oh home sweet home: Books, Crochet and Auctions

love to read

My earliest memory of a book is from when I was five years old. My nan bought me an encyclopedia for Christmas and I used to read it every night in bed. Every Monday night when she would come to visit I would tell my nan everything I knew about volcanoes. Since then I have always loved books. Roald Dahl and Enid Blyton books were my favourite as a child, and now I am always buying books and usually have two or three on the go and at least ten in my 'to read' pile. I find myself reading so much more in Autumn/Winter. Here's some of the books currently on my list:

- The Great Gatsby

- The Perks of being a Wallflower (currently reading)

- The Last Pre-raphaelite

- The Darkened Room: Women, Power and Spiritualism in Late Victorian England

- The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat

- Remains of the Day

- The Happiness Project

- The Journals of Sylvia Plath

- Mad, Bad and Sad: A History of Women and the Mind Doctors from 1800

On Sunday I went to my first ever auction at Westgate auctions rooms. It was great fun although it started to get a bit tedious toward the end. Being completely new to the auctions, I had no idea what to expect! I arrived at 10am and left at 3.30pm, on arrival you pay £1 for an auction catalogue and have a nosey around at what's on offer. There was a lot more junk there than I expected but there were also some great finds. I was a bit scared to bid to begin with, but once I started it was hard to stop. The auctioneer was terrifying and often told people off for talking. I ended up spending a little more than I had hoped, but had a great time!

Something else I've tried to do lately is learning to crochet. This blog might sound like something a 40 year old women might write and I realise that I am becoming incredibly boring. However, I now have a lot of respect for anyone that can crochet! It's so fiddly, and it's taking me a while just to learn basic stitches, I'm hoping that eventually I get to this level....