No more keeping shop for me!

As you may already know if you have arrived at my blog via my website, I have decided to close my online shop for the last time on 19th December. (If you haven't arrived via my website, hurry over there quick to grab a bargain from my massive clearance sale, while you still can!).

I am still shocked on a daily basis at how much having a baby has changed my whole outlook on life, work, family, friends, hobbies, etc, etc. Having been a very career-focused girl for as long as I can remember, it still surprises me how one little person coming into ones life can change so much. I have been finding it hard to fit in all my work commitments and still have time to do all the fun things that I want to do with little Amelie, so I hope my customers will forgive me for being a little selfish and giving up the retailing side of my work for the time being.

I'm also a terrible blogger so far! I have a head full of ideas but, like so many of the things I wish I could do with my daughter, I just never seem to have enough time to fit them all in. So, I am starting a list (a really long list) of "Things I would like to do", which I will publish here when I've finished compiling it.

Please bear with me while I get organised and watch this space...I will be back to blog again soon!

X

R.I.P. Poppy Bunny

After a short illness, our beloved house bunny, Poppy, passed away recently. Needless to say we are all feeling a bit sad and the house is very quiet without her hopping and scratching around the place. We held a burial ceremony in the garden – in a nice shady spot (bunnies don't like too much sun) looking across to the flower beds opposite. I am trying to decide on a suitable plant to choose for her grave – I'm leaning towards a nice classy white camelia, as she was a classy sort of bunny. It should tolerate the shady spot too...

Ho hum, you forget how gloomy it is when a little furry friend leaves you. I have tried to cheer us up by baking an apple pie today, and I'm halfway back to normal, but now I have to go and complete my VAT return – doom, gloom again! As I reconcile the bank statements and tally up the petty cash receipts I shall be thinking of my lovely little Poppy hopping around in bunny heaven, where no doubt she will be allowed to chew as many modem cables as takes her fancy, where someone will always be on hand to stroke her nose, and where lush young dandelion leaves are in constant supply!

Hope you are having nice cheery weekends whatever you may be doing.

Knitting news!

I'm very excited today as I have completed my first knitting project already (see two posts ago) and it really hasn't turned out too badly at all. So I took Baby Daughter out to one of our favourite local spots for a modeling session.



The Rolt Millennium Green is just a stone's throw from our front door and is a lovely little community garden which was donated by a local lady and is looked after by volunteers. They do a fantastic job of keeping it looking good and it has some really lovely features like this bamboo...



...an orchard...





...flower beds full to the brim with interesting plants...



...and at the end is this fantastic view of the Cranborne Chase.



A certain young lady I know loves to be taken for a spin round the garden on her new trike, especially on such a gorgeous sunny day as today.



Which brings me back to the knitting project – a smart chocolate brown beret with pink trim and pompom!





But like most babies, my Baby Daughter will only tolerate a hat for so long so she has to have a fiddle with it...



...and investigate a bit more...



...until she manages to pull it off her head...



...and throw it to the ground with barely a thought for her poor mother's efforts at learning to knit!



Ho hum, my next knitting project is for a friend's newborn who is too young to undress herself yet!

Hope you're all having a good week,

Sophie x

Farewell Fabric Boots!

I have been updating my webshop today and, among other things, have added two gorgeous lavender-filled boots. These are the last two left over from when I had my real-world shop in Shaftesbury. They were made locally by a very talented lady who has been collecting vintage fabrics and trims since her teens and has recently decided to retire. Sadly for me, this means no more of her lovely boots to sell — they really are so beautifully sewn. I have rarely seen such perfect hand stitching and she always chose just the right vintage buttons to trim them. Sigh!

You may wonder why I don't just make some myself but I'm not sure if I will, partly because I probably couldn't make them so beautifully and partly because their original maker and I have often discussed the woes of people copying designs. One of the reasons she has decided to stop making them is that so many others have made paler imitations of them. So here are the last two — catch one while you can!



...and here are some more of the lovelies that I have added to my webshop recently:

These prisms are from Denmark and come in very handy for trimmings — I have sewn some to the points of a lace trim and hung it as a pelmet at Baby Daughter's window. She loves the little rainbows that bounce around the room in the morning sunlight.




I love the little crown tag on this mercury mirrored tealight holder. I'm looking forward to the Autumn evenings when I like to light lots of tealights in mirrored containers and hang them in my inglenook fireplace to cast a cosy glow.


...and what better to light those candles with than some pretty matches?!


The prints of old family photos that come in this photo frame are so sweet it seems a shame to cover them up!


Hope the week has got off to a good start for all. I am having a sewing curtains day tomorrow so no more playing shop until later in the week! Promise to post again soon — I have news on the knitting front!

Inspired by knitting

Oh Dear! I haven't got off to a very good start with this blogging lark – after only two posts, off I go on an unannounced blogging break! So sorry to have neglected Blogland already. I will try harder to get on and post rather than just daydreaming about what I might post about!

Anyway, as you can see, someone (though not me) has been very busy on the knitting front and I am so inspired by its loveliness that I have decided I must learn to knit. I have ordered a beginners knitting book, bought some needles and ordered some wool – just have to wait for it to arrive and then I can get started.

I have to confess that I have tried to learn twice before without much success. Once as a teenager when I knitted some blanket squares for charity, but mostly my Mum did it because I kept getting frustrated at how long I was taking. Then quite recently, while I was pregnant, I knitted some fluffy sheep for my sister's baby. They came out all right in the end (sort of), but I kept getting in a terrible muddle and Mum had to keep rescuing me again! Also, the pattern was from a children's knitting kit that claimed to be suitable for children of eight years and upwards – I'm 37 and I'm afraid I found it a bit of a struggle!

Obviously, it will be a long, long time before I am capable of anything like this, but here are some pictures of Mum's latest handiwork for your delectation...and isn't my baby daughter lucky to have such a talented Gran'ma?!

A new home for Twiggy

I can't believe it has already been two weeks since my first post – many thanks for the lovely and supportive comments. I feel truly snug and cozy in blogland now!

Apart from yet more re-organising of my workroom and moving things out of the shop, my project for this week has been to find a new home for Twiggy, the beautiful weathered tree branch that has graced my shop for the past few years. Twiggy was originally found on Melbury Hill. Actually, I only decided that I really must have Twiggy once Husband and I had walked back down to the bottom of the hill, so rather a lot of persuasion was used and we hiked back up to get her!

Twiggy was first employed to display lovely Christmas decorations and then hidden away in our store room. After the second Christmas we decided she was so lovely that she should stay on show all year round and she hung from the ceiling of the shop through Valentines, Easter, Summer and on and on...!

Now the shop is no more so I decided Twiggy must come home and live out her retirement with us. She is now gracing a corner of Baby Daughter's bedroom and I have been decorating her with all sorts of pretties and sparklies...

...some of which are available to buy in my online shop. The pretty flower lights were from my shop but you can get them at DotComGiftShop. Twiggy is looking lovelier than ever and, even better, Baby Daughter is completely mesmerised by all the sparkly loveliness...and the fluffy rabbits nestling in the branches! Have a good end of week and weekend!

Thanks Mum!

It was my Mum's birthday yesterday so it seemed appropriate that she should be the focus of my first post. There are many wonderful things I could tell you about my Mum (warm, kind, quick witted, the list is endless) but the thing that struck me when I arrived at her house on her birthday morning was how perfectly colour-coordinated she was, as usual. This is one of my Mum's obsessions – all accessories must perfectly match the outfit...

from the shoes... 

to the earrings...

even down to the underwear...but you'll have to take my word for that bit!

Mum has been feeling a little bit sad since we closed the doors of our Shaftesbury interiors shop for the last time at the weekend. We have been very busy with moving, setting up our new workroom (more on that in a later post) and trying to keep up with our soft furnishings work, so we decided to take some time out yesterday (well, it was her birthday) for a trip to Blandford Forum for window shopping and a Dorset cream tea. A lovely time was had by all!

I also managed to spend some time to properly wrap her birthday presents (something I rarely had time to do when I was a shop keeper). I was "assisted" by baby daughter, so it's not my best work, but here is what we got:

Which looked like this after some very careful and ladylike unwrapping:
This sparkly crown is from Plümo and is a fridge magnet. My Mum is seriously into Swedish style so she loves crowns.
This pair of cutie-pie birds is from Cox and Cox (one of my favourite sites) – they are called friendship birds and you are supposed to give one away as a sign of your friendship and keep the other, but the little birds are very fond of one another and didn't want to be separated so what could I do?

These gorgeous pegs are hand découpaged with pretty patterns by the very talented Lucy Bloom who also provided the most wonderful packaging, gift wrapping and even sweeties!

So, apart from wishing her a Happy Birthday,  I also wanted to say a huge THANK YOU to my Mum for all her hard work helping to run the shop with me. We've had so much fun over the past five years but I know we will have even more good times as we start this new chapter, the three generations of Perks Ward ladies together!