If you follow me on Twitter, you got a sneak peak of this yesterday, but I’ve made a rainbow out of my Lamy fountain pens!

Earlier this week, I bought the Limited Edition 2012 green Lamy I mentioned earlier in the year.

Here it is, inked with the standard Lamy blue cartridge you receive with pen purchases.  I will eventually ink it with J.Herbin Lie de The.

Archie, thief of all that moves and glitters, didn’t take long to play with it herself.  You can’t leave anything light out in this house, because if it can be moved it will be flicked and stolen!

After buying the green Lamy, I realised that I needed a yellow Lamy in order to complete my collection.  Tsk tsk.  To use another food slogan, Once you pop you can’t stop…

So, after receiving the yellow Lamy yesterday from The Paperie (excellent service, as ever!), here’s my rainbow:

And my personal fave shot…

It’s the simple things in life!  German engineering at its best.

Have a colourful Friday!

I’ve read quite a few blog posts recently about being careful about wallet theft, and the ensuing nightmare such thefts cause. This post is inspired by the post on Get Rich Slowly.

I’ve never personally been a victim of serious theft. I had my mobile stolen when I was a teenager, but apart from the financial impact (I’d only had it a day and it was top of the line – I’d bought it with my part-time wages!), it wasn’t that traumatic. My phone company had blocked the phone within an hour of me reporting the theft and all that was left was to get a new phone.

Nowadays, though, my wallet is a positive cornucopia of information! As is my phone. I think I’d be more distraught with the theft of my phone, but Apple solved that problem with their nifty software for wiping a phone (or iPad) memory remotely. Thanks, Apple!

So, back to my wallet. I can’t have that wiped remotely (yet – hurry up, technology!). After looking at my purse, I’ve decided that I’m stupid to carry so much of my personal stuff around with me! I have a large pink purse full of library cards, loyalty cards, medical and identity cards, business cards, membership cards, credit cards… This for a person who rarely goes shopping, buys most items through Amazon, uses her library’s online facilities and hasn’t gone abroad for three years! I cannot think of a situation where I would have to prove beyond a doubt that I’m a Fellow of the Geological Society on pain of death, so why do I carry the identity card with me??

In the UK, you don’t have to carry identification with you. If you get stopped by the police for whatever reason, you have 24 hours to visit a police station with some ID. The only reason you’d probably like ID on you is in case you get in an accident, so the lovely hospital that treats you can get access to your medical records. Unless you want to be hardcore and tattoo your name and medical details on your arm for them to find… However, in these circumstances, a paramedic will probably just identify you by the name on your credit cards if he has to.

So, I’ve decided to move to a small purse and only carry the essentials with me daily. I can carry a full purse on proper shopping trips. The purse I’m switching to (on the left, above) is from Etsy, from a seller called Green Grass. I love all her items, go check them out!

Here’s what I now have for daily use:

I have a credit card, a small penknife and some loose change. I’d recommend more change, but I’m all out at the moment! I will also point out that if you get pulled over by the police with that purse then a lack of ID is going to be the least of your concerns. That penknife is 3mm (that’s right, 3mm!!) over the legal limit! Insane! I assume the law in Switzerland permits the carrying of larger knives, otherwise it seems a bit stupid for a manufacturer to make blades that are 3mm over the legal size for “concealment” (I’ve never tested this theory, but I assume keeping a knife in a purse counts as concealment of a weapon). Anyhow, the knife is for use at the allotment and cutting loose threads etc. I have no criminal intent!

This is the purse when it’s filled:

Nice and small and compact! And no danger of identity theft if it’s stolen!

What size is your purse? Maybe it’s time to downsize!

Last Sunday, the sun decided to shine for a whole day (with a cold wind, mind!), and we went to the allotment. We’ve not been for a few weeks, and due to the heavy rains in April we’re behind with quite a lot of our work. When we arrived at the allotment, there were a lot of people there also making the most of the weather.

My Mother set to planting peas and beans, and Julia (the person we share the allotment with) went to work on the new strawberry plants. I cleared an area of weeds for the new strawberry patch.

Here’s a before pic:

Last year this area had parsnips on it – how did it get so unmangeable in 6 months?!

After I’d cleared half the area, we were ready to put the new strawberry plants in:

Strawberry plants only produce fruit for a few years, so you need to plan ahead and start new plants so as not to lose any crop. These babies were grown on from the plants in our current patch. This means that for this year we’ll have two strawberry patches – the old one and the new one. We’re clear the old one at the end of the year, but the plants are flowering so they’ll stay for now!

Hopefully we’ll get lots of strawberries (if it stops raining daily!) and I can eat them all! I love strawberries!

Link tag Tuesday is a collection of webpages that I’ve been looking at this week.  You can view previous Link tag Tuesdays here.

• The May Carnival of Pens is here!  Go and check it out on Okami’s blog!
• I love these cross-stitch designs recently shared on How About Orange.  I haven’t cross-stitched since I was a child, but these patterns have me tempted to start again!
• 25 ways to get motivated today.  I need to re-read this post.  I had some news I didn’t want today, and I’m feeling very unmotivated right now!  I was going to skip writing Link tag Tuesday, but I’ve made myself do it whilst listening to early 00s music to cheer myself up (my teenage years!)!
• This list made me laugh a lot: The 35 greatest animal photobombers of all time!  Number 3 is my favourite I think.

That’s it for this week I’m afraid!  I’ve not been reading much on the web this week again, as I’ve been a busy little bee in the garden and crocheting!

Happy Tuesday!

Last week I decided to make some cashew butter. I’ve seen quite a few references to it in blogger land, and I wanted to see how easy it was to make.

It turns out that it’s very easy to make! I followed the recipe from nuts.com (not a porn site!). My supermarket sells unsalted cashews so it wasn’t difficult to get hold of the ingredients. A health food store should stock them if you’re having problems finding them.

It takes about 10-15 mins to whizz up the cashews into a paste. Then it takes about 5 seconds to eat! It’s got a milder nutty flavour than peanut butter. It’s very nice on toasted bagels.

I’m not sure it’s more cost efficient to make your own: I can buy organic peanut butter at my supermarket for 60p less than I can buy unsalted cashews, but it was fun to make my own and see how easy it was. I’m going to try again with some other nuts to see what other nut butters taste like.

I recently started learning foundational hand, which is a style of calligraphy.  It involves lots of repetitive letter-writing, but hopefully I will get better soon!

I don’t know what size calligraphy nib I’m using – it’s one I pinched from my Mother’s calligraphy nib collection.  I’m using it with J.Herbin’s 1670 Rouge Hematite.

The pen is a Parker Vector.  I have quite a few Parker Vector pens.  They’re very common in UK stationery stores, and they’re a hard-working little fountain pen!

I haven’t got the hang of capital letters yet, so at the moment everything is written in lowercase!

I’ve just got a short post for you today, as I wanted to show you how my crochet blanket for the Children of Chernobyl is progressing.

This is the detail of the pattern (lime and blue stripes).  I called it yellow originally, but the wool is definitely more lime than yellow!  I’ve done two blue stripes and one lime stripe so far.  Almost half way there!

I will show you the completed blanket when it’s done.  I have to have finished it by the beginning of June!

I have quite a few crochet projects on the go at the moment (three, all blankets, and a pattern for a cowl that I’m getting twitchy to start!).  One of the blankets I’ve started is with granny squares.  Considering how prevalent these squares are, it might seem odd that I’ve never actually crocheted granny squares before.  They always seemed complicated, so I stuck with my own patterns that I could understand.  However, granny squares are actually quite easy.  I’m left-handed, so it took a little trial and error for me to get started, and I tested a few patterns before I found one that was helpful.  The pattern I ended up following is from Craft Stylish.  As far as I’m concerned, this is the only one I sampled that included every step of the process.  It’s annoying how many bloggers give instructions without actually testing them to make sure they work!

Once I’d made a couple of squares, I’d got the hang of the pattern and I don’t need to follow instructions any more.  Granny squares are actually as simple as plain crochet patterns, and I would recommend you try them.

For joining your squares together, I follow the instructions from The Sunroom.  If you’re left-handed, start left to right instead of right to left as suggested in the instructions.  This stitching works for any squares you’re joining together – you can even use it for knitted squares if you like!  It’s much neater than whip stitch, and quicker to do.

Have you got any craft projects started?

Link tag Tuesday is a collection of webpages that I’ve been looking at this week.  You can view previous Link tag Tuesdays here.

• Let’s start today’s post by being more positive!  Wisebread did a post on how to become a more positive person.  If you’re feeling a bit sad at the moment, maybe it will help.  If you’re interested in the Cherokee legend about the two wolves, there’s a nice write-up of it on this site.
• The Gadgeteer did a post back in January about starting new journals.  I’m very late sharing it, but then I’m 20 pages away from starting a new journal so it’s still relevant!  The post is quite epic – it’s a detailed look at digital and analogue journalling, and it’s a really interesting read.
• This week I have some science to share with you!  10 stubborn body myths that just won’t die!  It’s a look at common myths in our society, and why they are factually incorrect.  Proven by science!  I particularly like the one about reading in dim light ruining your eyes.  My eyes used to be fine, but as a teenager I suddenly needed glasses and I was convinced it was because I read by torchlight every night!  Now I know that I just have faulty eyes!  Such is life!
• The Rowdy Kitten did a post a while back on 8 simple tips to overcome loneliness.  I know this is a problem a lot of people struggle with so I thought I’d share the link for those of you feeling lonely.  Personally, it’s not something I have a problem with.  I mostly like my own company and I choose to be alone most of the time.  I chat on the internet and for me that’s enough socialising!  However, I still have close friends and my sister to call when I feel like talking and doing things.
• This comic amused me.  I absolutely love the second section – meanwhile, in a parallel universe…

It’s a short one this week, as I have mostly been playing with my new camera lens and crocheting!  Happy Tuesday!

I bought a new camera lens last week and it arrived yesterday.  I am so excited!  Here are the first photos I’ve taken with it.  A robin graciously decided to pose for me in the garden.

I’ve also started using PicMonkey for photo editing.  It’s a free online editing program, and it’s the best of all the programmes I’ve used to date.

Have a lovely Sunday!