What We Did.

This weekend we made bread animals



Noticed how beautiful the nasturtiums are, particularly the deeper red ones.



Thought about how overgrown the border in front of the hen pen is, but decided it has an autumnal beauty all its own when viewed through the arching, heavily laden branches of a Cornish Aromatic apple tree. We will let it die down and eventually put it to bed for the long, cold months under a blanket of manure.



We sat on the courtyard with a glass of wine, chatting together and enjoying the sun while Isabella helped me to strip the last of the elderberries into a box for the freezer. Look at the concentration on that face.



We prepared the shallots from the allotment for pickling ready for Christmas feasts of cold meats, cheeses and all types of homemade tangy things!



More gin and vodka was acquired as we decided the cupcoards could do with a few more drinks to keep the chill at bay. Bramble vodkas and sloe gins are now steeping nicely alongside the others.



We also went to Falmouth Oyster Festival and a friend's 4th birthday party; ate a roast dinner, chatted with tom and his girlfriend and had a generally good weekend.



How about you? x

A Butterfly Bag in blue.

Christmas must be a-coming judging by the increase in orders coming in, everything from garden door hangings to bags. This is the pair to teh Butterfly Bag in russet that I blogged about a few days ago.



Again it is decorated in a simple flower design on a gorgeous blue, red and cream fabric



with a flapping butterfly to bring a bit of movement. I can just imagine a child flicking the wings to make them flap - well, I don't need to imagine as that is just what Isabella has been doing.



The bags seem to be appealling to quite an age range as Lucy at 11 still finds it cool to have a fun bag and Isabella at 3 manages to stuff hers with as many toys as she can carry! So, that's me for today. I'll just leave you with a Butterfly bag in russet



and a Butterfly in blue



Happy Friday x

Blissful Sunshine on a Blissful Beach.

Hasn't the weather been amazing this week? We have been making the most of it with trips to the beach after school to soak up that delicious feeling of chilly - not icy yet though - water and shifting sands between your toes



Big sister being pulled by little sister into a slightly deeper and very weedy pool.



Nothing beats jumping and splashing and generally getting wet.



or just hanging out



It's enough to bring a smile to the tiredest young lady after a hard day at school.



Then as the air starts to chill it's home to a tea of homemade pasty followed by sticky brownies - both stodgy, both totally yummy - and the warmth of a fire to end the day



and dream of this...



Have fun x

Autumn and Winter weekend

Well, that wasn't quite the weekend I thought it would be. A crashing migraine combined with the need to sort paperwork (ugh) and work on the business meant that I was hardly the light and soul of the house. Needless to say, everything I touched also seemed infected with some virus: the computer I am convinced hates me and showed it by going sooo slooowly all weekend that I despaired of ever being able to upload products and the camera batteries died on me...twice. Enough of this woeful tale and on to nicer things.



First up is my Little House Notebook in winter, a covered notebook in A6 size as I find this to be the most convenient to pop into a bag. I use notebooks constantly for sketching things which catch my eye or making a list - ahh, I do love to make a list! The 'winter' by the way, refers to the subject of the design and the tonal range in case anyone is wondering why there is a strawberry in the fabric border (global warming you know).



The notebooks have re-useable covers which I embroidered with a mix of freehand machine and hand embroidery, a style I am becoming slightly obsessed with as it allows me more freedom with my designs while still being able to use hand embroidery for embellishment. I suppose it provides the accent notes against the looser, more ephemeral machine embroidery. Oh I know what I mean, but am so tired today I can't express myself coherently..sorry!



The second design, Little House Notebook - autumn features a warmer tonal range more in keeping with early autumn, hence the name.


I really loved working on these, exploring the seeds and grasses imagery a little further and developing some of the designs in my own notebook.



Other than work this weekend mostly consisted of fires such as these:



trying to photograph a sock in the wrong light and on the wrong foot (i.e. mine, not Dave's much larger one) in bad light - Pomona it is a much nicer colour than this...honest!



and much moaning as my head tried to explode, thus freeing itself from the constraining bands that clutched vice-like around its poor girth. Oh and of course, the weekend also consisted of these:

Little House Notebook in winter



and a Little House Notebook in autumn.



Hope yours was good x

The Beach and the Butterfly.

Finally the sun returned and hasn't it been wonderful? Glorious, gorgeous, beautiful autumnal sunshine...bliss.



A quick much needed trip to the beach with Isabella early this morning swept away the cobwebs as the sea glimmered in the sun with these golden pampas shaking their heads against the blue.



We weren't able to walk far as the tide was fully in, but we stopped off at the quay to see it bathed in a far better light than yesterday's rain-ridden view.



Once home we popped this one surviving squash (plucked a week ago from our allotment) out onto the warmth of the clementine pot where it could bathe in the sunlight, hopefully curing to last until Hallowe'en. Can't think quite what the variety was, but Excelsor rings a bell.



I even managed to be organised enough to pack the camera and tripod before we set off this morning and was able to photograph one of the new items for my children's range. It is called the Butterfly Bag and is made from a beautiful softer-than-soft needlecord Liberty print with a cream lining.



The bag has a panel of hand embroidered flowers and a butterfly stitched to allow the wings to flap (which Isabella is so taken with that I have had to prise it out of her little mitts!). Dare I say Christmas is a-coming and it would make a lovely gift? No? Oh well, thought it was time to start mentioning it!



So, a busy and - for once - productive day here with the threat of rain ruining the fun tomorrow. Off to light the fire ready for an evening of knitting socks (yes, it goes on), drinking a glass of wine and bathing in the warmth of the flames.

Have a lovely evening 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

Urghhhhh!

EEEEEeeeeeeeeeekkkkkkkk

That's all I'm saying!