Lucky Find books - "Moon Man" by Tomi Ungerer

I've been collecting illustrated children's books for a while and thought it would be nice to catalog them here. This lovely charity shop find is by one of my favourite illustrators, Tomi Ungerer. He has such a soft loose style and a gorgeous sense of colour ... mmm... makes me smile lots :)

Juggling friends

Second weekend of the convention ... my favourite year yet :)

Lucky Finds - French Happy Families card set

I've been wanting to start cataloging my vintage/charity-shop/ebay* finds for a while now but didn't know where to start. Then this lovely thing came in the post today and turned out to be the perfect piece to start with: found going for a song on Ebay; a vintage Air France Happy Families card game set with an aviation theme and the most gorgeous retro illustrations.

* My interests are usually either mid-century modernist, or illustration based (especially retro/vintage children's illustrated books).

Tandem tent

How to arrive at a juggling convention.

I am a juggling groupie. I can't do it to save my life, but I go along to juggling conventions/gatherings/festivals all the time. Why? Because Sunshine is a juggler/manipulator as are many of his friends. Who are all of course now my friends. There is proportionally (and I speak not just for myself here ...) far more socialising that goes on at one of these things, than there is any actual juggling. This is especially true at the annual Bristol Juggling Convention.

It is 9 days and we go for all or part of it every year. This year, like last, Sunshine has to work - he's a university lecturer and term starts this week. So, as we like to say, we are "bookending" the convention. We drove up to the field on Friday night after work with our tent and other gear. We convinced everyone that we weren't actualy there - it was just our luggage arriving (nod knowingly and touch side of nose...). Set up our tent, hung around a campfire, then drove home to our owm warm bed for the night. Saturday morning we set out again, but this time on Bramble the tandem. It was a gentle hill climb all the way there but it took us just under an hour and we managed to arrive properly in style.

Tandem tent

I'm not sure where most of Saturday went. More people arrived; lots of hugs and hellos and catching up was done; lots of campfire-boiled tea and coffee was drunk; much marveling was done at the many vintage and new (Airbus A380!) planes that flew overhead as part of an airshow being held nearby. We showed off Bramble and Sunshine made her a tent of her own (great as it rained all of Saturday night). I was too relaxed to take any more photos, spending most of my time sitting on folding chairs and yawning. After a wet night, and a damp morning; on Sunday we cycled Bramble back home via the Bristol Cycle Festival. What a great detour! Unfortunately - left the camera at the juggling festival so we have no proof that we saw at least 7 tandems (one of which was even dressed as a dinosaur!).

Had hot showers and a nap at home (the combination of cycling and the really relaxed atmosphere of the convention made us both very sleepy), then drove back to the convention for another evening of random silliness, tea and catching up with friends; before the 20minute drive back home.

Sunshine is back at work today - but hopefully we'll be back at a field in North Bristol (where our tent is still standing) sometime this coming Friday for another gentle weekend ;)

Happy birthday lovely laydeez...

Miss Delia's super yummy birthday cake.

Hanging out with my illustration coursemates and Sunshine's friends, I'm usually the one of the oldest, being in my mid-30s - not that anyone realises this. But in the span of last week and next week, 3 of my girl-friends have turned/ are turning 40, 40 and 48 - not that you'd notice they were older than me either. What do they have in common (and I think is their secret) ? Swing dancing! I've been dancing now for well over 12 years ... and I sure hope I can keep my youthfulness - like these ladies - in my 40s ...

Happy Birthday Miss K-Star; Miss Delia-Dee and Miss Suzanne-McG!

Even kite historians have a soft side ...

Today I mostly hung out at the Bristol Kite Festival (sans-Sunshine as he is away)... with our friend the Kite Historian,and his grand-daughter (and son and daughter-in-law too of course!)

All things start small...

This afternoon I watched this white cabbage butterfly laying eggs all over our (slightly overgrown) Nasturtium.

I have no worries though - the little green caterpillars devoured our small nasturtium last year - and yet it still managed to seed and spread itself like a lovely orange flowering weed all over one corner of our 'yarden' :)