Wheatbags

Sometimes new products emerge very easily - sometimes it takes a bit longer to get a design just right.

This is one of the latter.

About once a month I get a migraine - as migraines go it isn't that bad but I still need to go and lie down in the dark for an hour or two.

I bought a special headache eyepack to help but discovered that it was really badly designed, the light got in and there was none of that feeling of contact that helps headaches. It actually made my head feel worse than better.

So I decided to make one for myself - I wanted it to be heavy, completely light excluding, lightly scented and able to be cooled down. It also had to look good. So I made it out of fine wool gingham backed with a soft navy wool/cashmere mix. I filled it with a wheat/lavender mix for a calming effect and to give weight and allow it to be heated or cooled.

Then it occurred to me that as it is big (20 x 54cm), it could also become a general heat pad, long enough to go round the small of the back, flexible enough to strap round a leg, soft enough to snuggle into with monthly cramps.


So here it is - a super all-round-heating-cooling-headache soothing-snuggly wheatpack. All it needs now is a more catchy name.

Mini gingham hearts

The motivating idea of Snapdragon the business is that customers should go away with more than they expected. At the van this usually means a few extra flowers to make up a bedside posy or some gardening advice, it might be the loan of a vase or some fresh herbs. It is what sets us apart from the supermarket and keeps out customers coming back.

I want this to continue when we move into mail order and am working on a number of small - low materials cost - things that can be added into parcels. This mini gingham heart is one of them - made from the scraps of wool gingham left when I am making the wheatbags with a backing of antique linen it is something that can be sewn up while watchbing television.

It is filled with our dried rosemary mixed with wheat scented with maychang a nice citrusy smell. I wanted something that wasn't lavender as many people hang these in their car instead of a magic tree. I don't want them lulled off to sleep.

Blog up on Country Living Website

I finally negotiated the internet browser problems and managed to access the Country Living Magazine blog site.

The point of this is that the magazine is looking for a new columnist and have chosen to search via a blogging competition. This makes the blogs a bit bizarre, instead of the unmediated and informal posts that are done by most genuine bloggers here, the competition drives everyone to hone their writing before posting. And there is some very good writing but somehow it just isn't as interesting as the random posts of El or Heather or Carolyn to name a few. (Sorry forgot to sort out links - use the sidebar)

I decided that it would be pointless to simply double post here and on the CL site so I have decided to do something quite different there, to tell the story of how the business started and then how it works as a rural small business as opposed to a generic small business.

I have decided to be very honest - probably more honest than some of my family will relish. I don't see the point of doing a pastiche of Sue Gaisford, the present columnist from whom it is implied the new columnist will take over.

If anyone want to check it out it is here

I didn't expect it to be so small. . .

That is usually my reaction to things that I buy by mail order. I know that measurements are always included and it is my fault but everything somehow seems a bit more skimpy in my house than it did in the photos.

I have been thinking about this today as it was one of my web sessions this afternoon and I spent it installing the paypall buttons on the site. Suddenly it looked real.

I haven't made the site live yet as there are doubtless typos and formats to be sorted out but technically I could run it via the web and buy things myself. (My life isn't quite dull enough for that yet - I love receiving parcels but posting them to myself might be going a bit far) Day for lift off will be March 5th.

I am - as the title of this entry suggests- rather worried about mail order. I am used to people handing the things they buy, personally choosing everything. I chat to them about what will suit them best.

Everyone who has bought from me via the web, having seen things on the blog and then e-mailed me, has given me lovely feedback. For which I am very grateful. I shall have to get used to selling without seeing the whites of the customers eyes.

The red and white handles in the photo are from some french style wire baskets that I have been painting. The baskets are a lovely shape and very useful for everything from vegetable collecting to loo roll storage, but the handles are a matt brown and make the whole thing look rather dull. I copied this red and white design from the swimsuit of a 1920s lady in a painting of Deauville. I've also done a more subtle duck egg blue version.

Country Living news . . .

It is all confirmed now so I can go into details!

I actually feel a bit mean being excited as there is presumably some really sad reason for our good fortune. The people who were going to do the garden feature at the Country Living Scottish Fair have had to pull out and it has been offered to us.

We are going to move our stall from one of the aisles to a much larger area right in front of the main doors. There is room to take the van and also to put on a bit more of a show. It won't be a proper garden feature - you can't do a proper garden feature in 4 weeks and get everything else together for a stall as well, but I hope that it will look great and be a fitting entrance feature for the show.

I am really chuffed as it will allow us to show all the different sides of the business - I was worried that we would appear to be a business that sells just crafts when I feel that that is a small part of the whole. We were working on a large pinboard to show all the other sides of what we do - now we will be able to do it on a grander scale (Though as I like the pinboard idea we may do that as well)

Karine Polwart - in Balfron

A couple of weeks ago I was driving with the children, listening to Radio 2, and suddenly Zoe said "Oh I LOVE that song - can you find out who sang it?"

I had also been impressed - and keen to foster an interest in proper music - and checked the playlist when we got home (what did we do before the internet?). It was a song called Daisy by a wonderful singer called Karine Polwart.

We were too late to book tickets to see her in Celtic Connections but we ordered a CD and have been listening to it on a loop ever since.

Yesterday I went to the post office and there on the door was a poster for a Karine Polwart concert in BALFRON. I zoomed along to buy tickets at Balfron Library.

The concert is 10th March 7.30 and is part of a much bigger music programme with venues in Stirling and Killin. I'm so chuffed as I gather that Karine is pregnant and won't be touring much this year.

Even more exciting is that Karine is a blogger.

The photo is of me halfway through making a batch of button magnets.

Back to work

Well Barcelona was wonderful - it is a fantastically friendly city and it was great to get away and be able to chat to friends without the constant interruptions of children - we managed to finish cups of coffee and sentences. And the food . . . .

I was also very buzzy anyway as, just before we left I got a very exciting proposal from the team organising the Country Living Magazine Fair here in Scotland. I can't go into it until it is all settled but it had my head whirring all the way to Spain.

Then I read in CL, which I had taken along as my inflight reading, about their columnist competition which is Blog based . . . well you really have to take a punt at these things.

Packing the party shoes . . .

And off to BARCELONA with the GIRLS (Alison, Jane and Tessa)

Back Monday - unless we like it too much . . . .

What is it about black flowers?

Why is it that I love black flowers so much? To be honest it is very difficult to make them fit into the garden design - they really need to be surrounded by lots of light coloured foliage - lime greens or silvers - which make them stand out. I have to look at them with blinkers on - marvelling at them like a planstman and not worrying about things on either side.

Yet every year I seem to acquire more and more black flowers - this stunning hellebore came from Floreat Plants, now sadly defunct. Sue sold me a lot of her stock plants when she was closing and this is the first year that it has flowered. It is gorgeous - especially with the sun shining through the petals - but I haven't found the right place for it yet.

At the moment it is in one of the long herbaceous borders and is really the only thing flowering there - visually it would look good against the silver of an artemesia but that wouldn't work in terms of habitat. I think that I need to find something leafy and lime green that likes shade and is full, fluffy and pristine in February/March.

Or perhaps I should move it in the autumn and make a woodland area with snowdrops and pulmonaria - but even those don't have a lightness which will lift the colour.

Or I could - as I tend to with all the black flowers - cut it and bring it into the house.

Sweetpeas

One of my jobs this week will be to pot up the sweetpea seedlings.
Temperatures in the tunnel are over 10 degrees for much of the day so the seedlings are beginning to grow again and will benefit from a bit more room I grow my sweetpeas in Rootrainers which encourage long healthy root runs. Rootrainers are basically black plastic cells which come flat packed with a hinge at the base - you fold them up and fit them into a plastic tray which gives you approximately 32 planting spaces. They spaces are much longer and narrower than plant pots and have grooved sides which guide the roots into going straight down. There is not a base to the cells, so when the roots emerge at the bottom they are air pruned (die off at the tips). This in turn sends a message back up to the plant to send out more roots.

You get the seedlings out by unhinging the cells so that there is minimal disturbance.

I find that the roottrainers are amazing things - it is very tempting to keep unfolding the cells just to see how the roots are doing.

But now the cells are full of roots and it is time to pot them on into large 2 litre rose pots - then with a bit of sunshine they should romp away. The top photo was taken outside last May.

New logo

For the past six months or so I have felt that Snapdragon needed a proper logo - something that could be (in theory) printed on everything from labels to lorries (world domination here we come!).

In the past I have relied on printing things out as I need them and, as I am a really disorganised person, I have tended to begin anew each time. This meant that I had a very changeable image - I didn't even stick to one font - and this is really an attempt to become more professional in outlook and to grow the business.

The logo has been designed for me by Kate Watt, a local graphic designer who is responsible for the distinctive graphic look of Park Life Magazine.

We initally fiddled about with a Snapdragon image - but although it is a good "snappy" name which people remember easily it turned out to be a very weak shape for a logo so we have gone for the much more sparky dahlia.

Now all I need to do is get around to tying up the many many loose ends of the website and get some publicity material printed up in time for the Country Living Scottish Fair in March.

Cloche questions answered.

I originally got these glass cloches - reproductions of C17th Dutch ones - because I wanted them for the garden but they got so many interested comments that I bought in enough to resell.

While I grow, make or commission most of our stock, we do sell commercially made vases, planters and the like so these fit into that category - no-one is going to think that I havea glassworks round the back of the tunnel.

As it is the first year that I have had them I couldn't answer any questions about how they stand up to the weather - well now I can. we have been down to -6 now and they are absolutely fine.

I assume that it is the shape that prevents frost damage - I imagine that it just slides off the sides. They don't keep the plants frost free but do make a couple of degrees of difference and keep the rain, snow and deer away. The parsley under the cloches is fine and green, the plants in the open are frosted to pulp.


The other question I got a lot of is - what can you do with them inside? I use them to keep the children's nature finds dust free and to elevate the pebbles, cones and nests into Victorian Naturalist territory.

But look at this page from Elle Decoration - British artist Polly Morgan is putting dead robins and mini chandeliers into bell jars and charging from £4000 for the results. this one is called A Thousand Years in Your Presence. Perhaps I should take Minou onto the staff and turn his kills into profit.

The varmints . . .

I took this morning off to hear Zoe read a poem out at the school's Scottish Assembly and then took Jasmine for a long walk as it was such a fantastic day.

This was the welcoming committee when I got home - 3 beautiful does in the field next door. It is the first time this year that I have seen them in the daylight.


Though I knew they were about. . . . They have actually been doing a fair amount of damage in the cutting garden - this photo is of some tulips shoots nibbled level with the ground.

Still, I couldn't possibly get someone in to shoot them - much as I like venison. They are beautiful creatures, in much better condition after the mild winter than they were this time last year.

They stop eating our plants once the grass and wild flowers begin to grow again in the fields.

I have stretched netting over the tulips- they will have raggy looking leaves but the flowers will be fine.

Name cards

When I am organising wedding tables I often find myself talking brides out of having too many flowers on the table.

There has been a fashion recently for alternating high and low arrangements on tables - a mix of low down rings and towering 4 feet high vases. The idea is that people will be able to see the flowers over the guests' heads and that they won't get in the way.

I feel that the tall arrangements - often in skinny conical vases - make the room feel quite claustrophobic, like there is something hovering around, and as they are inherently top heavy they can topple over if the table is nudged (I have seen this happen and it makes a mess).

I prefer to have small scented arrangements and to mix these with attractive place settings and candles. The photo is of one of the zinc pots that I use as a place card holder - it is really a candle-holder but here it is as a place card holder filled with buttons. It can also be filled with beads, shells, small flowers, sweeties etc. etc.

I am going to try and persuade my sister-in-law-to-be to have them filled with loveheart sweets.

As candles I like to use glass tealights - they give a lovely glow and can be ordered from Luckycats in bespoke fragrances.

Felty eggy soaps

One of the things that I get most excited about with the business is the opportunity to work with other small businesses and crafts people to come up with unique products.

It would in many ways be much easier to simply buy things in and resell but I don't think that I would get the same kick out of it if I sold the same as everyone else. It would become a case of watching everyone elses prices.

Last year Laura Capnerhurst of Lucky Cats Soap used my calendula flowers to make a fantastic gardeners' soap and this year we have been developing egg shaped soaps with a felted covering.

The idea began with my elder daughter's birthday party where all the children made vibrant felt coverings for pieces of Laura's soap - they work a bit like a flannel and soap combined. Laura had made felted soaps before but this was the first time that I had really seen them and they were a great success.

Then, at one of the Fairs before Christmas I asked Laura about making egg shaped soaps to go inside some chicken shaped topiary frames I have for sale. She suggested felting the outsides and to be honest I thought it might look a bit odd - I still had the image of the bright wool stripes from the birthday party in my head and thought that they would look too "tie-die" for the chickens.

Then Laura made me the prototype pictured above and I am in love. The wool is pure cream merino, it is soft as soft can be, it doesn't smell at all wet woolly, the soap inside is a lovely light citrusy bergamot, and it will look fantastic in the chickens.

I love being proved wrong.

Dahlia suppliers

Gillian asked me about reliable suppliers of dahlia tubers as she had bought a tuber from e-bay which was meant to be dark red but it had bloomed yellow.

It is always frustrating when that happens and it is NEVER something nicer than you had been expecting, always something in salmony orange or chrome yellow.

The problem is that all suppliers tend to buy at auction - they are bidding on lots which look more or less the same in their dormant state - so they are only as good as the word of the auctioneer and the growers .

As soon as a variety becomes oversubscribed there is a temptation to pass off other varieties as it - after all the customer won't know until it flowers and by then they may have forgotten where they bought it.

I buy in quantity direct from Holland and the firm that I deal with have so far been superb both in quality and in reliability. They don't speak English that well & I don't speak Dutch so I rely on a Dutch friend if I need to find out any fine details. They only sell wholesale though which is no use if you just want a couple of tubers.

In the past I have bought dahlias from Sarah Raven's Cutting Garden - her prices are high but so is the quality (I suspect we share a supplier!). I believe that her dahlia list will be out soon.

I do sell dahlias here at the van - but at the moment don't officially mail order them, though I would be quite happy to post them out. The varieties I am getting are 3 dark flowered ones - Rip City;Black Cat; and Choc and some fabulous Karma dahlias -bred as cut flowers with long vase life, good strong stems and vibrant colours - in pink and red. They will be available from March.

Pots of gold. . . .

Last night I went with friends to hear Duncan Bannatyne (of Dragons' Den fame) talk in Glasgow.

The event was hosted by Waterstones and the Glasgow Herald newspaper and was to publicise Bannatyne's book Anyone Can Do It (spookily similar title to the Coffee Republic founders' book Anyone Can Do it !)

The event was entertaining enough - Bannatyne is a good, if not particularly inspiring, speaker - but it was the audience that really made it for me.

The evening took the form a set piece interview (easy questions, cued up anecdotes) with someone from the Glasgow Herald newspaper and then it was questions from the floor. It was a lesson on why you should NEVER take questions from the floor in Glasgow. The first question was from a youth worker berating him from idolising wealth as a marker of success and it was downhill from there to the final (quickly terminated) insults about the quality of Bannatyne's plastic surgery.

The audience was full of desperate looking young men (the two I spoke to both had a "secret product" in development that they couldn't tell me about - presumably they would have had to kill me if it has been inadvertently revealed) and teachers/youth workers/ social workers torn between wanting to go home with some inspiration to pass on to their charges and the fact that they despise everything that Bannatyne seems to stand for.

Anyone can do it . . .but would they want to?

In the photo it is obviously Drymen Milk Bar that is home to the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

To typepad or not to typepad. . .advice please

This morning I was in Stirling - starting from scratch with the website.

In October it just didn't hang together and after missing my Christmas deadline I ignored it.

I always find that it is amazing how when you begin something, abandon it for a few months and then begin again you come to it completely afresh and with much clearer ideas. I feel that I have made much more progress this morning than I did in the weeks I spent on it back in the Autumn.

It occured to me this afternoon while I was out walking Jasmine, that I should really be sortingout the blog so that it fits visually with the website - and isit therefore time tochange to typepad.



Could people who are using it let me know the advantages of typepad? And the disadvantages if there are any.



Though my overall aim for the website is to have it really "bloggy" - informal, interactive, frequently updated - I want them both to look as though they are part of the same whole.