Memorandum

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!

Weekend treats and a little book

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!

Clutter City and new stuff

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

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!