Hello - A lot of you out there have been sending messages to see whether I am still alive or not! Well, this is a project that I worked on all of last week. As you can see, it's not exactly an easy project - it's a photo of Spencer which I converted to a bead pattern. I then ordered the beads, all 9,500 of them in 47 colours and once they got here, I dedicated 56 hours to bead this gorgeous picture - it's 6" x 5" and I presented it to Spencer's mummy, Caroline, on her arrival to Abu Dhabi from the States. She got here on her birthday and I managed to finish the portrait the day she arrived....... I think I started and finished the project in 5 days. Thanks to Pete, Karen and Renatta who fed me and kept the caffeine coming so that I could accomplish this project.

Other than all this, Cikka and Charles came to pick up Tina to take her home and I cried for a couple of days when she left - I adore puppies and I love having them around. The house is now too quiet without her after six weeks of lots of fun with them all playing around me.

Pete and I went to Dubai on Friday to meet our friends Nancy & Jim from Scotland. They went to Mauritius and then stopped over in Dubai for a quick visit. We had a super, if tiring day and it was really lovely to see them especially since I had not seen them for some 6 years.

I finally removed those bloody hair extensions and I hope to always remember the pain and discomfort they caused me for a couple of months, apart from the totally wasted Lm 550 of poor Pete's money! What a high maintenance, total waste of time they were - give me short hair anytime - thank you very much!

And now I'm dedicating these next few weeks to beading - Christmas is soon with us and I need to start beading seriously. Over and out :-) j x