Last year I spent a lot of my trip to New York doing lots of bead buying and I am determined that this year will be the same.

Today begins with a great meet-up with Merle Berelowitz and Suzanne Golden. These are two incredible bead artists, and good friends, so it was fun to be in their company again.

First up is a trip to the secret bead warehouse I visited last year where we spent hours rummaging through all the boxes and I managed to find some treats.

My mind today, for some reason, couldn't get around bead buying (well, not much anyway...) and instead I seemed mainly to treat myself to some great vintage brooches.

After shopping we headed off for lunch and a big catch-up and then a bit more shopping!

Merle had to leave us so Suzanne (a great if deadly-for-your-purse shopping companion) and I headed off to the Limelight Marketplace where we spent a while browsing lots of lovely jewellery, beauty and food shops. Then we found our intended target: Old Hollywood.

This is a jewellery branch of a Brooklyn store which has some of the most covetable jewellery I have ever seen. We spent a long time browsing and I left with two multi-finger rings and an order for two more to be re-sized- 3 of them from Fancy Sexy Me and the flower ring from October Anniversary.

Next it was onto ABC Carpet which is a great homewares store where I saw many lovely things including some very well-designed and unusual bird calls but I managed to resist and left before I bought anything.

We were nearly all shopped out but I managed to buy a sequin scarf from a nearby clothes shop where very annoyingly I discovered that despite the fact I had twice told my bank I would be travelling, they hadn't recorded this and my card didn't work. Cue many phonecalls over the evening to get it sorted (and unfortunately also over the rest of the trip as they continually blocked the card).

By the time I had got off the phone I needed dinner and a drink so we headed off to a lovely fish restaurant where because I wasn't carrying photo-ID (something I have never ever needed in the UK- it's not a concept we really have at all) I wasn't able to get a drink.

It was fun watching numerous members of staff subtly walk near me to see if they thought I looked old enough to drink and all vote "no".  Their crazy flattery was more than enough to reduce my stress levels!