OK, it’s only an online purchase and not the end of the world, but I had built myself up and when the package arrived I was so excited. Then, when I opened the box and saw the gorgeous colour of the contents, I was thrilled!
Then I was bumped back down to Earth when I tried to put on these stunning boots…
Duo Boots – Bexley in azure blue
My feet fitted perfectly, but they wouldn’t zip up – my ankles are too thick 😭😢😭😢! So, they are being returned. I didn’t realise that the wider fit version of the boots would have such a tight fit on the ankles.
Well, never mind. I really don’t need any more boots. I just fell in love with the colour of these, plus the stitching you can see on the images above. At least I will get my money back.
Wednesday’s post will be the usual Reading Roundup and I have actually managed to finish my book! I am planning a gorgeous reveal post for Friday (🥰😍🥰😍🥰).
I had hoped to be able to write about a gorgeous new purchase today, but, unfortunately, the courier didn’t knock on our door and so I will have to wait until Monday for the delivery! I am trying hard not to feel grumpy about that.
Instead, I have one outfit to show you this week. Most of the time, I have worn sloppy loungewear or one of my new (rather revealing so I’m not going to model them) nighties. But today I put on something nicer than usual to cheer up myself, and probably Lovely Husband too.
Here it is:
Outfit of the day 02/07/21 with Pure Collection’s silk shrug
Today’s outfit:
Navy cotton vest – Sainsbury’s Tu.
Navy linen trousers – Isle Collection.
Lapis lazuli and gold pendant – Bill Skinner Studio.
Blue, lime green and white, silk satin, mosaic pattern shrug – Pure Collection.
I had forgotten about this lovely silk shrug as I keep it folded up in my scarf drawer. When I opened the drawer to get something entirely different, I saw it lying there and just had to wear it. The shrug is so perfect for this kind of weather and works well in covering up ageing arms!
With this outfit, I also wore my newish bracelet from Massaccesi in cobalt Diamond calf leather. The colour and metallic shine are gorgeous! You can see this bracelet, together with the two others that I bought, in this post – here.
Well, thunder and rain are forecast here for the weekend, so I hope that you all have a great weekend, wherever you may be!
Oh, I have managed to get into a right mess with my reading this week! I started two books and read quite a chunk of each one, then got really muddled and bored and gave up on them. Of course, this could have been my fault. After all, the stroke means that I have real struggles with reading and concentration. On the other hand, they might have been poor choices. In addition, the Library Service’s reading app was being rather buggy in that when I returned to a book after a break, the app was not restarting at the correct place, but going back to the beginning each time.
You can imagine how difficult this was for someone with memory issues!
The Other People by C J Tudor
I haven’t reviewed or rated this book because I don’t think it would be fair to do so as the app issues muddled my mind. I think that the book itself might be better than my experience and I may try again at a later date.
Long Road to Mercy by David Baldacci
I put down the second book, Long Road to Mercy by David Baldacci, for a different reason. At the beginning I was still having issues with the app, but that was soon sorted out and I was really becoming engrossed by the story. Then… well, you can read my Goodreads review to find out what I thought:
Well, I managed to get about two thirds of the way through this book before giving up. It began quite well with a missing person mystery, set in the Grand Canyon, and then descended into a total mess. There were also long asides where the author expounded on various matters, which should have been edited out of the book.
So, as I don’t have a very long reading life left, I decided to cut my losses and find something better. I am sure that won’t be too difficult!
The annoying thing is that, at the beginning when I was enjoying the book, I was so pleased when I saw that there were other books from the series on our ebook catalogue! I put them in my account to read later. Then, I realised that the book was not to my taste and so I deleted them from my list. Now, I will have to find some new ebooks to replace them!
Well, I am now in the middle of yet another ebook. I am not going to name it in this post just in case it is another dud.
I really hope not!
Anyway, Happy Reading to you all and I hope that you have better luck with your choices.
Oh, it’s all such fun living in our house! Loads of things are broken and in need of repair because of regular Autistic meltdowns by our Elder Son. The latest problem is that the sliding doors on his wardrobe are not working and he can’t get to his clothes! He banged them so hard several times in a rage and now they are falling off the runners and are jammed together. So, we have to try to find someone to mend the wardrobe. It seems to be so difficult to find tradespeople who are willing and able to do relatively small repair jobs. Just about impossible, in fact.
Lovely Husband and I are beyond exhausted by all of this, but what can we do? Our son is so vulnerable in many ways and needs the safety and (relative) stability of his home as well as our advocacy. I cannot bear the thought of sending him to live somewhere else. He would be back here, crying piteously at the door until we let him in. It’s all just heartbreaking.
We just don’t know what to do.
Anyway, I am now trying to distract myself from these worries by looking at beautiful things. I saw this website the other day:
I had a post planned for today. Yesterday, I had an appointment for a haircut and so I was going to take photos and show you the look, together with my nicely organised outfit, based around my pretty kimono jacket from One Hundred Stars.
Sadly, it all went wrong. I felt far too ill to go out, so had to cancel the appointment. Instead, I spent the day in bed feeling really under the weather and very sorry for myself!
So, the outfit will have to wait until I feel a bit stronger. At least the two issues that I wrote about on Monday – the broken dishwasher and the mobile phone muddle – seem to be finally sorted.
This is the kimono jacket, by the way:
Outfit of the day with One Hundred Stars’ China Tree kimono jacket
Looking at that image, my planned outfit was going to be very similar! Funny, really 😂🤣😂.
Anyway, I really am hoping that my health will soon improve enough for me to get out of bed for longer than a few minutes. I need to try to do some very short walks, for a start, as I am becoming very frightened about my future – I am so weak now and dependent on my “chaps”.
OK, I think I had better sign off now and pick up my latest book so that I don’t become even more gloomy! I will try to improve my mood over the weekend and will write more positively on Monday.
Well, apologies to those of you who have come here to read my latest book reviews – I haven’t managed to finish a book this week! With all of the family hassles that are going on, I have either been sorting out mobile phones or trying to get our washing machine mended. I just haven’t been able to concentrate on reading.
Instead, I will leave you with this lovely quotation:
I do hope that you all had a great weekend. My Lovely Husband had a nice Father’s Day with presents and a lovely chat with Younger Son on the phone. He usually has his “Music Evening” on a Sunday, when he plays his favourite music for a couple of hours. Last night the neighbours has gone out so he was able to turn the volume up! As he was watching a DVD of a fabulous concert by The Who, I went downstairs to join him for a while and we had a companiable time together.
Today, unfortunately, Elder Son woke up in a really awful mood and, in a rage, managed to break the dishwasher. Sadly, our house has lots of damaged and broken things from his Autistic meltdowns. Anyway, once things were relatively calm, I was able to look inside the dishwasher and discovered that only a tiny part was actually broken. I was able to source the part pretty quickly (it is on its way) and also a man who can fit it. In the meantime, ES can roll up his sleeves and wash the pots in the old fashioned way – ha!
We have also been having issues with two of our mobile phones. I won’t go into the details because it drove me crazy trying to sort this out and it took two days before an agreed solution was reached. But, I think (hope) that this problem is also on the way to being fixed!
You may remember that I am suffering from memory issues from my stroke in September 2019.
I really don’t need complicated problems to sort out.
Aargh!
So, to cheer myself up, I am looking at the new season’s colourways for this Hermès shawl – La Danse des Amazones by Edouard Baribeaud, 140cm cashmere/silk (REF: H243593S)…
Here are the shawls again with their Hermès reference numbers for those of you who need them:
H243593S 04
H243593S 06
H243593S 08
H243593S 10
H243593S 11
H243593S 13
H243593S 15
H243593S 16
And, as a tea addict, this is rather cute: Hermès Tea Time by Jonathan Burton, 70cm silk scarf (REF: H983782S). Please let me know if you need the full reference numbers.
I am planning to purchase a shawl for this Autumn/Winter and I really like the pattern of La Danse des Amazones, but I am struggling to work out which colourway. I have two shawls already, the Liberty Hera in blues and purples and the Hermès Plumes en Fête in grey, mauve and pink. So which shall I choose?
I am feeling very ill today, so there won’t be much of a post. Hopefully, I will recover a bit over the weekend. Anyway, I have found a few images in the meantime. They are all things that have caught my attention over the last few months:
Studies in blue
So that’s all for this week. I do hope that all visitors to this blog have a great weekend.
This will be a short post today as I am not feeling very well and I only have one book to write about.
Pine by Francine Toon
My book of the week was Pine by Francine Toon. Here is the blurb:
”They are driving home from the search party when they see her. The trees are coarse and tall in the winter light, standing like men.
Lauren and her father Niall live alone in the Highlands, in a small village surrounded by pine forest. When a woman stumbles out onto the road one Halloween night, Niall drives her back to their house in his pickup. In the morning, she’s gone.
In a community where daughters rebel, men quietly rage, and drinking is a means of forgetting, mysteries like these are not out of the ordinary. The trapper found hanging with the dead animals for two weeks. Locked doors and stone circles. The disappearance of Lauren’s mother a decade ago.
Lauren looks for answers in her tarot cards, hoping she might one day be able to read her father’s turbulent mind. Neighbours know more than they let on, but when local teenager Ann-Marie goes missing it’s no longer clear who she can trust.
In the shadow of the Highland forest, Francine Toon captures the wildness of rural childhood and the intensity of small-town claustrophobia. In a place that can feel like the edge of the word, she unites the chill of the modern gothic with the pulse of a thriller. It is the perfect novel for our haunted times.”
I chose this book entirely at random from our public library’s ebook system, so I had no preconceptions at all. This is the review that I wrote on the Goodreads site:
I am not sure what to make of this book or how to write a review! It appears that there are very mixed reactions to it on Goodreads also.
So, what did I like about it? The atmosphere and setting were very well written. There was a real disturbing creepiness, alongside beautiful descriptions of nature and the changing seasons. Many of the characters were also very well depicted – particularly Lauren and her father. The situation that the two of them were in was also very sad and haunting.
True, the pace was somewhat slow with most of the “action” crammed into the last few pages. But at least there was a clear and satisfying ending.
This was completely different to my usual style of book. Usually I like fast-paced plots with vivid characters and plenty of action: the kind of books that really stay in my mind for a long time. Pine wasn’t at all like that, but will, for different reasons, remain with me for a considerable time.
After this book, I chose The Other People by C J Tudor. As I have only just read the first few pages, my response will appear in next week’s Reading Roundup post.
The Other People by C J Tudor
I do hope that you are all reading great books at the moment!
First of all, I hope that you all had a lovely weekend and that those of you who have it are enjoying the sunny weather. In this part of the UK it is very warm and sticky at the moment and I really wish that we could live near the sea!
When I have had enough energy, I have been trying to sort out one of my wardrobes. I keep my gorgeous Massaccesi handbags at the bottom, so I got them all out yesterday. Whilst they were out, I decided to take some photos of them all. Here they are…
Handbags by Massaccesi
The handbags are, from back row left to right:
Full size Victoria in grape Croco leather with handles in carmine Nappa leather,
Midi Modena in white Pebbled leather,
Full size Diane in titanium and silver Metallic leather,
Full size Victoria in amethyst Pebbled leather.
Middle row left to right:
Midi Selene zip in dark blue Africa leather,
Midi Muse in bluette Pompei leather,
Full size Minerva in teal pebbled leather,
Midi Selene in purple Africa leather.
Front row left to right:
Midi Penelope in bronze Africa leather,
Midi Victoria in teal Flor and teal Nappa leathers.
So that you can see them all more clearly, I have gathered some images into a slideshow…
I am so lucky that I can afford such a beautiful collection! Most are pretty large as I have so much stuff that I need to drag around with me. Small bags won’t hold enough for me these days. Now, I think that I shouldn’t buy any more as I have more than enough handbags for every occasion. Although one in a bright turquoise would be nice – after all that is one of my wardrobe colours 😂🤣😂🤣😂!
OK, I think that is all for now. Please don’t hesitate to ask me any questions you might have about Massaccesi handbags in the comments section. There is also a long thread about them on The Purse Forum. Oh, and I’m only writing about them because I adore the whole experience and the products. Marco is such a lovely man and deserves support from his customers!
Former professional school librarian, now retired through chronic illness. Trying to keep cheerful by reading, drinking lots of tea, blogging my new life, and my love of bling!
The Librain
The Librain......retired 
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