For what is Chatteris?

Frosty mornings

2010-11-17T16:11:00.003Z

We have been enjoying the walk to work for the past couple of days. We walk through Eaton Park every day which is lovely on frosty mornings, and on crisp autumnal mornings with bigs piles of leaves to kick through.

This week we have been busy preparing things for a stall at the Pick n' Mix Makers Market in Holt on Saturday - we'll have a few new things on our stall as well!

The Market is in St Andrew's Hall from 10 until 4, and there will be lots of other lovely makers there, including Robin Glass, Red Red Blue and Silverpebble.

Do come and say hello if you're in Holt on Saturday!

A new block

2010-10-11T13:57:00.004Z

Today we had some spare ink on the Adana after printing a special order, so we did a quick print of our newest block - a rather nice deckchair in the garden with a couple having summery drinks.

The block is slightly worn in places, so the first print was a bit patchy, plus we didn't bother to redo the packing on the press first... Hopefully the next one will be more uniform!

Still, a nice reminder of summer days now that we're on the cusp of autumn.

Starting all over again

2010-10-07T16:12:00.001Z

A couple of weeks ago we had a lovely week in Northumberland, staying in an eighteenth-century farmhouse thatched with heather. We walked many miles along Hadrian's Wall and blew the cobwebs away.

We were certainly in need of a break - I have just finished my doctoral thesis after four long years! Hurrah! It's nothing something that we've often written about on here, but it has taken up a significant portion of our lives (and our creative energies) for the last year in particular.

So, now that's it over, we're ready to pick up our tools again. Jon has worked on a few commissions over the past year, but, apart from the odd bout of letterpress printing, I haven't touched any lino or wood, or our cutting tools since last December.

So, for the first time in nearly a year I'm planning a new print, which is exciting but also slightly nerve wracking. What if I've forgotten how?

Motivation

2010-08-15T14:57:00.005Z

A lovely package arrived in the post this month wrapped up carefully with this nifty packing tape...

And with lovely extra little things inside...

And once I'd unwrapped all the bubble wrap (and popped it)...

Something to inspire me through the last weeks of writing my thesis...

Visit Rob Ryan's website here, and his Etsy shop here.

Camping!

2010-07-13T14:31:00.005Z

Last week we took our new tent for a whirl in the Peak District, and fortunately our first camping trip coincided with some of the hottest weather we've had this summer.

This is the view from our tent - a lovely sight to wake up to every morning.

We walked along the old course of the Leek and Manifold Valley Light Railway which is now a footpath and cycle path. The railway only lasted for 30 years (from 1904 to 1934), and included a stop near Thor's Cave which was a popular local tourist destination. We climbed up to the cave along a slippery paved path and some steep steps, and had the cave to ourselves.

It's quite big inside, but we didn't explore too far without a torch. The walls inside have become smooth and slippery from years of visitors like us.

We also had the Neolithic henge at Arbor Low to ourselves, apart from the company of the cows and sheep.

Haddon Hall, near Bakewell, was a bit busier than our other stops, but we still enjoyed looking around the house and gardens - the Tudor kitchens were brilliant, and the tea shop was well stocked with yummy slices of Bakewell tart.

We've put the walks we did on a Google map - eight miles in the Manifold Valley felt like a lot longer in the heat, plus our ankles aren't much used to Derbyshire gradients compared to our favourite Norfolk footpaths...

Books, Cake and Sunshine

2010-06-28T19:04:00.004Z

This week we have been working on a big batch of these letterpressed notebooks to take to Big Blue Sky in Wells next the Sea.

They will also be available in our Folksy and Etsy shops soon!

We have also been enjoying the fine weather which means we can have breakfast, lunch and dinner in the garden, which is looking nice and tidy at the moment with some new hanging baskets.

Tomorrow we're off to the coast, via Holt to pick up Jon's new jacket from Old Town. Fingers crossed that it stays sunny long enough for us to dip our toes in the North Sea!

We'll be having a big wodge of this coffee and ginger cake on our picnic - it's fast becoming a favourite recipe, which you can find here.

Seed Packets

2010-05-15T15:34:00.004Z

This month our hand printed seed packets are featured in Country Homes and Interiors, which is very exciting! Their shop of the month is Big Blue Sky, a lovely gallery up on the North Norfolk coast, which stocks some of our prints and other bits and bobs.

This weekend we've been printing yet another big batch of seed packets, as well as planning a nice long walk down in south Norfolk for tomorrow - we feel the need to get out into the countryside after spending the last weekends working! Fingers crossed for sunshine and big, open Norfolk skies!

Happy Easter!

2010-04-05T10:05:00.004Z

We have had a very relaxing Easter weekend, if a little different from usual because it's been too cold and wet to venture out of the house very far.

So we've been unadventurous and stayed at home eating Nigella's lemon and passionfruit meringue cake, which was well worth the slight amount of effort it took to make. And, for once, it turned out looking something like the photo in the book! The recipe is here.

We've got a pile of little notebooks to sew together this afternoon (with a big slice of the cake and a cup of tea alongside naturally) ready to update our shops with in the coming week.

A long break...

2010-03-28T12:15:00.003Z

Hello! We are still here, and only realised this week that we haven't blogged since December - eek!

Our not-entirely-intentional break from blogging has been mostly down to my new job, which is going very well, but has been pretty relentless and has meant that we've had to take some time out from printmaking for a few months.

We've just come back from a very relaxing, restorative holiday in Snowdonia. We stayed in Rhiwddolion (pronounced Ruth-0-leon), which is a semi-abandoned village in the hills above Betws-y-coed. The Landmark Trust own three properties there, and we stayed in the oldest, Ty Uchaf, built in 1685.

The house was a fifteen minute walk from the car along a very pretty (and muddy!) path, and the fields around the house are full of interesting ruined old cottages and farmhouses.

We enjoyed exploring Snowdonia and there are a lot more photos on Flickr.

But now we're back, refreshed and ready to embark on some new prints!

Pick 'N' Mix Market

2009-12-14T18:40:00.006Z

We had a brilliant day at the Pick 'N' Mix market in Holt on Saturday. The market was really busy, especially in the morning - our most successful craft fair ever, due in part to the great coverage of the event in the local press!

We got some yummy chilli preserves from our neighbouring stall, Chillis Galore, swapped notebooks for beer with the Grain Brewery, and I got a lovely pair of silver earrings from Emma Mitchell, and a jolly good day was had by all.

Getting ready...

2009-12-09T19:39:00.004Z

This week we have been busy getting ready for the Pick 'N' Mix Makers Market in Holt this Saturday. We're really looking forward to it, and have got all sorts of new printed goodies for our stall.

Here's a peek into a box of books and other little things all packed up and ready to go -

We've also been printing new notebook covers on the Adana - my new favourite thing is bright orange paper...

And we've got a few new prints as well, including a new engraving by Jon using this lovely dark blue ink -

There are going to be lots of other lovely handmade, vintage and edible treats on offer - so we'll hope to see some of you there on Saturday, from 10am to 4pm in St Andrew's Church Hall, Holt.

The winners of the Folksy and Sue Ryder Upcycle competition have been announced! You can read all about the winners on the Folksy blog, and all the entries are now up for auction on ebay (100% of the winning bid will be donated to Sue Ryder). You can bid for our upcycled black journal here, and we've got our eye on a few of the other entries too!

A Saturday Ramble

2009-12-05T20:47:00.008Z

Today we made the most of some winter sunshine and walked from Ashwellthorpe to Fundenhall...

Hearts

2009-12-02T16:43:00.005Z

Today I've been printing lots of little hearts in red ink on various papers, ready to make into gift tags and notebook covers and other little things.

I find it quite therapeutic to print the same small design over and over again, several hundred times (at least, it feels like several hundred times for my fingers).

We're trying out some non-lino blocks like these ones from Lawrence (although we got ours from Norwich Art Supplies). They seem much harder to cut into than normal lino, and the cuttings don't ping off all over the place but need a sharp tug or cut to remove them, which makes for a tidier table, but is much less fun than seeing how far a gouge of lino can make it across the room...

In the meantime Jon has been building us a new computer, as our current one is sloooooow to the point of being next to useless at times. Hopefully this weekend we'll be up and running with the shiny new one!

Cutting...

2009-11-25T18:24:00.004Z

This week we have been working on some linocut illustrations for the first Lapwing Printworks book - 12 poems by Andrew Bailey with six linocuts by us, and letterpressed text. It seems like a big project at the moment, but we're very excited about it!

Jon has also started work on a new engraving, using three seperate blocks. The first colour will be this lovely sagey green...

Today has been a beautiful sunny day, so we headed down to Dunwich Heath for a nice walk along the coast and across the heath.

Not a cloud in the sky! The wind was whipping in across the open heath, but down in the more wooded bits it was still and warm in the sunshine, and it was lovely to get out of the office for an afternoon and walk our cares away.

Notebook obsession

2009-11-02T14:22:00.009Z

My name is Sarah and I have a problem with buying lovely notebooks and sketchbooks... Above is just a couple of my favourites. Next to my computer is a pile of exactly twenty notebooks of various sizes (not including those pictured or my other stashes around the house). Now, there's nothing wrong with buying so many as long as they actually get used. But, here's my confession - the ones pictured above, and the pile by my computer are all blank and completely unused.

I keep telling myself that one day I'll get around to using them, but the pile keeping getting bigger and I still can't bring myself to put pen to paper.

Sometimes I feel guilty about my habit and I suspect that my scrupulous recycling of waste paper might be undone by my collection of pristine, empty pages.

So, when Folksy announced their Upcycle Christmas competition, I sat eyeing up my pile of notebooks on the desk and decided that I should try and make a notebook with upcycled paper.

Here's the random selection of books that I got in our local Sue Ryder shop (although the Printing Processes book didn't make it as far as the cutting mat...)

Another find in Sue Ryder was this rather grim black bag, which I took great pleasure in cutting to pieces...

Underneath the lining fabric was this horrible foamy stuff, which disintegrated and got everywhere!Once I'd unpicked the stitches, the bag material gave me quite a big bit to work with.

Then I cut the music sheets, the Dover book and some of the road atlas to make pages. The Dover book of stencils was made up of lovely, thick creamy paper, and each page was blank on one side, so I used these for the bulk of the new pages, intermixed with the odd page of music and road atlas.

I covered the back of the bag material with some of the sheet music to make the covering, and then sewed the whole thing together.

I incorporated the zipped outside pocket of the bag into the cover of the notebook, making a pocket perfect for pens, or other little bits and bobs.

About half of the pages are completely blank, and the stencil patterns in the Dover book mean that other pages have bits of floral designs on them with plenty of room to write around them.

At 24cm by 19cm, and 3cm wide, it's a nice chunky book, with 160 pages.

You can see the book on Folksy here, as well as all the other competition entries too.

Christmas is coming!

2009-10-20T16:02:00.005Z

Yesterday I popped over to our local branch of Sue Ryder to pick up some bits for the Folksy Upcycle Christmas competition.

My entry will involve this lovely bit of sheet music, the Dover book of Victorian floral stencils, a complimentary Barclaycard road atlas from 1990 and 'Introduction to Printing Processes' (which is actually quite interesting and might be saved from the cutting knife!).

Find out how to enter yourself here.

With Christmas on our minds, we're really looking forward to having a stall at the Pick and Mix Maker's Fair in Holt on December 12th, which promises to be a lovely day out, especially as The Tea Lounge from Norwich are doing the food! Find out more about the fair here.

After a recent burst of activity we've got a little box full of tiny offcuts of leather and marbled paper, the perfect size for making teeny, tiny little books like this one -

It measures just 4.5cm - not much use for writing a novel, but the perfect size for small striped bears.

The East Anglians

2009-10-15T11:59:00.004Z

Last weekend we headed over to the Sainsbury Centre to see The East Anglians, an exhibition of photographs by Justin Partyka.

It was excellent - lots of atmostpheric photos of Norfolk and Suffolk. It definitely captured the East Anglia we know and love, which seems less like 'a largely forgotten rural world', and more like normal rural life to us.

If you're in Norwich, then do pop in and see it. The rest of the Sainsbury Centre is very nice too, and they do splendid cake. And there's a nice shop.

This week we've been busy working on a pile of hardback journals using some lovely decorative papers, and some marbled papers.

This navy blue and cream paper is Jon's favourite.

I love this blue and green marbled paper. My little raku jar is from Jude Allman's Folksy shop.

This splodgy marbled paper in mustard, dark red and navy blue is another favourite at the moment.

Journals in these papers and more are now available to order from our Etsy and Folksy shops.

We are still here!

2009-10-06T19:50:00.003Z

Honest!

After reading Lupin's post on the Etsy forums about good blogging today, I guiltily realised that it's been nearly a month since our last post! Eek!

Since we last posted we've enjoyed a gorgeous week away in Wales at Stockwell Farm, another Landmark Trust property, which really recharged our batteries. This is the view we woke up to every morning - the hills in the distance were once the Forest of Radnor, and some of it is now a firing range. They were further away than they looked...

Now we're back to our more usual view from the office window, and the nights are certainly drawing in now that it's October. It feels like we've neverbeen away now that we're back in the thick of it again!

Now that it really feels like autumn I've started to plan out some ideas for Christmas decorations for our trees - this one is a prototype that I made this afternoon. Excuse the slightly dodgy photo taken in the dim early evening light! I really like it with plain white paper, but I can't help but feel it would be even better if the paper was printed with some kind of Christmassy linocut...

The John Jarrold Printing Museum

2009-09-13T21:35:00.003Z

Today was the last day of this year's Heritage Open Days, so this afternoon we dashed into town to visit the John Jarrold Printing Museum, a magical wonder-world of presses and ink and bookbinding and lithography and type...

We had a lovely afternoon peeping into type cases and chatting to the volunteers who run the museum, and who are very enthusiastic and keen to share their tips with novices like us!

They had a nice little Heidelberg press up and running (above) - they don't turn the huge ones on for big public open days (health and safety), but one of the volunteers said that they do run them during the museum's normal opening hours (Wednesday mornings).

There are some more photos in our Flickr photostream.

Do go if you ever get the chance, it's a lovely little place, and packed to the gunwales with presses and type and cameras and litho stones and guillotines and loads of other interesting bits and bobs.

A quick peek...

2009-09-10T08:52:00.003Z

...at a big lino block I'm cutting at the moment.

It's quite a big block - roughly A3 sized, so there's a long way to go yet...

Yesterday we had a lovely trip to Big Blue Sky, a really nice shop in Wells up on the coast, where everything is made in Norfolk. They're going to be stocking some of our work this autumn, which is very exciting.

More news soon, promise!

Spring time...

2009-08-30T17:40:00.005Z

This weekend Jon has been busy printing another little letterpress print on the Adana. This one has a nice old block from an advert or catalogue with some rings (priced in shillings, so it must be old....).

The quote is most famous for being in 'As You Like It', although the song probably predates Shakespeare (click on the picture to enlarge it if you need to).

Although this print is all about the joys of spring, it's definitely feeling autumnal here, the first conkers have fallen off the horse chestnut, the nights are drawing in and we've been foraging in the hedgerows. In our part of Norfolk the elderberries are ready, but the sloes aren't quite there yet - another week and we'll have to return to our top-secret favourite sloe picking hedgerow...

Weddings and Tigers

2009-08-26T12:54:00.003Z

A new letterpress print about weddings and tigers -

Printed on the Adana using our nice old wedding block and some Bodoni italic.

This one is in our Etsy and Folksy shops now...

We didn't dress up as tigers the day after our own wedding (or go to the seaside), although I suspect it would have been more fun if we had!

We're looking forward to the bank holiday weekend so we can both make a start on some new prints, and start planning a new and exciting project - more news soon!

Treasury

2009-08-15T07:46:00.004Z

It's always nice to find ourselves featured in a treasury on Etsy -

This one features lots of other fabulous Etsy printmakers, so do go and have a look!

Today we're finishing off a little print that Jon has been working on this week, we just need to add some letterpress text...

A prototype

2009-08-08T16:10:00.005Z

This weekend we made some British Birds cards as a special commission for someone - at the moment we don't do cards of any of our bigger prints, but we rather like these ones.

Then we made some new packaging as a prototype, we've been meaning to redesign our card packaging for ages - something nicer than the usual plastic bag...

We designed an envelope template over a cup of tea, and started cutting out a prototype in thick grey card -The envelope has a clear film window in the front to see the cards through (attached here with double sided tape) -
Here's the finished envelope complete with cards inside -
This batch of cards will be winging its way to a new home soon, but now we're debating whether we should do some more and pop them in our shops. What do you think?

We've just polished off rather large slices of lemon drizzle cake, complete with homemade lemon curd and mascarpone filling, the recipe is here - definitely worth the effort!

Wool (2)

2009-08-04T15:54:00.003Z

This weekend we printed the second layer of ink on our wool ball linocut for a business card commission - a layer of light grey ink over the pink layer to pick out the details of the strands of wool.

The next stage is to letterpress the text into the empty space, which will call for some patience and careful printing on the Adana.

On Sunday evening we spotted two hot air balloons drifting over the house. We often see them in the distance floating over Norwich (they take off from up near the university), but only rarely do they come over the house. Jon grabbed a camera and took some photos before they disappeared into the distance - they go quite quickly!

One day maybe we'll go up, up, up and away!

Chatsworth

2009-08-02T17:30:00.003Z

It seems like ages ago that we had a fun day out at Chatsworth when we went on holiday to Derbyshire, and ever since Jon has been planning this wood engraving.

And now it's finished!

Here's the nearly finished block, with just the sky left to do -

And the finished block all ready to print -

Here it is all inked up and ready to go!

Prints are available in our Etsy and Folksy shops now.

We have had a busy few days of printing and an exciting London trip - I spent quite a lot of money in here (photos of purchases to follow....)

Wool

2009-07-24T14:44:00.003Z

Its been so dark and wet here today that I've been tempted to dig some of our winter woollies out of storage! Whilst we wait for the weather to improve I've been cutting some lino blocks for a new business card commission.

The cards will have a grey and pink ball of wool wrapping itself around the text. I've carved the two blocks (one for a pink layer, and one for the grey outline), and hopefully we'll get a few proof prints done this evening before embarking on a mammoth printing spree this weekend...

British Patent Number 388934

2009-07-17T11:33:00.006Z

This little gadget is screwed onto the corner of a bookshelf in our study - the Fermafix Paper Binder!

Sheets of paper are fed between two notched wheels, turned by a long handle, which crimp the sheets together. The interlocking notches on the wheels work a bit like a zip to hold the pages together. Very useful for binding my endless lists together.

The patent number was registered in 1933, but as yet we haven't been able to find much out about it.

Yesterday was Jon's graduation at UEA - here he is looking dandy in his robes and bonnet (designed by Cecil Beaton, no less).

Next week we'll be starting on some new prints - hooray!

Munro Cautley (and some other new things)

2009-07-13T15:30:00.007Z

Many apologies for almost a month long blog absence! Where do the weeks go? Life at SpoonerGregory Acres has been extremely busy for the past few weeks, but hopefully we can start to relax again now and post more regularly!

Since we last posted we've acquired a big, cool new block to add to the collection (thanks again Alan!). This one is for the cover of a book (well known in these parts) - Norfolk Churches by Munro Cautley, originally published in 1949 with a watercolour by Albert Ribbans on the front cover.
Cautley was also an architect, and there's a Flickr group devoted to his work.

Here's a print taken from the block -

The church is St Peter's in Ringland, not far from Norwich, so of course we had to go on an expedition (complete with the block in our rucksack....)

The tree in Ribban's watercolour has gone, but here's the church from almost the same place.

You can find out more about the church on Simon Knott's Norfolk Churches website, always our first port of call for Norfolk church related things.

Now we just have to get our hands on a copy of the book!

In other news...

I have finally finished sewing together the pile of little notebooks that I started a while ago. Sets of five notebooks are listed in our Folksy shop at the moment.

Our Folksy shop was in serious need of restocking, and this afternoon is the first chance I've had to sit down with a cup of tea and do it, although there's still more to list.

Jon is busy working on a new engraving, which should be finished by the weekend.

And finally - on my way to the Post Office with some orders this morning I couldn't help but notice this dandy Hornsea storage jar in the local charity shop, so naturally it came home with me and is adjusting to life on our mantlepiece rather than at the back of a dusty shelf.

Poppies and castles

2009-06-16T20:20:00.002Z

On Sunday it was another sunny, hot day so we headed off early in the morning for a walk and then a picnic at Baconsthorpe Castle, near Holt in Norfolk. It was built in the 15th century, and was more like a country house than a castle, and the ruins are a lovely spot for an afternoon in the sunshine. We spread out our picnic blanket next to the moat and watched the ducklings gliding around.

Even though it was a glorious Sunday afternoon, there were only a couple of other people there, and we didn't see a soul on the five mile walk we did beforehand - where does everyone in Norfolk go when it's sunny? To the seaside I suppose!

Jon has printed his new engraving of a poppy head - it's on thick, Somerset paper, which was lovely to print on.

Theres one in the Folksy shop now.

We both have ideas for new prints to start this week - the inevitable water tower for me, and another engraving for Jon...

Wheels, windmills and water towers

2009-06-08T19:16:00.005Z

Today we had a fun day out for the first time in ages! After several weekends cooped up doing Open Studios (great fun, but housebound), it was lovely to be out in the countryside, especially on such a nice day.

We started at Bircham Mill - a mid nineteenth century windmill in north west Norfolk, scene of many a childhood cream tea for me and Jon's first visit.

We climbed all the way to the fan at the very top!

It was definitely worth the climb up the steep ladders, and unlike previous visits I didn't have to be talked down in tears by my Dad (I am not brave with heights, but Jon was bouncing up and down the ladders).

Then it was off for a 10 mile cycle along a section of the Peddars Way, a Roman road that runs all the way up through this part of Norfolk towards Holme-next-the-Sea on the coast.

One day we'll get round to doing the whole thing, and camping along the way - but 10 miles was quite enough for one afternoon. We didn't see a soul, just lots of birds and several hares.

After a nice cup of tea and a scone back at the windmill, we headed off for a bit of water tower geekery - stopping to investigate Docking and Foulsham. Expect to see both in printed form soon(ish)...

Docking (in the distance)

Foulsham

In July there's an exhibition on the towers of East Anglia (not just water towers) in Felixstowe organised by the British Water Tower Appreciation Soceity. I wonder just how many there are in Norfolk?

New projects

2009-06-02T15:05:00.005Z

Last weekend was the final weekend of Norfolk Open Studios - thanks to everyone who came along this weekend. We have really enjoyed the experience, and we've met so many lovely people!

We both started new projects over the weekend. Jon engraved a small block with a close-up of a poppy head in a walled garden -

We are going to print it one evening this week.

I letterpressed lots and lots of little coloured covers with some of our nice vintage blocks for sets of small notebooks. I've been sewing the notebooks together inbetween other jobs - very therapeutic.

This week we've been enjoying cherries and peonies (and these strange pink spiky flowers) from the market in Norwich. The cherries didn't last very long...

Just nudging into the corner of the photo of the flowers is our new little raku pebble by Norwich ceramicist Lucy Edwards. It just fits in the palm of my hand, and is lovely and tactile, and such pretty colours!
Also, thanks to everyone for taking part in our survey. We've had loads of responses, and I'm going to pick the winner of the giveaway later this evening :)

Seed Packets

2009-05-28T16:50:00.005Z

The sweet peas in our front garden are in their full glory this week - they smell lovely!

Last week we finished off the seed packets that we started printing earlier in May. We finished them off with 'seeds' printed in 24pt Plantin underneath the little linocut - leaving plenty of space to write names, dates and notes.

In the background is my new orange Nutscene twine - I can't live without it. Well, I can, but the garden would be a sadder place without it.

The seed packets are available in our Etsy and Folksy shops now.

You can also win a little package of printed goodies by taking part in a short survey about buying artwork for a course I'm doing at the moment. If any readers have time to take part, I'd be eternally grateful!

Click here to take the survey

Otherwise, we are gearing up for another jolly weekend of Open Studios!

Open Studios

2009-05-26T19:56:00.005Z

Well, our first weekend of Norfolk Open Studios has now been and gone! We had such a great weekend with a steady stream of visitors, most of whom stayed for a nice long chat and some tea.

We found time inbetween visitors to take some photos of everything set up -

The chimney in the front room is adorned with a framed set of Flying Ducks (as well as the inevitable Penguins).

We put Alan's manicule to good use in directing visitors through to the dining room...

...where they found a table full of materials, assorted bits and bobs as well as the Adana. We did a little demonstration for a few visitors, who had a go on it too and took their prints home with them.

Thanks to Celia, Andy and everyone else who came along to say hello! And we're doing it all next weekend as well!

But before next weekend's excitements we've got a busy week ahead of less than exciting things (like the enormous pile of ironing that's been ignored during the run up to Open Studios....).

Nearly ready!

2009-05-22T17:52:00.005Z

Tomorrow is the first day of Open Studios for us! We have spent a couple of busy days getting ready to open our doors.

We're open from 10am to 5pm this Saturday, Sunday and Monday at home -

5 Chester Street in Norwich (just off Unthank Road)

You can see a map of how to get here on our artist pages on the Norfolk Open Studios website - click here!

Parking on our street is for permit holders only, but there are some 'visitor' spaces at the top of the hill, and at the bottom (outside the fish and chip shop).

Do come and say hello if you're in Norfolk.

If you can't make it this weekend then don't worry - we're doing next weekend too!

Right, back to organising things...

New project - seed packets!

2009-05-17T15:07:00.007Z

This weekend I've been working on a little linocut of some vegetables to print onto some little envelopes.

I cut a pea pod, a leek, a carrot and an onion onto a small rectangle of lino (about 2 x 3 inches). I really like working at this scale, especially with a freshly sharpened tool :)

Our garden peas are racing up their pyramids, and the sweet peas started flowering this week too. We need to get lots of our seedlings planted out too, especially our climbing courgettes - we just need a dry afternoon!

Here is the block inked with some nice, new green oil ink -

The green looks really nice against the brown envelopes -

The next stage will be to letterpress some text onto the envelopes to turn them into proper little seed packets.

This weekend was the start of Norfolk Open Studios. We are doing the next two weekends, and we're quite excited about it! We'll post some more details about how to find us this week.

British Birds

2009-05-11T17:06:00.009Z

Last week Jon finished a new linocut - British Birds!Each little bird is paired up with his colloquial name. Naturally, we had to include a hornpie.

Here's a close-up of Billy Biter -

I love the blue Jon has printed this in, very Farrow and Ball I think.

Here is the block, halfway through cutting - lots of fiddly backwards lettering for this one. Fortunately Jon has a steady hand!

There are prints of British Birds in our Etsy and Folksy shops now.

The first person to leave a comment guessing the 'real' name of each bird will win a selection of Lapwing Printworks cards and the like! EDIT: Well done Fibrespace for guessing them all correctly!

I'm going to go and eat some more ice cream now - I had my wisdom teeth out this morning - so no solids or hot things for two days. I'm desperate for a cup of tea.

Computers and cupcakes

2009-05-06T14:26:00.004Z

This morning I made some delicious little elderflower cupcakes with pretty white icing and little yellow sugar flowers. Yummy and very cheerful!

We need cheering up because last night my desktop computer's hard drive failed! Fortunately, the most important things like theses and wedding photos were backed up elsewhere, but we have lost a lot of files. Most upsettingly, all of our Lapwing Printworks files!

Anyone who sells their work (online or offline) will know the joys of a finely crafted stock spreadsheet with a myriad of colours for what's been sold, and which things are in which shops. Not to mention all our accounts and things like that. All gone!

Also, we've lost all our internet bookmarks - blogs, interesting websites, tutorials etc. If you have any good links to share then we'll be happy bunnies :)

Anyway, enough doom and gloom! Tomorrow - a new print and some exciting things that have been arriving in the post!

Two more new prints

2009-05-04T16:41:00.007Z

It's May Day bank holiday today, and we've spent all weekend busily carving and printing ready for Open Studios.

Jon has finished an engraving of a bunch of daffodils in my favourite spotty jug -

It's engraved on plastic, rather than wood, and printed in black oil ink on Zerkall. Here's the block at various stages of completion -

This one has taken a fair few recuttings and proof printings to get it just right. The little spotty jug is from Ark in Cambridge, and is often filled up with flowers.

I've been working on a reduction woodcut of East Ruston water tower, which we saw on a walk we did in Happisburgh and East Ruston on Easter Monday. Jon did a woodcut of Baconsthorpe water tower a while ago - perhaps one day we'll do them all? Well, all the Norfolk ones anyway...

Here's the finished print - two images of the water tower side by side.And the block in the early stages of cutting -

And the first four layers of printing (the fifth and final one is the green layer) -

Of course, they are in our Etsy and Folksy shops now!

This weekend we had a go with our new book-making leathers - the result is one nice red leather journal, with some more gorgeous marbled paper inside.

If you join our email mailing list (sign up on the right!), then you can get 15% off (plus free shipping) on any of our leather journals this month. We promise not to spam you :)

Right, we've got rosemary breadsticks to bake for dinner, to dunk into a baked camembert... It's strange how I'd never dream of eating a whole camembert to myself raw (as it were), but I don't have the same qualms about a baked one...

A new print and exciting news!

2009-04-30T15:11:00.008Z

I like making word clouds - here's one made up of some of the most used words here on the blog. I think the fact that 'Lovely' is so large shows up that I've been writing far more posts than Jon recently!Make your own at Wordle.

So last night we printed a new linocut - a little word cloud full of printmaking words like ink, paper and burnish.Here's the block in various stages of being cut - backwards lettering can be fiddly sometimes!

Now in our Etsy and Folksy shops...

Meanwhile, Jon is busy drawing birds for a new print which he's hoping to start cutting this weekend. A good excuse to break out some ink.

Our exciting news is that we're going to be in an exhibition! For the very first time! At the Perfect Pad! From 22nd May to 11th June! Hurrah! But more on that later...

Tonight we are looking forward to popping into the private view of Celia Hart's new exhibition in Verandah on Upper St Giles Street. If you're in Norwich in May then do go and see it!

Flying Ducks

2009-04-24T13:58:00.004Z

At last! They are finished!
I started this trio of flying ducks 9 months ago, but for various reasons they got put on the back burner. But this week I've finally had a chance to finish cutting the blocks and print them.

I've always wanted a set of flying ducks but I thought a printed set would be just as good (if not better!)
Each duck is an individual print - a 7 colour reduction linocut. The biggest measures 18cm across, the smallest 9cm. I'm really looking forward to having a set framed, and on the wall! There is a set in our Etsy shop and our Folksy shop now.

Today I picked some of the lilac from the garden and filled up several jugs with it - the smell is slowly pervading the whole house... Lovely!

We have a friend coming to stay this weekend - tomorrow night we are going to see Pride and Prejudice at the Maddermarket Theatre for another friend's birthday treat. Hope you all have a good weekend too!

Sunny days

2009-04-22T16:56:00.006Z

We have been enjoying some beautiful sunshine for the last few days - the garden is bursting with greenery! It's lovely to sit outside and have morning coffee, rather than staying indoors.

The lilac in the garden has bloomed, and smells wonderful. Tomorrow I'm going to pick some for the house. Well, actually Jon will pick them since it requires the use of a step ladder (I am not to be trusted...).

The postman has had some lovely things for us over the past couple of days -

Some pretty type from Devon (more to follow too - hooray!)...

And a box full of leather offcuts for bookmaking from the Midlands - lots of black, as well as dark brown, tan, cherry red, dark green and a nice foresty green, and navy blue! We're looking forward to making some new journals with it all over the next couple of weeks. Although the leather will probably be enough to keep us going for several months!

We've also been busy printing reduction lino cuts - they should be finished by tomorrow afternoon, so we'll post about them once they are finished.

In the meantime have a look at our Etsy treasury here. Jon's ordered his gown for graduation this week - he gets to wear a bonnet, no less.

Enjoy the sunshine!

Getting rid of the TV

2009-04-20T17:06:00.005Z

We often get really fed up with the TV in the evenings and turn to a good book instead - hence Jon's new letterpress print -

Let's sell it and spend the money on books.

There are copies in our Folksy and Etsy shops now, as well as some newly listed hand bound journals too.

Today we're really pleased to be featured on Sam's Inklore blog (one of our favourites). Sam is another printmaker who makes the most wonderful block printed fabrics for the home. I especially love the 'no tie' hydrangea apron in her Etsy shop.

New Stuff

2009-04-15T16:07:00.006Z

We've bought a few lovely things from the internets over the past few months (some of which we have finally got round to having framed) to share -

Two lovely bird prints from five in the morning lino -

One linocut of swallows and swirling clouds...

...and one of some weaver birds and their intricate nests.

Mark's Etsy shop is here, and he has his own website too.

We also have a new screen print from The Post Family, which is now hanging in the office next to the camera shelves...

The photo doesn't really do it justice and it is pretty big - 79cm x 70cm.

And this morning the most adorable amigurumi from hannah-chan arrived in the post.

A sweet little star gazing bunny...

...and the most adorable finger puppets ever.

Have a look in hannah-chan's Folksy shop, and her blog - they are so lovely, I want more!

Hot Cross Buns

2009-04-10T17:36:00.006Z

Today we made a big batch of hot cross buns using our favourite teacake recipe. We slashed the tops in the shape of a cross, rather than using dough crosses because I always end up picking them off anyway.

They were quite delicious toasted with a cup of tea after an afternoon spent tidying up the garden.

We have been working hard all week so we are looking forward to our weekend off which will be spent baking, gardening and relaxing (and no doubt planning the next print...).

Here we are working from home together in the dining room

This is our Easter egg tree made with some greenery from the front garden ...

...and some sweet little egg decorations from John Lewis.

It was really sunny for most of the day, so we took advantage of the nice light to take some photos of our leather bound journals to list in our Folksy shop. This is our favourite photo, white paper with a few pastel coloured pages.

Swallows

2009-04-09T18:02:00.002Z

Today Jon saw his first swallow of the spring down in Suffolk. I managed to snaffle a treasury on Etsy this afternoon, so I chose some pretty swallow themed items to go in it -

Have a proper look here.

View from Cotehele

2009-04-06T18:59:00.005Z

Cotehele is a lovely, rambling old house in Cornwall owned by the National Trust. We've been there several times when we've been down in Devon and Cornwall - it has a great 18th century triangular prospect tower (there is another one tucked away on a side street in nearby Plympton too).

Jon's new print is the view from the top of the Prospect Towers - a five colour reduction woodcut.Here is the blue ink being rolled out for the first layer of sky.

The sky was followed by a creamy yellow for the arable fields, followed by three layers of green for the pasture fields and the trees and hedgerows.

In our Etsy and Folksy shops now.

Handm@de Cambridge

2009-04-05T18:02:00.002Z

Well, we are home from a lovely day out at Handm@de Cambridge. Here is our little stall!

We had a fun day, the sun shone, and lots of people stopped by to say hello including Celia (we love her work, and her blog Purple Podded Peas), one of my students from UEA, our little nephew Gabriel (along with his Mum and Dad), and some of our lovely blog readers (hello!).

It was hard not to resist spending all our taking on other stalls (I am still coveting this necklace by Claire Howison), but I got some lovely earrings from corryvreckan, and we got some sweet Gocco bicycle cards from Paperleaf. Too lovely to send!

It was nice to meet so many lovely fellow Etsy and Folksy sellers for the first time too :)

Now we've tidied everything away back into our little studio store and we're having a gin and contemplating Open Studios....

Price labels

2009-03-31T09:01:00.003Z

Preparations for H@ndmade Cambridge are in full swing here - there still seems to be lots to do!

This morning I made new price labels to have on our stall - we put individual price labels on things like handmade books and prints, but we find it always helps to have big price labels standing on the table too.

These ones have little Lapwings standing up from the top of the fold - a happy morning with a sharp cutting knife awaits...

New stuff

2009-03-27T22:02:00.003Z

A short post this evening - we've had a busy few days, and a tad too much ginger wine... But I think it's safe to say that we'll have plenty of handmade goodies on our stalls at Clutter City tomorrow, and H@ndmade Cambridge next weekend!

New hand bound books -
New letterpressed cards -
And some new prints too. Hooray!

Busy, busy!

2009-03-24T17:39:00.009Z

We have had a busy old week - engraving, printing and organising mostly. And a spot of letterpress too. Remember the Pemberley notecards we printed ages ago? I always meant to make them into a series, so here is the next one - a nice quote from Northanger Abbey with a vintage block.

'A woman especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing
anything at all, should conceal it as well as she can.'

We're hoping to perhaps print these tonight so the ink will have plenty of time to dry before the weekend, then tomorrow we have Jon's new engraving to print.

Otherwise, we have been busy working! Here I am attempting to teach some students something useful at Wimpole Hall yesterday - they all seemed to enjoy themselves despite the downpours.

More books (and some bookplates too)

2009-03-15T12:41:00.005Z

This weekend we are busy getting ready for the next Clutter City and H@ndmade Cambridge - Jon is working on a new engraving, and I've been letterpressing plenty of cards and notelets.

We've printed a batch of Penguin bookplates, and letterpressed 'Ex Libris' in black oil ink on the Adana.

We popped out into Norwich yesterday to buy some leather offcuts from Norwich Art Supplies and Anglian Fashion Fabrics to make some more hand stitched books... We picked up lots of lovely brown leather, and a really gorgeous piece of soft grey suede.

We've got plenty more to keep us busy over the next couple of weeks, including new prints!

Handmade Books

2009-03-06T12:46:00.008Z

Last Saturday we went on a brilliant course run by a local bookbinder, Judith Ellis. We learnt a technique called 'longstitch' binding, which doesn't require any glue.

In the morning we used pink and green PVC covers to get the hang of things -

But in the afternoon we were let loose on a selection of lovely leather covers, and marbled papers....
Jon used dark brown leather with a light blue marbled paper inside, and I used red leather with a matching red marbled paper.

We're really excited about experimenting with this technique - somehow printmaking, letterpress and bookbinding seem to be happy bedfellows. Hopefully we can remember enough from the course to make another one each this coming weekend...

There are lots more examples of this type of binding on Flickr.

A relaxing weekend

2009-02-23T12:22:00.006Z

We have had a very relaxing weekend in the Fens, playing with dachshunds and whippets and eating yummy little cupcakes.

Since getting back we've realised that it isn't many weeks until we're at H@ndmade Cambridge - it's on Saturday April 4th. We've got plenty of printing and letterpressing to do before then, so we've drawn up a long to-do list and we're going to spend the next few weeks gradually crossing things off.

You can read a little interview with us on the H@ndmade blog, and find out about all the other lovely people who will be there too.

It's also not long before Open Studios - this will be the first year we've taken part, so we are very excited but quite nervous too! More details to follow soon...

We had a load of peppers lurking in the back of the fridge, so this morning I roasted them up and stuffed them in a jar along with plenty of olive oil, garlic, chilli and balsamic vinegar. I don't think they'll last very long though!

All I want....

2009-02-15T15:00:00.007Z

....is a nice cup of tea and a sit down.

I say this at least once a day, every day. So here is that immortal phrase as a lino cut, complete with a steaming cup of tea and a cosy chair to snuggle up in.

Here is it in various stages of production - cutting out the light blue teacup to leave a thin dark blue outline...

Inking the final layer of lettering with dark orange ink -

And about to lift the print off the block after a little burnishing.

Hopefully having a copy on the wall means that I'll just be able to point to it, and Jon will know to go and put the kettle on.

In our Etsy and Folksy shops now.

This weekend we did a little bit of tidying up in the garden and planted these primroses in the pots on our front windowsill. We also got this years batch of chilli seeds on the go - hopefully they'll do better this year than last year!

We've also signed up for Twitter, so if you want to go what we're getting up inbetween blog posts then come and follow us there! Here is our profile.

We're off to make some drop scones for afternoon tea now, and light the fire for a cosy Sunday afternoon.

Charlton

2009-02-12T20:40:00.005Z

The ink has finally dried on Jon's new print - a small wood engraving of the landscape of the South Downs.

In the Etsy and Folksy shops now.

It's snowing quite heavily here this evening - the tyre tracks in the road from earlier on are almost completely filled in again. I hope its still there when we wake up!

New prints

2009-02-10T20:59:00.006Z

This weekend we both worked on new prints - a linocut for me, and a small engraving for Jon. It felt so nice to spend all weekend printing and cutting again after so many weekends being busy doing other things.

Here's a close up of my lino block - part of a much larger reduction print, I've printed three layers so far. There is one more layer to cut and print before it's finished.

Jon worked on a small wood engraving of the landscape near Charlton in Sussex (where we stayed on our honeymoon) with lots of fields and tiny hedgerows. Here is the block in various stages of completion...

Our new Emma Bridgewater Lapwing mug is in the background in the photo above. How could we resist?

The engraving is all printed, but the ink is drying very slowly so we'll upload a photo tomorrow.

Those tulips that I bought last week opened out into huge blowsy blooms!

Paper

2009-02-04T15:59:00.005Z

To celebrate our wedding anniversary a few weeks ago we went out and spent our pennies on some sheets of paper (paper being the traditional gift to give a couple on their first anniversary - see here) from our local art shop, Norwich Art Supplies.

As well as a thick wodge of Zerkall, we also picked up some other printmaking papers - BFK Rives, Hahnemuhle, Somerset (in white and in black) and some Fabriano sheets.

I treated myself to two lovely sheets of paper which I have been coveting for ages, but needed an excuse to splash out -

First, a beautiful sheet of hand marbled paper by Victoria Hall in the most lovely soft shades of green and yellow (difficult to capture in a photograph). It will have to be saved for a special project (perhaps after the bookbinding course we're going on in a few weeks...).

We also got the most fabulous sheet of walnut paper. It looks a bit like the surface of the moon, and is really thick and stiff. Absolutely no idea what to use it for as yet, but had to be added to the collection. Any ideas?

I love the colour of these tulips - a pale creamy yellow, and almost green in places. Today has been gloriously sunny, and full of the joys of spring, so I couldn't resist them at our local greengrocers.

Lee's Century Baking Powder

2009-02-02T20:30:00.007Z

Here is that new print...

Here are the first two layers - first, a layer of beige brown bricks...
Followed by a thin, blotchy layer of a darker red-brown.
Then Jon cut out the lettering and printed a thin layer of white over the top for the final layer -

Lee's Century Baking Powder - it never fails! If only you could still buy a pound of baking powder for sixpence.You can see a photo of the real-life sign here.

There are loads of great examples of faded adverts painted on the sides of buildings on the Faded London blog and in the Ghost Signs group on Flickr.

Jon's print is now up in our Etsy and Folksy shops.

A new print

2009-02-01T19:03:00.005Z

Here's a peek at Jon's newest woodcut (he's firmly back in his printmaking groove now that the thesis is handed in). We'll upload some proper photos tomorrow - its a bit dark to photograph the the finished prints properly.

We've had a sprinkling of snow today, but yesterday was gloriously sunny so we went for a walk along the River Bure, near Oxnead and Buxton.

We've been sorting through the rest of our photos from our holiday - here are a couple from the top of Walsgrove Hill. The colours look rather muddier than they did in real life, but it was a spectacular view with plenty going on. We were up there for ages watching a shoot and a football match at Abberley School, as well as all the sheep (including a few lambs) roaming around the fields.

We had to move in the end because we were getting so cold, but the view definitely has some potential for a print in the future - perhaps an engraving?

Rollers!

2009-01-29T16:26:00.009Z

Today I got home from work with a dreadful headache and decided to cheer myself up with a nice spot of printing - our back room was full of late afternoon sunshine and an hour or so with a cup of tea in the company of the Adana seemed like a bright idea...

We've had a few weeks almost completely away from printing of any kind, so today was the first time I'd tried out the new rollers that Jon bought me for Christmas, as well as the sweet perpetual calender I got from ebay a couple of weeks ago (2010 calenders here we come!)

If you look carefully you might spot my mistake - if only I'd noticed at this point!

Here is the Adana with some purple ink splodged all over the ink disc -

And with the ink covering the disc -

The rollers are excellent, and make everything much easier than hand inking - although I did manage to get purple ink all over myself because I kept brushing the ink disc. The rollers also make a very satisfying pattern - hard to get in a photo though.

Here is the finished month - completely and totally backwards - Sunday, Saturday, Friday, Thursday, Wednesday, Tuesday and Monday. Argh! Oh well, that'll teach me to try and do it when I'm distracted about other things instead. Fortunately printing is so therapeutic that my headache was cured enough not to mind (much).
Ah well, I shall go and find solace in a home-made egg custard tart and ponder what kind of engravings I can make Jon do to go with my calender months...

Yet more lovely daffodils, in a bargainous vase from the Habitat sale.

Lock Cottage

2009-01-24T21:06:00.004Z

We have just got home from a lovely week spent at Lock Cottage, an early 19th century lock keeper's cottage owned by the Landmark Trust on the Birmingham and Worcester canal. We did lots of walking, eating, drinking, reading and sketching - but not a great deal else! Lots of lovely walks up and down the towpath and across the fields, then back to the cottage for tea and a bun in front of a roaring log fire.

We only saw one boat go through the locks outside the cottage, but we did see a fox and lots of ducks, moorhens, fieldfares and redwings.

Who would have thought a holiday near Bromsgrove would be so lovely?

The joy of fusing

2009-01-16T16:19:00.005Z

Today I had a long list of errands and work I wanted to get done before we have a few days away next week....
Unfortunately I got sucked into rummaging around in the cupboard under the stairs to find some plastic bags after reading this tutorial on Etsy. Once you start fusing, it can become difficult to stop. By lunchtime I had a large pile of pieces of fused plastic bag all ready to be made into exciting things.

So, this afternoon I whipped up a bag with some fused Waitrose and Co-op bags and some black canvas handles. Not perfect by any means, but not bad for a first attempt!

Now it's nearly half past four and I still haven't done anything on my 'to do' list today, but I do have a new and useful bag!

Perhaps even more exciting that fusing plastic bags together are these - Penguin stamps!

A frosty walk

2009-01-10T17:02:00.007Z

Today we headed out into the Norfolk countryside for a lovely walk through a very pretty hoar frost. Everything was covered in delicate spines of frost, and the ice in the puddles was over an inch thick (which doesn't take the weight of two people, incidentally).

We parked in Long Stratton and walked along some of the Tas Valley path up to Hapton and then back down to the car through Tharston (which we've visited before when we did the Veteran Tree Survey back in the summer of 2007).

We kept warm with a flask of beef and tomato soup and some cheese straws, and we're now tucked up at home with a mug of hot chocolate with whiskey in it. Just the thing to thaw out.

Gardens and gift tags

2009-01-09T15:44:00.009Z

It's been cold and foggy here for a couple of days, so we've been keeping warm inside planning what to plant in the garden this spring, and ordering some seeds. At the moment we've got spring greens and chard on the go, with purple sprouting broccoli to look forward to in a few weeks.

But the bulbs are coming up and the lilac is covered in buds so our thoughts are turning towards the spring and summer... This year we're going to branch out with some more interesting varieties that we haven't tried before, such as munchkin squashes, trombomcino courgettes, and golden beetroot. If only we had room for more!

Apart from planning the vegetable garden, we've been busy stamping out sweet little gift tags from some of the pile of printed bits of paper and card in our stash.

I think they look rather fetching with some natural raffia tied onto a present, but I think we'll use them as price labels too.

There's a pack of 10 in our Folksy shop.

A very therapeutic activity for a wintry afternoon!

Brrrr!

2009-01-07T18:08:00.005Z

It's cold! Really cold!

But we're keeping warm inside with a plentiful supply of tea (and hearty home-made soup for dinner)...

And some cheerful daffodils to keep our spirits up!

We've also been enjoying some lovely sunsets from the study window during this cold snap .

The car has broken down so Jon can't get to work for a couple of days, so we are spending far too much time on the internet looking for a new car. I'd rather spend the money on the orange sofa we saw in Habitat, but needs must I suppose...

Happy New Year!

2009-01-05T17:14:00.007Z

We are starting 2009 with lots of ideas about using our Adana prompted by the arrival of these little beauties from Father Christmas....

Rollers!! No more careful hand inking for us! The Adana needs a bit of TLC - the springs for the rollers are a bit stiff from lack of use but hopefully we shall soon be printing with proper rollers and using the ink disc for the very first time. Hurrah!

We are also looking forward to the eventual arrival of the Model press - it might be a few months yet though, because the rollers need recovering and we have to find a home for it here (we need to do a bit of spring cleaning and chucking out first...)

Here is an advert for the Model in a copy of 'British Printer' from the summer of 1902...

The magazine came with the press, and has some beautiful adverts! The other page just visible in this shot is the 'situations vacant' page with various adverts. My favourite is this one -

'Engraver wanted for Artistic American and View work; must be competent man and able to make his own sketches; exceptional opportunity for first class man.'

What about a competent woman?! Although I'm not sure you could call my engraving competent - perhaps Jon could have applied instead of me...

When we were doing the history of our house (built in 1894), we looked up the 1901 census to discover that the occupants were involved in printing and bookbinding too! Here's an extract from the census - click on the image to see it properly.

Harry Webster (aged 19) was a bookbinder, Lionel (aged 18) was an assistant compositor and Grace (aged 16) was a book sewer. We haven't been able to find out anything more about them, but it's quite nice to think that we have our press and type all set out in what was probably their bedroom.

Quite how six people managed in our tiny house I'm not quite sure - sometimes there barely seems room for the two of us!

Anyway, here's some nice decorative type that came with the Model press in a sweet little wooden box. We haven't used it yet - but we're looking forward to testing it out with those new rollers!

Happy Christmas!

2008-12-24T10:42:00.007Z

Our tree is up and decorated and Spooner-Gregory Acres is looking very festive indeed. We will be having a proper knees-up because Jon has finally finished his PhD. Hurrah! Here is the finished bound thesis - the hard back version will be bound later in the spring, after his viva.

In case anyone is wondering it's called ' Marginal Environments and the Idea of Improvement: Heathland and Moorland Landscapes c.1650-1850'.

Happy Christmas everyone!

We have a winner!

2008-12-17T18:40:00.004Z

Congratulations to Jenna! And thank you to everyone else for leaving such lovely comments :)

A short post today - it's so cold that I can't type properly! We had a little expedition out into the cold to buy our Christmas tree, its sitting outside in a bucket at the moment but expect a blog post festooned with decorations soon!

A giveaway!

2008-12-09T11:42:00.005Z

Today is the 2nd anniversary of 'For What is Chatteris?', which we started all the way back in December 2006.

You can read our very first post here.

To celebrate we are giving away a veritable smorgasbord of printed goodies!

To win, simply leave a comment on this post before midnight (GMT) on Tuesday 16th December - a week from now.

What you can win -

A Tulips linocut
Our little Edgefield wood engraving
A pretty paper flower brooch
A letterpress notebook
A handmade concertina notebook (like this one)
Letterpress Memorandum cards
Letterpress Note! cards
Some tiny letterpress TV cards
Hand printed holly decorations (I forgot to put those in the photo though - oops!)

More than £40 worth of hand printed stuff - all for free!

Here's to another year (or two) of blogging!

T&C
The winner will be chosen at random from the comments on Wednesday 17th December using an online random number generator.
All entries welcome - we will post to anywhere in the world (might not arrive before Christmas though...)

Makes!

2008-11-29T15:57:00.006Z

The new Makes section of Folksy has launched, and we are very excited to be one of the first 'makes' on the site.

Find out how we engraved and printed our little Edgefield print here... And have a look at the other splendid 'makes' from other Folksy sellers too!

Today we have made a rather large batch of teacakes using one of Dan Lepard's recipes, and we'll be spending the rest of the day toasting them on the fire and reading the papers!

Teacakes:
600g strong white flour
125ml warm water
5 tsp or 2 x 7g sachets of quick yeast
150ml milk
75g caster sugar
50g white chocolate or dripping
300g mixed dried fruit
25g golden syrup
3 eggs
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground ginger

1. Mix the yeast with the water and a tablespoon of the flour. Set aside.

2. Heat the milk until it is almost boiling, then take it off the heat and add the sugar, syrup, white chocolate/dripping and the fruit.

3. Beat the eggs and add to the yeast mixture.

4. Sift the flour and spices into a large bowl and then add the milk and yeast mixes. Beat together until it is all thoroughly mixed.

5. Cover the bowl and leave in a warm place for an hour or until the dough has doubled in size. You can knead it if you fancy but we've found it makes no difference to the final buns.

6. Divide the mixture into 14 teacakes. Shape them by stretching the dough and tucking it in underneath itself so you get a neat round ball of dough.

7. Place the teacakes on baking trays covered with baking parchment.

8. Leave in a warm place for 1hr 30 mins. Preheat the oven to 200C.

9. Bake for 10-15 minutes, until golden on top but still slightly soft.

10. Eat far too many of them, split, toasted and slathered in butter. Yum.

Another treasury!

2008-11-20T17:24:00.003Z

I managed to snag another Etsy treasury this afternoon... They are so much fun to make!

Click here to have a proper look at lots of lovely prints from members of the Printsy street team!

Memorandum

2008-11-18T17:07:00.006Z

We usually write notes to each other on bits of scrap paper, but we recently picked up this lovely little 'memorandum' block - the perfect excuse to letterpress some nice cards to write lists and notes on!

Although only special notes - they're too nice for something like 'Jon - remember to put the wheelie bin out!'.
On Sunday we printed loads in pretty blue, purple, a lovely sagey-green and our old favourite, hot pink! Tonight I'm going to sit and package them up ready to take to Clutter City on Saturday - the days seem to be slipping away and I still have a list of things that need to be done before then...

Right, we had better think about making a start on our tea - pumpkin tagine tonight!

Finished holly leaves

2008-11-16T11:09:00.009Z

This weekend we finished a pile of holly decorations ready to take to Clutter City next weekend. Here they are at various stages -

And here they are finished! We're saving most of them to take to Clutter City, but we have listed a pair in our Folksy shop too...

As well as making holly leaves we've also been adding to our pile of concertina books too. They look so pretty, and we're really pleased with how they have turned out. They're very relaxing and therapeutic to make too - must be all that paper folding. This photo is rather dark (it is a very grey day today), and the colours are much more sparkly and vibrant in person.

This afternoon we are going to letterpress some new Christmas cards, as well as baking a cake and lighting a fire!

Ahoy there!

2008-11-09T15:55:00.006Z

Today, after sitting and staring at the computer screen for rather a long time, I finally managed to bag my first Etsy treasury! Hurrah! So, here is it - all members of Printsy: Printmakers of Etsy street team.

Treasuries are member curated lists of lovely things, and this one is all about prints inspired by the high seas.

Jump aboard the HMS Printsy here...

Christmas Decorations

2008-11-08T14:21:00.006Z

Today we have been experimenting with printed Christmas decorations and this is the most successful one. Two holly leaves printed with green ink, sewn together with little red buttons and some red ribbon for hanging.

The design needs a little work, and we need more red buttons and thinner red ribbon - I feel a crafty trip into Norwich for supplies coming on...

Birthday Cups and Saucers

2008-11-07T12:08:00.009Z

It was my birthday this week, and Jon bought me these adorable little mugs which he knows I have wanted for ages! They are by Alice Garland, and he bought them in Verandah, which is a lovely little shop in Norwich, and now there is one in Holt too.

Actually, Verandah is one of the buildings in the engraving Jon did of Upper St Giles Street - its the shop on the far right of this detail... I'm not sure that'll be much help if you're ever in Norwich, but it is worth a visit!

This week I went to the British Library to do some research. Even though I got there before it opened there was still a long queue waiting to get in, but the library is so vast it swallowed them all up and seemed really empty. It was a very dull day, and it does look a bit monolithic from the outside, but inside is very swish!

I enjoyed looking round the exhibitions - Taking Liberties and the permanent display of the Treasures of the British Library. I kept squealing out loud when I saw interesting things, like the Gutenberg Bible and Jane Austen's manuscript of Persuasion - go and have a look if you're in London, it's free! And there's a nice shop and cafe (always important).

Anyway, here are some lovely ornamental cabbages. I love the colours, and the patterns on the leaves, and I've been plotting how to turn them into a print...

Weekend treats and a little book

2008-11-02T12:03:00.007Z

This week we had our first fire of this winter! It was lovely and toasty on a cold autumnal day, especially when combined with another weekend treat - Chelsea buns! These are from a recipe in Dan Lepard's book, The Handmade Loaf, which is brilliant. This week we also made cucumber pickle rye bread, with the pickle juice from an empty jar of gherkins - also very nice, although perhaps not quite as good as Chelsea buns...

In a few weeks it will be time for another Clutter City market, so I'm attempting to be organised and make some new prints and other things a few weeks in advance. Here is the first new thing - a little concertina book with lovely covers made from Japanese origami paper. Here it is all folded up -

And unfolded...

I'm so pleased with how it turned out, although the gold colours on the paper is really difficult to capture in a photograph - expect to see a large pile of them on our stall at Clutter City!

It's cold!

2008-10-30T16:47:00.006Z

Very cold - but we haven't had any snow, unlike everywhere else it seems!

Not much printmaking or letterpress news today I'm afraid, we've both been busy working and writing and haven't had much spare time on our hands. Today Jon has been out and about in the cold in Coggeshall and I've been trying to think of something pithy to write about the state of garden history. Here is the view from our office window, which I have been gazing out for a large part of the afternoon -

And here is another place I've been doing lots of staring out of windows in recent weeks, mostly planning letterpressed Christmas cards and various prints - I am determined to work on one of our projects this weekend!

Finished cards

2008-10-19T11:34:00.006Z

We have finally finished printing the linocut Christmas cards we started a couple of weeks ago. We printed each one in red, green and gold, and it made us feel very Christmassy...

Especially when I dug out the Christmas tree lights to take some photos! I managed to resist the temptation to dig out the Christmas mugs and tea towels - its a bit early for that yet...

We've decided to letterpress some more Christmas cards using some of our teeny tiny holly blocks - that will be this weeks project, as well as pressing on with my flying ducks (which have been sitting on a shelf feeling lonely for a couple of weeks - I'm determined to finish them this month though!). Sets of Christmas cards are available on Folksy, Etsy and Dawanda now!

This afternoon we're going to make Chelsea buns and plant some last minute bulbs in the garden - we'll have to sweep up all the leaves first though!

Note!

2008-10-12T14:19:00.008Z

We love this little vintage block - it's got a few little chunks missing but I think that adds to its charm once printed. I especially like the 'E' (and her little hat).

A short post today because I'm busy printing Christmas cards. The green is almost dry, so I had better make a start on the red - photos to come!

New things!

2008-10-11T17:27:00.007Z

Today has been a lovely, sunny autumnal day, so we have been busy making bread and kicking leaves around in the sunshine.

New exciting thing number one -

A gorgeous new resin and silver ring from Quercus Silver, which arrived this morning and is just perfect! You can see it being made here, and here.

New exciting thing number two -

A new press!! Made by the Model Printing Press Company, this is a Model 2... It hasn't arrived at Spoonergregory Acres yet - but we are looking forward to giving it a loving home! Hurrah!

Today we listed notebooks and flower brooches on Etsy and Folksy - new letterpressed notecards are going on tomorrow, and I shall be printing Christmas cards in earnest...

Joyeux Noel

2008-10-05T15:50:00.004Z

Today has been wet, grey and cold - a good excuse to stay indoors and do some carving. We meant to start making Christmas cards much earlier this year, but as usual various things caught up with us and we've only just started!

This year we are having simple square cards with handcut lettering, done on lino. Here is a proof of the first one, 'Joyeux Noel' -

This one is done in gold ink - we've only ever printed tiny areas with it before, and I wanted to check how it looks over a bigger surface area, and it looks great (although better in person than on the computer screen...).

I've got two more blocks to carve before I start printing the cards - I would have like to finish the carving today but I managed to gouge my finger instead of the lino, so I shall be forced to spend the rest of the afternoon curled up with a book and a cup of tea instead. Never mind - remember, always cut away from you!

Our second ever blog post in December 2006 was about printing Christmas cards - at least we've got a bit further ahead this year!

Clutter City and new stuff

2008-09-27T18:49:00.006Z

We had a lovely day at Clutter City today - saw lots of people from the last time round, and lots of lovely new people too - so hello if you've stopped by after picking up one of our postcards!

We made lots of shiny new things for our stall, including the paper flower brooches that I made this week. They were really popular, so I'm planning on making lots more!

We also made a little pile of hand sewn books with hand printed covers, filled with nice drawing paper. I used a mixture of old letterpress blocks and larger wooden blocks, in all different colours. The ones below have got various 1960s 'dinner dance' blocks all over them. The dandy felt pincushion is by Lupin, and is the nicest thing in my sewing box!

Here they are all finished -

There are still some notebooks and brooches left over from Clutter City, so we'll be listing them in our various shops this weekend...

Flowers and a new print

2008-09-25T11:36:00.008Z

Last night I finished the flowers for Christine's flower project.

The rest of the flowers have been turned into pretty brooches! They were quite fiddly to attach to a brooch back, but they look great pinned on, and we'll be selling some of them on our stall at Clutter City this Saturday.

For Jon's birthday last week I gave him a little linocut of our house, which I've been beavering away on in secret since the end of July. It's hard enough not to let slip what his present is normally, but keeping a linocut a secret is hard! He kept wondering why there were ink splotches in the bathroom when he came home from work, even though I supposedly hadn't been doing any printing...

Here's the wood mounted lino block with the design all drawn and ready to go -

In progress (after being hidden in a drawer inbetween spells of working on it) -

And the finished print framed on the wall - twelve layers, about 6x4 inches, and about six weeks of skullduggery.

We will be at Clutter City again this Saturday - come and say hello if you're in Norwich!

Back from our holidays

2008-09-21T17:54:00.002Z

We spent a lovely and mostly sunny week in north Devon. We stayed at the Library, another Landmark Trust property - plenty more photos here.

It was Jon's birthday whilst we were away, and for a surprise I gave him a linocut of our house that I have been secretly working on for several weeks - I'll post some photos of the finished print, and some 'in progress' shots this week.

Now we are back we are busy working again, but I have been working on the flower project mentioned in our last post. I've spent a couple of evenings cutting out lots of different shapes in various colours ready to make up into finished flowers.

Not all of these flower shapes are going to end up being sent off for the project, but I have a plan for the leftovers!

Flowers and macaroons

2008-08-31T18:45:00.002Z

I did find some time this weekend for a little bit of crafting (poor Jon has been chained to his computer unfortunately...). Here is a prototype for Christine's flower collaboration that I blogged about a few weeks ago. It's just three layers of some block printed paper that I had stashed in the spare room, cut into flower shapes and sewn with a button in the middle. Simple, but effective I hope! I'm going to experiment with different papers, colours, buttons, shapes and sizes - there are a few weeks before the deadline, so I've got plenty of time to play around with them.

And plenty of time to stuff myself silly with salty-peanut-caramel macaroons from our new cookbook, Ottolenghi, which is brilliant - we've tried a different recipe almost every day this week, and they've all been delicious.

Dog Sitting and other adventures

2008-08-28T14:17:00.006Z

Our first post for a couple of weeks - we have been busy dog sitting in the Fens and having various adventures, as well as trying to fit in some work as well!

We had lots of fun looking after three elderly dachshunds -not that anyone would know they were old, from the amount of mischief they get up to!

This is Hal, engrossed in a book (he sometimes likes watching tv too). We ate our fill of produce from the kitchen garden, which is much larger and more plentiful than ours is!

Today we explored the kitchen gardens at Audley End, which are even bigger again! We liked the glasshouses and the mushroom house best.

It was another grey and dull day, until we got in the car to go back home and now its really sunny! Hurrah! Still, summer is definitely over, and everywhere smells autumnal.

Anyway, no rest for the wicked - we are both working hard to meet some deadlines before we go away on our Landmark Trust holiday, so printmaking has had to go on the back burner - hopefully we might find time at the weekend!

Hello Duckie!

2008-08-09T18:21:00.004Z

I've started clearing the first of the three lino blocks I mentioned in our last post. I've always wanted a set of ceramic flying ducks, but now I'm creating a set of three printed ones instead! This is the largest one - the other two smaller ones need to be cleared as well before I print the first layer. There's a long way to go yet!

I've signed up for an interesting project all about handmade flowers, thought up by Christine from Paper and Cloth. Each artist/crafty person involved makes several flowers which will then be sewn together to make one big piece of art. You can find out more about the project (and join in!) on her blog. I'm going to be making some printed paper flowers over the next few weeks - I just have to work out how they could be sewn onto fabric first. I think I might need to experiment with some prototypes!

Should Hello Duckie really be Hello Ducky? We couldn't decide...

Pika Package!

2008-08-06T11:49:00.011Z

A few weeks ago I was the lucky winner of a Pika Package, and this morning it arrived from Pikaland! Full of lovely goodies from designers and illustrators from all over the place - all of which are brilliant! I'm so excited - I never win anything!

I'd thought I'd share a couple of my favourite things....

An original drawing on a page of Goethe by Susan Schwake.

A print by Iris Schwarz.

Another little print - by Nancy Mungcal (pretty little thieves)

And my absolute favourite - a Little Red Riding Hood set by Denise Ann Simon, including a Gocco print (above), bookplates (below), and bookmarks!

I have many other favourites too, naturally, and so does Jon! In the package were some adorable stickers from PhatSheep - I am now coveting the Fair Isle jumper tea towel in their Etsy shop.

Apologies for the slightly dodgy photos - it's wet, grey and miserable here today. Where has the summer gone?

We haven't been idle despite the horrid weather - these three lino blocks are almost ready to start cutting! They'll be turned into a set of identical prints in three different sizes, so they'll work together or individually. There is a lot of clearing to do before printing the first layer, which will keep me going through these wet afternoons!

Home Grown Produce

2008-08-01T17:49:00.004Z

This week everything in our little garden seems to be suddenly ready all at once - loads of peas and beans, courgettes, chard, herbs, tomatoes and the first beetroot. One of my chilli plants has finally flowered as well - hurrah!

Here are some of our double courgettes...We made a delicious salad with them on Monday night - cut the courgettes lengthways into ribbons using a potato peeler and mix with the zest from a lemon and a lime. Make up a quick dressing with some nice olive oil, a little honey and the lemon and lime juice and mix into the courgette ribbons.

Yummy! I'm afraid it didn't last long enough to take a photo of it, but it looked very pretty. The recipe is from Sarah Raven's Garden Cookbook, which we use a lot!

We're also over-run with chard, both pretty and delicious!

Not much printmaking news I'm afraid - it's been too hot and busy this week to have a chance to do more than think about it, although we are both hoping to start something new over the weekend - so watch this space!

In the meantime, have a look at these lovely little birds by Emily Sutton. They'll be in the new exhibition at St Jude's gallery in Aylsham later this month. We like having the occasional mooch around Aylsham - Humphry Repton is buried in the churchyard, and there is a good second-hand bookshop which usually has some good Penguin finds.

Postcard Tower

2008-07-28T16:13:00.004Z

Ever wondered what a pile of 500 postcards would look like? Here is the answer! 500 brand new Lapwing Printworks postcards ready to go in with our orders and to be given out willy-nilly. Ordering them is something we've been meaning to do for a long time, and we're so pleased we took the plunge because they look great!

This is another letterpressed card from last week's efforts - a teeny, tiny card with a dark blue crown. The envelopes have a smaller, matching gold crown on the front. I love these ones, they strike me as being rather Regency somehow - perhaps I was being influenced by flicking through Pride and Prejudice looking for quotes for the Pemberley cards. Now available in our shops - and with the added incentive of a Lapwing postcard!

Today has been hot and muggy again, and attempting to work in a deckchair in the garden didn't result in much work being done... Tonight we are harvesting our very first courgettes for our tea, which is very exciting, but I'm making myself wait until Jon gets home from work so we can pick them together (seeing as he does all the work, and I just reap the benefits).

A great estate...

2008-07-27T20:46:00.008Z

This week we letterpressed some notecards with a quote from Pride and Prejudice paired with a vintage 1960s block of a bungalow. I love this block, and have a whole raft of ideas on how to use it in various little projects.
We printed sets of the Pemberley cards in various summery shades (pink, blue, light green, lilac and peach), and they were snapped up from our stall at Clutter City yesterday. Clutter City was good fun - but hot! Today we've been sitting in the garden reading and trying to keep cool. This week I printed several more sheets of wrapping paper too which look brilliant - but too nice to use?The remaining sets of Pemberley notecards are available in our Etsy, Dawanda and Folksy shops now.

Clutter City & Folksy

2008-07-24T11:56:00.004Z

Come and see us this Saturday!

We will be having a stall at Clutter City at Norwich Arts Centre from 10 to 4. We are busy getting ready at the moment, so expect all manner of printed and letterpressed stuff. If you're in Norwich then come along and say hello!

We have also set up a new online shop at Folksy, a new craft and design website. This means that we can now list our prints in £££, which is brilliant! The site is still in its testing phase, but there are already plenty of lovely UK designers and crafters on there.

You can find our Folksy shop here, at the moment there are only a few prints in there but we will be adding the rest over the next couple of weeks, as well as some new stuff!

A Suffolk adventure

2008-07-20T20:37:00.004Z

This weekend we ventured out of Norfolk down into deepest, darkest Suffolk...
We explored the very pretty village of Clare (where we took lots of photos with the Rollei on the windswept castle motte) and pottered about in Sudbury, including a good poke around in Gainsborough's House which has a very nice print studio. If only it wasn't an hour and an half drive from our house...We also went to visit Celia Hart's studio, which was open to visitors as part of the Cambridge Open Studios scheme. We love reading Celia's blog, purple podded peas, and it was lovely to have a good chat with another printmaker. We spent the long drive back to Norwich discussing all the prints we want to do in the next month or two.

Today we have been busy wrapping prints ready for the Clutter City market in Norwich next weekend (more on that another day), so expect lots of letterpress related posts this week as we get ready to stock our little stall!

A New Engraving (and some giftwrap)

2008-07-13T10:32:00.006Z

For a long time I've been planning to do an engraving of St Giles Street in Norwich, one of our favourite places to go on a Saturday morning. Last summer I took photos of all the buildings down one side of Upper St Giles, and over the winter turned these into a pencil drawing. This then formed the basis for the wood engraving. Rather than try and find a very long and thin block I decided to engrave the street in two sections, one above the other. I used a 4 x 3 inch block, with each row of buildings just over an inch high. Here's a picture of the block in progress (the lines in the middle were to help get the buildings roughly to scale with each other).

When it was finished we printed it on the Adana 8x5, with mixed results! We did a few of the whole block, and then some using just one half with the other masked off. It was printed using Lawrence oil-based letterpress ink on Zerkall paper, and after about an hour of trial and error we eventually managed to start turning out decent prints. This was the first time we've used oil-based inks for ages. We always hated the cleaning up afterwards - too many nasty chemicals and black stains in the bath. We've found a good routine now though, using a small bottle of "Zest It" and a pile of old black socks to get the rollers, pallette knives and inking slab clean. Here's a print of the whole block. Prints in various combinations will be turning up soon on our Etsy, DaWanda and Folksy shops.

Sarah has been busy making hand printed wrapping paper, using one of old fabric printing blocks. One was printed in dark blue ink, and the other in dark red ink on large sheets of handmade Lotka paper from Nepal. She's really pleased with how they turned out, and the blue paper has already been used to wrap up presents! The red version is in the Etsy shop now.

Peas and artichokes

2008-07-04T15:03:00.006Z

We have been out in the garden enjoying the sunshine this week, plotting new ideas for various prints and keeping a close eye on all our little vegetables. Today we harvested our first pea pod! Hooray! It was a Hurst Green Shaft, and it was delicious - why bother cooking fresh peas when you can just eat them straight out of the pod? Like green smarties, only better.

Inspired by all this vegetable growing I did a quick watercolour sketch of some artichokes yesterday (not grown by us, but bought from the local farm shop instead). We've been trying to decide what kind of print we could turn my little painting into - Jon thinks it would make a good wood engraving on one of our tiny little 2 inch blocks, and I think it would make a nice woodcut.

I think we might end up doing both!

A new photograph of an old print

2008-07-02T14:52:00.004Z

This week I have been slowly re-scanning some of our prints and taking some nice new photographs of them to add to our Etsy listings. It's a slow process, and the only one I've done so far has been the green TLR camera print, which I think looks rather nice on top of our new bookshelf. The new improved listing is here, and more will follow in the next few days!

We had a jolly day out in London on Monday - Jon had a work meeting, and the office is right next to St James' Park, we followed the sound of the band up to Buckingham Palace and watched the Changing of the Guard (from behind a very large crowd of eager tourists).

Whilst I'm beavering away on jazzing up our Etsy shop Jon has been busy working on a new wood engraving. At the moment he's still sketching the design onto the block - more photos to follow before he starts cutting!

Busy Busy

2008-06-23T18:10:00.005Z

We have had a busy couple of weeks, but sadly without much time for printmaking! We spent the last two weekends at my parents house enjoying the sunshine and their big garden. Our own is looking splendid and everything is romping away.

We did find time to set up our new shop on Dawanda - a European site for lovely handmade things (a bit like a European version of Etsy). We haven't got all our prints listed in the shop yet, but hopefully they should all be there by the end of the week. The site is priced in Euros, and during Euro 2008 you can get an 11% discount in participating shops (including ours!) - the discount is applied automatically but is only available whilst matches are being played.

We had a nice surprise this week when Jon's little Penguin print turned up on a cool crafty blog that I enjoy reading - thank you Lupin!

To make up for the lack of printmaking related photos, here is one of Hal falling asleep in the sunshine instead...

Cock-a-doodle-doo

2008-06-09T17:23:00.010Z

This weekend I have finally managed to find the time to finish my cockerel print - carving out the final layer and then printing a lovely dark blue colour. Jon helped with the printing when he wasn't out in the garden, and we're both really pleased with how he has turned out. If only we could have a real one of our own! Maybe one day...

We don't have the space at home for a proper studio so all our printmaking activities take place on our dining room table (helpfully covered by a wipe-clean striped oilcloth). My favourite place to sit and carve is in the chair opposite the window, which gets the most sun. Everything gets moved to one sie of the table (or onto the floor) when its time to print, so we often end up having to eat our tea on our laps because the table is covered in wet prints and other printing paraphenalia.

We've interviewed a fellow printmaker, Ellen Shipley, for the Prinsty (Printmakers of Etsy) team blog - read it here.

It has been very hot and sunny here for the past couple of days, which has meant lots of time in the garden tidying up and planting things out. It's all looking lovely and tidy out there now. This is the first year that we have tried our hand at growing strawberries. These ones are in a hanging basket outside the back door, above the herbs. I've got all my fingers and toes crossed that they ripen!