Despite having had a wonderful weekend with Janet and John, I have struck the gloom again today – pretty much everything I’ve touched has gone wrong in some way or other – I missed an appointment first thing this morning, found myself at the wrong end of a ‘heated debate’ a bit later, couldn’t get hold of another person I’ve been needing to speak to, lost some money (long story but suffice to say I find myself wondering how I can be so stupid yet again), couldn’t make head nor tail of a project and generally feeling a bit beleaguered.

I bumped into David in the kitchen at around mid-day when I scooted in to make a coffee in my anguish and he said 'what's wrong' - I wailed 'I'm having a bad day'. At least I got a hug out of it!

So, when I’d finished my day job and an hour working in the garden, I was ‘without’ a pic and decided that I needed to cheer myself up a bit, so I tucked this necklace into my pocket and went across to the studio to try to get a nice shot of it. It has been very difficult because obviously glass is reflective so getting the heart of the piece without its beauty being hidden by reflections was not easy. I found myself trying all sorts of things – reflectors, different lighting set ups and exposure times and this is my favourite of what I took.

However, I now see its shortcomings – I’d have done better of I’d got the whole of the right hand outline but failed!

Anyway, the ‘art’ in the shot cannot be considered mine – the real artist is Gail, whose handiwork this gorgeous necklace is. She’s a very talented lady. Don’t you think it’s a lovely thing?

I thought if I photographed it, I might work myself up to a purple patch of my own……I hope I can!

Things could not have been different last year - I was having a fabulous day and it was SUNNY!