Hello Again

It's been a wee while since I sat down and wrote something on this blog.
I think  a lot of bloggers take a break during the summer, usually because they are off on holiday, but we are in the throes of our silly season now, and time is a joke.
What have I been doing lately?
Well, a massive clearout for one. Three van loads of "stuff" have been taken to the recycling centre and charity shop and the house seems so much lighter and airier. So is my head, but then that's probably because my brain went in the van too.
Old suitcases, mattresses, videos, computer from a different age, broken furniture, old clothes... you know the kind of thing. Upstairs is now tidy, fresh and clean. Love it.
This is all because daughter is coming home for a few days soon and she is quite badly allergic to dust, as well as cats and pollen.

This is our business van loaded for a craft fair but I borrowed the photo to show just how much stuff can be accommodated in it. And it was three loads this size we got rid of.
Now I've just got to remove the dust of months from the downstairs and we're all ready.
Actually that pic of the van was pinched from last year's blog about the West End Craft Fair.

I can't believe that it's nearly upon us once more. By that I mean the Craft and Design Fair which is held in Edinburgh during the Festival and which is open seven days a week for three weeks.

This was our stand last year just as we were about to start setting it up.

It doesn't look much at this stage - just a shabby little wooden chalet. But after a few hours of hard labour it turns into this.

Then Bob climbs into the cockpit and away we go for three weeks. What I mean is he makes the round trip to Edinburgh each day, rain or shine, and spends the day sitting behind the stand and selling (hopefully). While I am at home making stock for the next day. Team work, and after ten years at least of this routine, we've got it all sussed out.

Yes but I'm not only making stock for the next day, I'm making up orders for our trade customers and keeping our own shop open. Not to mention the website and mail orders.

And Bob isn't just sitting behind the stand either, oh no, he takes piles of cards with him to paint and finish off.

So it's all go.

Despite the panic we're intending taking a couple of days off when Laura is here and having a bit of a life. I hope the weather is decent and we can get away into the hills or coast or somewhere. I think Laura would appreciate that as she misses the scottish hills in Hertfordshire.

Oh and the website....

Mmmm, it's taking longer than I would have liked but already there is a whole host of new designs added. And I've been moving things around a bit to make navigating simpler. Well it will be simpler when it's finished and much needed, as there are now more than three hundred products listed with almost as many again still to be added!

I've had some lovely comments and feedback from some of our regular customers, and they seem to think it's working well. I've added a Craft Market area to the site, where there will be a selection of products not made by ourselves, but chosen to have on display in our own shop.

At the moment we've got -

Fairtrade embroidered bags from India.

Fish Strings from India as well.

And patchwork cushion covers from much closer to home, to mention just a few.

Never a dull moment then.

We were sitting watching a film tonight at 10pm, just winding down for the day, when an email pinged in with a large shop order. 10'clock on a Sunday night!!

Anyway, that's for tomorrow - after we've been to the cinema to see "Inception"! Got to get the priorities right, after all!

Once this crazy month or two is past, we'll have time for our own holiday, and it's going to be a biggie this year, for a certain person's big birthday. That's something to look forward to while burning the midnight oil.

Have I Deserted You?

No, no not at all. But that old complaint of no time left to do stuff like blogging is back.
Since I was last here for a chat, we have been at the Royal Highland Show, which was four days of glorious weather, record attendances and sell outs of our cards.Which is of course what we want, isn't it!
It's great to be selling the cards so well, so easily, and in fistfuls to many customers, but then you get home and look at empty stock drawers and take a deep breath.
It is only a few weeks to the Edinburgh Festival Craft Fair - three and a half weeks long, seven days a week....
Well we do it every year and survive, so what's new!
Another reason I haven't been here for a while is that I'm trying to rejig our web shop and add loads of new cards and other goodies. So online time has been devoted to that, but oh dear it takes FOREVER to upload photos, add text etc.
It's a bit of a jumble at the moment, so please bear with me. I'm not a techie and things are a little confusing until I get the whole lot sorted out.
I'm trying to simplify the website for customers, so that if you're looking for say, a wedding card or keepsake, you just have to click on the "Wedding" button at the side. Simple, a no brainer you say. Yes but it's such a slog copying every single product from one section to another.
Anyway, that's it for tonight.
Holland have just won the semi final of the World Cup, and if they go the whole way I stand to win one hundred pounds, thanks to Bob, who had a little flutter on them on my behalf. His team (Italy) were out ages ago, so I suppose I should share my winnings with him - that's IF the Dutch do the job.
He says if they win I should spend the hundred pounds on something from Holland - that's a lot of Edam for instance. Then again there's beer, tulips, clogs...what else?

Late Night Rambling

Sorry it's been a while.
I've been busy - we've been busy, I mean - but I had to add another post to this blog so that the first thing anyone sees when they land on this page isn't that photo of chaos in the workshop.
It's been embarrassing me for days, especially since the workshop is now all nice and tidy, and what's more is managing to stay that way. At least for now.
But you'll have to take my word for it because I haven't had a chance to take any photos.
We had the Gardening Scotland Show to do last weekend so it was a busy time in the run up to get stocks ready. Then there was the usual packing up, transporting, and setting up.
Then three days of the show followed by the same thing in reverse. Amongst all that I did a massive tidy up and shift around in the shop ready for the summer.
So what's new..... well this isn't so much new, as resurrected. A long time ago I did a series of cards and pictures based on prints of watercolours of local and not so local scenes. The cards were embellished with textural painting and the pictures with embroidered foregrounds.

They ran for a few years and then I "rested" them. I found the little watercolours again recently and thought I'd print them on to cards again. Here are some of them....

This shows the last image which is of Largo Law as seen from a few yards up our farm road. It has been printed on to a card and then has hand painted detail of poppies and grasses added in the foreground. The colour reproduction in this image isn't great, as I've just scanned it, but it lets you see just how tiny these landscapes are.

There seems to be a new interest in them, particularly this Largo Law one as it's easily recognisible as a local landmark.

New Designs

It was a late, very late night in the workshop last night. The birds were singing and the sun was almost up by the time I crawled to bed, and then this was the scene that greeted me when I opened the door again this morning. Err well - I wasn't going to waste any more precious sleeping time by tidying up! All that mess was to produce these cards, hopefully suitably flowery for the Garden Show next week.

And these are a couple of new designs using the long shape of card.

And while on the subject of long cards, some of you might remember me scanning and playing around with some genuine '70s textile designs, painted by moi way back when I was a stoodent. I blogged about them here. Well I thought I'd try a few cards with the designs. Now that I've got them on Photoshop the colourways are endless.

And more colourways of my little birdies - Old Pals.

So it's not all holidays by any means. ( I blogged about our holiday in the Outer Hebrides last night with photos of some glorious beaches. Please take a look at the previous post to see what I mean)

And last but not least I swapped postcards with Emma from "a little bit of everything" blog as it is her 50th birthday coming up. She sent me this beauty which reminds me of where she lives, the Isle of Skye. She has quite a task making fifty cards to send out to blog friends, but the joy will be opening the fifty different ones she will receive in return from all over the world. Great idea, isn't it?

The card I sent her is over on my other blog. The link is on the sidebar.

Right, I'm off to clear up the workshop and start messing it up all over again.

Yes - Off gallivanting again

Do these people ever do any work, I hear you say. This blog is turning into a travelogue.

Well, in anticipation of a long - and hopefully hot - summer, with no respite from work - the month of August, after all, disappears in three and a half weeks, seven days a week at the Edinburgh Festival Craft Fair - we decided to sneak away for a few days R&R and have a breather before it all gets crazy.
In order to do the sneaking, we worked our butts off last week and had all the website and shop orders finished and packed and dropped off at the various dispatch points - Post Office, carrier depot etc en route to our "staycation".
For the past few years we have headed off to the South of France at this time of year, but the volcanic ash problem (now seemingly resolved) put us off booking a flight anywhere, so instead we decided to visit a part of our own country we've not been to before.
So it was on Monday morning we set off up the A9 to Inverness and on to Ullapool on the North West coast for a night, and then boarded the ferry the next morning to Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis for a couple of nights.

Here come the pictures....

This was the amazing view of Loch Broom taken from our hotel window in Ullapool.

Saying goodbye to Ullapool as we set sail for Stornoway, a three hour ferry journey.

A magical place steeped in history - the Stone Circle at Callanish, with the peat moors of Lewis in the background.

Next day, a shoogly bus journey through beautiful scenery to the west coast of the Isle of Harris, and the breathtaking white sands and clear turquoise water at Horgabost.

We had the place entirely to ourselves.

The receding tide created interesting patterns on the sand.

And on the headland, watching over the beach was this stone - Macleod's Standing Stone - well, unless Bob manged to push it over.

Next day, after a brief flirtation with the "Tangle o' the Isles" it was farewell Stornoway and back to Ullapool, and home.

As we managed to take 117 photos in 48 hours, I reckon you've been let off lightly with just this few, but believe me these weren't the only good ones. Every picture captured an amazing view, despite the inept photographer behind the lens.

So much open space, fresh air and huge skies, sea breezes and stunning colour - we definitely recharged the batteries.

Apologies to anyone who tried to get in touch with us by phone, fax, email or plain knocking on the door - we were not at home!

But we're back, and have got started right away to the orders which have found their way to our inbox.

If I have the chance tomorrow I'll post some photos of work for a change. We do actually do some - between days off!

Next day off is likely to be in September (it's booked already).

A Glorious Day Out

I thought I'd show you some photos of our day out last Sunday - a trip we've been meaning to make for a long time - and I'm so glad we made the spur of the moment decision to go when we did.

It was a boat trip to the Isle of May, a national Nature Reserve and bird sanctuary situated at the mouth of the Forth, just off  the coast from us in Fife. We sailed from Anstruther harbour, in a little boat full to the brim with 100 passengers.

See the vintage cars lined up on the pier? It must have been a rally.

And this was why I was glad we made the trip that day - the river Forth is hardly ever as calm as this - and that is our destination ahead. It took just over an hour from the mainland.

The Isle of May is a summer home to tens of thousands of seabirds - puffins, fulmars, guillemots, cormorants, terns to name a few - and there are spectacular close up views of them nesting on the narrow cliff edges.

The island is uninhabited now, apart from a nature warden who is stationed there over the summer, but it used to have a manned lighthouse with the keepers' families living there. This was a steep little path up to one of the lighthouses which the keeper had to trudge up every day. They aptly named it Palpitation Brae.

In summer the island is covered with pink thrift and white sea campion, totally unspoilt and beautiful. A little bit smelly though with all those seabirds and very noisy too.

We came across this quite magnificent driftwood sculpture near a ruined monastery - not made by long gone monks, but more likely a recent warden who had long evenings to fill.

There were well marked paths all over the island and visitors were asked not to stray off them because the birds were nesting in the grass all around. This female eiderduck was incubating her eggs right at the edge of the path and totally ignored us as we passed just inches away.

The females stayed on the nests while their stikingly marked mates enjoyed a splash about in an emerald green lochan.

On the far side of the island, the side exposed to the wild North sea, there were dramatic cliffs, stacks and huge caves, every tiny ledge crowded with nesting seabirds.

We sailed back to Anstruther in the early evening and with all that fresh sea air giving us an appetite we headed straight for the world famous fish and chip shop!

We have been working too though. This week has been busy on the website, as well as orders coming in every day from our stockists.

I did an evening shift in the workshop tonight ( Wednesdays are always late nights for some reason) and this was the sight that met me when I stepped out of the workshop at nine o'clock - the most glorious sunset.

Sadly my photographic skills didn't do it justice.

And then I swung round 180 degrees to get this shot of the fresh new shoots of the wheatfield right outside our kitchen door. I love this wide open space.

Well as I said, Wednesday nights are always busy, and I'm procrastinating. There is a pile of orders needing to be packed up before bed, and they won't pack themselves up. Hey ho.