'How to Avoid Paperwork' or' Procrastination Works for Me'

One sunny day a few weeks ago, a Babbit appeared and decided to find a spot to snooze in the pretty garden. Looking around she spotted a mass of nodding flowers and settled herself down with a yawn.

But however hard Babbit tried she could not get comfortable. The sun was too strong (!!!) and her head began to ache. She searched some more until she came across the shade of a giant cabbage grown by the fair hands of the enchantress Pipany who was believed to make potions from the herbs in her garden and bring toy animals to life through the magic of her stitches. (Bear with me, I'm avoiding paperwork!!)

Try though she might, Babbit could still could not sleep. A gentle breeze ruffled the veined leaves of the cabbage, the light casting an unearthly glow as the they moved to and fro. Babbit moved on again and saw ahead of her an open door which led into a ramshackle house, the tired gutters full of birds' nests and the flaking paint of the windows sheltering intricate works of art: tiny woodlice wrapped in gossamer threads which shimmered in the soft breath of the wind; delicate spiders swinging like circus acrobats, their swollen bodies performing acts of great agility and skill as they wove and bound their treasures away safe from prying eyes.  Babbit left the magical garden behind and entered the (very shabby) house...

where she soon found a place to lie. Soft and warm and wrapped in the comforting folds of a worn-but-lovingly-made patchwork quilt, Babbit's eyes finally began to close.

Before long, she was woken from her slumber by the sound of distant voices coming closer ... closer ... until finally there stood before her three creatures just like herself. The more Babbit looked, the more she realised there was something different about these happy souls - each wore a dress of the finest fabrics with tiny flowers scattered here and there, 

and a pretty blossom nestled just by their long floppy ears.

The littlest of the three said to Babbit, "My name is Baby Babbit. Come with us and we will take you to see Pipany. She will make you a dress to keep you warm and find someone to love you forever."   (Cos she's good like that you know)

Babbit so wanted a dress and to wear a flower by her ear. She went with the little Baby Babbit even though she was just a tiny bit scared of meeting the enchantress Pipany having heard so many tales about her. 

"Is it true she sings sad songs and teaches them to her children, songs of Gypsy Rovers and Angels Way up Yonder; songs of Packing up your Troubles and Goodbye (ee) that speak of war & loss? I've heard she sometimes plays notes (the wrong ones) on a piano accordion and makes the cats cry in pain at the sound?" said Babbit with a tremor in her voice.

"Oh yes, all that and more," said the little Baby Babbit happily. "At the Eve of All Hallows she dresses in the strangest garb and sticks her head into tubs of the coldest water to fetch an apple. She hangs bats from the ceiling and dances in her kitchen with her (creepy) wizard to the strains of Black Sabbath and Meat Loaf, the children hacking the innards from a pumpkin and candles guttering in the breeze."

Babbit was now visibly trembling when before her appeared Pipany bearing a sewing needle in one hand and a glass of the finest champy in the other (cheap Cava from Asda, but hey, it all tastes the same to me)

In no time at all the three Babbits explained the predicament and downing the contents of her glass with one huge gulp, Pipany set to work. She cut and she sewed and she sang and muttered darkly to herself in the manner of one deranged as is her wont until finally...

Babbit was clothed in a dress of her very won, a flower of the pales pink perched elegantly upon her pretty head and a label bearing the name of her precious new owner who would live with her and love her...forever.

And with a flourish the wicked witch - er, the beautiful and wondrous enchantress Pipany, sent the newly-clothed Babbit on her way to a life full of joy and happiness, where cuddles and laughter would fill her days and there would be no sad songs of lamenting and loss (though what's wrong with such songs I have yet to discover despite the endless groans of said children and 'wizard'!)

Ta ta for now! x

• Postscript: No Babbits were harmed in the making of this blog post.
• Pipany actually runs her business in a manner most efficient when not faced with a paper mountain needing filing, thus leading to drivvle such a s this.
• Potions made by the enchantress Pipany include blackberry gin and sloe gin, both of which are jolly good when mixed with champy and sipped lovingly from a champagne saucer.

Short but Very Sweet!

We have some new additions to our family because we felt there were not enough adults/animals/children already. Allow me to introduce: Washington Elderberry - guinea pig number one, chosen & named by Dave who has a thing for guinea pigs...in a good way of course! 

Isabella finally has a rabbit. She has always loved bunnies and still takes her two favourite cuddly ones with her whenever she is able. She is the instigator of the Babbits I make, so named because her baby mouth couldn't get its tongue around the word 'rabbit' and now they will never be anything else to us. She has bestowed the very pretty name Summer onto her gorgeous new pet. We once had a hen called Summer too back in the dusty years of long ago. I rather like this name as it may be the only lovely summer we get.

Lucy is holding guinea pig number two: a sweet chap now named Willow. She is smitten to say the least and has many, many cuddles throughout the day. Actually, they are all handled a lot and are quite comfortable with people, particularly the little rabbit.

The children are good at caring for their pets and regularly are sent to feed our hens and ducks, though less frequently than i would like considering our torrential weather which sees me decked out in waterproofs and wellies on a regular basis. I would quite happily leave it to the kids at the moment. To be fair, Isabella is never put off by rain.

We have had lovely times watching these sweet things chomping on the clover and dandelion leaves scattered through the grass. I knew there was a reason I don't like perfect grass. It leaves me quite cold to see manicured lawns; it's as though no-one uses them instead of the scuffed patches that tell of endless picnics and games and general lazing around, or the longer parts that remind me of so many wildlife-hunting sessions with Isabella that inevitably lead to lengthy chats about being 'nature girls'. Never quite sure how to respond to that one.

So there we are:  chunky littleWashington Elderberry (we are not allowed to shorten it according to Davey)

Pretty Summer the Babbit

and dear little Willow

Welcome to our world, sweet things.

Bye for now x

Time 'Flu!

My world of late has mainly consisted of work: sewing, cutting out, packaging of orders, website maintenance.... I am not writing this to impress merely to make myself understand why I am so very tired. Oh, and I forgot to mention three weeks of 'flu and I mean real 'flu which renders you weepy & pathetic. Well, it did me anyway. Yep,I have been a delight to behold with eyes sunken in deep pits of grey, a particular shade matching my general pallor BUT I am finally over it! Hurrah! Now I can catch up on the world and work with a zest missing for a long while.

Though the weather in 'sunny' Cornwall has mostly been gloomy there have been some beautiful sunrises which Isabella and I watch from the front door step before the mad morning mania is truly underway. The criss-cross of lines quite please me here for some reason.

Yesterday I collected the ornamental (pah!) crab apples in from the garden to dry out for decorations in the weeks to come. Did you know Christmas is almost here? Oh yes, even ill I am ahead of the game and at the forefront of news. I only wish I were also at the forefront of tidying the garden and clearing the leaf litter!

I have left plenty of these little golden apples scattered around as I am sure there must be some creatures who make use of them. Our garden is full of wildlife from toads and frogs, newts and shrews to slow worms and many varieties of birds. My love of all this is shared by little Isabella who often tells me she 'loves the nature Mum'.

But for now I must end this short post and attend to business which is wonderfully, fantastically busy, a fact I am so grateful for and humbled by. The idea that in these very straitened times people choose to part with their precious funds on something I have designed and created makes me feel very proud.

And I know Babbit agrees.

Have a lovely day x

A Bright Spot.

I thought I had better replace the spider with something more calming, but searching for inspiration on this darkest, wettest of what has been a very dark, wet week is not easy. Isabella and I drove home from the school run past Swanpool beach where the gulls surfed the lazy waves.



Even the sea could not be bothered to put on a show and lacksadaisically swirled about throwing the odd half-hearted ripple our way. An occasional wave revealed its dirty underbelly where on a sunny day it would glisten and shimmer with shades of azure, jade and deepest blue. Not today. Today is a day of lighthouses peeking through the mist, here one minute, gone the next. An ethereal vision of protection from rocky coast. It is in the photograph, but so shrouded that you can only see it by squinting.



Still, the quay next to Isabella's nursery provided some colour even in the gloom.



Off now to the sewing room where new things are waiting to be photographed if only the light would improve. Ah well, plenty of sewing to be done including a little bag requested by a lovely customer who rang me yesterday. She told me of a similar bag I had made roughly a year ago, telling me how loved it is and how the little girl uses it all the time. I love these tales of the things I send out into the world, love hearing where they are, what lives they live. It is what the business is all about for me and makes it all so much more personal.



My favourite has to be the regular reports I get about one of the Babbits I made for a dear little baby boy who travels the world with his parents as part of a circus. What amazing adventures Babbit and T have (haven't asked permission so won't put his name here) and I am lucky enough to be kept up to date. So many ideas for children's stories come out of these tales... little books illustrated with Babbity pictures. Maybe one day, but more importantly for me is the thought that something I stitched is so loved and such a part of a child's life. How lovely is that? Definitely a bright spot on this dull day.



Bye for now x

A Babbity Day!

A very quick post today as the sewing room is hidden by a pile of orders which need packaging and posting...with much help from Isabella no doubt. The Christmas stocking and Carol Hearts have been really well received, so thank you for all the lovely comments - the next batch of items are on their way to the website, but I still haven't got pictures I am altogether happy with yet; probably be ready about New Year at this rate!




Today is Davey's 40th birthday - hasn't quite caught me up yet - so there has been much excitement here at Poltisko Farm. I have a pile of his favourite brownies to make which will be all gone in a very short time once the hoards get their hands on them, and then we shall have a lovely romantic dinner once the littles have gone to bed; well, that's the plan though I haven't actually worked out what I'm cooking other than pea & borage soup...hmm, may need a bit more than soup and candlelight to make it work.



Lots to do so I had better make a start and had also better rescue poor Fatty Arbuckle from Isabella as she is trying to get him to have his photograph taken...looks worse than it is really as he is the soppiest cat and positively purrs like a mad thing when she 'plays' with him. At least it keeps her away from the Babbits waiting for their name tags before they leave for their new homes. The word busy seems to be synonymous with Babbits at the moment, so for once I will introduce a new saying instead of Isabella (she of the 'Habby' for happy and 'Babbit' for rabbit') and say I hope you all have a Babbity day!



Have a Babbity day everyone x

A problem harvest.

I have finally morphed into a true Brit endlessly looking out of the window, sighing at the rain, clicking my tongue as I shake my head with a melancholy air. Oh I am a true delight to be around I can assure you. I switch from sighing to whining...loudly. I'm not sure about the rest of you, but we have had so much rain here.....right, enough; I will stop and get a grip before I drive any poor souls who may have ventured this far away. On to other things.





Ok, this does involve a rain-filled discussion, but bear with me. Cornwall is renowned for being slightly ahead of the rest of the country in the plant stakes - it is the mild climate you see, the same one that brings much rain, and usually I start harvesting herbs for drying from July onwards. This year has been tricky, more than tricky, as I have patiently waited for the lavender to flower, the oregano and sweet marjorams to bloom, the myriad other herbs strewn around our increasingly wild and windswept garden to blossom so that I can begin one of my favourite tasks of cutting them. The eventual aim is for them to be used in various mixes in such things as these Sweet Dreams hearts....





or these embroidered sachets...





or even this Babbit filled with soothing lavender and chamomile...





Needless to say, the harvest has been poor - slow to reach that perfect point of flower with the wet weather and high humidity rotting much of the potential harvest in the meantime. I always pick my flowers in the late morning where possible, the reason being quite simple in that too late in the day runs the risk of the powerful essential oils having evaporated and too early could mean they are damp from the dew, thus running the possibility of botrytis (grey mould) developing in the drying process. On the one of about three days which were not rain drenched this holiday I finally decided to cut them and be hanged, hoping that the meagre harvest would be dry enough and not overblown, but not prepared to wait any longer.



(lavender & chamomile sachets)


My hope is that by cutting them back I will at least ensure a subsequent late flowering as in other years. If nothing else, the plants no longer look at miserable with that awful shattered appearance that torrential rain causes. I do feel rather as though I have started putting the garden to bed for the year though. Hey ho, perhaps the sun will come out tomorrow...sing along now!


Bye for now,
Pipany xx