St Ives Shops.

Today has been mostly grey with heavy drizzle/light rain. Once again I was up and doing my exercises by 7.00 which is remarkably early by my standards. I got all my routine done and then tackled the next stage of the tv unit. After many, many checks I cut 2 notches at the corners of the middle shelf using a handsaw. Accuracy doesn't come naturally to me so everything was labelled and marked using a try and mitre (had to look the name up) so that my cuts were true. The next step will be to cut along 3ft 6ins to reduce the depth of the middle shelf. I could do it by hand or wait until we bring the circular saw back from Borth. Completed today was the hand shredding of all my old bank statements.

I tend to only draw the sitting room curtains halfway so I can watch the sky and this evening a large bat, about the size of a blackbird, was flying around the buddleia bush. I think it must have been after insects either attracted to the buddleia flowers or to the light from the sitting room.

St. Ives Shops.

Above is the local bakery I found. It's so small that you can only fit one customer inside so that the lady serving can get to the windows where the cakes are. I got talking to the lady and she told me that the shop had been a tobacconist and then in 1956 her aunt changed it to a bakery.  Of course I told her about my origins and as with every local I spoke to bemoaned the takeover of St Ives by wealthy tourists. There were no prices on display and I wonder if they might have been flexible with a hike up for tourists. There was a good selection and it was obvious that they were not the mass produced items sold in a lot of the other bakeries. They also sold pasties, proper Cornish pasties made with short pastry and filled with beef, potatoes, onion and swede. We bought hot pasties to eat sitting by the harbour and my small and Peter's medium pasties were large enough to be enough for a whole meal. 

A chocolate shop aimed at the tourists. I went in for a look around and a dark chocolate button taster but resisted buying any.  

There were a lot of shops selling original art, prints and other tasteful decorative items. 

This shop sold vintage maritime items, shells and fancy rocks.

And now my favourite shop, a tiny glasswork studio tucked away in a little courtyard. I fell in love with the round jewellery and decided that even though they were very expensive by my standards I would treat myself to a pair of the hand made earrings. It was so hard to chose as apart from the red and black designs I loved them all. In the end I bought the ones bottom left above. I went back to the shop the following day to buy something smaller for somebody else and to take photos. I always ask permission first which the owner appreciated. She said that often people march in, photograph everything and march out again. That's just so rude.

The shell boat (below) is more in the interesting category rather than tasteful.