Umm . . . Hi

So this is a really new thing for me.  After years of saying 'blogging is for scary people who spend too much time on the internet' I feel it is something I should give a go, partly because I'm a bit of a scary person who spends too much time on the internet.

I guess a good place to start is a bit about me (this is where I normally start complaining that blogging

 is for self indulgent people).  I'm 20 and I live in Norfolk in England at the moment.  I'm in a bit of a complicated place in my life right now because I withdrew from my English degree at Cambridge University in October 2008 because I really hated it as it wasn't what I wanted to be doing and after spending a year sat in the dark seriously depressed I finally decided it was time to make some bold decisions about where my life was headed.  I've spent my whole life wanting to be a vet and I've worked really hard to get there but I had some problems during my A Levels that I didn't really deal with too well and I wound up doing a degree in English so I could leave home.  The great thing about leaving university before I finished my degree is I will still be able to apply for some government loan towards a veterinary degree.  The many rubbish things about it include not being able to get a job because there aren't any at the moment, having parents who can't understand and think I've thrown my life away and not quite being able to work out what the next step is.  It's a little bit like that saying about out of the frying pan and into the fire.

So onto something less depressing now: I have a great passion for animals (sort of obvious really), I'm 

particularly keen on reptiles, specifically geckos and even more specifically the Rhacodactylus genus of which I am breeding crested geckos; or at least I would be if my only adult female

 hadn't died a few months ago.  I also have two cats, a rabbit, fish and I occasionally babysit a hamster for my sister and her boyfriend.  I enjoy photography, I've even won some awards for it - if you're interested some of photography can be found here and here. I would love to do more natural history photography but it is a difficult art to master and requires the ability to get to remote places (I can't drive yet) and knowledge and equipment that I don't have at the moment.  Another great hobby of mine is crafting.  I guess I'm pretty lucky in that my mother is an amazing lacemaker (she's been teaching for 25+ years, has won competitions, designed patterns for publication etc.) but she's also into lots of o

ther crafts (and teaches some of those too) so I've always had this empathy of creativity and the support and materials to do things others might not have had the chance to try, at least not all at once.  I'm a pretty average lacemaker but I'm a reasonable everything from dressmaking to tamari balls, card making to glass engraving with a special liking for polymer clay sculpting and cute things from textiles.  I have an etsy shop for my polymer clay bits and occasional other items.

That's probably enough rambling about me for now.  I'm sure those of you still reading are extremely bored!  

I'm not quite sure what I want to do with this blog but I'm considering showing off some handmade items I like and interspersing it with some updates about the geckos.  I guess I'll play it by ear and see who ends up reading it and what they like reading about.  So, those of you still reading (and it's no good skipping to the end without reading the middle bit you know!) please feel free to let me know what you'd like to know more about.

TTFN

Cat x x x