Playing.

Oops, I got sidetracked! I should be working... you know, finishing the orders and posting, but I have just lost nearly an hour messing about on this.

So much more fun than I thought it would be, but now I really am getting back to making some of these... (oh, look who's in the centre of it all. She gets in on everything, that one!).

Toodle Pip! x

Dreaming of Days to Come.

We have almost finished the last of the three Christmas puddings and very lovely they were too. Christmas is behind us and the beautiful weather of the last week has brought spring ever closer. Dave and I spent a blissful few hours on Sunday beginning the post Christmas clear up of our garden and discovered so much growing beneath the covering of leaves, making me itch to start propagating and cutting back.



The mass of seed heads we left over winter to feed the birds is now being added to the compost heap, the parade of goldfinches and coal tits having moved away to more interesting food as the season gets going once more.



Not only are the earliest of flowers, the delicate snowdrops with their purest of white nodding heads, beginning to open



but tulips are also pushing their stubby leaves high above ground. The more debris I cleared, the more drifts I found which makes me feel somewhat better about the fact that yet again I didn't add to the bubs as I intended, the autumn/winter rush of orders making any garden work an impossibilty.



The purple petals of the arabis beneath the sitting room window are already opening and plenty more buds are tightly furled promising a pretty display later on in the spring when the drifts of dainty saxifrage open alongside.



How ever, much as we have started to wreak a little order on the neglected garden, there are many areas yet to tidy. I really should turn the compost heap as we are already adding more to it. The whole area needs a clear up as pots and buckets have been left there since the summer and now it all looks so bedraggled.



Of course, Dave and I are spurred on now we feel back in touch with our patch. I love to browse through the catalogues, bathing in the glow of the inspiring images within the glossy pages.



Sarah Raven particularly concentrates on fantastic photography and curled up by the fire I like to imagine our garden looking a little like this ...



which of course it doesn't. I will say though that over the years we have created rather beautiful swathes to look out on, pretty patches such as this tangled mass of lychnis, lupins and ever-manic nasturtiums.



We have made a large duck pond with an old fruiting cherry gracefully arching its branches over the pond and scattering confetti petals over the murky waters beneath.



In summer bright orange marigolds seed in any gaps and lift the green of the yet to flower lupins



and clumps of chives are everywhere, used in salads and posies with equal fervour.



There are all kinds of herbs growing through the perennials such as lemon balm, oregano and my favourite golden marjoram which looks so amazing when grown with lavenders or marigolds.



Gorgeous never-ending forget-me-nots with the prettiest of summer's day blue petals and surely the prettiest of names.



It's a garden where hens often escape to wander free (to peck and wreck)and the sound of ducks splashing and diving mingles with the sweet songbird always present;



where there are fruit trees and bushes of all kinds to provide us with the makings of jams and puddings and a number of alcholic beverages to boot. The children pick their own apples for packed lunches, grazing on red and black currants, scoffing juicy tayberries, and enjoying crumbles and pies made from our rhubarb and gooseberries.



It is a garden that changes constantly and provides a home for all manner of wildlife from newts to hedgehogs. It gives us vegetables and salads, a place to sit or for the children to play, flowers to fill the house with nosegays such as this



and although I had not intended to visit it in quite this way today, I am so glad I have. It is all just around the corner and the fun begins again! x

A Little Look at Autumn.

Autumn in Cornwall hasn't been what I was hoping for so far. Where many of you have had glorious sunshine and hot, hot days we have been experiencing damp, sometimes muggy, sometimes really chilly weather. As some of you say though, it does give an excuse to light the fire - not that I ever need one. And there is beauty to be found even in the dankest of days.



Beautiful seed heads have an almost structural quality to them



which I translate into my handmade covered notebooks



Raindrops catch the fading light and hang from every surface.



Hard to tell these soggy flower tops were once the childlike flowers of feverfew - dainty daisies dancing in the breeze, now reduced to a static display of decay.



All around are the things which give me ideas for my work particularly at this time of year. I somehow relate to autumn more than any other season, though I find things I love in them all. I like having a little reminder like this lavender cushion so that I can enjoy it all without always having to get wet to do so!



When I see such beautiful things in nature it inspires so many ideas which is why I capture them in photographs. These often become a separate art form which inspires me as the lens takes up the shadows and highlights, offering a new image from the one I originally saw. Having these cards in my sewing room is a quick means of having a reference point for me.



There are still plenty of blackberries around, though I doubt they will be there much longer if this picture is anything to go by. See the pretty calyx left by the dropped berry; it almost looks like a flower in own right.



No matter, I will be able to look at these instead in the darker months and know their time will come again.



I picked up these windfalls this morning when feeding the ducks and collected up a pile of wood from the woodshed to use on the fire tonight. I have plans for a lovely roaring fire to accompany my knitting.



Isabella has plans to help me make another plum, apple and blackberry crumble. This one had a sprinkling of cinnamon and a goodly slug of our homemade plum gin to help it on its way.



Yes, even a grey day can be beautiful.



What are your plans tonight? x

New Pipany products!

Oh I am so excited! I have finally, after sooo much procrastination and uhmming and ahhing and basically doing anything I could to avoid it, put my new stationery range onto my pipany website. At last!



It was a job and a half I must say, but I am so thrilled with the look of them in all their cheeriness that I can't quite think why I didn't get them done much sooner.



The range contains both cards & postcards and are all taken from my photographic images of the things I see around my Cornish home. These are the things which inspire me and feed into many of my designs for my products. Things such as this..



and this..



The cards are available to buy either individually or in sets of three and have been left blank inside for you to add your own message. The cards come in four sets: autumn Fruits, Seeds & Grasses, Skies and River Views



while the postcards have an additional two themes - Cornwall and Seashore - and come in sets of 5.



And of course, as with everything else in my shop, postage is free to the UK! Oh dear, I sound like a very bad salesman..



I will be changing the range fairly frequently as my camera finds new things to grab me on my travels, things I want to share in the hope that you may love them too.



I won't show all the range here as it would spoil the fun, but I would love it if you could pop over and let me know what you think (please be gentle!).



Now I need a strong cup of tea and a biscuit! Have a great day x

(P.s. Kate, Diana has booted me up the proverbial and there will be an email full of mortification winging its way to you later today...sigh x)

Alchemilla for Camilla.

Mr Davey came home from school recently - he will pass his exams eventually, I am sure - and announced that he was organising a visit to the school by Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall; he then announced that he had said I would do the flowers for Camilla and her Lady-in-waiting. Oh. Right. Now let me tell you a little story...



Once upon a lifetime ago, Pipany sort of trained as a florist. This was as a back-up plan because she had actually trained in horticulture, but as Pipany was a skinny waif of a gel, it seemed getting work in the world of gardening may be a problem in not so very enlightened Cornwall (it was a long, long time ago), but soon decided that she was not keen on such formal flower arranging and returned to her own tied posies of garden flowers grown by her own not-usually-very-fair hands.



Having learned all about corsages and wreaths, wedding flowers and all manner of funereal crosses and sprays, Pipany then did indeed work in the prettily-scented floristry shops of ye local town (plus ye not so local town now I come to think about it).



The years rolled on until one day Mr Davey announced that he had put Pipany's name forward as the arranger of posies for m'lady Camilla - Ooohhh bum. The thing is, my posies are very informal and full of things like herbs and marigolds, wildly disarrayed sprays of whatever is looking pretty out in the garden. Typically, we are on the in between bit, but there was plenty of golden marjoram, lavender, daisies, hypericum berries, oregano and masses of my trusty alchemilla. I even cut our precious few brodeia - like a small and very dainty agapanthus which lasts brilliantly as a cut flower despite its fragility.



So, there you are and there I am, yet again bemoaning the fact that the photographs I took were hurried and in harsh light which has turned what were really rather pretty and natural tied posies into things of garishness where the soft mauve of brodeia and the gentle lime of my favourite alchemilla are lost only to be replaced by a harsh purple and green which bears no resemblance whatsoever to the original.



Ah well, such is life. The day went well and the flowers didn't fall apart and I made fruit loaf to mark the occasion



and jammed the tayberries



and made a batch of bread rolls to scoff thickly spread with butter and said jam.



Not a bad day, all in all. How was yours? x