Typical English Picnic....

Today we went to the very beautiful long sandy beach at Hornbaek, which has plenty of shells for the children to pick up, and sand-dunes for them to play in (this is my son contemplating building a sandcastle and whether his parents are completely mad I suspect!). It was pretty damn cold though. We sat (very briefly) and had a cup of tea and a sandwich while the children made a sandcastle, while a few hardy Danes eyed us suspiciously, thinking to themselves "it's so obvious you are English, only English people would even attempt to have a picnic on a beach in 6degC...". We will return though (once it warms up a bit) for a longer day there most definitely! The town looked very sweet as well, not at all gaudy like British seaside resorts (I do love that about them though!), although of course Hornbaek is minute in comparison to resorts in the UK... good things come in small packages and all that! The beach itself however is by no means small. We have also visited the beaches at Niva and Rungsted and will try Amager at some point, but this has been our favourite so far and at less than 30 minutes from our house, it will be a frequent future destination of that I am certain!

Managed to actually get some books completed over Easter too.
My grandmother (Frieda Gumn) is a fabulous bookbinder, and still does the odd professional job, although at 87 she doesn't do quite as much as she used to. I always felt the urge to follow in her footsteps and learn this dying craft, so when to my amazement, I found a course locally, which I applied for and studied part time over three years. Would I ever consider myself a professional though, not yet, there's still so much more to learn! Last year my grandmother paid for me to go on a weeks course with her master tutor and good friend Maureen Duke at Urchfont Manor. This was a real honour, Maureen is an amazing lady and very highly respected in the bookbinding world. I loved every minute of this course at this beautiful college and learned an awful lot. I have yet to work out what to do with my books out here in Denmark(there are quite a few more than in the pic!)! I had an Etsy account in the UK, but it's kind of drawn to halt since we arrived here. I might attempt to sell a few to gift shops locally, and I still do commissions for friends from time to time, but it would be great to build this up as a small business. Although I am going to be heartbroken when my youngest starts at Nursery soon, I can console myself with the fact that I will have a lot more time to do this and get things started.