We're having a party....

Judith Hodges, Liz McDougall and I are having a little event here on Thursday 11th.

Judith's bringing lots of  contemporary silver jewellery from Bob Adams Designs - new designs just in from his travels, at discounted prices - Bob himself may even join us. Liz is bringing some of her lovely new baskets, fresh in from Morocco and Ghana - check out her site http://www.green-baskets.co.uk/.  Jenny Williams will be bringing some of her great range of Phoenix Christmas Cards and Advert Calendars. And me, well... I have made some things from stuff I have grown in the garden and will be ready with some new designs for Christmas Wreaths for mail order and home-delivery using local, compostable materials.   We are all really looking forward to it..  Wine, chat, old friends and new.. Come and join us.... 

I went to a meeting last week with a load of editors (something to do with the dayjob..) and one of the breakout (aargh...) sessions was about social networking media and its applications to academic publishing.  Yup. It was that interesting.  However, I picked this up along the way.  Just about sums up this game..

Christmas is coming...

as the Mahonia Japonica by my kitchen door is in flower.




It smells good (especially at night). It attracts pollinators like fury (note bee on the right hand side really going for it...) I make Mahonia Berry Jelly with the lovely blue berries that follow in the spring.  I took this picture during a short burst of sunshine between the showers today.  It is definitely half-term as the weather has taken a turn for the worst.. ho hum...


 

..hydrangea danger...

it's the floral equivalent of taking a motorbike apart in your hall.. There are trays of hydrangeas drying everywhere.  They go out in the morning into the garden to get a bit of sun but the rest of the time hang around the house getting in everyone's way.   

I have got some lovely bright red local ones, some really great ones from Cornwall and also from Glastonbury.  Have some more to collect but fear that the frost may beat me to it.  It has gone VERY chilly in the last few days .

The hearts are really coming out well but also working on red and green hydrangea balls on ribbon hangers.  Will get them photographed soon but now need to find some boxes to put them in...  I wonder how we managed to do anything before google....

a good day at the office..

..or rather up the willow trees at the end of my mother's garden cutting whips to make some bases. These trees are quite old for willow and the trunks are splitting and the foxes are burrowing underneath them.  They were the trees we used to climb as children, and we used to use the branches to make bows and arrows.  They regularly got wasps nests in them and were full of caterpillars in the summer, which used to add a bit of excitement.

Mike, my elder brother, once got up into the tree above the nest hole with a broom and whacked the tree very hard,  holding a can of silver spray paint in the other hand so he could spray the wasps on the way out (why?why?)  I watched out of the window from the house.  He got quite a few before the whole nest turned on him.    I've never seen him run so fast, up the garden back to the house tearing off his shirt as he ran, to get them out of his clothes. Hur hur.  So getting up there today brought on a bout of nostalgia..

Here is the cut willow, and below is the bases I made with them. 

All in all, a very good day...and not a wasp to be seen...