Window Shopping

Tinker has obviously inherited the family’s sense of punctuality, anyway. The world remains in suspense, but I'm taking a break from the heavy stuff anyhoo to do some shopping.

First off, our friends who run the soap shop in Whitby are now on-line. Honeyz sell handmade soaps, bath-bombs, massage bars, 'soap cakes' (like this one on the left) and so on. It's all suitable for vegetarians, none tested on animals and so on. It all sounds absolutaely delicious with Patchouli and Lime bathbombs and Cinnamon and Orange soap.

Yes, this is an unashamed plug, but as well as orders, they would be very interested in feedback about how it is all looking.

I had been meaning to make a puppet to help me communicate with my niece or nephew when he or she finally emerges into the world. However, since the birth is imminent, I decided I must buy one instead.

I love glove puppets. And my very limited childcare experience suggests that children are captivated by them – just sew two buttons on an old sock and make it speak with a lisp (because, you know, snakes lisp). We’re sorting a webcam out so that I can speak to Tinker through Skype and I figure that, not having the kind of face which is naturally entertaining to small children, I may need a puppet sidekick to keep those conversations going.

The best puppet shop I found on-line, and the one I finally bought from was Puppets By Post. You can get almost any animal you could think of in puppet form. They even have seagull puppets and the bizarre biblical camel (which is wearing sunglasses, as all the camels did in the Bible). They have a troll puppet which comes with a hedgehog finger puppet, so one could recreate the sinister dialogue that might take place between these two. They also have a range of what they describe as signing puppets although I don't know whether that means what it sounds like.

After much deliberation I bought a rather plain but cute bear puppet. It cost £8.50, is supposed to cover your entire lower arm and has a working mouth, which I thought was important. It is sweet, isn't it? But not too silly. It doesn't have a name yet, if anyone has any ideas.

And whilst on the subject of shopping and stuff, when I was really bored and looking at jumpers at Dorothy Perkins, I noticed that some of the jumpers were described as boyfriend jumpers. What the heck is a boyfriend jumper?

Is it supposed to attract a boyfriend? Replace a boyfriend? Resemble a boyfriend? Although they are all quite long jumpers, they do vary rather in shape and colour. I quite like this shape jumper but they have such dull colours. Apparently this autumn's colours will be red, grey and black and white. Well there's a surprise...