I came across an article a few weeks back about how in olden times, servants couldn’t afford to have wedding rings made from precious metals so they would steal silver spoons from their employers and have them turned into rings. I love this idea as there are so many pretty silver spoons around!
Mum gave me a spoon to have a practice with, as I’ve actually never worked with metal properly before (cutting, forming, soldering etc.) and this is the end result:
I should have done a “before and after” really, shouldn’t I? Well, I’m sure you can all picture in your head what a spoon looks like 
Anyway, this was my first attempt at metalwork and I’m really pleased with it! The ring fits the finger I intended it to fit, is ROUND and shiny and is soldered together. The solder joint isn’t perfect because the metal wasn’t the same thickness or size at the points where it had to join (!), but I’m still pleased with how it turned out.
I’ll be keeping it as a ’starting point’ to see how my skills improve over the coming months as I do more metalwork & silversmithing.
Today we got our money back from the bank after last week’s fraud incident. Still no actual communication from the fraud dept, so we don’t know if it’s been a mix-up or actual fraud. Hoping they’ll send us a letter soon to put our minds at ease. Still haven’t got our new bank cards yet…
I was checking my bank balance online the other day when I noticed quite a big discrepancy between the running balance and available balance. Thinking it was either a mix-up or some horrific bill I’d forgotten about, I waited until this morning to check again in the hope that my online banking statement would give me more details.
So, first thing this morning, I logged in again and found exactly the same discrepancy and no explanation of the cause. So, I gave the bank a call and it turned out that someone has had a nice shopping spree at my expense – to the tune of over £400!
I can’t believe it – am absolutely devastated. The bank has cancelled our cards (it’ll take 7-10 days before we get our new ones) and is “investigating the transaction”. Apparently we’ll get a call from the Fraud Department in the next 3-4 working days and they’ll give us a timescale for getting it resolved. We won’t see our money back until their investigation is complete, so we’re down £400+ for the foreseeable future.
What’s amazing me is that there doesn’t seem to be any fraudulent activity monitoring system in place for current account holders that would have flagged this up. I can remember ordering a takeaway online once using a credit card – the transaction was declined and within minutes I had the CC company on the phone to check it wasn’t a fraudulent transaction! When we confirmed that we did indeed want to order the takeaway, they released the block and we were able to order without any problem. I’d have expected something like that with the current account as well – a £400+ clothes shopping spree (we were told it was women’s clothes) should have flagged up as being suspicious because it’s TOTALLY abnormal for our account.
So, now we just have to cross all of our fingers and toes and hope that we get our money back quickly!
Hope everyone had a lovely Christmas & New Year!
I’ve got some exciting projects lined up which I’ll be blogging about shortly – stay tuned
