The Gurkha Justice Campaign

I was very gutted at the result today by our government in that they are not prepared to allow settlement unconditionally to ex served members of the Gurkhas.

The government is happy to send them to war, to fight campaigns or solve crisis', whatever they want to be called, and its the governement that is happy to have an open door policy for any one who wishes to settle in the UK. Those 2 sentences are a contradition in themselves - no wonder our state of affairs is in complete and utter chaos.

I'm not going to pretend that I understand the politics behind it, cos I don't. I am a 'minion' - one of the hard working population, that does the most, yet gets the littlest reward for my efforts. Thats ok. If I wanted a big house, big pay check, and a big car - I'd be an MP or District Councillor or other white collar official.

Anyhow, coming back to topic - after setting the world to rights there - I have a high regard for the military in general, and have a high regard particularly for the Gurkhas. They go through a rigourous recruitment programme even before they can don the Queens uniform to begin training. The training that they undergo is harder than the standard training. They are expected to fight alongside their UK national counterparts for the privilige of less wages, with one month leave to go home every 2 years, and at the end of it all, are bagged and tagged back to Nepal - ok - maybe that was fine in olden days.

But - now with the UK being the open door that it is, letting in every man jack and his uncle for reasons of 'If I stay in my country they'll kill me' - then by the same token, I think, no - I believe that it should only be fair that the Gurkhas should be given the same opportunity to settle in the UK - where they did their training, and where they had their home base throughout the time served in the queens uniform - instead of being packed off back with a medal and a handshake back to Nepal.

Sorry this is long winded - so I'll close off here - for more information, please read this link http://www.gurkhajustice.org.uk/ which will take you to Joanna Lumleys campaign details, and if you feel so inclined, please sign the petition to render your support.

Thank you in advance of your consideration and assistance.

The Past Week

I've expanded our selling online to actually physically taking our items to the outside world. Scary I know - meeting actual people face to face. Well - it had to be done.

We're trying to downsize as we're hoping to move later this year - if all goes well and house prices don't rise too much - so we've taken to filling the car with boxes with bits and bobs that we no longer need and taking them to bootsales. To expand the selection of items that we're selling, I've also added some hand crafted items to the inventory. Sales of the hand crafted items are going really well, and I am also picking up orders and getting ideas of things that they'd like to see available. The doll outfits and doll pram / cot accessories are a really good seller, as it is now that we are having nice weather and little girls are playing with their dolls and want to have new outfits and pram sets. Another good seller are peg bags.

I did a bootsale last Saturday, and also last Sunday - and on both days the weather was coldish to start, but turned out really hot. Hubby was quite amazed when I arrived home and my lower arms had nice red patches. Luckily for me, on a normal day the red turns into a tan - but I'll have to remember to take the sun cream with me for hotter days.

I've been busy working on a few orders and have them nearly completed ready for mailing. I also have the orders cut out ready to stitch tomorrow for customers who are collecting their purchases at Saturdays bootsale. I really do wish I knew which doll was Baby Annabell and which was Chou Chou. It would make it so much easier. I'm also hoping to expand the inventory of Reborn outfits.

I finished a batch of 4 yellow embroidered anglais dresses for the Zapf Baby Born dolls. I've done these oepn backed, so they are ideal for childrens play dolls rather than doll collectors. I love using the embroidered anglais cotton as one side comes with ready made embroidered edge which is great for hemlines. It also gives a unique finish to the dresses making them individual.

I'm a little more forward with the fairisle socks - which are an experiment. I'd never knitted socks before now and it was a challenge getting used to working with 4 needles - but as the knitting grows, and I get used to it, then it does get easier.

I sometimes do bootsales on weekend - but when I got up this morning, I checked the weather and it didn't look too promising - a combination of sun and black clouds (the weather forcasted rain showers for our region), so I didn't bother going. Most of my stock isn't water resistant, and I didn't fancy rushing to get it all packed away before it got soaked. Typical - murphys law happened, and cos I didn't do a bootsale, it turned out quite nice, even if a little windy - but you can guarantee, if I DID do the bootsale, within half an hour of me setting everything up, it would have bucketed down and I'd have had to pack it all away and come home. Oh well, there are other things that I could do instead.

Our eBid.net forum cookbook project seems to be one step nearer to the collecting recipes. I'll have to get a couple of my favourites ready to email accross.

Just set up this new blog page

I've got a little blog page on My Space, but decided to give google a go to see if its easyish to set up. This is the finished version. I hope that you like it.

We are Babs n Ray - a husband a wife team - Ray does the post runs and I do all the listing, packing, and making of things that we sell online. We've been selling online now for somewhere around 4 years, although last Aug we moved our main selling home to eBid - and are glad that we made the move. We do still sell occasionally on eBay and have got a few items that are duplicated on Etsy. To see what we are selling and where - the links to our listings and stores are all below. We are dotted about in different places on the www, and can be found on Twitter, Flickr, MySpace, and Facebook. All under the same user name and poppy avatar.

To update you on recent activity - I've spent the last month uploading new pics to our Flickr photo stream, busy making hand knit bed cape, hand knit doll trousers to match a fairisle matinee jacket - in white with blue. I've also been very busy in the sewing room making doll dresses in embroidered anglais fabric, glasses cases, phone cases, cushion covers and table linens. I've also been going out on sat and sun mornings - before the sunrise - to do bootsales. We are meant to be downsizing and bootsales are a great venue for selling large items like chairs, cabinets, etc where carriage is ridiculously high enough to prevent them from being saleable online. Bootsales are also useful for heavy items of china and books where postage would push the price of an item up beyond what would be classed as reasonable.