In The Beginning...

First, an introduction. Welcome to the cottage industry in the Kingdom of Fife, Scotland. The cottage started out back at the beginning of the 20th century, as far as I know. I wasn't alive then. It spent the first eighty years of its life as a home for a succession of farm labourers who worked in the fields round about. It probably didn't change much over that time, apart from a bit of a makeover just after the war, when two new rooms were added to it to give it all of three bedrooms.

Then suddenly it all changed. The cottage was sold, along with others on the farm, and the incomers were not farm workers. They were a teacher, his wife and two children, plus a cat. They moved in, and soon things started to happen. The wife, yes me, had started a small business creating handmade cards - remember, this was 1989, many years before QVC. The handmade cards business took up the kitchen table and sometimes the living room floor, but soon it started to creep into other places in the house, and it was time to move out - into the garden. So the workshop was built, and it hosted embroidery classes as well as a place to work and a little shop to sell the cards.
The teacher gave up his job after a while because the business was growing and needed an extra pair of hands. The children lent a hand now and again too, not always willingly.
The cottage industry was beginning to take shape.
Come up to date - the children have grown up and spread their wings. The cat has gone, and been replaced, twice.The business is the now the child, and a demanding one.
I'll explain more next time.