Virginia Cheeseman Blog

Spiders, spiders everywhere! The South East Arachnid Show (SEAS) was excellent as usual, a lovely venue in a plush hotel, two large halls and everything was extremely well organised throughout the day. There were many European traders, with plenty of less common species of tarantula. I went mad as usual and have practically doubled my spider stock this week. I think I have all the spiders entered on my website now but I still haven't had time to sort out the lovely desert scorpions that I purchased there. I need to get some photos organised but that is a 'blue' job and my hubby isn't back from his training week until this evening. I hope he can get back ok as he is up in Manchester and they have snow. We just have rain here! I haven't managed to house up all the new spiderlings yet but I expect to get them all sorted by Monday. I have had plenty of orders this week so 'homes' are being vacated all the time. As always with shows, there is a lot of pressu...

Blog time again? This week seems to have flown by. The weather has turned very cold here but thankfully no snow and everything has arrived perfectly. I have a huge number of new bugs and beasties to collect from an exhibition this weekend, so I already know that next week will be frantic, not helped by the fact that hubby will be back in Manchester training once more. I have pre-ordered a whole host of creatures from tarantulas and bush crickets to beetles and cockroaches but I also hope to pick up some bargains. As always I will have my famous shopping list, people may scoff but goodness knows where I would be without it. Exhibitions can get very crowded and it is extremely easy to forget something or even buy the same thing twice (on more than one occasion I have bought the same spider under a different common name and not realised until I have got home). Although hubby doesn't like spiders he is very good at searching for them on the various stalls so he gets a copy of my list...

What a busy week, lots of orders (thank goodness after such an abysmal December) and lots going on in the bug room. My second captive bred Tail-less Whip scorpion has now got babies on her back and the babies from the first mum have left her and are running around independently. My other scorpion babies are doing well, I'm not sure how long I can keep the baby Shiny Burrowing scorpions together? They are certainly not communal as adults but they seem fine at the moment (I haven't lost any). I am really pleased that I'm doing so well with the scorpions after trying to get them going for so long but I still have plenty to learn about these fascinating creatures and their breeding habits. The second egg sac from my beautiful Madagascar Fishing spider has hatched, there are fewer babies than the first one but I think this is normal for successive egg sacs. I remember this being the case with praying mantids. Although I no longer keep them (too difficult to post, they were ...

Oh dear, I woke up this morning and realised that Friday had been and gone and I hadn't written my blog! Sorry, yesterday was a difficult day, I won't bore you with the personal details but I will promise to try harder next Friday and I will catch up with everything going on in the bug room (and elsewhere in my life). It has been a crazy first week back, I am now re-stocking frantically so special offers and lots of new stock will be constantly appearing on the website.

Happy New Year! Have you had enough of hearing that already? I had a very nice Christmas and New Years Eve. It was pretty hectic with all the family get-togethers but lovely to see everyone, especially the kids (and there are a lot of kids in my family, I have shares in my sister's ten grandchildren aged 1-11 years). We all went along to the pantomime in Windsor on New Year's Eve, it was great, I love pantos. My hubby got me a new camera for Christmas (purple of course, my favourite colour) and a wireless printer, scanner, copier thingy. He promises that he will teach me how to use it so that I can finally do something with all the photos that I love to take. I am still working on improving my website but I would also like to improve my chances of winning more competitions. I have the raw materials for entering photo comps (furry animals, scary animals, cute kids), I just need to work the technology now! I must get my Facebook page sorted very soon, I could certainly put p...