My Month in Numbers 2014: March

Hello hello.

Unlike last time - where I bemoaned the lack of days in February - this month gifted me one extra!

The calendar I'd been referring to all month had the 31st all the way back up to the top of the grid next to the 1st ... and so I entirely forgot that today existed!

And seeing as it does in fact exist it means I get to round-up my month on its final day as usual ... and here it is.

Or should that be 'here is was'?

7 = the number of friends I spent 3.5 days with in a converted barn during a crafting/eating/laughing weekend in the countryside:

It really was very countryside-y too, so much so in fact that we backed on to a farm. And, when the direction of the wind changed ... the smell proved as much!

Apart from the country smells ... over the weekend I experienced ... my 1st piñata:

Its 6 pointed star was soooooo hard to break open that none of us could even dent it until ...

... until someone suggest we imagined it was someone we really didn't like and, funnily enough, it didn't last long after that.

Despite being in the heart of an area where many people go on walking holidays beating the life out of that piñata, wandering to the end of the drive to pick up a phone signal, and climbing the step up into the Land Cruiser to visit the craft shop was the nearest thing we got to exercise all weekend!

Crafty-wise, for me, it wasn't an especially productive weekend but I'd made up for that before the month ended ...

I spent 6 hours with 12 other people picking up mono-printing / gelli plate tips from Kate Crane last Saturday:

Photo courtesy of Kate Crane

As I don't have a gelli-plate I just wanted to try it out, play with techniques, maybe make some fun backgrounds for other projects and just spend some time listening to someone who knows what they're doing! After spending the day playing I'm a little bit tempted to get a plate of my own ... but you know what I'm like ... if I can't do it [without making a mother of a mess] on my knee, while sitting on the sofa watching TV ... I probably won't get round to doing it. Unless of course I book myself on to another full day workshop ...

3 = the number of little boys[about 6 or 7 yr old] who waited with impeccable patience and good manners in order not to photo-bomb that group shot above! They were about to whizz past us on their scooters when they realised that we were lining up to take the photo and they just stopped in their tracks and waited.  They were a credit to themselves, not moving, commenting or giggling until someone told them that is was OK to move on past us.

Which they did.

Slowly.

Cautiously.

I think they were perhaps a little bemused as to why on earth 12 grown-up women were standing outside proudly holding-up their paintings!!

7 = the number of new embossing folders I accrued in March. 

I say 'accrued' rather than 'bought' as I only actually paid for 6 of them.

No. I didn't steal the 7th! What do you take me for? [Is it the piñata bashing? Or the territory battle we had with The Quilters earlier in the month? Are you worried I've got myself in with the wrong crowd?]

No, the source of the 7th was Heather, one of my loyal shop customers who very, very, kindly sent me an embossing folder which wasn't her kind of thing but which she thought I might use. [For the record: I had no idea she was sending me it ... I honestly don't solicit embossing folders from all my customers!].

Anyway, Heather had posted her gift out to me on the 18th of March which was 1 day BEFORE I wrote the following on my Facebook page:

"I'm browsing for embossing folders - a task which I thought would be straightforward / quick / relatively cheap - until I saw all the *really* nice designs I've somehow overlooked before ... hexagons, birds, dandelions ... oh dear, this may turn out more expensive than I thought!"

Weird isn't it? That at the time I was writing that there was a surprise embossing folder already wending its way through the postal system for me! Well, the whole scenario left us both changed women. While Heather confessed to being slightly freaked out at the coincidence I on the other hand ... began to wonder about what else - embossing folders aside - I could draw into my life just by thinking about buying some for myself! Let me try ...

"I'm browsing for an amazing new dress / pair of cowboy boots / era of world peace ...."

I'll let you know if any of that drops on my doormat tomorrow.

Speaking of gifts ...

57 days after my birthday a friend [who I only see in person a few times a year] gave me not only this handsome chap she'd needle-felted for me:

 ... but this rather appropriate book too:

 Perfect no? It's full of useful/useless number-based facts such as:

And speaking of Shakespeare ... [almost as if I'd planned it like this ....] this leads me to my final statistics for March:

BBC Radio 4's Afternoon Drama spot really spoilt me!  As I had 0 hours of work on campus in March [hey, what can you expect from a 'zero hours' contract?!] I've purely been working from home on magazine features and shop products ... while spending my day listening to the radio. And while Radio 4 is my favourite place to rest my ears week in week out ... this month it excelled itself giving me:

• 2 new episodes of Rumpole - one of my all time favourite radio dramas. Court room intrigue. Humour. Benedict Cumberbatch. Need I say more?

BTW: 5 minutes into the 1st episode some misguided fool - who clearly hadn't read the radio schedule for the day - cold-called me trying to tempt me into buy a nonsense warranty. While. I. Was. Listening. To. Rumpole! What kind of a person does that?

•  and finally ... during each of the 5 week day drama slots last week Shakespeare's Hamlet graced the airways. And as that totalled around 225 minutes or 3 hours 45 minutes it meant that it was a pretty faithful adaptation of the full gloriously wonderful script! 

A rare treat which, as so often happens, proved yet again that when you hear Shakespeare done well, you can see through the hype and unfamiliar language to actually understand not only what he was saying ... but how he was saying it.  

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Right then ... I'm going to leave it there before all I do with this extra day I'd forgotten all about is sit and write about the previous 30!

I must get something else done, I mean as there's at least ... no, wait, I daren't count how many ... things on the ironing pile ...

If you'd like to join me by sharing your vital statistics for the first time then do check out the full how to guide here. And if you're one of the regular number-crunching crowd ... then it's over to you ... link me up ... I'll stop by for a visit soon.

Julie x