grand final apparently

It's blowing a breeze out there. Yep, I'll say it again, love how everyone was out in the worst Spring outfits earlier this week and now it's windchill and driving squalls of rain, as they say 'one swallow does not a summer make'. I'd love to just be hunkered down with tea and newspapers and a little nap at some stage but I have a shop to open and (hopefully) some customers to chat to.
It's the Grand Final and things will probably go stone-cold dead about lunchtime but I live in hope that I will make a few sales today. It's actually a great day to go shopping as it is easy to get about and there is parking, football crazed partners are off doing their thing and those people that like a bit of retail get left alone to peruse their favourite stores, win/win situation I think!
Anyway, I need to find myself something to do in the shop (idle hands and the devil you know). Perhaps it is time to start the soap wrapping as I have finally settled on how I want them packaged. I can be a bit slow at times.
I may close the shop a bit early if it is deathly boring, if you are heading over later in the afternoon you can always ring to say you are coming and I'll keep the door open.

billow

Cool and blustery, just the way I like it.
I lay in bed watching the patchwork billow in the breeze, a very soothing thing to do after listening to the rain.
Appallingly quiet day in the shop yesterday due to the warm balmy weather, that always happens when I am out spending money on things for new projects.
Anyway.
We have socks (even though Customs has snatched our latest shipment) and cardis that can be worn with Spring dresses and I am off to the studio to spend the day making.

ps Excuse the big 'play' logo and the jerkiness of the 'video' but I liked this version better than when I loaded it in video mode.

right tizz

Just a quickie this morning.
I woke up ridiculously early in a total panic that I had ordered the wrong fabric weight to be printed and things have one down hill from there.
I'm now running late, haven't had breakfast, am totally disorganised and flapping about like a loon.
Oh and I'm in the shop today.
I got a few things made yesterday, after zooming all over the place getting things I needed (none of which are working in the way they were meant to), so we have more Harvest Smocks and the dress in the photo. It's a size 4/14 and there is another coming in the same fabric in a size 2/10 as soon as I get back into the studio.
OK. Better flap off and get sorted.

diamond (quilting) days

Just a quick post today and a few quilt-y photos.
There are a piles of quilts dotted about the Cottage, teetering towers of patchwork.
We have sold a couple so if you see one you like you better be quick.

I'm feeling a bit better today, calmer and not so flat, so I am hoping I am pulling out of the funk I was in. I'm looking forward to a sleep in in the morning and I have to go walk Ferdy and Pelle in the afternoon, a nice balance of rest and fresh air. I need to get an indigo vat cranked up too and mordant some fabric ready for dyeing. Time to get the ball rolling on some projects I think. Oh and the kitchen needs a good clean but strangely the injuries to my poor hand makes cleaning very hard, washing the dishes has never been so painful. And let me tell you trying to slide a pin into fabric is absolutely fucking excruciating....

I've got one denim Harvest Smock left in store today. It amuses and befuddles me that we have been doing these smocks for about 4 1/2 years and people are only just cottoning on to them. I need to get on to doing them in the checked cottons I have in the studio and perhaps in the new longer version, which I love but might be too long for some people.

OK, got to go run a couple more errands before I open the shop up.

the hamster wheel of pity

It's been a hard week.
Almost a month of agony has sent me spiralling down into the pain-depression pit, it makes getting out of bed difficult let alone making stuff and running a shop (and we are in the middle of the quiet month which makes it even harder... and by the way sorry but  I'm not open to suggestions from people as to how to handle it, I am coming clear of the mess and, slowly, will get back up to speed). I did get a little time in the studio and a bit of energy to get some stock made, some patchwork and denim Summer scarves to go with a couple of Harvest Smock I managed to finish yesterday. I have some many things that need to be nutted out and made and I am feeling the Xmas pressure starting. Just to rub salt into the wounds photos started to appear on IG of Xmas stock and I felt even more under the pump.
Anyway I am sure you are sick of my moaning (as indeed I am).
We had a shipment of Trunk&Orderly cases arrive this week which was very exciting. We ran out of these months ago and it took me ages to get an order together but Joel brought them down from Ballarat on Wednesday and we now have lunch, kinder, school (new one with a strap), weekender and the fabulous record cases in store. The record cases remind me of all my cool friends who had radio shows on PBS and RRR, they all had vintage record cases that they carried their stuff in for a shift. One of them even had the mo-ped, the anorak and an obsession with 'Quadrophenia'... and she would ride over the Westgate Bridge every day on that bike (I get scared driving in a car over that bridge!).
I'm in the shop for the next two days. I'll be pottering about, trying to decide if the shop needs a total overhaul and if so how I can achieve it. There are things that need to be packed away (like the last of the glass domes) ready for the sale I also need to organise... if you've been eyeing a dome off for a while pop in, get it for a great price and save me having to lug them up to the studio!
I better get moving.
Two days in the shop..... scary!

sky view

A couple more snaps from the trip, just because I haven't really much else to show you from this week.
The milky way is somewhere in the top shot is you look closely.
So a bit of a mixed up week here and suddenly I am shopgirl again and although I only missed one Saturday it feels like forever since I was last Official Saturday Shopgirl. It is a slightly weird feeling, can you imagine what I would be like if I ever went on a real long holiday? A right mess.
I am actually looking forward to pottering about the house tomorrow and having a sleep in. Doing a bit of cleaning, that sort of thing.
I'm hoping to get some quilts photographed today if I get a moment this morning to drill holes in the clamp handles so that I can hang them up. The new size quilts are causing problems as I am the on;y one that has the arm reach to hold them up and between my sore hand and being the photographer I am a bit stuck.
I have so many emails still to answer and blurbs and stuff to write but I seem to have brainmelt at the moment. I also need to sit down and pop my thinking cap on to nut out the new products I am working on. We've got so many things on at the moment to organise and photograph and make. I need a holiday!
I'm drivelling again.
We are down to the last 4 Turkish towels so you had better be quick (the next batch may not be the same....).
We've sold out of the pineapple lights but we do have stock of our lovely cockatoo lamps.
I need to find somewhere to stash the quilts as we have one pile teetering precariously on a stool.
And I need to start organising a studio sale.... on top of getting to work on new stock.
Anyway, I'm hiding out in the shop today, come visit!

holiday blues

So here I am back from a rather topsy 'holiday' in Tasmania.
It wasn't anywhere near enough relaxing sadly. I went with a pinched nerve and a bruised coccyx and came back with the pinched nerve and not quite so painful coccyx and a bruised and scraped knee, pulled thigh muscle and a right hand of torn soft tissue/ligaments/tendons. This is what happens when you are admiring the view instead of looking where you are walking after a 4 hour hike and are 10 minutes from the car. Routes and plans had to be changed so that I could head to Launceston Hospital for xrays, luckily nothing broken but the extreme agony of all those nerves tingling and smarting made me a right pain to be around. Luckily/unluckily I was travelling alone, had a had company I would have been a right pain in the butt and would have completely dropped my bundle (as the saying goes).
The photo above is the Vale of Belvoir just near Cradle Mountain. The first time I saw it, a few years ago now, I didn't know whether creatures from Lord of the Rings would appear or some character from the Brontes would stumble out of the mist. It really is incredibly amazing, like so much of Tasmania, and every time I go I get so caught up in this isle's peculiar beauty. And I am a sucker for moss and lichen.

The weather was stunning for most of the trip and now I am back of course I have missed out on the snow which has just hit Hobart Town. Damn. And sadly no aurora watching this trip either although I did get one milky way shot that I am yet to download from the camera. I ate some fabulous food, caught up with fabulous people (and missed a few) and sucked in lungfuls of lovely fresh air. I didn't read enough, had to take painkillers most days and had way to much to worry about to do with the Cottage. It was a slightly stressful time away, mainly thanks to the doldrums created by politicians and their crap.

Anyway. I am home, things are evening out, Jethro is happy to see me and there have been boxes of fabulous things arrive in the last few days. A shipment of socks from Lisa B (women's spot in new colours, new snowflake design and more baby socks), Heico lamps in the classic cockatoo and the new pineapple style, coloured enamel mugs (red, orange and chocolate, Lucy calls them the 'jaffa collection'), handknitted baby booties and Ann has sent down more tea cosies (including the new pineapple design) and a lovely black edged multi-coloured afghan.
I need to get back into the studio next and get working on lots of new things. Hopefully the hand will ease off and I can start furiously making. We have lots of things coming up in the next few months and I have lots of things I need to get on to.
In some ways it is nice to be back but I think I need a holiday to get over my holiday!