There’s nothing like repetitive making for removing stress. These figure-of-eight sterling links are satisfying. Blood pressure drops as the wire is bent into loops and the chain builds steadily.  It’s like silvery yoga.

There’s been a design knocking around in my head for a couple of months. A collection of silver flowers, berries and nature finds placed around the hand-made chain, like a silver nature table.

Making the little nature-inspired charms is soothing too. My hands have made these shapes before, for pendants and earrings, so the movements are familiar.

A couple of new ones were inspired by Lynn’s nature table. I just needed one or two more ideas for tiny silver things to make. This is why blogland is truly brilliant. Thankyou Lynn. I loved firing the little acorn - it made quite a flame.

The best thing about this kind of relaxation is that when it’s finished there’s something to hold - something tangible that I’ve made. It’s shiny, which is always good.  I think I might add this necklace, or perhaps its cousin, to boost my collection at Primavera gallery.

Two days ago we heard there was to be a produce show in the next village this afternoon. Neither Mr P nor I had ever entered anything into a show before. i had my eye on the flower arrangement class. Mr P had a steely glint in his eye. He would enter his tomatoes. The little ones got excited about vegetable animals.

We did our research - there are rules you know. Tomato calyxes must be left on. Beans must not be trimmed. Flower stems must be of uniform length. Tricky stuff.

Letting the housework and washing go to pot, we beavered away at our entries this morning. We took it very seriously. Some of us a little too seriously if I’m honest. We took our entries of to the village hall and eyed up the competition.

Returning later we found there was a dog show before the results were revealed! We dashed off to pick up Hairy P. She had never been in a dog show before.

The fancy dressed entrants were first:

A hula girl.

A very, very reluctant schoolgirl with red gingham bobbles (incidentally, the same uniform as little P’s)

A canine Florence Nightingale. She must had an excellent bedside manner because she won.

Thw toy dog category was hotly contested. Obedience standards were high.

Hairy P won the waggiest tail category! How fabulous is that?

Next the doors were opened to reveal the results of the produce show. We were in suspense I tell you. Adrenaline was flowing.

Mr P won the tomato category! He was quietly triumphant (there were some very shiny, perfect-looking cherry tomatoes on a neighbouring plate)

Our lemon pig and chilli-and-squash-snail scooped second and third ( but if I’m honest there may have been some parental help with design and execution).

I was totally thrilled to win the flower arrangement category with my posy!

I was in a field of two entrants and I was told later that the judge was colour blind and that he thought all my flowers were blue but I was not downhearted. I won a prize for goodness sake!

What a brilliant day. I think we’re hooked.

Thankyou so much for your messages about little P going to school. She settled so well and the new little bits of routine - hair plaiting, start-rite shoe buckling, finding her coat peg, are just lovely. The most helpful part has been having her friends with her.

I cleared a drawer for her school uniform and found this photo.

It’s my Gran, Grandad, myself aged three and my sister aged just a few months in 1975 (a spot of evidence here for the hair issues to come). Finding this precious piece of history and sending little P off to school got me thinking about photos - you know, those images printed on shiny precious paper that aren’t so common nowadays. I got digging to see what I could find.

The same two sisters twenty odd years later.

A duffle-coated, three-year old Mr P in 1973.

1982, and I had a special friend called Mr Glockenspiel. We played at the Liverpool Philharmonic, me and Mr G (along with about a hundred other children and a couple of Mr G’s cousins).

1997. Is that really me? Where is Mr G?

Someone or other by the side of Lake WIndermere in a tiara she made in 2001 (it’s ten years next year).

This is the only digital image in the post but it’s a precious one.

It’s April 2008, I’m 36 weeks pregnant with the littlest P, and the day after this picture was taken I wrote my first blogpost. Even more special is the fact that I’m making jewellery - there are so few pictures of me doing this that I think I’ll squirrel this one away in a separate file. I’m enjoying the little posy I’ve picked too - I’m trying not to yearn for aqualegias and bluebells at the moment.

Oof, I enjoyed that. It’s got me curious though - I want to see your old photos.

Having been rather nervous for several weeks, eldest P woke excitedly this morning and we had breakfast round the dining room table. Usually we just grab it as we can but I thought a new ritual of family breakfast would help to ease her into the new school routine.

She opened a card or two and a couple of little presents. She got dressed. I plaited her hair. She was delighted with her new bobbles - a thoughtful present from Gina. (Thanks again Gina - as you can see, they’re perfect).

She had a wobble when she had to leave Monkey - her sidekick since she was six months old. She settled him down with a picnic of flowery buttons. I plan to take a picture of him, laminate it and put it in her new pencilcase. I should have thought of this earlier.

We drove to school. She was excited to find her peg and drawer. She settled to sticking sequins onto a nametag. Three of her friends from preschool sat round the table with her. She seemed content. We said goodbye. The settling-in programme the school had organised at the end of last term has paid off. That was it. There were no tears - I couldn’t quite believe it. The relief was huge!

Afternoon nap last week

And how am I? I’d been keeping the slight sadness in a box and fending it off with housework and baking. I got it all out last night. I had to dig out the easy viewing DVDs and a couple of tissues. I might need a spot of chocolate this morning but I’m holding it together.

Some of the shapes made by the shadows of the jungly garden on the walls have surprised me whilst I’ve been taking these light pictures. They wouldn’t look out of place on a skirt or even a curtain. They might also find their way in some form into some future silver pieces.

Clematis, hollyhock, lychnis, Russian sage, rose and viburnum are responsible for most of these shadows. I photographed shadows of aqualegia seedheads outside early in the morning against the pink.I’d love this design round the hem of a dress.

Changes that are rather daunting are coming next week and stopping to take these photos in amongst the mad dash has been a helpful distraction.

Thankyou to Ali who’s introduced me to a new word - chiascuro, and who has joined in, taking pictures of her beautiful door lights, and to Trash who shot shadows in a newly decorated bedroom.

I am about to write a post about a wall. Bear with me.

This is a wall with some history. It used to be the outer wall of an old farmhouse, part of which makes up half of our cottage. The farmhouse was a patchwork of a building and we’re not sure how old it might have been. The window in Miss P1’s room has been dated to the mid 1700s but the knobbly logs and branches cobbled together with wooden pegs in the roof space might speak of something much earlier. There are hints of another, lower roof apex in eldest’s bedroom wall. Was this a medieval longhouse?

The portion of the cottage beyond the wall was added in around 1850. The little hole in the wall is my favourite spot in the house.

What was it? A salt hole? A teeny window, blocked off when the 1850 ‘extension’ was added? The village used to be a port. Clunch was shipped out from the middle ages via a series of Roman lodes and ditches. Some of the Reach clunch was used to build Cambridge University colleges. There were fourteen inns here when the port was at its busiest, not all of which were legal.

I like to think this was a tiny window used to keep watch for the constabulary whilst the room was used as an illicit alehouse.

The shadows that fall here are some of the most beautiful in the house. When I’ve been photographing the patterns of light and shade I keep being drawn back to this small place, not least because of its historical riddle.