Snapdragon's garden

Lunch

Yesterday, it being a Wednesday, I went out for a lovely lunch, visiting  Sara, a friend from school who is now a writer, living in a flat in a very posh street of ladies (probably literally) in Edinburgh.
I am in touch with hardly anybody from schooldays (Euan doesn't count) so it is a bit of an anomaly amongst my friendships. The one adult connection to a time as one of 12 girls in a boys school (not as much fun as you would think).
As I was driving over I was thinking how very different our lives are.  Sara was the first of my contemporaries to have a baby.  Her daughter is now grown and almost flown the nest.  You can see Sara preparing to do the same, the whole world is open to her, she can choose exactly where and what she wants to do without any constraining ties.  It is almost like being 17 again, though without the bad bits.
I, on the other hand, seem to bind myself to this place, these people, with increasing numbers of ties - who plants a garden if they aren't going to be there to see it flower? 
I wonder whether it is a star sign thing - I am a very Taurean Taurean, the earthiest of the earth signs - Sara, a June girl is the next sign along, airy Gemini.  Who knows?
There is something very reassuring about school-friends, even if you have as few as me.  It allows for friendship of opposites in a very affirming way.

I decided to add a splash of colour to the egg cosies, as suggested, and I think it worked well - I am now working on a sketchbook which is looking promising.
Thank you to all the people who have contacted me about signing up for the newsletter - I have been overwhelmed by the numbers, thank you,
J
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Bring on the spring

This week we have been trying to bring Spring forward.  This morning a photographer for a monthly magazine was here to take photos of me - the brief was for it to look spring like.
According to a friend's father who measures these things, this January has been the wettest he has known - many of our raised beds are puddled with water and the overall mood is more squelchy than spring.
Thank heavens for forced bulbs - we had only 5 days notice of the photo-shoot so the house has been filled with bowls of paper whites and iris reticulata trying to get them into bloom.
The photographer was charming and it was great fun being photographed by someone perched up a stepladder proclaiming "Now give us that lovely smile"
He is going to send some images so that I can post them here.
I am going to do a "how to" on bulbs in containers in my Newsletter which should go out at the end of the week.  It also has a bit about our chickens, what to do with an amaryllis when it stops flowering and special offers only available to subscribers.  You can subscribe here. Completely free, guaranteed no spam and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Decluttering the website

Well - I'm feeling a lot better today - I think that its one of those bugs that is short lived but very virulent when about.
I spent my time trying to declutter my website - somehow odds and sods kept being added over the year and it got into a right mess.  I haven't finished yet - and along the way I have lost my curvy corners and the logo - but it is getting there.  I cleared out a lot of the stuff that has sold out and hopefully made it easier to get around.
The newset thing to go up onto the site are my chicken egg cosies which were the result of all that experimenting last week -  They are made out of a slightly felled wool gabardine - nice and fluffy - and I can't begin to say how pleased I am with them.
Often I find that designing things is fraught - I end up with a mountain of malformed bits and pieces, things discarded because they just aren't like the image I have in my mind.
These egg cosies were different - they just worked.  I like the way that they link my loopy sketches of my chickens to something that becomes a useful object.  They sort of close the loop if you get what I mean.
I am working on some other things which should be ready in the next week or so.
I've also put a newsletter subscription button up on the site - I'm not too sure that this is working properly as I need to go to another machine to test it.  This is where I am going to be putting all my tips, tutorials etc.  There will be a "how to" for the supermarket bags and a dogwood heart in the near future.  If you want to receive the newsletter & the button doesn't work then just e-mail me!
I hope that you are all fit and well,
J
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I wasn't going to post today

I wasn't going to post today as the vomiting virus has worked its way North and attacked, so I am lying on the sofa feeling very sorry for myself.
However I am up to some light web hopping and came across this on Danny Seo's site - and he is right, wouldn't it be fantastic if all shops did it - or something else . . . .
The photo is another of Jane Robertson's - she wasn't that happy with it but I think it makes my dogwood heart look very beautiful,

Draw for the bags . . . .drum roll please

We found the scissors, cut up the 71 bits of paper and the girls and Euan each drew a name from the sweetie tin. . . . .
And the winners are . . . Carolyn, Tash and a customer who emailed me with her entry (so I assume doesn't want to be named) - bags will wing their way to all 3 this next week.
To everyone else who commented or emailed thank you very much - I was overwhelmed by your lovely words.  The market shoppers are now up on the website - the totes should get there next week.

I would like to give everybody something for taking the time to enter and for being so nice. so if you weren't picked and you would like a one of my trial embroidered badges drop me an email with your address and I shall pop one in the post especially for you,
Hope that you are all having a great weekend,
J
x

Why the draw will now take place tomorrow.

Well firstly all 3 pairs of non fabric scissors are missing without leave - I have looked into the bedrooms where I think they are hiding and I am not going there.

I am not going to cut up bits of paper with my lovely sharp special "touch these and you are dead" scissors.

I also have no-one else here to do the draw - no-one with only 2 legs and as soon as the girls get back we are hot footing it down to Ayrshire to have a blether with this woman.

So the winners of the draw for the bags will be announced tomorrow rather than today.

Today I have been whizzing about with my machine, trying out different styles of chickens and unearthing a load of sketches that I did of poppy seedheads in the summer.

I have been making them into badges - these are medium sized badges - c. 5.6 cm - there are also small ones but they are more fiddly to do and not as impressive. Though they do look good as a group with a bigger one. I have been playing about pinning these to my handbag and they look rather arty.  Charcoal thread on cream wool flannel.
I have still to decide what I am actually doing here - other than having fun. Suggestions please!

While I have been working I have been catching up on a whole load of podcasts - it is a bit like programming your own radio station.  The blogs on the Women in Rural Enterprise site have begun and can be accessed on the side bar - there is a woman who is working towards opening a fabulous sounding farmshop on her family farm (Phillip Webb buildings, leather sofas, good coffee) and another who combines a web design business with an internet mail order site.  If you have time & interest please take a look - we could do with some publicity.

Influence

I have been spending time over the past couple of days playing around with ideas that I have for using the machine freehand drawing in making things. For the past year I have been wittering onto people about wanting to make closer links between the garden and the things that I create.  In some ways my ideal Snapdragon product is the honesty heart as we make it from beginning to end, from sowing the seed to sending it off I am involved.  This is something that only we can do, it is what I want Snapdragon to be about.
I spend a lot of time taking photographs and drawing our flowers, vegetables and animals and want to use all this somehow - I have also done dyed some fabric with plant materials and that also appeals.  And then there are the artists who come and sketch . . .
Anyway it is all up in the air at the moment - a time to play about in the name of product development.
What I am very aware of is that I must not go a browsing round the Internet looking at other people's work - I must not run the risk of copying other people's styles when I am trying to find my own.
Fads and copying (or influence if you like) run riot through cyberspace, it is all too easy and not at all bad if it is acknowledged and not for commerce.  What rammed it home to me was seeing the above photo while flicking through Lucinda Ganderton's book Vintage Fabric Style.  It is a book I got for Christmas but had flicked through before in a bookshop.
Do you remember the post about Gayle's wedding and using old lace for her bouquet?  Do you remember this photo I took?
I can't remember seeing Ganderton's photo before - but I must have. . . . . .

I shall be drawing 3 names out for the bags tomorrow - so still time to post a comment or send me an e-mail.

A Give away

While this blog is occupied with a giveaway I shall be waffling as usual over on Snapdragon's chat.

I haven't actually done a blog give away before - which is really quite disgraceful.  I don't know why I haven't - perhaps because it would be so depressing if no-one wanted whatever it was I was offering.

Over Christmas I came across a lot of people chatting about re-usable bags.  This isn't that surprising as Drymen Primary had an Eco-Bag as this year's answer to the school tea towel or  mug.  What everybody said is that they mean to use eco bags - goodness we all know how damaging they are both on a local, littered trees level and a worldwide oceans level - but when they get to the checkout they find that they have forgotten their bag and end up saying "yes" to the question "Can I put that in a bag for you?"  .
So I was pondering this over the holidays and wondered whether the problem is that we don't really have eco bags that fit into our lives

I find those Jute bags too bulky to carry around empty, I don't like the look of the handy nylon ones that fit into a purse, I lose things through the mesh of a string bag and if I end up doing a supermarket shop I need at least 5 bags to pack up the shopping.

I decided that I would make 3 different reusable bags - for 3 different types of shopping and give one of each away.

First up is the market shopper - this is a bag for people who shop at farmers markets or in small shops - it folds up into an integral pocket you can stash it in your handbag and then unpack it when you need it.
Then it is a great capacious shopper - here in the photos it is stuffed with the contents of my organic veg box.  The storage pocket flips inside and can keep small things to hand like glasses, change etc.

The next bag is the Town tote - this was originally designed as a way to showcase beautiful pieces of material against the elegant background of a dark grey wool.  This particular example in the photo has its outside pockets made from a vintage Sanderson linen dating from the 1930s-50s.  It is lined with a jazzy floral satin and has a little pocket and clip so that you can keep your keys safe and don't lose things in the bottom of the bag.

This is really a bag for people who want to have something nice enough to carry all day - start off with makeup, keys and purse and with enough room to add in some treats from the deli, some apples from a fruits stall and a magazine to read on the way home.

I have been road testing this bag all week and really love it.  It is squashy yet structured and seems to go with everything.

And finally onto the main culprit on the plastic bag front - the supermarket shop - still most people's main way of cramming shopping into a busy week.  The supermarkets, to give them their due, have tried hard to push all kinds of eco-alternatives - plastic boxes, jute bags, heavy duty bags for life - but when I did my road testing for a supermarket solution every other customer in the checkout queues was taking the free plastic bags from the dispenser.
To my mind there are 2 problems - one is having enough bags to put all your shopping in, the other remembering to have said bags in your car when you get to the supermarket.
My solution is a number of simple gusseted bags made from recycled materials stored within a pouch - clip the pouch to the trolley, take the bags out at the checkout, pack up all your groceries, unpack them at home - pop them back in the pouch and store it in the car ready for the next week.  The pouch comes with 5 bags but if you need more then either normal pre-used carriers or eco-bags could be put in as well.
The photo of this is terrible as I really need to get a trolley or some groceries and the weather has been so bad today that I couldn't bring myself to venture out.

So that is the giveaway - one of each type of re-usable bag.  To enter just leave a comment letting me know what kind of shopper you are . . . - Market shopper, tote or supermarket sweep!

I shall leave this up here for the next week and will blog on Snapdragon's chat instead.

The gales went over us last night - the forecast was for 80 miles and hour winds and that is certainly what it sounded like drifting off to sleep with the wind banging in gusts against the windows.
Then, at 4 am we woke with a loud dull noise - the trampoline had flown through the air and crashed into the airstream - fortunately it was leaning bouncy side against the caravan side - I think that, if it had been the other way round, the legs would have punctured the aluminium.
So, we got dressed, lit up the neighbourhood with the massive torch I got for Christmas and fought with the trampoline, managing to lay it face down on the lawn and then pinning it down with a cast iron bench.  I'm not sure it will do much for its bouncability but thats a concern for another day.
It isn't quite light yet so I haven't done a proper walk round but I can see that our garden is peppered with roofing felt from next door's summer house and that the fruit cage is now an acute parallelogram with 2 legs waving in the air. 
The wind is still raging and there is little I can do on my own so I think that I shall ignore it all and head off to the coffee that I have arranged with Caireen.
The photo is a detail of something I have been working on - a new product line which I shall be my first giveaway, hopefully tonight, perhaps tomorrow (depends on how much debris needs sorted I suppose).  Do check back to see what I am on about - now time to brush my hair before heading off for that coffee.

Fuzzy children

In December, Katie was Mary in the Nativity Play.  As proud parent I sat in the front row near to her head teacher.  "You know Jane" she said "this is her last year as an infant".  Oh I do know that! - in next year's play she will be part of the upper school choir.  And yet, in comparison to the primary one angels, with their wings and tinsel halos, she already looked quite grown up.  I had forgotten quite how blurry and amorphous small children's faces are when you see them sitting still - eyes at different levels, noses not defined, mouths slightly lopsided.  Absolutely gorgeous.
Yesterday we went to see The Golden Compass as a "last day of the holiday" treat - one of the main threads of the plot is that the souls of people are seen in animal form as familiars or daemons - by adulthood the daemon form is fixed, in childhood it can change from minute to minute.
I was thinking of both of these views of childhood today as I looked around the exhibition of Joan Eardley's work in the National Gallery of Edinburgh.  This is an exhibition I have been champing to see and which I left pretty late - it closes on the 13th.

Eardley painted mainly in the 1950s, specialising in Glasgow children and wild sweeping seascapes, and the exhibtion keeps them apart.
It is the children I am drawn to most - partly because of the blurry unformed faces, full of character, mainly because of the colour, crimson next to cerise, chrome next to umber.  I love the use of the graffiti walls, I love the plug ears and bitten fingers.
I have swiped these photos from the National Gallery website, not something I like doing normally - too much of the curator in me.
I can't find a photo of the painting that impressed me most - it was from early in Eardley's career, of a beggar in Venice.  She had recently seen & admired Masaccio's frescoes, the  broad planes and clear colours under Italian light and here, in her study of a female beggar with child, she mixed bright chrome yellow, orange, red and cobalt - slab on slab to create a painting that seems illuminated from within, almost like an icon.  It wasn't the most technically accomplished painting in the show, it certainly wasn't the most subtle, but it was the one that touched me most.
The other thing that I have taken away with me is Eardley's way of using chalk pastels on very fine sandpaper, intensifiying the colours - my friend Christine, who is an artist, gave my girls a set of her old pastels a while ago - we keep them for special occasions (something Christine will hate to read) - I shall pick up some sandpaper this week and we shall give it a go at the weekend.