Spring is open for business

Well, it is here anyway!

Just as we start to get the garden ready to face the year, it seems that we have been overtaken by things springing into life around us. The grasses are growing back, the asters are showing signs of life and the daffodils won't be far behind the snowdrops at this rate.

After another weekend of shifting oak leaves, one mountain at a time, and we finally felt safe enough to take the cover off the pond and the newts rewarded us by coming up to have a stare (probably to get air, but as the fish were entirely unmoved I like to think something was paying attention to our efforts!).

In honour of spring, the pic is my 'spring greens' bunting which is over on the folksy shop. It is also the first one to have a sale which is VERY EXCITING! Have I said that loudly enough? Brace yourself, I'll say it again - VERY VERY EXCITING!!

It was also featured in a lovely folksy friday entry on a blog called Blingery, which I must figure out how to do...

For now, I hope you are all starting to feel some of the joys of spring too :-)

Snowdrops

Aren't these lovely?

Some signs went up last week for a 'snowdrop walk' at Keswick Old Hall, which is just about walkable from our house. We had guests to stay over the weekend so we didn't really plan to be able to get there. But we found ourselves with the opportunity so we pulled on our boots (still with clods of murmurating mud stuck to them) and wandered out, arriving 5 minutes before they packed up their slices of cake and went home.

The Hall itself is beautiful and with a great history all intertwined with the big Norfolk families, particularly the Gurneys. There was all kinds of sueing for causing things like 'emotional estrangement from wife'. Brilliant.

The chap who owns it now opens it for the snowdrop walk every year for charity, this year was St Johns Ambulance. The gardens go down into the woods by the river and were absolutely chock full of snowdrops - really, really beautiful. Despite our late arrival, we were made really welcome and followed a very well worn trail so there had obviously been plenty of people there during the day.

There were also tea and cakes and, being late, we helped them use up what was left... HUGE slices of coffee cake and chocolate cake, shortly followed by the need to walk the long way home to burn of a few of the calories.

Overal, it was a great reminder that you don't have to go far or make complicated plans to find something lovely . Hope you all had a lovely weekend too :-)

This has been an exciting week in the world of says alice...

I have finally made good on my threats and set up a little shop on Folksy. I know it is only a success after I have made a few sales and a bit of a reputation for great quality work and service, but just getting it up and running feels like a great leap forward.

I have made four different strings of mini-bunting to stock it with to start with. The royal wedding bunting has gone on (pictured here), and some greens and blues and reds. It's mini bunting so it is designed to fit mantle pieces and shelves, but, if I do say so myself, very cute indeed :-)

Check me out at www.folksy.com/shops/saysalice

Watch out, I'll be on Dragon's Den next!

Getting in line

You can always tell when I have been on a sewing roll, because my pins get all lined up in an orderly file.

This means I have been using them all at once, run everything through the machine in a batch and got into a real rhythm of putting them away in the tub next to the machine.

I have developed a real preference for these pins as well, probably because a lot of the fabric I have been using lately is patterned and the little metal pins blend in far too easily. These coloured pins were the cheapest of the cheap from IKEA and (now all the blunt ones have been weeded out) they are the ones I always grab out of the sewing box.

The sewing blitz is because of the plans for the new folksy shop that I hope to get up and running in the next few weeks. The bunting is now all stocked up and I have a few other things coming together as well. Only a half day to work on it today so I'll do some cutting out I think.

Hope all is well out in the blogosphere. Hope your pins aren't as OCD as mine!