Update- after numerous emails and phonecalls (even with Royal Mail kindly giving me the wrong number to ring back on at one point) the new pickup is scheduled for this afternoon. I wonder if they'll redeeem themselves and turn up?...

Have you ever had a dream where every time you think you're escaping from somewhere you turn another corner and you're trapped again. I feel caught in that at the moment with every day a never-ending stream of highs and lows.

Today was a monumental day and at times I was so close to getting everything done and then Royal Mail let me down.

To cut a long story short the book (the book!!!!) began arriving at 9.45am and over the course of the day a friend and I, and later one of my sisters and my niece who turned up to help, packaged up 500kgs worth of books, signed and all ready to send.

And then, for reasons they have yet to explain but which so far seem to involve a few lies being told to their bosses and me by staff, Royal Mail didn't turn up for the booked and paid for collection. I spent literally hours on the phone to them and their best sugestion was I somehow get 500kgs of mail, by myself, to a sorting office about an hour away. Before it closed in 50 minutes.

Fortunately some books were going by courier so they're on their merry way around the World and I have put in some strongly worded emails so hope the mail can be picked up tomorrow.

I shall keep you updated!

But back to good things- I am weary of other people's nonsense putting a downer on my day so I'm trying to just think of the good which is that Geometric Beadwork is all done and if I do say so myself- it looks good!

The book has a lovely weight to it, much heavier than I imagined, and even though I have proof-read each and every page so many times as I finally flicked though it when I went to bed I was shocked at just how much I got in there.

Yesterday was a roller-coaster of a day- for hours our whole house was literally filled with boxes of books, mail sacks, envelopes, stickers and packing tape- it was very exciting, stressful and fun all at the same time. My back was aching and I hadn't stopped to eat or drink all day but we got it done.

This is a book I planned on writing for so many years but I had so many fears about self-publishing that I put it off so I can barely believe it's all done and here. Hope you like it when you get your copy.

In also nice news here is the photo of the star I promised you yesterday. This is a project in Geometric Beadwork and it involves beading an integral hole as you work which means you can attach your star permamently to a ring- as I did here - or thread a rope or similar through it to hang from. The book contains the specifics to make this star as well as the basic so you can resize as desired.