✮ Wishlist

As promised, in lieu of seven interesting facts, here are seven things on my wishlist.  Thanks again to Faith for the Versatile Blogger award.

✮ Atelier Shinji Ginza 
I found this amazing jewellery designer on one of my recent Etsy trawls.  I love it all.  It's 'me' in jewellery form:

✮ Joules slipper socks

This one's a bit crazy, seeing as I just bought myself some new slippers last week (you remember the day when the weather warmed up?  It was that day) but these are definitely going on my 'list of things to drop hints about nearer to Christmas'.

✮ Pashley bike (with wicker basket, obviously...)

When I was small, my mum had a yellow Pashley tricycle with two seats on the back.  My brother and I used to sit on these seats like minor royalty and wave at people as my mum cycled through the lanes (we lived in the middle of the country, on a farm estate).  It was idyllic.  Just thinking about that makes me smile and also feel slightly sad, oddly.  I also had a friend who lived in Winchester (*sigh*) and who was a Goth - I thought she and her friends were the coolest thing ever.  They all had black Pashley bikes and used to ride off into the countryside on them and have picnics.  How cool is that??  Ever since then (blimey, that was the eighties) I have longed for one of these beauties so that I can waft elegantly around on it with freshly-cut flowers spilling from the basket.  Inexplicably, I always have a long skirt on in this daydream - clearly practicality doesn't come into it.

✮ Lloyd Loom chair

Classic.  I long for one of these.  It would have a crocheted cushion and blanket on it, natch.

✮ Paper Patisserie labels

How could your life not be enhanced by having some of these lying around?  My kids don't have the monopoly on sticking stickers all over the place, you know.

✮ Chickens
When we lived on the farm estate in the country, we had what can only be described as a menagerie.  We had three pigs (named, hilariously, by my dad: Pork Lunch, Bubble and Squeak.  Sicko.  Later on we had Oxford Sandy and Black pigs called Verbena and something else, which I can't for the life of me remember.)  A dog, Toby (a much more normal, but slightly less appropriate, name.)  Shetland sheep (including a psychopathic ram, named Rambo.  Natch)  And loads of mental hens.  I used to dread my mum asking me to feed them, because I was only short and when I walked in their rather extensive patch of garden, they used to mob me to get at the bucket of food.  I never twigged that bringing the bucket up so that they couldn't jump in it had exactly the opposite effect to the one I wanted - encouraging them, as it did, to jump even higher and even closer to my head.  Anyhoo, this hasn't scarred me too much and I now find myself longing for a couple of birds to scratch around in my garden slash football pitch.  I would have two hybrids to ensure a good supply of eggs, and one that laid blue eggs.  I don't know which variety this would be, but the idea of having fresh, blue eggs is completely thrilling.

✮ A bit of peace and quiet

Oh yes, as all of you with small children will appreciate - a bit of peace and quiet is a luxury and a rare occurrence.  Perversely, I know that when my children are all at school/university/away somewhere that isn't home, I will miss the noise and mayhem and long for them to come back.  But for the moment, surrounded as I am by high-volume activities, I will continue to yearn for half a day on my own, in which I can do as I please (probably crochet/blog-surf) without having bleeding eardrums.  Ho hum. x