News & Updates from Christine Dixon · Page 2

This is Daisy, a friends's golden retriever and she likes nothing better than to swim after big sticks. Here she is in the Blackwater Canal near Chelmsford, swimming to keep cool on one of the recent hot days we have had.

I know she looks real cute here, but I have to tell you that on the same walk she found a very smelly dead fish by the riverbank and rolled in it.

We had to encourage her to swim all of the way back so that she wasn't too stinky to let into the car, then she had to have a bath with her special orange and lemon shampoo!

Here's two of my new designs this week - a funny housewife card and a pretty dressing table card.

I'm sharing this photograph of lilies bought for me yesterday. And I'm wondering, can you choose just one favourite flower?

I'm not sure I can, but three of my favourites are freesia (for their delicacy and scent), lilies (for their sheer beauty) and roses (but only those with the proper rose scent that I remember from my childhood).

Of course, as I write this, all sorts of other varieties are flooding into my head, making me doubt these choices.

Perhaps the beauty of flowers is that they are all gorgeous in different ways? Here's two of my lily card designs.

Search for LILY on my designer page to see lots more.

It was a very hot day at a loud and busy local summer show, with children shouting and clamouring for a look, but this little ferret slept peacefully in his camouflaged hammock.

Maybe not my most favourite of animals but this did look cute!

Some ferret facts: Ferrets have a long and slender body covered with brown, black, white, or mixed fur ... Average length is 20 inches including a 5-inch tail. They weigh 1.5 to 4 pounds, with males substantially larger than females ... Gestation is 42 days, litters are usually 3 to 7 young, but sometimes more. Females may have two to three litters annually.

Young are weaned after 3 to 6 weeks and become independent at 3 months. Sexual maturity may come at 6 months. Average life span is 8 years. Here's two of my theatre fold mini kits - ten to choose from, search for THEATRE under my designer name.

It's daylily time in my garden! Every day is a riot of colour and a joy to behold. Most of them are orange, but there are a few pink and yellow thrown in. I didn't plant them, I inherited them from the previous house owner.

The daylily is often called "the perfect perennial", due to its brilliant colors, ability to tolerate drought and frost and to thrive in many different climate zones, and generally low maintenance.

It is a vigorous perennial that lasts for many years in a garden, with very little care and adapts to many different soil and light conditions.

Mine get strimmed to the ground every autumn and have come back beautifully every year for the past ten years.

Amazing!

Two of my French Corset designs on special offer, these and more corset designs with shooting stars available right now.

One of our local summer shows had a very interesting army display and stand selling lovely goods for supporting the armed forces.

But there was this hidden danger... can you spot him? He nearly scared the living daylights out of me, lying so very still and silent in his hide.

Now my mind wanders and I have to find out where there that idiom came from. Apparently "daylights" was slang used in the 18th century to refer to a person's eyes, then the phrase was extended over time to "living daylights", referring more widely to all the senses.

More recently, the release of the 1987 film The Living Daylights, the fifteenth in the James Bond series, reawakened usage of this old phrase.

Here are my two very latest designs, inspired by the use of battenburg lace frames.