Why do we hare around?

Why is it so desirable to be too busy? Is it an essential part of the human condition?

A lot of people tell me variations on the "I'm too busy" storyline. It tends to be "Oh you are so lucky, I am just too busy to buy from local shops" or "Oh you are so lucky, I am just too busy to help out at the school".

I used to think, in my insecurity, that it was actually being used as a synonym for "too important" - as in "I am too important to help with weeding playgrounds". Now I am deciding that it is a bit more complicated than that.

Like the jacket on the back of the office chair and the boasting about taking a Blackberry on holiday I think that this frantic "busyness" is perhaps itself a sign of insecurity - of needing to be seen to be doing things. A symptom of our tendency to judge people's worth by what they do for a living. A person who does so much that they are always "too busy" much therefore be more important than someone who has time to drink coffee in the sunshine.


We all live busy lives, "too busy" lives, but I also think that we all make decisions about what we prioritise in those lives. I know that when I use the "too busy" phrase it is usually about something I don't want to do anyway - I am, for example, "too busy" to go to the gym or have a manicure. That is indeed rubbish - if I hadn't prioritised reading or gazing at birds in the garden over going to the gym I would indeed have time - as well as a more toned derriere and nicer nails.


My resolution is to find some other, more honest, phrase to explain why I don't do all those things that I perhaps should (ironing, labelling school clothes, going to the theatre are a few more examples) and yet how there still seems to be time for making mayonnaise or embroidering baby shoes.

My theory of time is that expands when I slow down - today the baby housemartins are learning to fly from cherry tree to telephone wire and back. The air is full of their chirps.

We also have Timmy, the Jack Russell we fostered a while back, here for his holidays so I have my click-clicking shadow again.

The hares in the top photo were made as a response to a request for a boy's equivalent of the ragdolls - I toyed with a boy doll but had my reservations - these hares in oilskin dungarees were the solution. The one on the right sold in the shop this morning - the other is available for £28.95. NOW SOLD - Thank you (I might make more when I get time so e-mail me if you want one)

Irrelevant mice

Recently I have lost a few stone in weight and in attempting to adjust my steroid medication to fit with my new BMI I have knocked myself out of kilter and am really knackered.
Therefore - instead of spending the evenings pulling thistles and digging beds in advance of the garden club coming on Saturday, I have been making what Euan is terming "those highly irrelevant mice". This is as in "And are Connell Garden Club going to be impressed with these ranks of highly irrelevant mice?". I should point out that, while I am sitting on the deck embroidering dresses for mice, he is busy strimming a path to let the garden club members into the garden.

When I was small the magazine with the craft patterns in it was "Woman's Weekly" - my Gran got it, storing it under her sofa cushions to keep it in mint condition until our visits. Then my Mum would make things from it - mainly small soft furry toys. the main designer was a woman called Jean Greenhowe so when I saw a book of her patterns I snapped it up.




They are a contrast to today's toy patterns - whereas today's hand crafted toys scream out Japanese inspired individuality, these aim for the bland expressionless uniformity of mass production. The aim was to make something as good as you could get in the shops













I was feeling tired, I had some brown felted blanket scraps, I needed something fiddly and fairly brain free to do so I decided to make a dormouse. The photo is from the Jean Greenhowe book - a fleecy dormouse in a dormouse house.

And here is one of my irrelevant mice - oddly they look nothing like the Greenhouse version - it reminds me of being a teenager and desperately trying to fit in, buying the same clothes as everyone else and somehow still looking different.

Baby boots

What is it about baby shoes that is just so CUTE???

A couple of days I mentioned that I was embroidering some baby boots - here are the finished versions.

They are for a baby born about 10 days ago - his parents have just aquired chickens - hence the pecking chicks on the fronts of the shoes.

They are made in vintage linen and have been great fun to work out.

I have a Japanese craft book with lovely baby shoes in it but none of them looked very practical as they are more like adult court shoes and I suspect that they would fall off on first outing.

I based these on those lovely leather baby shoes that don't fall off at all.

A frippery perhaps but there is something about new babies which encourages such things.

Connections

Connection is the word that we would have inscribed above the door in Snapdragon's imaginary shop. It is the word at the core of what we aspire to do. Connect with the seasons, with the soil, connect with our customers, with the community. Only connect. This blog is a symptom of that quest.

Yesterday Carolyn wrote a very astute comment on my post about the demise of the Country Living Scottish Fair, questioning whether handmade was enough of an intrinsic value in itself.

It was a comment that made me think - because I am very vociferous about the fact that the similar catch all "organic" covers a multitude of sugary sins. I think that she is right - why do I get worked up about the need to preserve the hand made in Britain?

If I want to buy a salad bowl why do I go to the local craft gallery rather than Habitat? If I wanted to buy a doorstop why Primrose Hill rather than Cath Kidston?

And I think that it stems from this basic need for connection - connection at some level to a discernable human maker.

I do not feel comfortable buying from chain shops - I was in Edinburgh shopping yesterday and was very put off by the impersonal nature of the shops. The place where I did buy ( a party dress from East) was largely because of a wonderfully engaging member of staff. When I do part with my money it tends to be either in craft or antique shops.

I don't really know where this post is going - I think it is very hard to justify the allure of the handmade using pure logic. Yet it seems that, like lighting an open fire, growing your own vegetables or making jam, there is something more, something unmeasurable. All these things, if judged on a strict value for time and money basis, would probably fail, yet they are the parts of life that give me connection and are therefore, for me, beyond value.

That is how I feel about the hand made (though not all handmade) and the reason that I think it is worth fighting to promote.

I would be very interested to hear what items people value as hand-made and which they don't.

Thanks again for all your comments and e-mails.

Not quite the golden egg you would think.

Last week I got a letter from Upper Street Events who run the Country Living Fairs to say that they would not be having a Fair in Scotland next Spring.

It has turned out not to be an viable event for them.

It is a strange thing - talk to the stall holders and they feel that they are paying too much for their space, talk to the customers and they feel that the ticket price is too high, talk to the organisers and they say that they cannot make a profit on the event.

Perhaps there are not enough people in Scotland/North of England to justify the event - certainly, speaking to people who do both the London and the Glasgow Fair there are far fewer people at the Scottish event, spending far less per person.

That is perhaps the rub.

Yesterday I had lunch with a friend who had just bought a beautiful quilt from a catalogue specialising in Fair Trade goods. It was a lovely piece of work - the pieces had been carefully toned and my friend had bought it because of that, but also because it had been made by someone being paid properly for the work. She felt that she paid about a £70 premium for the good feeling that she has buying Fair Trade.

How many people would (or perhaps also could afford to) do that?

The Country Living Fair tries to reflect the magazine - to have a high proportion of stalls selling hand made, locally sourced, high production cost items - whether that is bags made from vintage materials or hand made jewellery.

The problem is that the price of those goods reflect the fact that they take time to make. With the Scottish Fair what seemed to happen was that each year there were fewer and fewer of these specialist stalls as too few people bought from them and they did not cover costs. Gradually stalls importing mass produced jewellery, enamelware, trinkets and so on began to dominate. Even the stalls which sold handmade items began to supplement with bought in goods, which were cheaper and therefore easier to sell. This applies to me as much as anyone else - whereas everything bar some hyacinth vases was made by me in the "home section" of my stall, there were pots and hand tools in the "garden" bit which were bought in - and available at another stall in the hall.

There were approximately 12,000 visitors to the Scottish Fair - that means to cover costs on a small stall you have every single person who comes in that door spend 30p with you. That is very high indeed. No wonder so many stallholders - with lovely stalls - hardly make a profit.

I really don't know what the answer is - if I could change one thing about our consumer society I would have people buy less but spend more time and money on their individual purchases. This Primark, disposable society depresses me. People look at a hand made object like a basket and think that it is expensive, if they began to think of the time taken to make it and what hourly rate they think would be fair, I expect that it would suddenly seem a great bargain. -

A Christmas Fair has been suggested for October 2008 and I hope that that comes off and that people use it as an excuse to get all their Christmas presents in one handcrafted, unique, happy shopping day.

I would be interested in hearing what people think from a customers' point of view.

Daisy doll - Mark 63

When the girls were younger we had a book of miscellaneous bedtime tales - my favourite was a one called Ruby. I can't remember the author but the story was about the adventures of some toys - led by the eponymous Ruby - who escaped from the reject bin at the toy factory and eventually found happiness by being adopted by a little girl.

They were obviously paying attention to their bedtime stories as the girls' bedrooms are now full of mutanty dolls - scooped from MY reject bin. Dolls with fat heads, dolls with thin heads, dolls with backwards shoes, dolls with felt hair (that did NOT work), dolls whose faces turned out to be really really scary.

I am amazed that I have actually persevered with this - I am not patient by nature - but here we have The Finished Daisy Doll.

Her body is made from vintage French linen and wool gingham with vintage ticking shoes; her titian locks are the jute string I use to bind my sweet peas; her reversible dress is a Liberty print with gingham as the alternative.


My idea with the dolls was to, as I have mentioned in the comments to my last post, make something that could be customised, either as a bridesmaid present or just a really nice present to a little girl. I could match hair colour and style (within reason), eye colour, perhaps even a favourite dress. I would love to have a go at making one as a copy of a bridesmaid's dress.

I do like this red headed girl though - very Scottish - I would have loved long wavy red hair.

She has been sitting in the shop today and has received lots of lovely complements (just look at her blushing) - I need to work out timings and costings before she can go on sale.

An excuse for a play about - wip

At the week end I was asked whether I made rag dolls. I had a material rabbit with me on my stall at the Green Gallery opening that sold encouragingly fast, so I said that I would give it a go.

So this week has been a parade of prototypes - and my girls are now proud owners of a series of slightly wonky versions, rejected because their faces were too fat or because, as Katie said, "Mummy are her feet meant to be backwards?".

I think that I am now getting somewhere and the photo is of the latest prototype - there are some changes to make - everyone preferred an earlier version's hair and I need to work out a better solution for the clothes.

I want the finished doll to be quite old fashioned looking - like those early C19th wooden dolls with their painted on hair and secretive faces but I also want her to work as a dress up doll so that her clothes come off and she can have alternative wardrobes - perhaps a ballet tutu.

I also want her to have outsize hands so that she is easy to hold hands with (perhaps not quite as large as this prototype).

Her name will be Daisy - in homage to the Karine Polwart song that seems to be on constant play here. Perhaps she shall have red hair, perhaps I will work out how to make her dungarees. Perhaps I will stop faffing about and actually make a final version . . .

Repeating the pattern?

When I was growing up my Mum, like many women tried to find piece work that would fit in with being at home after school and in the holidays - she did B&B, she painted pegs to look like soldiers and highland dancers, she helped organise play schemes but most consistently she made toys for a local craft shop.

My clearest memories of Mum before she took up antique dealing are of her sitting each evening in front of the wood burner with a willow basket full of half made animals waiting to be hand finished.

Recently I have been drawn to making toys again - and I am looking back to patterns from the 60s and 70s, probably quite similar in style to the patterns copied from magazines in my youth. This cute pony is my favourite at the moment - made in soft suede effect fabric with felt mane and tail he is just the right size and squashiness for a small hand.

I wonder whether this is a form of broodiness - my girls are growing up fast and are not as attached to soft toys any more (though they pleaded for, and got, all my prototypes for the toys I am working on at the moment). I don't intend to have another baby - perhaps this sewing soft things is a displacement activity (though if you ask me professionally I will spout that I want to develop a children's section for the website)

Updating the website

This afternoon has been drizzly so I have finally put down my hoe and got around to updating some things on the website. I have put up a few more of my Mum's ever popular chicken paintings - these cost about £2.00 to pack and post, and they are ideal for chicken lovers. She is busy working on paintings for a series of exhibitions in East Lothian so I suspect that these are going to be all I can manage to prise of her for the next month or so.

This photo is of Treela, an Isla Brown and our cheekiest chicken. Today I found her in our bathroom, perched on the side of the bath. Neither cats no dogs bother her at all when she is in the house.

I also finished the felted/embroidered cushions and put together some kits.

I have loved making these cushions - they are the ideal work to do in the evenings either outside watching the sunset or inside watching the t.v. The cushions have turned out even better than I thought they would - I was determined not to produce anything that looked like anybody else's, I wanted to make something that looked vintage but not derivative. I hope that I have succeeded. I am not going to be able to produce many though so they are strictly limited editions.

Seduced by sewing threads

Over the past ten days or so I have been wishing for a good rainy day so that I can snuggle inside and do some hand sewing.

However, though every weather forecast claimed that it was raining, it was actually lovely and sunny and I spent my days outside potting on seedlings and trying (and failing) to keep on top of the weeding.

Today it was a bit drizzly - weather I would normally brave - but I declared it a wet day and indulged myself with some sewing.

The reason for this is that I recently acquired a stash of vintage embroidery silks - one is fabulously labelled "Flosette for Flourishing etc" - and I have been using them to make up a selection of one off cushions. Until today it has all been evening work and therefore very slow but today I have been able to work without children and with the table all to myself.

To make the cushion bodies I am using vintage wool blankets which I have felted and dyed. My favourite is a soft raspberry pink and the panel will be the vase of flowers shown half sewn above. I might put it on the website.

Obviously I can't spend all my time embroidering flowers so I am considering putting together kits with everything to make the cushions - embroidery, hoop, vintage linen, cushion cover, silks and buttons etc. I am not sure whether there is a market though. Feedback would be appreciated.

Getting outside

This morning was the school Easter service and afterwards I went for coffee with friends, friends that I have been very remiss about keeping up with over the past six weeks or so.
It was somehow immensely cheering. We moved to Drymen 3 1/2 years ago, knowing no-one and slightly wary about whether it would be one of those places that you had to live in for over 80 years to become a local. It isn't.

The decision to move here was a good one, one of our better ones. I have more friends - good, funny, gallus friends - now than I have ever had before. Friends who can tell me as they did this morning - when I am moaning about the state of the cutting garden - that it always looks appalling at this time of year.

It is the cusp of my year, the point when I tip from making things to sewing things. I do hardly any gardening between October and the end of March but then, once the clocks go forward it is a mad rush to claw it all back from chaos.

So today I have been weeding, dividing perennials and planting out. It has been heavenly. I have a pile of orders to make up for things that sold out at the Fair but I told all the customers that I wouldn't be doing any sewing for the next month. For the next month I shall be sowing not sewing and I just can't wait.

Actually that isn't quite true. The thing that I regretted most about the amount of work I took on over Christmas was that I didn't get a chance to make Christmas presents for the girls. I have always made them a present but this year we just ran out of time.
So I decided that, after the Fair was over, I would make them both something. Zoe won a pack of pencils at school so I thought I would make them pencil rolls. So far, so simple - an hour's work maybe. Then I googled pencil roll blog and found this.

Isn't it fantastic? So that it what I am sewing - slowly.

Country Living Roundup.

This was meant to have been done on Thursday - ah well - it is probably a bit irrelevant really but these are stalls I liked at the show and then there are a couple of rants


Caroline Zoob - always beautiful, much copied, but then they never quite get it right.

Primrose Hill Interiors. Flowers, ginghams, hearts and dots

Boxwood - the most packed stall in the hall.


And now for Rant 1.

The Country Living Magazine awards a prize for the best stall design, the prize is a free stall next year and it is meant to encourage people to put a lot of effort into their stall design and so improve the look of the whole show. we won last year and it was a good reward for a lot of hard work that went into the look of the stall over and above the things we were selling.

This is the stall that won

Hume Sweet Hume. I don't really understand it - I'm not being tricksy with the photos - that is the whole stall, there isn't something interesting just out of view. Now I like Hume Sweet Hume's products, their knitted cushions are very soft and tasteful, but this is not a designed stand. It is a shop fitting c. 1997.

This is the stall I think should have won.

Dream Acres had a great hand cart that became the stall and lots of things, including these patchwork flowers, had been made for the show.

I think it very peculiar - and judging from the amount of people who mentioned the odd choice at our stall - so did a lot of visitors.

Rant 2

There has been a lot of bad publicity for Country Living Shows within the blogging community, a feeling that there are not enough small craft producers any more, that much of the stuff on offer is bought in and that there is a lack of variety, that they are too crowded for a leisurely browse . The knee jerk reaction seems to be to blame the magazine and actually I do not think that that is justified.

Stalls are expensive - the overall expenses for a small stall for a one of the shows must come in at about £2,000 - but this is very much in line with all trade shows -many of which do not have the slickness of the CL show. I was constantly amazed by the speed and professionalism of the Melville team handling the putting up and taking down of the show. I don't get the feeling that the shows are a great money making exercise for CL magazine.

So, to cover costs you need to sell approximately £4,000 over the 4 days. Now this is not an issue for some stalls - Stephensons Rocking Horses must take double that every day, one jumper stall told me of a customer spending £2,500 in a single purchase - but it is an issue for most of the craft stalls. This is because customers do not value their products properly.

I had bought a felt corsage, made from knitted material hand felted then sewn up, a one off.

It is lovely and goes well with my red coat and cost all of £16.00. I feel that it was a more than fair price. 2 customers told me - without my having brought the subject up -that I should have saved my money and gone down to Accessorize where they have a 2 for 1 offer on corsages.

There seems to be an inability in many people to distinguish between mass produced throwaway items and hand made unique ones. It all comes down to price. Though they want the stalls there at CL Fairs so that it looks pretty, they will buy on the high street.

Then there is the customer who does appreciate the difference. The customer who has paid her £7.50 entrance and is using the Fair as a source of ideas. She quizzes about methods, she takes surreptitious photographs, she scribbles in her notebook. Friends say to each other "Oh what a good idea, you could do that".

I had 15 magnet buttons stolen from my noticeboards - presumably by people who thought "Oh what a good idea, I could do that".

So I don't think that it is the organiser to blame - yes, I wish they could get more innovative press coverage, yes I wish they would get more young people in with houses to fill, but really I think that it is the customers.

If you want the small crafty unique stalls to attend- BUY FROM THEM - don't just tell them the look nice.

As to the negative comments about the magazine itself see here I am with Nikki on deploring the laziness.

Rant over

We actually had a very good fair - but many people didn't - so I leave you with a last photo of my van. You can tell I am confined to bed today trying to recover my voice, this post has taken ages.

Aprons

Last year the most requested items at our Country Living stand were the aprons that Sally and I were wearing. I didn't have any for sale at the time but subsequently made some up - mainly for B&B owners who wanted something out of the ordinary for serving up breakfast.

So aprons were always on my list, but with one thing and another they have turned out to be the last thing to be sewn up.

I actually have a problem with aprons. I have as euphemism would have it, a curvy figure. I have a bust and hips with a waist inbetween. In most aprons I look like a badly tied parcel with a baggy bit above my bust and not enough material to wrap round my ample hips. I never feel like a capable confident domestic goddess in an apron. I feel like I am in a hospital gown.

Over the years I have tried the tie on 1950s pinnies and the amazing wrap dresses from the 1940s - the sort of thing you should wear to scrub your step in a Hovis advert - but nothing looked right.

So this year I decided to tweak last year's apron pattern and come up with something flattering to the non-beanpole. And it has worked - I used a couple of beautiful drapey linens so there isn't that bunchy cardboard effect that you get with ticking or denim, I was generous with the side flaps so that they don't stick out and most importantly, I scooped the neck so that it sits properly.

The result is a very high class apron indeed with a lined top, an Irish linen pocket, vintage button detailing ans a handy clip to attach a cloth to so that you can wipe your hands.

It is a pinny for Nigella or Marylin (or me).

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.

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.

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.

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.

Another use for buttons . . .

I don't usually copy ideas directly - usually original inspiration bubbles away in my brain for so long that it turns into something completely different.

I have to admit, however, that these button fridge magnets that I have made are a direct steal from Kaari Meng's beautiful book The French-Inspired Home.

The book is based on Meng's Hollywood based shop French General and it is full of the kind of photographs that make you want to move right in. It has a number of craft projects - I would say that the patterns are probably for someone who knows what they are doing as the directions are very basic - but more than anything it made me wish that I had the type of house where a 'gift wrapping station' with spools of ribbon, baskets of silk flowers and SHARP scissors would be a possibility.

Our house is more a "Who has moved the Sellotape now?" kind of place. But now I have no excuse for losing all the drawings that come back from school - they are firmly buttoned to the fridge.

A busy fool . . . .

When I began to think about starting my own business, about 6 years ago now, I used to attend a lot of networking events run by Scottish Enterprise and the like.

One of the co-ordinators was a lovely woman who had once worked for Scottish Enterprise and had then left, wangling herself a freelance consultancy job for Scottish enterprise, working her own hours, being her own boss and earning a lot more money. She gave me a lot of very good advice the most important piece of which was to resist becoming a busy fool.

As I rush about painting mood boards for weddings and sewing up glazed cotton hearts I'm not sure that I have followed that advice.

I am also a great fan of Michael Gerber and his book The E-myth Revisited which looks at the way in which skilled workers - gardeners, shopkeepers, knitters, florists - begin their own businesses and keep on doing the type of skilled craft that they feel comfortable with - become busier and busier until it isn't sustainable and they become exhausted. They become busy fools.

Working in a craft based field, it is very difficult to avoid the trap. Initially I was so worried that no-one would buy anything that I pitched prices low - then when people did buy I felt that I had set a price level and couldn't raise it much. It has taken 5 years to get prices - both flowers and crafts - up to a sensible level. My worst habit is forgetting all the extras that go into making things - not the ribbons and so on, but the time spent buying materials, the petrol for delivery, the stall costs, the sandwiches and so on.

How does everyone else solve this? There are obviously a number of crafters who are even more foolish than I am if the e-bay prices are to be believed (* I put this bit in for Lisa whose doorstops are 100% nicer than the copies on ebay) and then there are those Chinese imports.

This year I am hoping to be just as busy but a little less foolish.