Bubbles To Balloons (Trade 16)
This trade was almost a year in the making.
Jim Campbell, or Mr. Celebration Balloons if you like, had first made me an offer wayyyyy back in January, for Tommy Cooper Rex - but I had already decided T C Rex was going Lynda Cookson's way in Trade 7, so that was that.
Then, in April Jim made me the same offer for either Stan the Spider or Ollie the Fly - but I wasn't quite tempted, couldn't quite justify accepting, and they ended up going in Trade 10 and Trade 13.
Spring forward to November, I was thinking we should try again to work something out, so I contacted Jim - and we worked something out!
Jim had his eye on the Lynda Cookson Bubble Invasion art work, and I wanted a few balloons in return.
1570 balloons, to be exact, and 2 6 ft banners.
I also invited Jim to throw in something else just for fun and unrelated to balloons, if he wanted. A few days later Jim told me I would also be getting "Gordon" if he could find him...
"All I'll say about Gordon is that he is house trained, and you shouldn't have any problems getting him back on the plane :-)" wrote Jim.
The suspense was immense!
So we just needed to figure out a time and place to trade.
Jim lives in Northern Ireland, just north of Belfast, five minutes away from my Dad, it turned out, who I just so happened to be planning to visit.
So we agreed to meet at 11am last Friday, in Loughshore Park car park.
My Dad drove us along, and parked the car in the car park by the park. My daughter came along too, sporting her official photographer hat.
We could see the Harland and Wolff shipyard across the water, where they built many great ships, including The Titanic.
Jim showed up with his family, and I was soon introduced to Gordon the Gorilla.
Now Gordon looks uncannily like an orangotan in all fairness, he is orange after all, but he is definitely a gorilla, says so on his label...
Gordon the Orange Gorilla.
Jim tried hard not to look like a ventriloquist, and so did I, and we did the trade - the first in Northern Ireland...
(Balloon by Celebration Balloons, of course!)
Then our fussy photographer told us to be more focussed, so we tried, even Gordon tried...
Gordon accompanied us on our trip back down to Kinsale, it took a while to convince him we were waiting at the wrong platform...
On the train Gordon liked to keep his hot chocolate at arm's length...
Once in Kinsale, Gordon wasted no time making himself at home...
So, I have now introduced the following items up for a trade:
As always, if you want to make me a bigger/better offer for one or some or all of the items I have Up For a Trade, please go ahead!
Posted by Andrew @ 10:18pm
To see what I traded the Gordon the Orange Gorilla for, click here
To see how I got the Lynda Cookson original artwork "Bubble Invasion", click here
Why Wait For New Year's Party
I just caught the end of Jody Gnant live at The Brickhouse in Phoenix, Arizona. Very sorry there is no audio to go with these...
Posted by Andrew @ 7:18am
Special Delivery
Remember I traded the rocking chair to Jane Jermyn in Trade 13?
Or rather I gave Jane an IOU because I hadn't figured out how to transport it from County Cheshire in England to County Waterford in Ireland...
Well, Jane now wants me to bring it over in the Rolls Royce or Bentley I trade up to!
I am, of course, up for this.
So... I now plan to personally undertake probably the most stylish delivery of a part-restored rocking chair ever, anywhere.
And Trade 16 is still on schedule to happen, probably on Friday, December 28th...
Posted by Andrew @ 12:18am
Beanie Babies Wanted
No, I'm not desperate to do a trade for Beanie Babies all of a sudden.
But there are some unlucky kids out there - in Afghanistan in this case as it happens - who really would appreciate any Beanie Babies sent their way, big time...
I read about this project in the online newspaper the Hudson Gazette - Hudson is the town in Canada I lived in for a few years.
It works like this:
- send as many Beanie Babies you care to, to Jerry and Nicole Fallis in Canada.
- they send them on to their nephew, who is serving in the Canadian Army (I believe) peace keeping in Afghanistan.
- the Beanie Babies are then distributed to troops, who carry them in their pockets and hand them out to kids.
If you want to send any Beanie Babies, in the first instance contact Jerry and Nicole by email here:
fallij1~AT~sympatico.ca (~AT~ is @)
They have sent over 3000 Beanie Babies out to Afghanistan so far in this way, believe it or not.
Oh, and there is a deadline - February 15th, 2008 - since their nephew will be returning...
Posted by Andrew @ 10:10pm
X Cheers
One of the three trades I was hoping will happen in 2007 will not happen until 2008. Another might still happen soon, but at the same time it might never happen... and the other is still on track to happen next week, somewhere across the sea.
Posted by Andrew @ 10:40pm
I Got Lucky Yesterday!
Jody has these giveaways, pretty much every weekend I think, where she sets a question, and the first person* in her livestream chat room to answer correctly wins a bunch of goodies!
* maybe the competition is open to animals too, I really don't know.
Anyway, yesterday was the first time I had been around for one of these giveaways, and I somehow came up with the first correct answer to her question...
"Name four of the one red paperclip traders, not including myself"
OK, I admit I lucked in - I had only just about finished reading the one red paperclip book! In fact I finished reading it today, and I can well recommend it - actually I think one of the reasons Kyle succeeded in trading up to a house was that he can write very well...
So I won this ultra cool and highly highly limited edition see-through mug...
And I'm not sure, but I think I might have also won this mirror...
But I am sure enough I also won this for-sure-much-sought-after backstage Police road crew t shirt, worn at The Police's last ever (surely!) show in Phoenix, Arizona...
And there was more! I also won a limited edition Jody Gnant fridge magnet, and a music CD compiled by a radio station I think ... and maybe even more, I forget - we'll see what arrives through the post!
I have never won a bundle of goodies before, and this bundle is so cool it made me look a lot like this... :oD
If you want to be in with the chance of winning one of Jody's giveaways, you need to be where it's happening in the first place - www.jodygnant.com.
My rusty old Honda Civic has a broken radiator right now, so two trades are looking less likely to happen this week... but they could still happen...
Posted by Andrew @ 12:12am
Three Cheers
Three good possibilies of trades happening before the end of 2007!
So now I'm also feeling good about the rest of 2007 all of a sudden...
Posted by Andrew @ 12:10pm
2008
I'm feeling good about 2008.
Maybe that's something to do with the number 8, I'm not sure.
Lately I've spent time improving the site, and the stats tell me that was time well spent. People are staying longer, and also I'm seeing more people arrive straight from an email message, which must mean something... right?
I now believe I can trade up to a Rolls Royce or a Bentley motor car some time in 2008, so that's now my official target deadline.
All I have to do is make the right trades!
Speaking of which... I might be trading the air guitar soon, maybe even in the coming week.
Anyhow, I feel I owe it to all the traders in particular to get there. And although I have two of the paintings hanging on the wall, and the pod form looking cool on top of a cabinet, most of the art works are "in storage" - not where they belong! They all deserve good homes of course...
Oh and, Teddy Bears On Tour won't start until probably some time in January.
Posted by Andrew @ 6:10pm
tradingnothing.com Fully Restored!
What can I tell ya?
In short, Trade 6 Sean, who lives in Preston, had issues with the first newspaper story on trading nothing. This was a big page 3 splash in Preston's popular daily, which was also given prominent space on the front page.
And Sean had issues.
So I pulled tradingnothing.com offline.
And we sat down together and changed the site the next morning, in such a way that Sean no longer had issues, with the understanding that one day the ch-ch-ch-changes would be undone.
And that is how the website content stayed until yesterday, when, with Sean's nod, it was fully restored to its original pre-Lancashire Evening Post scoop state.
Quite extensively affected by all this were the blog entries for Trade 6 and Trade 7. Also the "Tommy Cooper Rex" Item 6_1 was looking quite different for a few months... not any more.
One day I will have to elaborate, I guess. But this was all down to my mistake, and I felt I owed it to Sean to put it right as best I could, so that's what we did.
I'll finish with a "lost" photo of one whistle, taken in County Waterford, Ireland, on my way back driving from Trades 12 and 13...
Oh, and I wonder did you notice Castle Conna in the background?
Posted by Andrew @ 11:30pm
|
