Makegood Festival

I have neglected you all ... but it is only a week now till the Makegood festival

Please do come if you can as it is going to be quite brilliant! An amazing showcase for 200 creative businesses many who I can say are very cool people indeed as they have been my fellows on this journey we all have been taking at School for Creative Startups. This all reminds me so much of my degree show and I still have nightmares about that! The lists are everywhere, and today is the last day I have in the studio to get the last things packed and ready, then into the car ... on Sunday we will drive there to put it up (there will be photographic evidence) and then it starts on Thursday for us with Press and VIPs coming. Open to public on Friday! YIKES! As I have barely had time to look after myself this last two weeks or more ... I am a little worried about the bloodshot eyes and lack of smartness when meeting the press. I don't do "smart" very well, even when I try really hard.

The photos below are of the work in progress. New embroidery kits which came in huge great rolls which I can hardly lift, mad frantic stitching to complete samples for the show, the colour dilemma, choosing threads for the kits. Many early mornings and late nights.

And I still have inappropriate shoes to wear to this event! I long to wear my Birkenstocks but not sure it would be right. That will be worth a visit if nothing else, to see what I finally manage to cobble together to wear and whether I have had the mental where with all to brush my hair and not put mascara on only one eye. Seriously I would be chuffed to bits to meet anyone who reads this blog. And here I want to thank any of you who have helped with the frantic stitching of samples ... you know who you are ... THANK YOU SO MUCH!

New kit ... Little Bird No.2

Detail Long Tail Bird Cushion kit

Little Bird No.2 new kit detail

New Kits on the roll!

Long Tail Bird and Pigeon Cushion Kits on the roll

David Pye bowl, more fungus, cake and thread ...

Sarah winding threads for kits

Field mushrooms and Parasols

Field mushrooms in David Pye bowl

Harvest

Autumn sunshine took Sarah and I outside to wind thread for the kits, drink tea and eat some delicious shop bought custard tarts, the best possible indulgence. As fast as she makes the thread bundles for the kits, they seem to disappear. The Christmas orders are coming in and we are going full pelt. Also a photo of some field mushrooms picked that morning locally, with one or two parasol mushroom thrown in too. They are rather artistically placed in a wonderful hand carved wooden bowl made by David Pye

which he gave to my parents back in RCA days. He was Prof of Furniture Design from 1964-1974 and I remember his collection of moths and butterflies in beautiful museum drawers when we went to visit him at his home in Wadhurst. Loved drawers ever since. The bowl reflects the radiating gills of the mushroom so beautifully ... here is another bowl very similar to it. I treasure this bowl, much loved, much used. The dressing when using it for a hearty salad runs obligingly down the ridges, easy to scoop again for another dousing ...

Country Living Article SEPTEMBER 2013

Well here it is, more about the cottage than the business but very pretty none the less. This was photographed before I had even had the first prototypes for the kits printed. The Pigeon being started ... then it got put in a cupboard because everything started to get rather busy. But working on it again now, and I think it has found a home before it has even been finished! It does not look like this now, in fact so much has changed, and amazingly I do not live in this sort of lazy idyll at all, mooching about stitching in the garden! whatever next!

It would be great if this feature gives me a bit of a surprise one way or another ... I have already had one come to think of it. Last night my call for a Girl Friday was answered in the shape of Sarah who is coming to help me once a week! I am really excited about having her here and I think it will be great fun and certainly extremely helpful! I hope I can help her too, starting with learning to crochet!

Grass

I have been asleep ... and more  ... then some more. It is 3 and a half weeks post op and still my brain feels incapable of anything more testing than working out what to do in the next 5 minutes! The district nurse who comes out twice a week says this is all normal but I worry that the inactivity has curdled everything and my lazy gene has taken over, numbing all thought and willingness to move around. Maybe she's right. The dog is very down. She mopes about looking at me disapprovingly, then gets periods of utter exasperation and gives me a good talking to but there is nothing I can do ...

And the garden! While I was away the grass grew ... to a foot or more, then got tired of that and spread into the flower beds and began climbing up bushes and walls and over windows. I can't help thinking of Sleeping Beauty except I am no young beauty with golden tresses .... but I do sleep a lot! I can't mow or tackle it as it has gone crazy madness and I am a little frightened of it now, hardly daring to set foot out of the back door ... except to take these photos. My friends promise to come once exams, end of terms etc are over, and Joe ( maybe the rescuing knight?) promises to come next week as long as he can hack his way through and free me from the ever encroaching vegetation.

And as for work ... I am trying. I am trying to work a new tutorial and design a new kit for a little stuffed dog to embroider, but I manage only a half hour at a time before sleep overtakes me.

But despite the moaning, the garden is also beautiful too, full blown and resplendent as these "before" photos may show. My dear friend Bobby came yesterday and cut the ivy and roses from the windows so I can get some light into the cottage, then she polished and buffed the glass till the light poured back in. Bless her!

Back "meadow" remember this when I post the "after" shots

Front meadow

At last I can see out!

The honeysuckle is wonderful and as I sleep with the windows open the scent wafts in gently

Bluebells showing off

They are ... but it just amazes me every year how incredible a sight it is in this country in May to see carpets of colour like this. A few shots I took yesterday on my way home.
Also one last blossom one of another carpet of petals on the front lawn, blown by the tempest style winds we had last week ...

House and Garden 1951

Here is the article from 1951 House and Garden with my parents tiny flat in Kensington Gardens. My mother always used to say that it was actually very damp and dark and pokey, and to line it with asbestos! The hardboard flooring was constantly curling up and tripping you up ... but it looks so like the beginings of a style I came to know as 'home'. My father and uncle, Robert Nicholson both used to smoke heavily and my mother would say it was quite hard to breath let alone bring up my older brother John then a baby in this little flat. But still my father looks so handsome here, ... and some of the ornaments and pieces of furniture including the Ernest Race rocking chair I still know and love. The rocking chair was also another death trap as small squidgy fingers could be sliced off guillotine style under those rockers! Ah the pitfalls of modern living in the 1950s!