Snapdragon's garden

A bit of natural medicine

As part of an auti immune condition that I have my hands often go completely white and numb.  This year it has been gradually getting worse and over the past few months I have had 6-8 hours a day when I can't feel any of my fingers (not ideal when you sew for a living!).

On Sunday I was weeding in the polytunnel and ended up with stung hands from all the tiny nettles in the salad beds.

stung hands but no numbness . . .

And my hands weren't numb on Monday or Tuesday either.

I woke up with numb fingers this morning which had spread to the rest of my hands by 9.30 - so I went in search of some nettles (not hard to find in our garden) and deliberately stung one of my hands.  Within quarter of an hour that hand was back to normal and within half an hour both were working fine.

Obviously I will have to keep experimenting - it may be co-incidence - but I thought that I would put it out there as so many people get the same thing and nettle stings are much, much better than numb hands. . .

Country Homes and Interiors

I am delighted that our home is featured in the magazine Country Homes and Interiors and very chuffed that all the photos capture what we have been trying to create - turning our house from a typical rural 1980s bungalow (all tiny rooms, low ceilings and aluminium windows) into something more airy and light filed.

Thank you very much to Vivienne Ayres and Polly Eltes who made it all very easy.

Here are the photos

walking dogs by Loch Lomond

The front of the house (we added a porch) and the hall with the Mary Chapin Carpenter quote which I hope that my daughters will live by

2 views of the kitchen - floor and worktop from Hargreaves Reclamation in Airth http://www.hargreavesreclaimedflooring.co.uk/

Our "big space" with the wonderful wood burning stove that was made for us by Steve Dowling - http://www.stevedowling.co.uk/dowlingstoves/index.html - I love his stoves so much that we have 3 of them.

The dining bit in the "big space" - we bought the drawers from the antique centre in Doune where they had been unsold for over 2 years - obviously fate . . .

The sunroom sofa with a granny blanket that was indeed crocheted by my Gran!

Ourbedroom (look at that beautifully ironed duvet cover) bathroom and my dressing table

The view from the garden over towards hills.

I love that they used one of the Sanderson linen magnets that are on our fridge to hold up that bit about what is "On our doorstep".

It felt a bit exposed welcoming people "into" our home but everyone has been very kind.  We were 6 years living in a much smaller space,  a space that I made worse by over stuffing it with furniture that I kept buying when I saw it - 6 years planning for when we would be able to afford to change the house into somewhere we love living.

 

 

 

Finished at last!

This week I have finally finished the camper van needlepoint cushion from Pearl and Earl that I started about 3 years ago.

In my defense I did lose it for 18 months of that period having "tidied" it away when we had a party and promptly forgot where I put it.

It is pretty typical of me though - I have a terrible habit of starting projects and then not finishing them.

Which is why I was delighted when Jacqui Pearce told me that she was bringing out a book of supersize needlepoint patterns -

projects in other words designs that are big on style but which shouldn't take years to make (unless you lose them)

I love this rainbow tea cosy and think I may convert it into a cushion

There are also lots of projects which could be easily made by children but which aren't at all twee.

I am thinking of asking my youngest to make me this eggy picture for the kitchen.

A new page for Snapdragon

I am not a natural business woman. My background is largely academic - my degree was in Art History, my post grad in Museums studies and I happily immersed myself in the rather rarefied world of museum galleries until I decided one morning that it just wasn't what I wanted to spend my life doing.

So I left work when pregnant with my younger daughter, retrained in horticulture and started to grow flowers, selling them from a vintage citroen h van in the drive and at local farmers markets.

(wet flowers)

The change in the climate and a period of dragging illness gradually ruled that out as a properly commercial business but by then I was embroidering things, selling them at fairs like Country Living.

We bought an airstream, I moved the business out of the kitchen and had a proper workspace.

I began to sell wholesale to shops - I took on a team of helpers, we built a wooden cabin in the field behind the house

A work space which - as you can see - we quickly outgrew.

It became obvious that unless I managed to clone myself then I would have to expand the non embroidery side of the business.

So we developed the printed side of the range - and I am so delighted with it.  Every single vehicle mug we make makes me smile.

But really - from month to month, year to year there has been no plan, no strategy just a kind of frantic pedalling.

Last week I found that Snapdragon has been accepted onto Scottish Enterprise's High Growth Pipeline

Which basically means that we have been identified as a business with exceptional growth potential, as a business which would repay some investment of time and expertise.

I am pretty overwhelmed that my little old kitchen table business seems to have grown up while I was busy with other things.

And so, here we are on a new page - a page that will be immensely exhilerating and challenging, a bit frightening and definitely in need of a plan.

Light

Lack of light is a great problem in Scotland at this time of year.

It was one of the main reasons that I gave up my job as an art gallery curator back in 2000 - my basement office had no windows and regular working lunches at my desk meant that it was perfectly possible to see no daylight during the week.  I decided that was not cut out to live my life as a mole.

So when we altered and extended the house here a couple of years ago, getting as much light as possible into the house was my main priority and we made a room off the main living space with 2 walls of windows

Somewhere to sit with a coffee and a book, gazing out into the garden and soaking up as much daylight as possible.

and just as importantly, somewhere to keep my scented leaf geraniums over the winter. 

It is amazing, it can be dark and dreich outside, but just brushing past the lemony leaves takes me right back to long summer days.

 

Back in the workshop.

We had a wonderful family holiday, spending half term exploring Venice

a whole week of walking, gazing, drinking and eating

A week of spending time together and being inspired.

and today I am back in the workshop, slightly overwhelmed by the scale of the sewing pile

but still making time to kick through the piles of leaves in the sunshine outside.

Packaging love

Some people may celebrate the growth of their business with new shoes and handbags or bottles of champagne but I'm afraid that what I get excited about is being able to afford new packaging.

Since last Christmas we have been wanting to change the way we wrap our mirrors - we always like to make our parcels look nice, and everything has always arrived with customers wrapped in tissue and paper.

However the number of people wanting us to wrap everything individually always increases around Christmas and with some orders having 20 mirrors in them it was very time consuming and confusing as they all had to be labelled too.

We also noticed that people, quite understandably, opened the wrapping when it arrived and we just knew that however neatly they put it back together it wouldn't be quite right.

So over the summer we designed these gift pouches - they fit a single mirror and are tied at the top with fine satin ribbon.  We can add a gift label if its needed. They can be opened and then put back together . . . we can label them easily (or check if we lose count!)

Earlier this week 12,000 of them arrived.

From next week all mirror orders will be going out in them.

www.snapdragongarden.co.uk

I hope you like them,

Jane x

Our winner or the typewriter tote bag

Well we read through all the entries - and this one was the one we picked

So MFinthree a bag will be winging its way to you.

Thank you to everyone - the bags are now up on the website - as are some matching mugs.

Anything else we should be considering?

Chance to win a bespoke typewriter bag

Over the weekend I was busy designing a typewriter embroidery.

Using fabrics from my special "Do not touch" box to create the applique

- a cannibalised flannel skirt I made in my early teens, silk taffetta from an flouncy evening dress, a 1930s cotton underskirt, some suiting samples and some silver nylon.

Then we shall  print it onto bags (and mugs, possibly t-shirts) with personalised text printed onto the sheet of paper.

So - what would you write?

Let me know and we will pick one suggestion on Wednesday and its writer will get a free bespoke bag.

As bags are light to post, the competition is open to everyone - UK based or otherwise!

Autumn seedheads - limited edition

This is my favourite time of year, especially when you get a run of bright sunny days.

I particularly love the seedheads that take over the garden and fields - poppies, teasels, fennel. I pick them and take into the house to draw.

These are poppy seedheads lined up in stone bottles on the bathroom shelf.

and a wonderful angelica seedhead I found in the field.

Seedheads with their wiry structure are my favourite things to sketch.

I decided to make a very special limited edition herb cushion to incorporate my sketches of seedheads - it is a very complex design, with 4 colours built up in 5 layers. Ochres, olives, sepias and a tiny shot of the bright yellow which lifts the garden at the moment.  I am delighted with how they have turned out.

I am only making 30 of these - and each is signed, dated and numbered on the back - once they are gone they are gone. 

You can find them here http://snapdragongarden.co.uk/acatalog/copy_of_Scented_cushions.html#a946