hot sauce

I'm sneezing like.... ummm.... a kitten whose been playing under a couch. There is heat on the way today and a wind that is kicking up dust and pollen from all the plants that have gone wild from all their rain encouraged growth spurts and flowering. Hayfever in December.
It's been a crazy week at the Cottage. The excitement of the satchels arriving, the disappointment of 11 boxes delivered and 9 taking a slow boat from China (they will be here on Monday first thing supposedly....). The excitement of the bilums arriving, the disappointment of them sending the wrong ones (the ones we received are great just not the style I spent 6 months emailing about....). We restocked our enamelware after selling out on some styles/colours and a new batch of anodised milkshake beakers came in (new violet colour, still waiting on red....).
What else? I finished the scarf dresses made from vintage scarves, whipped up some tea towel cushions, made new vintage floral linen cushions and a pile of our industrial felt oven mitts (now with black, hot pink, orange, bright yellow and turquoise binding) and put out our new range of 'make your presents attractive' Xmas ribbons.
I went to the Big Design Market yesterday to check it all out. I visited all my favourite people there and looked at a lot of stuff a friend of mine described as 'same same but not different'. There is a strong sense of incestuous copying going on, it would be amusing if it wasn't also more than a little disheartening for those people who design and create excellent product. I'm wondering whether and when there will be a shift away from the marketeering approach to retail and the type of products sold in that type of environment. Anyway, there was tacos available at BDM, which is always fabulous, although I burnt my mouth in a hot sauce accident with a Taco Truck fish taco and my tongue was still numb hours later. The high price to pay for pigging out on tacos at 11 in the morning!
Damn! Where has this morning gone?? I better get moving! Shopgirl today and tomorrow. We have half our satchels in so please drop in if you want one (or two or three) and lots of other stock too!