Border Collie Whisper Makes a Difference

You may have noticed a new page on our website dedicated to our border collie products. This is because, sadly, our lovely collie Whisper has been diagnosed with a tumour with no chance of recovery. 

Whisper has been just the best border collie a girl could have wished for - the kindest, the most amusing, the most loyal, the most annoying... So for that reason, we have decided to donate 20% from the sale of any of our border collie products to The Animal Health Trust. The Animal Health Trust is a charity based in Newmarket that works to fight against injuries and diseases in animals. They’ve had numerous success stories - you can read some of them here - and do amazing work. They also serve a very good tea and cake!

Whisper was loved by everyone in the Lindop house and everyone at Penny Lindop Designs, even if he did get in the way and make a general nuisance of himself on occasions! We’ve had him since he was a small and fluffy puppy.

I used to take him to dog training (not sure how successful that was!) where he seemed to spend a great deal of time cleaning out the ears of a huge German Shepherd dog! We also tried our hand at agility – we even won a couple of rosettes! Although I think Whisper mostly just did as he pleased.

Evidence of this also exists when you take a look around our garden; firstly there’s Whisper’s very own secret den underneath an old tree trunk. He dug this all by himself, it took him quite a while, but he looked very proud of the finished result. 

 

There’s also a potato plant in one of our flower beds; Whisper had a habit of stealing potatoes from the kitchen; they’d often turn up around the house or in his bed, but this one ended up sprouting!

He loved a stick or a ball and he loved the seaside

These are just some of the many memories that we have of our lovely boy, and we’ll never forget him. We shall give him the best that we can for this last part of his life.

We’re sure many of you have dogs or pets that you feel the same way about, so any support for the Animal Health Trust would be very welcome and greatly appreciated. You can buy our products here, or if you’d just like to give a donation to The Animal Health Trust, you can do this here.

It would be great if you could spread the word of what we are doing...

Thanks

Emma

Penny Lindop Designs meets Prince Charles

Well, it's been busy, busy, busy here at the Penny Lindop camp, so I've not visited this writing space for quite a while. But it's been an exciting few weeks, and today I just want to tell you a little about the Great Yorkshire Show which happened in the middle of July.

Yes, that's me talking with Prince Charles

We were exhibiting in the Country Living Marquee with its fantastic location on the site.

Anyway, great excitement this year, as we had a royal visit on the Wednesday.

To celebrate the 1st anniversary of the Prince's Countryside Fund Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall visited the show, and the Country Living marquee where Prince Charles made a speech and announced who was to benefit by receiving funds.

Before his speech the Prince was introduced to a few of the exhibitors, and Emma and I were some of the lucky folk that he spoke to. I am truly grateful to Lizzie Kershaw of National Magazines for making the introduction and for appreciating the small effort we are making at Penny Lindop Designs to help promote knowledge of the rare and endangered agricultural breeds of Britain. We shall be working on our range of rare breed greeting card designs over the next few weeks, so will let you see more anon.

Prince Charles is the patron of the Rare Breeds Survival Trust - hence me being pleased to be introduced. The Duchess of Cornwall took away one of my Portland sheep greeting cards....

Our Portland sheep greeting card - a horned sheep with a tan face

And here is Prince Charles stopping at our stand: not brilliant photos, but they're the only ones and I'm really grateful to Wood Like to Play for thinking about taking them.

Here are a few that I managed to take through the crowds:

Lizzie Kershaw's Hampshire Down sheep, Lady Baa Baa and Ewe Beauty - they were introduced to the Prince too

Some of the award winners including Gareth Barlow in the checked shirt - the man with the passion for Hebridean sheep

Always polite - having a little chat with Lady Baa Baa, the Hampshire Down sheep

In conversation with Fiona Davies from WireUK - lucky recipients of some of the funds. Well done WireUK!

With WireUK's Fiona Davies

Read more about Gareth Barlow here - a man with a passion for his Hebridean sheep who has Prince Charles to thank for getting him started.
You can see our Hebridean cards here, and even buy them!

Hebridean Sheep with an old Fergie tractor

Summer time with new designs and the joys of Norfolk

With summer now officially underway, there are lots of things to look forward to, including playing a bit of tennis if you were inspired by Wimbledon. Are you a Rodger or Rafa fan? What about Novak? Or did you think Andy could do it?! For any tennis fans this new greeting card design is perfect

or if you prefer to enjoy the summer with a glass of pimms and a slice of strawberry cake, this may be more appropriate

Living in Norfolk has its benefits, one of them being the Norfolk broads! 

Each summer we hire a little day boat for a few hours - it's so peaceful and so full of inspiration. The two dogs seem to enjoy a little boat trip, although they can disturb the peace when they get a little over excited and end up in the water!

There’s always lots to see on the broads, with ducks, swans, and my favourite, the cute coots! Here's a new design, of a dragonfly which is already very popular.

Wedding penguins in action

I recently supplied some of my penguin wedding cards to a customer in Ireland, for a wedding in early June, where quirky was definitely considered good.
This is what she did to them, and I love it!
I love people to adapt, modify and write on the cards that I design - such great team work! And it's even better when they send me a picture of them.

You can see more of Mark's photography here

Scottie dogs

I've recently supplied some of my Scottie dog products to The Scottish Terrier Emergency Care Scheme and as I didn't know about them before thought I'd give them a mention on my blog. There seem to be lots of Scottie dog fans out there - I have friends who have recently moved out to France with their 3 and have since got a 4th one. We've had their Scotties to stay in the past, while they were away, and I have to say they are quite full of character and determination! The first thing Gordon did when he arrived for his weekend was to "mark his patch" by peeing up one of my boxes of greeting cards!! A bad start to our relationship, but we made friends later!
If you want to rehome a Scottie or have any Scottie dog queries, this would be a good place to start: www.stecs.net

I've got a movie clip of some puppies when they were just 36 hours old - if anyone can tell me what to do with the clip so that I can post it here, I'd be very grateful (at the moment it's 134MB and 1.15 minutes long - it's obviously way too big to be able to put on the web...)

In the mean time, here are a couple of photos:

Here's mum with the puppies at 36 hours old:




And these are 3 of the same puppies at 2 months:

And if you'd like to see some of my cards, giftbags and other gifts, have a look at my website and put Scottie dogs into the search box

New home page for the website

I would really appreciate comments on the new layout of my home page. There's now a slide show of some of my products - do you think the slide show is at the right speed? Is it of interest to you to see a range of products in this format?
I also now have a button to enable you to sign up for a newsletter and another to come here to my blog.
As a tiny thankyou for any useful comments, I will send you out a little sample - so do please email me separately to let me have a postal address: info@pennylindop.com

Thanks!
PS. The border terrier was the most popular breed for me at the Country Living Show, so here he is!

Thoughts on sending Christmas cards

We still have stocks of some of our very unusual handmade Christmas cards, so it's not too late to choose 1 or 2 for someone special. Have a look at our website to see the range. I thank everyone who has bought our cards, calendar and gifts this season. We have been kept very busy which has been wonderful. And thank you for all those kind comments.

What are your thoughts on sending Christmas cards? We're encouraged to divert the money spent on cards to charities, which is great, or to buy charity cards - also great, and there are some really lovely cards available.
But how about a compromise - sending just a few beautiful designer cards supports the designer and sending all cards supports your local post office. All our cards are printed in the UK and handfinished by a small team in Norfolk - trying to be greener by keeping local.
And what do you think about ecards? Personally I'm not keen, but then it's not in my interest to be keen on them. I actually love to receive post that isn't business post, and I love images and the feel of paper. So I love to receive quality and beautiful cards.

Penny Lindop's handmade calendar

Penny Lindop has been producing a unique handmade calendar every year since 2000. It's available from the website but stocks are running out fast.
While you are thinking about Christmas this year, and getting your diaries and calendars for next year, we are having to come up with designs now for 2010! This will be the 11th calendar - that'll be 132 individual calendar pictures, all with our fluffy handfinished element!
We've got most of the ideas now for 2010 - I just need to sit down and get some sketching done!

If you have any special requests or ideas, I'd be delighted to hear them!