Nasty Norton Nincompoops

I have steam coming out of the ears as we have spent all morning trying to renew our subscription to Norton for our anti-virus, security thingy. 'Click here to renew' it said beguilingly and, trusting little souls, we did. I won't bore you with the details, suffice to say that they have taken our money (that part was easy) but the renewal code they gave us keeps being rejected. Then they said turn Norton off. You've guessed it - it wouldn't turn on again. Eventually sorted that out and now we wait for the email from the helpline (please allow 2 days for us to respond). Anyone know a better way? I bet the Mac fans are smirking!

Barbara - not much in Bournemouth itself but there is a Hobbycraft at Longham (near Ferndown, north of Bournemouth) which is quite good for paper and beads. In Bournemouth you'll find Fabricland which is a good source of cheap felt, velvet, organza etc.

Aussie Jo - I like the trainee shopper. Clive would be with your husband on the clothes front - Claire used to say to me, on shopping trips, 'Shall we buy him a jumper and ruin his day'.

Daniela - good to hear from you. You do such lovely work - I especially like your monoprints on your blog.

Chrissythreads - you must get into walnut inks. Just buy the basic crystals and then add food colouring to get a few different colours going. Experiment; red gives a good terracotta and blue goes green.

The shopping was good on Sunday and the best thing to do on such a wet day. I bought a copy of Belle Armoire, as someone told me they had a good review of Stitch, Dissolve, Distort. It was good, but described Val as 'the author of several craft books' and me as the embroidery expert. She would not have been amused.

In Starbucks they were giving away lovely, crumpled, printed tissue paper. Oh what a dilemma - how much can you decently take? Would anyone else appreciate it as much as me?

Here is a piece of it, bonded to Vilene and waiting for the ink and bleach to hit it. What a good freebie.

I'm glad you all liked the Shopping piece. I'm working myself up to a new big piece but need to work through a lot of design stuff. I usually work on several themes at the same time (recent ones have been Icons and Fruit) but feel the need of a new direction. Clive gave me a super book for my birthday - Return to Chauvet Cave. All about cave painting in southern France and very inspirational. Looks good for the inky stuff - watch this space.