drilling

Running a bit late this morning! Stayed up late working last night and then overslept by 15 minutes this morning, better than yesterday where I forgot to set the alarm I suppose. I was totally indecisive getting the milk and papers and baked goods this morning and strangely I think everyone must have overslept this morning because everywhere I went was running a tad late.
I finally finished a batch of the two coloured leather granny purses last night. They have been sitting on my work trestle table taunting me, I can see them from my seat on the couch, but they are underway and in store today. Getting the drill out yesterday to hang the sign was good as I have a pile of drilling jobs that need doing and I had developed that kind of procrastination/tool fear that I get sometimes. It's not that I am 'fearful' of the tool just that it sits there mocking my procrastination and so I grow to hate it and avoid it. Yeah, OK, it's just an excuse for procrastination. You know what I am talking about! The five minute job that blows out in your mind to a huge production which, of course, when you finally get around to doing it only actually takes 2 1/2 minutes. Well I have a whole pile of those lying around here.
So Saturday shop news.... the Cottage has a new sign, there are Heico cockatoo lamps in store, a couple of new glove colours, new leather purses that I have nowhere to display, Ann's tea cosies have arrived and new pianola shades in in all 5 sizes have been delivered.
I've taken the bunting down outside which is sort of strange after so many years. It's not that more won't go back up but the shiny new sign just dictated a bit of a spruce. I was planning to paint the sections above when the windows were replaced but have never actually got around to it. I hate painting (a realisation that occurs 5 minutes after I start painting) and deep down would love to just pay someone else to do it. Which means if you drive by tomorrow you'll probably find me up the ladder doing it. Stupid me. Really I should be out the back drill in hand.
Time to vacuum and mop!

gilded lily

It's up!
Ray the Gilder dropped off the sign yesterday so there has been a flurry of glueing, tacking, drilling, measuring and, as of late this afternoon, it was hung.
It's strange for the Cottage to finally have a proper sign. We've had the chalk sign on the door and the slate in the window but this is the real McCoy, it's so grown up and proper. And very beautiful. I feel like the Cottage isn't quite good enough for its sign!
Ray has done some of the most wonderful gold leaf signage around town, there is a great little interview with him over at Mr Blanc (I am loving Mr Blanc's blokeville blog, I do love a good 'bloke'!). Once you get your eye in you'll be able to spot Ray's work as you gad about Melbourne and further a field. It really is very beautiful which is why we had it done on a framed glass panel so that we can carry it with us where ever we may go- not saying that we are going anywhere!
Library Girl dropped in on Wednesday and teased as that we should be an 'emporium'. We want an emporium and a tea room! Dell and I have been joking about the Cottage Industry tea room for ages now, what we will cook, the decor, the preserves, the ginger beer..... of course it is all dependent on me winning PowerBall.... there is also the jokes about the country cottage totally decorated with Welsh blankets.....

cocka-one, cocka-two, cocka-three....

I am nursing a splitter of a headache, one of those that makes you feel nauseated and crappy.
Damn.
It's been a bit of a bitza of a day, a few hours at the studio, back at the shop, out in the car.
As the computer screen is making my eyes hurt I might sign off for the evening.
Just wanted to let you know the cockatoo lights have arrived and we've got some new cute little ceramic critters in store as well.
Night.

cosy

Two days in the studio. A hard slog. I think it is just getting my head around working at the machine, cutting patterns and trying to match checks in the fabric. It was slow going but I get a couple of dresses completed, apart from buttons and sadly only in one size. Sampling is always slow and then as painful as production is at least there is the joy that making multiples takes only a smidge longer than making one.
Today will be bill paying, typing on the computer and glove dyeing. Hopefully.
A package arrived from up country yesterday, Ann has been busy crocheting and we have a whole garden of flowering tea cosies in the shop now. They are a joy to behold. Makes you think Spring is on the way....
Jethro has ramped up his 'glove hunting' and brought/caught me 10 pairs last night. He used to restrict himself to samples and seconds nut now he is fetching stock. It's cute, annoying, amazing, obsessive, proud  and I should think myself lucky it isn't mice. I think it is because he has scared all the mice away that he does it. Every morning I have to collect them off the bed and pick them up from through the house, a glove trail. He brought me two pairs straight after the earthquake last week, a short and a long, obviously he wasn't sure which ones I would need in an emergency.
Time to turn the dye copper on and whip up a batch of porridge (not in the copper) to keep me going through the day. And definitely another bucket of tea.

checking out

So there I was in the studio yesterday, trying out some toiles of basic blocks, thinking about how we are so short on wintery clothes and how I need to get my shit together. My brain just doesn't like the idea of production at the moment, like the good 'craft athlete' that I am I really need to push through that maker's pain barrier. And I need to find some way to clone myself and work on a dozen projects at once. Or I suppose I could get out of bed earlier.... hmmm, maybe not that.
I'm off to get some more pattern kraft as the end of my roll is so tight it springs up and curls when I am trying to draft patterns. It is both annoying and amusing. I might tinker with the new dress pattern before I grade it and then find time this week to make a few. Along with all the other things waiting to be done.

My new Lisa B 'patch' socks seem to match the studio happenings exactly. A bit of an orange/blue/grey theme happening although the 'blue' in the dress is much more electric-y purple than denim-y indigo. 

OK I'm going now. 

Things to do. 

interuptus

A dreadful night's sleep, sleepus interuptus indeed. My best wishes going out to all my parenting friends and their little fiends who wake every 1/2 hour. I have no excuse except for some seriously weird noises in the night and they weren't issuing from me, somewhere out in Fitzroy strange things were a-foot. Just call me the walking zombie this morning.
Instead of cleaning yesterday I walked into the city, bought a pair of jeans, lost my Myki virginity and wasted most of my Sunday. The house looks even worse, only half the washing got done, no vacuuming and I managed to knock a box over last night on the way to bed and it's contents are now spilt across the floor. The walls are closing in! Sadly whilst the new clothes airer is brilliant (it's on wheels) I don't actually have any room for it and rather than making things better it is cramping what little space I have. Time for a total overhaul, totally.
Now though I really need to get to the studio and to find no distractions  and actually spend the week working hard on stock. Those blanket quilts sadly won't make themselves you know. So please, no distractions this week, no having to be somewhere else, at some annoying time, if I must have appointments then please don't make them a waste of time. Let me have one day of dyeing when everything goes smoothly and I can build up a nice backlog of stock and the kitchen ends up containing a few less boxes of gloves. That I remember to put out all the recycling on Garbage Eve. Not much to ask for really.
OK, now I really must bust a move and get out of the house and to the studio.
Wish me luck and a fair wind.

sign of our shop

I was so hoping to unveil our new shop sign this weekend, sadly Ray the Gilder made a boo-boo with the gold border and he has taken the sign off to re-work the edge so there has been a bit of a delay. Excitement has got the better of me though and I just had to post a photo of his work!
Mr Cruickshank did the typography, it's on glass so once it's been hung in the window you'll still be able to see through it. It's framed in an Edwardian frame and that was what held us up for so long getting the sign made, I couldn't find a suitable old frame, I hunted high and low and then, of course, one day just stumbled across one. It's only taken 4 1/4 years to organise. We did have the green door with the chalk writing for years and I think it has alway quite amused us watching the befuddled look on people's faces trying to work out the name of the shop since the glass door was installed.
So to go with our love of all things traditional 'skillz-mad' our sign has been hand painted on glass and gilded in real gold. A dying art in these days of computer cut vinyl lettering, a skill once learnt as an apprentice and at trade school (yes, TAFE training, don't get me started on the what is happening here in Victoria... foolish and shortsighted).
So soon we will have our shop sign up. It might cause a rash of renovation or perhaps just a spruce up. We may even finally get around to having out invoice books printed rather than sticker-ed they way we having been doing them for the last 4 1/4 years. I am amused that we have done this all arse-about, most shops these days do their branding before they get their product together! I've also never quite got my decisions made about uniform typefaces etc, I just can never decide ('oh that's nice, hmmm not quite what I was thinking of.....') so things just get changed every now and then. I think Mr Cruickshank has been deeply horrified by my airy-fairy indecision!
So hopefully this time next week our sign will be well and truly hung.
Shop day for me today. Another week lost to the well of good intentions. How do I lose so many days?
Please drop in and have a look at our lovely Trunk and Orderly cases (I know a small boy who has been given a blue lunch case for his car collection), they make great craft storage boxes we have discovered. There are lots of gloves out, a mountain of Welsh blanket cushions and we are started to run low on some sizes in the Slade sweaters and cardis so don't leave buying one for too much longer or you may be disappointed.
Take care, have a warm and cosy weekend!

mid-winter glory

Doesn't look like I'll be getting to the studio today. Bet it is absolutely freakin' freezin' there!
We need gloves dyed and clipped and tagged so I am trying to get that sorted.
I was so tired last night I was having trouble tap-tapping out the post about T&O. I hope it made sense. I was going to write how I think the 'weekender' case makes me think of a 1950s film, a woman standing on a railway platform waiting for the train to take her to Bournemouth for an illicit weekend, her case packed with a silk peignoir. Or perhaps the 'lunch' case or 'kinder' case might be perfect to hide the love letters from her admirer... or the 'weekender' if there was a hell of a lot of them. Considering the ridiculous prices  badly battered crappy cases are going for these days, these are a snap, so vintage and so new at the same time.

I had to share with you yesterday's fabulous Bacchus Marsh heritage pumpkins. They really are a sign of Autumn/Winter bounty. I brought a couple back for Dell (she asked for 'small and weird') and I got a quarter of a Windsor Black for me. This is the pumpkin of my childhood Sunday Roasts, I can never find it anywhere these days, it's a killer to chop up but I am hoping for pumpkin heaven. There are so few pumpkins available these days, butternut just doesn't cut it for me, that I might have to pencil in a pumpkin run to Bacchus Marsh every Autumn from now on.

we ♥ trunk and orderly

A nippy 5.8°C in Ballarat at 11.30 this morning but worth the cold and the drive to meet up with Anna and Joel of Trunk and Orderly- the Cottage is now stocking their fabulous cases! I love people who save machinery, are as skills-mad as me, are producing such gorgeous products and have a homemade pot bellied stove to keep their factory warm.

You can read the story  of T&O over at the D-Files . These beauties are handmade in Ballarat, the case board is 20-30 years old, as are most of the fittings, the lining we've chosen is a print created from old train tickets and we've got the cases in 3 sizes (lunch, kinder and weekender). If I wasn't so tired I would rave more about them but between my yawns and watery eyes I think it is time to heat up the wheat bag and crawl under the mountain of Welsh blankets on the bed.
Between earthquake and windy icy weather I'm worn out and sleepy.
Oh and look we have product in the Michi Girl online shop now!
The rest of the week is looking bitter weatherwise (just how I like it!) so remember we have lots of lovely angora gloves and Lisa B socks for you to snuggle into. Really need to do something about the lack of Winter clothing  and the dearth of blanket quilts.......

shaking

An exciting evening. An earthquake that seemed to go for quite awhile. Jethro fine about the shaking, he just sat and looked at me curiously then went down to check all was OK and to bring a pair of short burgundy gloves and then a pair of long red gloves. He'd be good in an emergency obviously. Seems there is a bit of Rin Tin Tin in him.
A bare couple of hours in the studio today, spliced in between wholesale customer meetings, a photo shoot of products for a local newspaper and a bit of dyeing. I really will have to have a very intense burst of dyeing soon as I'm finding the glove boxes to be running low again. I barely seem to catch up before I have to start all over again.
I seem to have a lot of appointments this week, Ballarat tomorrow, something exciting to show you soon! And Jethro has just brought me another pair of gloves... fluoro yellow... he's so kind... I really shouldn't encourage him...
I received some lovely emails from people about yesterday's post- thank you. I'm not really down on Pinterest and time on the internet, just more curious and contemplative about the world they create. I don't quite know how people fit them into their days, I seem to run out of time everyday just getting through the basics. Time is a luxury.
I am mourning the impending demise of broadsheet newspapers and editorial independence. I love reading my news printed on paper. I'm sorry but I can be a Luddite about these things or should I say an 'anti-Luddite'- don't smash those machines, keep them running! I know, I am very old-fashioned.

thinking

I'm flat as a tack today. It's probably the tail end of the stupid cold, a bit feverish and  a bad night's sleep can take it out of one. There are gloves to be dyed and pressed today, lots of paperwork to read for a meeting, so I think an at-home day is needed, mind you half the day is gone already.
I've been thinking a lot lately about 'stuff', nothing particularly earth shattering, just contemplating life in general, then along came this post by Rohan, 'happiness vs content' which was exactly what I was pondering. I've been thinking of late how the whole blogverse could really get one down, too many aspirational photos of beautiful people/children/houses/holidays/possessions/clothes/food. I was wondering whether there are crowds of people out there feeling they could never achieve the edited 'happiness' they see online and the cynic that I am wondered about façades and anti-depressant medication. I steer clear of places like Pinterest and would much rather stick an occasional photo on the wall near my desk or having enjoyed an image for a little while, file it in my memory and move on.
I have always been a bit wary of 'happiness', I think it is fleeting and the push of societal pressure to be happy just freaks me out, the rise of online 'happiness projects' seems weird and vaguely creepy to me. Not every day is a happy day, some days are flat and grey and exhausting but that's ok, that's life, it goes up, it comes down. People often say to me how lucky I am to spend my days making stuff, how they wish they could do it. I always have a chuckle inside. This is my job and it is my life, it is sometimes fun and exciting but often the pressure (physical, mental , financial) is exhausting beyond belief. And I am not going to put a smiley face on and pretend I am not worn down by it all. The other thing people always say to me is that they like that I am honest in my blog, that I am never 'jolly hockey-sticks' and fake-ly cheery.
Which all leads to content. I don't live my life with a high 'happiness' quota but the last few weeks' thinking
made me decide I am 'content' and to me that is no bad thing. I don't have a partner, a child, own property, my holidays are pretty basic, if I was to separate my work possessions (mountains of stuff) from my personal then I don't actually own much (my home does appear quite full though). Content is the simple things in life. Funnily enough when I think about ways to describe content they are often about extremes or the little things... breathing in the steam of a mug of tea on a cold cold morning, feeling your toes thaw out after a winter walk, the smell and crack of a fresh made loaf of bread, the small pride in making something well... perhaps because Winter is a time to slow down, to nest and burrow oneself away, to find a quiet place deep in one's self.
There is nothing wrong with being content. There has been  quite a lot of work looking at how we really need to slow down and find quiet times in our day. That without these quiet times we are actually less creative and innovative. It takes a lot to switch off, to stop 'relaxing' with a bit of blogsurfing, to learn to sit quietly for a minute or two, to not wake up at 4 in the morning with our minds buzzing. Sometimes we need to be a turtle, slow and steady and carrying our 'home' with us, not our physical home but our content inner home, not racing about creating towering edifices but spending time on the simple things.

overwhelmed

Saturday. Again. Different this week as I actually have internet connection.
Weird ol' week this week, kind of mixed up and a bit nothing, if you know what I mean. A disconcerting week, perhaps a 'waiting week', an off-track week, a not a lot achieved week. I think maybe my working patterns are changing and I feel a bit out of kilter, it's been like this for a bit now and I wish I could find some steadiness in my days.
On the studio front I cut up hides and sides of leather to make new granny purses- fluoro grannies, lustre grannies, bi-colour grannies, granny takes a trip grannies. Really they are ridiculously bright and the fluoro ones match our satchels. Hopefully in-store next week and there is going to have to be a really big move around to find space for them.

I only made two new Welsh blanket cushions yesterday. I know, it's got totally out of hand. We've had people in this week looking at cushions who have ended up leaving in confusion because of the choice (mind you they always put their names down to be notified when new ones come in- what, they want to be even more confused?!) and I am starting to think we should hide half of them out the back. Overwhelmed for choice it appears. 

On the matter of choice, the two boxes of Lisa B socks have arrived. Along with a repeat of spot calf, spot OTK, Argyle calf, diamond OTK we now have two new styles, fairisle and patch and there are new colourways too. Yep, even more to confound your brains with.

Which Welsh blanket cushion will go with my socks and should I match my gloves to my socks or to my cushion?? And will they go with my satchel? And which colour combo should I get in the  mix'n'match granny purses?

Ha.

I better go press up some short charcoal gloves before the Saturday shopgirl shift starts.

the great equalizer

No product to show for today, just a lot of pencil sharpenings, bits of kraft paper and some swearing. Playing with pattern blocks, master blocks, adapted blocks, doing things like 'equalizing shoulders', losing darts, creating ease. As I said, no product, perhaps it will lead to product.... or hair tearing.
I am feeling flat this evening, funny how that can creep up on you. I've just been through the glove boxes trying to get an order together to discover how low we are on some colours/lengths. How did that happen? So now I have 'elephant' in the washing machine and 'charcoal' soaking in the copper. The kitchen is piled high with boxes and bags of gloves , there is definitely no room to swing a cat although Jethro like to pretend he is scaling the south face of the Himalayas by clambering up and over them.
I've discovered that I can easily clean the kitchen ceiling if I wait for the copper to reach a nice boil and fill the kitchen and laundry with steam. I've been thinking it needed a re-paint but it's amazing what a wipe over can do. Cleaning, so many other better ways to fill your day. I do have plans to get out the drill out soon, I'm thinking the sliding door between the kitchen and laundry might make a good moving pegboard. Sometimes a bit of home reno is as good as a holiday.

trying

No studio yesterday. I slept in a fraction (and again this morning, my bed is just so nice and snugly) and then drove up country to get the rest of my glove order. A few op shops on the way, no great hauls, and I seem to have developed a love of photographing things I don't buy, Hipstamatic and op shops seem to go together so well.
The first box of our second order of Lisa B socks has arrived and fingers crossed the second lot will arrive today. There is a full range of calf length spot socks in and the lovely Argyle ones too and in this box was the knee high fair-isle design. There should be OTK diamonds and spots and the new colour block style in today's delivery. I'll snap a photo later to show you their glorious sockiness!
Other news? Not much. Trying to stop procrastinating and trim and tag a couple of boxes of gloves. Trying to remember to take a kilo of lavender and a technical book to the studio. Trying to find a picture of a seat cushion to send to the upholsterers for a job I'm advising on. Trying to leave the house. Very very trying.

a tuesday a bit like a monday

A day in the studio, the first full day in... oh, I don't know how long! I thought perhaps I needed to do something new, dust off Monster (the walking foot machine, brother to the Beast the walking foot binding machine), chop into some leather, make a new purse or two. I floated a bit, couldn't settle totally, got annoyed at the dust and mess. So out came the vacuum, which actually always sits in the middle of the floor taunting and tripping me up, lugged cardboard boxes to the bin and I hunted out blankets read for quilt making.

The studio was freezing and my fingertips got clumsy from the cold, meeting my fellow studio dwellers in the hall everyone was murmuring about the cold, jealous of my beanie. For the first time this Winter I switched the heater on and burnt the dust off. It's always a bit of a rude shock when the residual warmth of Summer finally leaves the building. So this week I need to get my head around being back in the studio, focusing on what needs to be done (like Winter clothing), I'm late as usual but once I get motivated I'll speed up. 

I've got gloves in the washing machine that need to go in the dryer, gloves in the sink that need to go in the dye pot, gloves on that table that need clipping and tagging, gloves up country that need to be picked up, gloves to go out, gloves, gloves, gloves......

cake, stew, flu

Sorry for the lack of communication.
I had a post written and ready to go on Saturday morning but something went haywire and I thought it was Blogger's fault but actually my modem had a touch of the interflu which has resulted in my hanging on the phone for an hour and a half on a public holiday trying to get it fixed. All done now.
I managed to sneak in a sleep in this morning, a double batch of poppy red gloves dyed, an apple and walnut cake cooked and a chicken soup/stew on the stove. The washing has even been hung out. Crazy huh? If you are thinking that looks like a lot of cream next to that slice of oven warm cake then I refer you to my friend Beck's comment yesterday that there is never too much cream (made as she spooned whipped cream onto my golden syrup sponge cake filled with cream patisserie and coated in chocolate ganache).
I really do like a two day weekend, I seem to only get them if it's a public holiday on the Monday. I wonder sometimes what it would be like to have them every week. I'd probably get bored.... and I wonder why it is that on some days it is so much easier to get things done.
Hope you've had a lazy few days, it's the last of the off-days for some time here, Winter is settling in hard and fast. To all those people who tried phoning the shop today to come in and buy gloves and satchels, just have a day off from shopping, OK?

wan

Morning all.
No 'good' included there, sorry.
My cheekbones feel like concrete and may make my whole face pitch forward into my porridge if I'm not careful. On the up side I managed to neither burn nor boil over said porridge this morning and though it was delicious to eat I wasn't in much of a mood for actually eating it, spooning was very slow.
I think last night's post was probably a bit garbled and weird, sorry about that, blame this silly cold. I did have things to tell you. Things like...
Our lovely Lisa B socks on the D-Files sock post, more socks in very soon, today hopefully!
I've just popped some vintage capes and jackets into the shop made from... Welsh blankets! Yes our addiction grows ever stronger, 'hi my name is Pen and I seem to have a bit of a fascination for carthen...'. We have a couple of capes and a fabulous jacket made from the same purple/pink/black colourway we've done cushions in. We have some more on the way.
And there is satchels.
And there are new glove colours.
Even when sick I seem to get a bit of work done but I should probably get a couple of hours in at the studio if I can today. A friend's mum said I looked a bit 'wan' yesterday and I have to say that little word quite sums it up. The face in the mirror this morning was really quite pasty. And my iPod has had a spak-attack and lost every bit of its music and won't talk to my computer, contagion.
OK time to make a move.
Oh and I enjoyed reading this about the rise of 'professional amateurism' whilst eating my porridge in bed this morning, it applies equally to craft and making.

cold and counterfeit

I am still fighting the lurgy sadly, a right little snot monster, but I've been soldiering on though. One minute I'm feeling fine-ish, the next pretty carp. I haven't got to the studio, tomorrow perhaps, but there are some new glove colours done. I've had to change the window display as Mr Furpants has taken to 'stealing' the gloves hanging in the window, he likes to play fetch with them, I often wake up to the bed covered in gloves. He got a smack on the nose for doing it but that only resulted in him looking sulky and affronted.
This evening we discovered someone had managed to pass a counterfeit $50 on us yesterday, resulting in 50% annoyance and 50% amazement. We spent some time checking it out. I'm thinking of giving it to that annoying whispering beggar we all dislike (I know... that's mean... but he drives everyone mad... and I am joking... ).
What else to report? Nothing much I think.... I have a stack of work I really need to start/finish, the clock wall is looking very very bare. I think the lurgy is creeping up on me... I know I had interesting things to say when I first started typing... the couch is calling.

dreaded lurgy and darkest derrimut

The Dreaded Lurgy has really got it's claws into me. I'm coughing and spluttering and sniffing. See, as soon as  one slows down this is what happens, it pounces like an evil troll and drags you to its lair where it precedes to do nasty things to you. Blah. Cough. Sniff. Yawn.
Yesterday I had to get in the car and drive to glorious Derrimut (yet again) as Fedex had managed to deliver three out of the four boxes we were waiting for and I had to go pick up the one that had 'missed the bus'. I sometimes wonder what I have done to deserve the courier crap I seem to regularly have to sort out. Is it some form of karma? Or is it that courier services are just generally pretty poor? Perhaps I am just impatient.
Anyway we now have the four boxes clogging up the shop. A small shipment of Cambridge Satchels. Not the big shipment we ordered 2 months + ago but an apology shipment that will hopefully tide us over until our next big deliver at the end of August. There is a story there and I will write it today, nothing interesting but just an explanation of why the satchels are late arriving.
On the up side we have some new glittery satchels! 'Graphite' which sparkles all silvery and the black with multi-coloured glitter which we like to call 'Starry Starry Night'. They are pretty fabulous! We've also received 15" Classic pink and purple, 13" and 14"  dark brown and 11" in dark brown, black and pink. No fluoros so please don't ask! I'll post a list later of exactly what we have in stock including the leftovers from the last massive shipment.
Now I need to go stir the dye vat, take some medicine and eat some porridge.



ps I burnt the porridge

naught to nought

Well all those plans for the weekend clean and technical investigation came to naught. That bug that has stalked me for the last month took it's chance when I slowed down last week and pounced. Sniffles and sneezes, swollen glands, sore throat and a blocked ear, headaches and a cough, your usual Early Winter Cold.
Most of yesterday was spent in a daze on the couch. I am wondering if I can do the same today.
I did pop out for the paper yesterday and there is a whole swag of Cottage stuff on the cover of the M section of the Sunday Age. Angora gloves, woollen scarf, handknit beanie, a couple of Welshies and a prop stick from our Xmas window.
And if you go over to the D-Files you can go in the draw for the annual Winter Week Giveaway. Look! A yellow mohair hottie! And lots of scrummy stuff from some of our favourite people.
Need to fire up this creaking body, feeling not sick enough but very old and flat today.
Jethro is of course still asleep in bed. Brat.

mountain, molehill, morass

Saturday.
Here again.
Blah blah blah.
I'm longing for a day in bed (won't happen tomorrow, vintage tour due at 10.30 am), even got a head start on the washing last night and have managed to pick up half the clothes on the bedroom floor (wasn't as hard as it has looked for the last 6 months... although the need for a damn good vacuum is really obvious now). I do want to allocate a couple of hours with my brain turned on to read some technical books, no TV in the background, no distractions, in the hope that my brain does actually take it in (it's felt very slow on the uptake for sometime now... creak creak...).
I did get into the studio yesterday. Made up some Welsh blanket cushions in new colourways, a few flax seed and lavender eye pillows, worked on some purses, spilt lunch down my leg, stared at the mountains, molehills and morasses of muck and stuff dotted and piled all about the studio. The lift has been broken in the studio building for a couple of months and this has led to rubbish bin issues, there has been a build up and everyone is via for the first fill on the day after the bins have been emptied, I seem to have missed the last few weeks and my off-cut bags are overflowing. This coming week I must be first to the bins! Chores... the bane of my life.
Jethro has finally decided to get out of bed (it's alright for some) and  I suppose I better get the Saturday shop chores done.

winter of our content

This week hasn't amounted to much. A lot of farting about and procrastinating, no dye pots, no sewing machine, a bit of tea cake eating yesterday. 

Now it is Winter and I am bravely attempting to leave the house. I have a huge pile of Welsh blankets to lug to the car and have just realised I may be almost out of cushion inserts. Damn. This is what happens when you leave the elves to run the studio. 

I had an old photo of my studio that I took ages ago emailed to me this week and I was so embarrassed by the state my studio is in now. You can't even see the floor or a have a clear sightline from one end to the other, I really need to do something about that before I am found dead under a hoarding avalanche. And home isn't much better at the moment. The bedroom is sporting a clothes carpet and there is an trail of escaped beanbag beans through the big room. 

Time to face the elves at the studio.