my usual scatty fashion. Yesterday I cycled up to Blenheim as there was an art/design/food festival there this weekend. What a glorious day it was! Lots of sunshine and an immaculate sky. Happy people everywhere: families of all sizes and descriptions, elderly ladies and gentlemen, lovers and somewhere behind the hundreds of windows and pillars, a wedding party. Had to leave a little earlier than I would have liked to go to 'textiles for peace' at the community centre - felting this week! I've never tried it before, really good fun. Came away with sterile hands from all the soapy rubbing. Today a good friend had her first finals exam - odd how mine finished a year ago tomorrow. It feels both immediate and so remote, and I find myself both eager to move on and looking back nostalgically to the days of endless reading and essay writing with a sense that I never quite finished anything. Four essays perhaps, maybe five. The puppets are almost done. I think I'll miss them - will have to find a new project to keep my busy:)

I'm having trouble keeping up with time these days! Exactly a year ago, I was almost finished with my finals, an odd thought. Need more mental breathers, moments of reflection, to catch up a bit. School's out for half term as of yesterday, so I'm looking forward to a whole week of anything and everything and nothing. Yesterday I managed to fall asleep during PE, Geography, lunch and Maths... not a great record. I'm going to Germany on Tuesday to visit Deborah! Exciting. Before then I need to more or less finish the Hamlet puppets - fun, but it's so beautiful outside that it seems a shame to be sitting in here.
I went to see an exhibition - mostly textiles - at the museum in Woodstock: such beautiful things!!! Made my fingers itch and made me feel a lot better about my large and growing hoard of fabric etc.
Right, I think I'll finish the other shoe...

I seem to be in a rather happy state of mind these days, for no particular reason. Everything is so green and generous and full of life, and it rubs off on me! I spend at least eight hours on my bike each week, usually hedged in by hawthorn and Queen Anne's Lace, and even in the rain (perhaps, especially in the rain!) it's absolutely lovely. Refreshing. These thoughts were passing through my mind at a leisurely pace on the way to work this morning, and I thought I'd better write it down, take stock, place a wee marker here. Work is good. Friends are plentiful, if scattered and sporadic. The birds sing outside my window. The play seems to have been a success, including the costumes which caused me a certain amount of anxiety... Plenty of things to improve on, of course, but that is how it should be, or at least, how it always will be.

The website for the play I've been doing some costumes for over the past few weeks, months...

http://www.marecheracelebration.org/SBBK.html

I just rather recklessly (or so it felt) bought train tickets to Strasburg to visit Deborah Lanz! Two weeks tomorrow!

A quick line or two before bed - a simple necessessity after my first experience of an 'alley cat' (a bicycle treasure hunt following clues round Oxford). Superduperfun. The Oxford Cycle Workshop organised a cycle festival today, including a bicycle bell orchestra, a showing of Belleville Rendezvous, bicycle polo and a puncture-mending competition! I missed a lot of it, but a happy thought all the same. I did the last odds and ends for the costumes of a play that starts tomorrow. It's been going on for a fair while now, so I'm looking forward to having something new to work on:) I've been meaning to give the garden some tlc for months (!), but for some reason it just hasn't happened. Today I saw that the pink rose had blown over and needed tying up, so did that in the dying light tonight. It looks a lot airier now, and I feel a bit more inspired:) Let's see how long it lasts.