Not your average lazy Sunday

Today, being Sunday, I thought I could really get on with those last bits that need doing before setting off for the shows. Sundays are quiet days, no phone calls, no one trying to sell me anything etc - aren't they?
So today, when I have a long list to work through, the phone starts at 9.30 with someone wanting to order from the website but preferring to do this by phone - and could she have the order quite quickly please?
10.15 another phone call - someone from Scotland wanting some advice on calendars.
An then an email comes in - could she place an order for her business please, and could she have this next week?
And another email - could I please do this one bespoke card by Nov 12th for someone's birthday? Well, no not really, but guess what? I've just done it for them, so I hope they'll like it. In fact I've done everyone's orders and they'll all go out on Tuesday.

All's done. I've even remembered to pack a few clothes and a book. The van's loaded with every last square inch filled - poor thing will have to work hard tomorrow!

Autumnal joys

Well, that was my last walk locally for a couple of weeks, and what a beautiful afternoon - a perfect leaf-kicking sort of day. 

Here are a couple of our villagers who we chatted with - I think I might do some Gloucester Old Spotty designs.....

 The light was glorious looking up through the canopy of the beech trees:

 

The sparse beauty of a freshly worked field appealed to me today too:

 And these are the boys who came out with me:

Now I have the remains of the weekend to finish the last jobs that need doing before setting off for London. Next week it's Spirit of Christmas at Olympia, preceded by a trip to St James' Palace with my younger daughter for her Duke of Edinburgh gold award - how exciting!
The following week is the Country Living Magazine's Christmas Fair at the Business Design Centre in Islington.
A busy couple of weeks, but so much fun - I love meeting all my lovely customers.

A Plea to Retailers

We love retailers. Without them we'd be without a business. They do a great job getting our work in front of people and they work incredibly hard.
But please could retailers think about us when they place their orders - by "us", I mean all designer/makers. We take your order and then fulfil it. This means that we, yes us as designer/makers, sit down and make whatever it is you've ordered.We've paid for the materials needed to make your order, we spend time on the pieces especially for you. We don't run a factory overseas - ours is a little "factory" at the bottom of the garden with just one or two people.
Do you know how much it hurts when you turn round to us and say that you've changed your mind and you don't want the order anymore? Apart from upsetting the cashflow...
This is a relationship based on trust - you trust us enough to place your order, we trust you enough to pay. Foolish us!
Let's get that trust back.
Personally I have a lovely relationship with all of my customers, built up over time, based on trust. When a customer messes me about, I stop supplying them, and they cease to be a customer.

Welcome to Agatha Christie

The girls have both left for university, but never fear, we've been adopted by another two. These two seem to prefer our house and garden better than their own, and are just as untidy as the two who have left! And, like teenagers, they just come and go as they please...

Wordle fun

This is totally frivoulous, but quite fun. Wordle clouds - go to wordle.com to play with some text.

This one uses the text taken from this blog


And this one is based on the About Us page on our website, and seems to feature sheep quite heavily!


They may be a bit small to see here

Empty Nest Syndrome

I caught part of a programme today on BBC Radio Norfolk about Empty Nest Syndrome - ie, the kids have just flown the nest. Both my girls have now left for university, the youngest just starting her 1st year in nursing at Cardiff and the elder just starting her 2nd year in International Studies with Economics at Birmingham.
I thought I'd reflect on this idea of empty nest syndrome. I always thought that a syndrome was a medical condition, and surely when you have children you accept that one day they will leave home and do their own thing. So, syndrome?...

Sure, I feel sad that they've gone, but that's only from a selfish point of view - I'm sad because they're not here to chat to etc. Actually I'm excited for them, setting out on their journey through life, making their own mistakes and revelling in their discoveries and joys. If I'm honest, I'm a tad jealous too - I had a wonderful time at university and would gladly go there all over again!

I'm proud that I've brought up 2 girls who are brave enough to leave their nest and launch themselves onto the big outside world.

However, that does leave myself and their dad to sort out our lives! This might take us some time, getting used to the new found freedom. It hasn't taken any time at all to enjoy the reduced amount of dishes and clothes that need washing!

So, all change - but what an opportunity for all members of the family.

A Little Inspiration towards Christmas

I don't usually follow fashion trends, but I just thought these little bunting decorations would look great on a Christmas tree, or where ever.

It's just simple paper bunting with my hand drawn sketchy animals with their woolly bodies. They were fun to make and kept me away from the computer for a good part of the day - what a delight!

Having made up 2, I then needed to find a Christmas tree - which I did, on the main A1066. Heaven knows what other drivers thought I was doing, especially as it was blowing a gale! It's now raining really quite hard, so that was good timing.

And then I couldn't resist these gorgeous autumn berries

A few commissions

It's been a busy month, with lots of orders from shops getting ready for Christmas along with the summer holidays and preparations for both daughters being at university. But I've just been tidying up some of the folders on the desktop, and came across a couple of commissions I did a while back.
I thought I'd share a couple of them today.
This first is a recent commission for a clock, which is going to my home county of Worcestershire:

And here a just a few others that I've enjoyed doing:

An order with a surprise

Just a short post - I did something very silly the other day. I received an order in the form of a spreadsheet, and printed it off and sent off the invoice, only to be advised by the customer that I'd not spotted the tabs on the spreadsheet - there were 3 pages to this order, not one! These are some of the products I wouldn't have sent:

9 clocks on test

A pile of 43 pictures

100 tiny sheep gift bags drying

It's a good size order, so I've been working all weekend, and the rest, to get all the work done. Just some more gift bags to finish, and then it's ready for packing up.

Some recent commissions

I had a lovely commission recently, and such a good surprise. Some years ago I did some wedding invitation cards using my fluffy sheep as the theme (well, she was marrying a Yorkshire man!).

I was then asked to continue the theme through for the birth of their first child, and then for the birth of their second child. That was back in 2005.


And now they have moved to Canada and are expecting their 3rd child and I've just sent them their birth announcement cards! Baby Celia, due fairly soon.

The new canvas paintings

Just an update on the canvas paintings I did to attract buyers to my stand at the Home and Gift Fair in Harrogate.
On the evening before leaving Norfolk I quickly did a 3rd canvas - I still had a long thin area of white wall on my stand, so I decided on a canvas 1 metre long by 30 cms high. I quickly rustled up a landscape (I really don't think you can "rustle up" such a thing) in between loading the van and cooking a meal.
Well, the canvasses were quite the talking point - so much so, that I've been asked to work out trade prices for them. I now need to think about this new development - can I reach a good trade price? Is this something I'd like to add to what I do for a while? What other paintings can I do?
All very flattering, and I'm looking forward to exploring the possibilities.

2 of the canvasses at the Home and Gift Fair

Another show, another display

I set myself yet another challenge recently:

The design of my stand at the next trade fair, Harrogate at the end of the week,  was looking a little bare at the top, so I decided I needed to do something. I fancied doing something to link this display with the one I did at Spring Fair, where we painted a mural.

So I bought a couple of canvasses and a tube each of black  and white acrylic paint with the idea that I would paint my photographic landscapes and superimpose my fluffy animals.

Now I've never used acrylic paints before so this might seem rash, with the show being so imminent!

I dug out my mother's old easel - it's HUGE!! But then she used to do 8 x 4 foot paintings. It was a lovely day, so I put the easel up in the garden in the shade and, well, had some fun!

The canvasses aren't quite as large as I would have liked, but they were all the shop had at the time, and the results aren't as good as I'd like, but I'll take them to the show and see how they look.

These are the results:

This is taken from a photo I took in the Lickey Hills a few years ago. 

      



And this is from the Yorkshire Dales

What do you think? Shall I use them, or should I leave them behind in disgrace?!

Where 2 lives meet

I recently found some very old sketch books - nothing inspiring in them unfortunately, but it was interesting to see where my 2 lives crossed although at the time I couldn't see this.

These are a couple of pages from 1981 when I was working on an archaeological excavation in France. This particular site, Pincevent, is fascinating - a site where hunter-gatherers set up camp in the autumn to ambush the migrating reindeer, about 12,000 years ago.

Sketches of the site, with the reconstructed tents, plus some random scribbling on the left - some of the scribblings are about the tools we were excavating and about whether they were produced by specialists/artisans - was there such a person as an artisan this long ago? Certainly the flint knapping was produced by skilled craftsmen.
Some more of the scribblings are about another important Upper Palaeolithic site, Etiolle, and more is just some random boring dream I had!

These 2 sketches are of the late Guy Celerier, the director of the excavations at Pont d'Ambon in the Perigord where I worked for several summers - a lovely, lovely man.

And these 2 sketches are from a much longer time ago, in 1972, when I worked on a Roman site in Xanten, in Germany - a rough sketch of the sites boudary fence and someone's rucksack!

Colour in my world

I had the tiniest parcel of fleece delivered yesterday and it led to a massive, all-day sort out of all the fleeces on hand at the moment. This has to be done every year to check for moths, and a fine day is perfect.

But I just love fleece, and I love all the colours I've built up over the years. There's no way I will ever use it all up in my work (unless I take up spinning again.....), but it's so gorgeous!

I ordered these carded batts of Scandinavian fleece, because I didn't know what they were like and here, we all prefer working with fleece from the sheep (washed, obviously!) or fleece that has been carded. With carded fleece the fibres are in all directions and there's alot of air in there - they're light and open and a joy to twizzle into my little sheep - you can see some of my little sheep on our website here. Fleece rovings, which we sometimes use, are not such fun - a bit dull I always think. The fibres are all smoothed out and perfectly aligned with each other. Somehow the character is lost.

These are the carded batts:

They came oiled ready for spinning or felting, so I washed them, and they are gorgeous, if a little hairy! Very light and very warm, and probably not suitable for the cat walk!

So having dealt with my tiny fleece order, I went on to sort out my stock of fleece.
These are the colours I've built up over the years, all different fleeces, dyed using fibre reactive dyes:

The moth hadn't got through to these, I'm pleased to say, although they had got to one lovely light grey fleece that I obviously hadn't washed and packed carefully enough. Moths much prefer dirty wool, so do make sure you wash all your winter woollies before you pack them away.

And these are just a few of the natural coloured fleeces I have - Manx Loaghtan, Shetland, and a couple of mystery breeds from a friendly small holder.

This is what a Manx Loaghtan sheep looks like - not my photo - I found it on stuff and nonsense's blog - I hope she doesn't mind. Aren't they just the best looking sheep!

Early morning delights in south Norfolk

The birds woke me early this morning, as they do every morning, but today I decided to take the dogs out for an early walk, before any rain set in.

It was lovely - it's lovely every day. There's always something to raise the spirits, whatever the weather. This is what cheered me today at 6.30:

glorious poppies standing with grasses,

 the village church with marguerites growing by the boundary wall,

cow parsley that's already set its seed.

And below are 2 new hedges on the edge of the small holding where the lovely Clun Forest sheep live. This first photo is their new hedge, planted this year. The second photo shows a similar hedge planted 5 years ago and is now an absolute haven for wildlife.

Peace

While on a day's course recently I unexpectedly learnt the Chinese for peace: he-ping or hépíng or 和平(pronounced her-ping).