One of my favourite parts of Paul’s speech at our wedding was when he talked about how much he loved to come home to find me, surrounded with scraps of paper or bits of card, working on ‘a project’. I’ve tidied up now, so he won’t be coming home to a total mess this evening, but I have enjoyed spending the day creating.

It has always been a dream of mine to have the sort of funky, flowery bicycle basket that you might see in Amsterdam – or North London. So, this morning I set out in the rain to buy all the supplies I’d need. The basket was an easy enough purchase, despite the rain. I popped into AW Cycles which is just down the road towards Wimbledon. It’s always made me smile that local bike shops never seem to have enough space in them for any customers, let alone the space to wheel your bike in for them to look at it, but somehow these guys seem happy in the eternally dark and cramped hovel where they work. They were very polite and helpful.

Then, into Tooting, where I knew I’d seen some excellent varieties of plastic flowers in a Pound Shop there. Unfortunately, the shop had been closed down. The windows brandished notices on all the windows that the shopkeepers hadn’t paid the rent, and the landlord had seized back the property. [Curious how my sympathy lay immediately with the shopkeepers and not the landlords, says a lot about our property law over here…].

So, I went on to Tooting Market, which I’m told was quite the place to be in the sixties, but which is now painfully down-market and average. But they had flowers, and they even gave me a discount (I’ve never been much of a barterer!)

I spent the afternoon with a needle, thread, picture wire and beads; and ended up feeling pretty darn smug.

I started with some leaves, attached with embroidery thread. Then added the flowers using wire we had for hanging picture frames. The completed basket is pictured at the top of this post, though I added a lining from an old Cath Kidston bag I had. Not sure if I’ll keep it in or not. It might be kitsch overkill…

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‘And the bicycle?’ I hear you ask…. Well, with the money I’m saving not commuting into work everyday, I have bought myself a brand new bicycle to play with. It should be here in the next week or so!