showers and sunshine...

We're having such 'April' weather here and it's good because we need the rain and it's making me stay in to do some work instead of being enticed outside by lovely sunshine.  

Us easily distracted types need all things in exactly the right place to actually get to work and stick at it for a whole day - I'm doing a logo for a green building store at the moment and have really been promising it will be ready for far too long!

guess where I've been today...

...not too hard to guess on a sunny day in the middle of the growing season...

Today was a good picking day - lots of raspberries, although none made it home, radishes, salad, one giant onion, some herbs and the very first broad bean pod (although I probably should have waited a few days as they really were baby beans).

I also gave the gooseberries a good squeeze.

Maybe by Wednesday...

stop everything - the berries are ripe...

I've got a thing about berries...I'm only really happy when there's a line of jam jars filled with different coloured jams in the cupboard and several bags filled with frozen berries at the bottom of the freezer.

We all love jam and puddings and sauces and fruity drinks in this house and really could not have too many.  

Today it was decreed that the black currants and white currants were ready (not all are such glossy black but the wind was picking them for us so the desicion was made and we acted fast!).  That meant that dinner was late and slightly random but THE BERRIES ARE SAFE.

 

...not everyone helped, but the den in the lounge is especially comfy at the moment...

tea towels ready to deliver

My new dockside tea towels are going to be in the museum shop at Bristol's nearly open museum 'MShed' - it opens on the 17th June so they are busy putting all the stock in ready and it looks really exciting because they are going to have lots of local Bristol artists, makers, crafts people and other local goodies (even some Bristol made chocolates - yum)...and quite right too for a museum about and for the people of Bristol!

Meanwhile it is quite exciting seeing all the tea towels piled up together ready to deliver...

terrible photos!

I'm not a photographer and surely some of the hardest things to take photos of are 'products'!!

At the moment my house is full with cards and prints and so on, but taking proper photos and putting them onto Folksy is turning out to be an impossible task...

Getting things framed and taking them to galleries?  Yes, I can do that.
Wrapping prints in cellophane and packaging up for the post?  No problem.
Coming up with ideas and designing new prints?  Trickier, but great fun.

Photos of things I want to sell?  Well, today's a bit cloudy, so they won't come out quite right and first I need a couple of panel pins the right distance apart, and some nice bull dog clips and maybe some fancy twine and some clean wooden clothes pegs and something pretty to decorate around them - maybe some bunting - and it's not clear yet how to arrange groups of cards together, but some kind of nice cover or tablecloth may be needed...maybe I should wait until I've redecorated the lounge so that the background colour is just right too...

lovely evenings

I can't think of any better way to start a Friday evening than playing at the allotment as the day cools down (a little...).  Birds singing their bed time songs and frogs on the move, ants nests in the compost bin to disturb, apple pips to water just in case a tree will grow, water boatmen to try to catch and some really thirsty soil sucking up the moisture as we water - I love the smell - and then really filthy, tired, sunned children who have pushed it a bit too late to have a bath and have to go to bed as they are, promising to have a shower in the morning (I bet they don't...)

mangle prints

Have you come acrosss Mangle Prints before?  Fantastic prints, cards and decorations (take a look at the bunting, I love it).  Well last week I was really lucky because Amanda from from Mangle Prints featured me on her blog and it was such an exciting suprise to be asked!  Once I got going on those questions I really couldn't stop...