Easter? Pah!

I don't like Easter much.  Sure, the chocolate's nice but it's always overpriced at this time of the year, and since I'm a Trophy Wife and don't 'work', the long weekend break doesn't really mean much.  But it still manages to feel like four days in a row of wet Sundays in the 1970s when you were a teenager and NOTHING EVER HAPPENED.  Somehow, though, there's still this expectation that a fuss has to be made, or families have to meet up, or  you have to go out somewhere.  I suppose it might have been different if my reproductive system had had any intention of co-operating and had managed to push out live kids rather than dead embryos, then I would probably have got right into the whole Easter Egg Hunt and decorating eggs malarkey, but when it's just the two of us, frankly, what's the point?

Yes, I have removed my giant hat of smug and replaced it with the cloche of curmudgeon.

It was also our 14th wedding anniversary yesterday, and I had, in my head, before it arrived, the germ of a blog posting about our wedding in Las Vegas (as I'm trying to persuade sas to run away there to tie the knot).  There'd be pictures including an entire coachload of oriental (possibly Malaysian or Thai) tourists who arrived as we were having photos taken and whom we invited to join us for a couple of pictures.  But I changed my mind.  Perhaps next year.

Of possible more interest to you (or possibly not), my valiant readers, is the fact that a couple of weeks ago, due to enormous arses having constantly been plonked in it now for around 15 years, one of the springs in our biggest sofa gave up the ghost, went 'PER-TWANG' and shot the spiky end through the bottom.  There then followed days of debate about what to do.  TLH was leaning towards getting a new one, but I was loathe to spend the money on that when it could be spent on much more interesting and fun ventures such as holidays abroad or, at the very least, more wine.  It had been an expensive sofa at the time so we decided to at least try and have a look to see if we could do any kind of repair ourselves, or if it would have to go to an upholsterer or, indeed, have to be replaced.  We also don't really like the colour of them anymore.  Terracotta was a very popular colour back in the mid-90s but it just looks dated now.  I chuck throws over them.  In the picture below you can see in the bottom left corner the edge of the smaller sofa which has a dark brown throw over it.  I put lavender ones on in summer.  God, this is scintillating stuff....

So, yesterday, TLH tipped it on its back and began to remove the underneath bit (click on all the pictures to make them bigger):

Once again, as you can see, I couldn't be arsed to tidy up just for the sake of the pictures.  The eagle-eyed among you may spot a lone Lindt Golden Bunny on my table (the one on the right with the floral stash bag of wool on the floor in front of it). This is my one recognition of it being Easter - I sent TLH out to get Easter Eggs last Saturday and he came back with Golden Bunnies. I rather like the little golden bell on the collar around its neck, but girl cat Pepper likes it even more.  Anyway, I digress.

When we could see underneath better, this is what we saw:

These long springs are called Serpentine springs and you can see where one has just snapped through metal fatigue (from enormous arses).  We did some research online and it seems you can replace them but it looks like you have to deconstruct the sofa to get to the frame where they're bolted on.  Bugger.

TLH went away and pondered a bit, had a rummage through his manly detritus in the garage and found a couple of angle-thingies that he bolted to the spring to hold it together.  Success - TLH really is The Lord of the Darn Settee! Although we'll see how long it lasts.

In other news, I'm very pleased with a fibula that I was commissioned to make for the lovely Completely Alienne.  Fibulae, as I mentioned in a post back in February, are an Ancient Roman design that directly led to our safety pin.  Ms Alienne wanted one with darkish green beads but I didn't have anything that exactly fit requirements, but I did have some really rather lovely Fluorite beads that would work.  I love Fluorite:

  (pic from Shutterstock - http://www.faqs.org/photo-dict/phrase/3902/fluorite.html)

It combines all my favourite colours in one stone - green to purple with shades of pink, lavender and blue in there too.

I found three large, smooth, barrel-shaped beads that would work, a purply one, a greeny one and one to go in the middle that had both colours in it.  I then added clear Swarovski Crystals in between the beads but found that when I then bent the wire up to make the catch, the pressure caused the crystals to flake so that was no good.  But I wanted something clear and light catching, and remembered I had a stash of very beautiful Ice Quartz tumbled chips that were quite large and had holes that were big enough to take the wire, so I added those instead and it worked a treat.  Made the catch, then did the curves and the swirl at the end.  I wanted to add a suitable dangle but the Fluorite beads were too big, and the swarovski crystals I had weren't the right colour.  A small stack of the Ice Quartz chips might have worked but my eye fell on the star-shaped swarovski crystals that I use to hang below my Crescent Moon suncatchers, which were perfect.  So I wired up a bail for one, put a jumpring through the middle of the swirl and attached the two with a small length of sterling silver chain.  Lovely.

I took some photos to send to Ms Alienne to ensure it was what she was after:

I took the second one to show Ms Alienne the size of the finished brooch.  Please avert your gaze from the enormous matronly bosom shelf and focus on the lovely, lovely, brooch. I think it works really well.  If you want one of your own, just drop me a mail or visit my jewellery website.

Finally, there may be some readers out there who wiled away great tracts of their misspent youth attending gigs at Guildford Civic Hall, and who no longer live in the area.  After years of wrangling by Guildford Borough Council, a couple of years ago the old Civic Hall was demolished and it's now being replaced with another venue (I think they're including a hotel in there as well).  I was in the area last week so took a couple of photos to show TLH and wondered if you might like to see progress.  They're not that exciting, it just more of an historical record really:

The Civic always used to be on the gig circuit for all those great bands in the 70s and 80s.  I can't recall how many bands I've seen there but it includes (from early days when I was very young) Mud, Kursaal Flyers, Bauhaus, Echo and the Bunnymen, The Vapors, The Jam, Lena Lovich, The Buzzcocks, The Damned, The Cramps, The Police (who were the support act to The Cramps!), Toyah, Penetration - I'm sure there were many others.  At one time it seemed there was a band on there I wanted to see every week, but then they stopped coming and then it eventually closed.  Shame, really.

Anyway, this has been a sort of rambling, pointless post, just a bit of catch up really.

Hope you've all enjoyed your Easter more than I have!!!