Snapdragon's garden

Morris

I am here blogging away- glass of wine at my side - while the rest of the household watches Top Gear.  This is a big thing in my house - the girls are curled up with hot chocolates under a duvet on the sofa - time with their Dad. Personally I believe Top Gear is a children's programme - a very well made children's programme.; For me it is a chance on a Sunday evening to answer e-mails, do a bit of surfing - have some peace. This may be surprising as I am the person who is instrumental in initiating the scrap yard accessories that litter our land - first the Citroen H-Van; then the Morris Ambulance and then the Airstream. But then of course these were all bought for their design and not for their speed or torque (?)
The H-van is my flower stall and the Airstream my workroom which just leaves the Morris ambulance - originally this was earmarked as my office but with one thing and another (most paperwork being done at night) this never really took off. Instead it is to become a really cool den for the girls - so they have been sanding (Zoe) Priming (Katie)

and putting together a design.At the moment Morris looks like this

but I gather that we are going for a Hippy traveler look with lots of flowers. . . and then they want to borrow my sewing machine to make curtains - with the state of the house at the moment I may just move in.

A bowl of cherries

My favourite thing in the world to eat is cherries.  Dark, warm, luscious cherries.  I am so envious of people in the South with roadside stalls groaning with trays of cherries - driving round Sussex one June I ate pounds and pound of them.
I had always assumed that there was no point in planting a proper cherry tree here as it is too cold.  We have a morello cherry - the only proper tree in the garden - which is a favourite with the blackbirds who beat me to the fruit, but they like north walls so are quite different.
2 years ago I planted some saplings to divide the drive from what will be the front garden - they were meant to be bird cherry - to flower twiggily in February - but it quickly became clear that we had the wrong variety.
I was going to dig them out and move them to the boundary hedge when they began to fruit - dark, juicy, luscious cherries - pictured above.  I am in heaven.
J
x

Commissions

I have now finished the 4 large meadow cushions that a Country Living magazine reader commissioned me to make  - this is them in the late evening sunshine yesterday.  I have really enjoyed making these and am now working  out the logistics of another potential commission - for some curtains in the same design, something that I think will look stunning if I can work out how to do it without the bulk of the material getting in the way.

New home wanted for thugs

This is the time in the garden when I can see which plants are getting out of hand.  In a couple of months Fiona and I shall be sorting out the long borders that run the length of the cutting garden and chucking out the thugs that are taking over.   When I say chucking out I actually mean "moving to a more appropriate place" but it does occur to me that I shall have lots of plants left over and it would be good to sort out a new home for them in advance.
The first on offer is the leopard lily - not really a thug at all, except for in this garden.  Anna Pavord visited last year when it was blooming gloriously, she is writing a book on lilies and had been unable to get it to grow for her at all. So obviously it is a soil and situation thing - we are slightly acid, lots of rainfall, retentive soil - and the 30 bulbs I planted 3 years ago have romped away, squeezing out anything less robust.  I love this lily - it has healthy looking whorly leaves and then between 5 and 15 dark orange turks cap heads.  I shall be replanting these in rows but there are probably about 40-50 bulbs going a begging.
The next is a thug - but what a beautiful thug - white willowherb, the white version of that railway siding flower.  This is the first year that the flowers of this have not been eaten by deer and it is absolutely gorgeous - but it is already 1/2 way across the border and I know it will not stop.
I once saw a photo of white willowherb growing in a meadow and I think that I shall move ours down to the orchard where it can look ethereal in amongst the grasses.
However, thug or not, this would be ideal for anyone who has an area away from other plants that needs lightening up.  Again - I suspect that come October I shall have a lot of roots of this.
I am quite happy to pack these up for free but I would need postage refunded - but if anyone is looking for lovely robust plants this is your chance - e-mail me for more details.

EDIT - GOODNESS YOU ARE A GAME LOT! ALL THESE SCOTTISH THUGS ARE NOW RESERVED AND SHALL BE SENT ON THEIR WAY IN OCTOBER

J

X!

Why I don't sell wholesale . . .and why thats OK

When I first began to make things for a living - the height of my ambition was to have my goods sold in shops, any shops.  I thought that it would be a mark of having arrived.  That if a SHOP wanted to buy my things then they must be good. All conventional wisdom says that it is important to get your brand out there.  I've changed my mind.

Now - having had a whole heap of wholesale enquiries over the last month (gallery owners being avid readers of Country Living Emporium) - and having re-visited the basic economics of the whole thing - I can definitely say that I do not supply wholesale.
As I see it - for me to supply wholesale either I suffer or the customer suffers.  The mark up in a shop or gallery is 100% plus VAT; so something selling in a shop for £14 nets the maker £6.    Something that the maker charges £10 for costs the customer £23.50.  I'm not arguing that shops don't deserve this money for their rent, staffing, tissue and bags but explaining the problem as I see it.  What then happens is that you either have to set your retail price very high (and some makers manage this well, their brand becoming aspirational in itself) or you pay yourself very little, way below the minimum wage in my experience of fellow crafters who seem to count any work done after 5 or in front of the tv as somehow not counting in the figures.
What I am trying to do is to set a price that is fair to me - that will allow the business to grow, and not end up a hobby business with Euan funding tissue paper and phone bills, but a price that also allows people to afford the things I make.  The prices that I have settled on for the website are approximately 40 - 60% less than they would be in a shop or gallery and that seems fair to me.  As it costs me less to sell from my website to existing customers there are also special offers for newsletter subscribers along with free gift wrapping and postage for those special customers. Which brings me onto the photos in the post - this fortnight's newsletter is now out - e-mail me if you are not on the list and want to be - it is about making lavender sugar and sowing biennials this time, along with a special offer on my doorstop.
J
x

Light evenings . . .long holidays

The late bedtimes and long evenings of the summer holidays are nicely stretching the days so that I don't feel bad about having to put in some work most days.
Yesterday I beavered away making 4 large embroidered cushions which were commissioned by a Country Living reader after she saw my small scented cushions in the magazine.
Then - there was still time to go out for a cycle
From Callander to Kilmahog (good pub) along the railway line.
I was able to indulge my love of rust
and lichen
To bask in the beer garden and then to get back to Callander in time for fish and chips from Eat Mhor Fish.
Definately a chip shop worth traveling to.
This morning I went to the florist wholesaler Country Baskets with Karon to see Jane Means, the gift wrap guru, demonstrate wrapping presents
It was definitely worth the trip - I always wrap orders in tissue and ribbon anyway - but now with some of her simple but very effective ideas, things can get a lot more spectacular and pre-Christmas I shall be offering a proper gift wrapping service.
Now, back home - the shed roof is now red and beautiful and we are all going to wash the Morris ambulance that is the girls' den so that they can decide what colour to paint it.
Photos of that another time,

Craft sanity

There is a mistaken impression that I am techie - this is because I blog regularly and designed my website.  What people don't realise is that both of these are basically the same as word processing.  No tech needed.
In fact I am pretty much a technophobe - I have what Euan describes as a "learned helplessness" when faced by dvd players central heating programmers and mobile phones.  I just stay away.
So naturally, for my birthday, he bought me an i-phone.  And it is wonderful - I now phone, I text, I e-mail!.
Ostensibly it was so that I can get orders through no matter where I am - and goodness I do love selling things while walking the dog - but really the thing I use it for is listening to pod-casts. 
Now I know that there are many ways to listen to pod casts - that you don't need an i-phone - but I never really got the hang of it.  I would start them up on the laptop in the kitchen but the speakers were so tinny that as soon as I chopped or whizzed anything I lost track of the conversation.  Now I can cart them round on my phone and plug it into the radio wherever I am and just listen to sections.  This has opened up a whole world of podcasts that I never listened to as they are much too long for one sitting.
So yesterday I listened to a few Craft sanity podcasts (and yes I know that everyone else has listened to them all and I am late as usual) but it occurred to me that the podcast done with Alicia Paulson back in 2006, shortly before she closed her shop, is really the best thing for anyone wanting to make a living from craft to listen to.  She is frank and honest about the problems of money, trying to sort out wholesale, customers who "love what you do" but never buy and are shocked when the shop goes, and the fact that her husband (like mine) brings in the steady wage that allows her to have her dream job.  It contains the best advice to the craft entrepreneur that I have heard. I'm working my way through the other podcasts (Emily Martin's is excellent too) - while getting prototypes ready for photography. I like the way that  Jennifer Ackerman Hayward manages to ask the practical nuts and bolts "so how many orders did you get after you were on Martha's show" kind of questions. The photos sprinkled through here are of my new design doorstop.  After tea, needing some me-time, I took myself off to my caravan, locked the door - plugged in the i-phone - and happily busied myself designing and making a new doorstop.  I wanted it to be neat, to be different from anything else on the market, to incorporate my embroidery and most importantly to hang on the door-handle when not being used. The photos show the final prototype in vintage wool blanket and Harris tweed.
Meanwhile, the girls made an office next to the kitchen and drew up a draconian list of household rules which they decorated in felt pens.  Euan painted the shed roof.

A time to plan . . . please!

We are now into the second week of the School Holidays and the "I'm bored . . .What can I do . . .I don't want to help with deliveries" has begun.
I love the school holidays - I love the fact that we don't have to rush about in the morning and I appreciate so much that my job allows me to be at home with the children and means that I don't have to cobble together childcare for them over the holidays.
But I do have a job.  And I do need to have some quiet, uninterrupted time to plan what needs to be done in the next 6 months, and I am just getting absolutely none of that at the moment.
An important part of my business is letting the children know that I do work - I learned a lot from my Mother working at home - it is an important part of the process.  I am also very lucky that I can scale down aspects of my job to fit around the children - and lots of things - seed sowing, flower picking, packaging can be done alongside their playing.  The need to spend at least part of the day at home working also stops me from cramming their holiday with "activities" and in theory gives them some much needed self starting down time.
This week we have had the house full with a joyful throng of visiting children - playing schools, painting banners, baking and whining about watching tv.  I have loved it but now I just want to go and curl up somewhere quiet and write some to-do lists.
What a BAD Mummy.

Dream Acres

When you are a small hand-making Scottish business you soon become aware of others ploughing the same furrow.  I first became aware of Karon Grieve and her business Dream Acres in Spring 2006 when this small scented mouse appeared in Country Living Magazine's Emporium section  (Well not this actual one as he belongs to Zoe- but another very similar!).  I was impressed with the quality (sadly not always the case with small businesses), cuteness and the long, leathery tail.
I met Karon in person at last year's Country Living in Glasgow where she had the cutest stall, centered around a rescued and restored handcart - much admired by Annabel Lewis of VV Rouleax who felt (along with me) that it should have won best stall.
We kept in touch and, at the beginning of this year, we both found ourselves needing to move our businesses onto the next level so that we could make some proper money.  So we formed formed a bit of a bolstering support group we call Sow Sew Scottish - We are unusual in that we both have businesses growing and sewing things (Karon grows the herbs for the sophisticated blends that fill her products) and also in our commitment to sell unique things that we have created, rather than supplementing with bought in things. 
It has been an interesting process - and I think that having someone to bounce early prototype ideas of has been invaluable for both of us.
Anyway, Karon has just been re-vamping her website and has incorporated a secret page full of tips and special offers which can be accessed if you e-mail her.  It is well worth a look - and for anyone who will be attending the Country Living Fairs in either London or Glasgow this year I recommend signing up for her special offers - I know she has something very special planned for these 2 Fairs.
Thank you for all the get well soon e-mails.  I feel rather a fraud as it was really only a cold - I am a terrible patient though.

Poppy meadow

The poppies in the meadow have begun to bloom.
Each year they seem to come up a different colour - this year they are a pink toned red with a good black splotch.
I shall try to draw them this week I think - before they become seedheads.
It is these poppies, escapees from the cutting garden into what we term (very loosely and somewhat optimistically) the meadow, that are the inspiration for my embroidered meadow cushions.
Since they have been featured in Country Living Magazine's Emporium section I am quickly running through my roll of vintage French hemp - there is perhaps enough for 5 more.
I will do the design in a different fabric but I thought it best to let you know, just in case there is anyone who wants this type of rumply rustic background.