A bit of a break.....

Gosh, it's been a while! How are you all, have you missed me?!!! I've been having a wee break from blogland, last week was a bit of a crap week and sometimes you just feel that the computer can completely take over your life, don't you think?

Just a quick post tonight to say hello, lots to report on this week so I'll be back tomorrow with all the news. Thanks to Tash over at Vintage Pretty for giving me a Thinking Blogger award, I'll post about that tomorrow. I'm also doing a scrummy swap with Marie over at Marie Chantal, more about that later in the week.

Lots of exciting goings on in the world of nature too, but you'll just have to come back again to hear about it all......

See you all tomorrow.

L x

Spring showers

At last some rain has arrived in our neck of the woods, in the form of spring showers, little bursts of really heavy rain, on and off all morning. It always amazes me the weather and peoples reaction to it. We have a spell of beautiful Spring sunshine, perfectly timed with the Easter holidays, but we still manage to complain, everyone talking about how dry the ground is, having to water spring plants and the like, and how they wished it would rain! Why is it that sometimes we are never a happy nation?

Anyway, amidst the glorious sunshine of last weekend we managed to have our first BBQ's, both Saturday and Sunday night, sitting outside enjoying the last of the days rays, how fab is that for mid April?

I also got stuck into the seed planting in a big way, probably a little bit late, but still early enough not to be too worried that I'll be harvesting my peas in September! I got the pasting table set up and had a little production line going, while dancing away to a digital radio station we've just discovered, Life, they play lots of oldies mixed in with some new stuff. Gregg and I spent the whole weekend saying to each other "ooh listen to this one, I haven't heard that in ages......." boogy, boogy, boogy!

It was actually mostly flower seeds that I was planting, 17 varieties in all, so no excuses for empty beds this year! The last of the veggie seeds will be planted tomorrow hopefully, if I get my finger out of my (slightly bruised) bottom and get all my work finished today, nothing like a deadline to get you going and the thought of a day off spent in the garden!

Photos are of the quickly filling up greenhouse and some Rocket that has germinated already.

On the chicken front, the duck came off the nest yesterday so no ducklings from her I'm afraid. Bit of a shame but I had my doubts after we'd disturbed her, I'd rather she was safe than foxy loxys supper though. Plenty of time yet for little ducklings though, we have to live and learn from our mistakes!

Falling from grace

Well, the chickens had a good old laugh at me this morning! I'd let them out and was changing their water, we're lucky enough to have not one but two burns (streams!) running through our property, both of which border the chicken run. I was on my way round to fill up a bucket of water from the burn when one minute I was striding along, the next I was flat on my arse, caked in mud! I swear it was a chicken poo that I slid on. Little b*ggers. It's my own fault, I have been blessed with rather long legs, which means that I never walk anywhere slowly as I have quite a long stride, anyone walking alongside me tends to trot rather than walk. Maybe I should slow down, they do say "less haste, more speed" or is it the other way round?

Anyway, my rather cold and caked in mud bottom is slowly recovering and my jeans are in the wash. I have a feeling it's going to be one of those days.

Here's a picture of our French Cuckoo Maran sitting on a clutch of 10 eggs, they should hopefully hatch around the 6th or 7th of May, although she did decide to come off them for a little while yesterday, hopefully no damage has been done.

Crafty swapperoony!

I had planned to post about other things today but when the posty arrived with a rather large parcel for moi I just had to tell you all about it!

You'll recall from previous posts that I have a cyber twin, Rach, over at Oh the glamour...... From being days appart in age to lots of other things that we're both experiencing in life, it's just way too freaky how similar our lives actually are, but I won't go into all of that. We met at the Country Living Fair, I'm not sure if there was a crack of lighting outside the hall when we clapped eyes on each other, but I'm pretty sure a firm friendship has been found.

Last week Rach suggested that we do a little crafty swap, and true to her word a huge parcel arrived today, here's what was in it..........

beautiful hand dipped candles......

really groovy knicker discs........

a huge selection of gorgeous handmade cards......

and a fab covered notebook .

All handmade by the lovely Rach herself and available to buy in her on-line shop. What better way to start a boring old Tuesday! So all that's left for me to say is a HUGE THANK YOU to Rach, your parcel from me will be winging it's way over to you this week!

On the home front, Mrs. Duck decided to sit on her 12 eggs on Sunday so when we went to shut everybody in she was sat tightly guarding her nest. We put an old wooden fruit crate over the top of her with a large stone on top, thankfully she managed to survive the night out on her own. After getting lots of advice from the Practical Poultry Forum, we were advised not to leave her outside as a fox would stop at nothing to have her for a snack. So last night we managed to lift her off the nest, move her beautiful blue eggs and most of the nesting into a little coop for her to stay in. We're not sure whether this will work but we can only try. She has been out in the little run this morning making lots of noise, having a bath and some food. I had to coax her back into the coop where she has now returned to sitting on the eggs. I am a bit concerned that she is coming off the eggs for too long, up to two hours at a time, but I'm sure she knows what she's doing. We've got the whole summer ahead of us to try and hatch ducklings and I'd rather try doing it the natural way this time round.

Nature notes

Today has been one of those days that makes me realise just how much I love living in the countryside. It was such a glorious morning, sun shining, not a breath of wind and the birds twittering away. I took Chrissie out for her usual early morning walk, along the burnside, up the farm road. I've noticed over the last couple of days that the fish are visible again up at the little bridge, I spend hours in the summer just watching them dart about in the pool under the bridge. There are little dippers darting around from stones to banking, just a flash of white breast as they disappear, and yellow pied wagtails bobbing about too.

I often hear woodpeckers both pecking away in the surrounding trees and making the distinctive chitting noise that is their call. As I was wondering back along to the cottage this morning I could hear a real birdie ding-dong going on in the trees, I thought as soon as I get close it'll fly away. But to my amazement here were two beautiful Great Spotted woodpeckers flitting about in the tree up above me, totally unaware of me and an audience of finches, blue tits, coal tits and others spectating! Wether it was a male and a female flirting or two males fighting over a tree I'm not sure but it was certainly entertaining!

Living the life we lead now constantly takes me back to my childhood, I was a real little nature boffin, always out pottering in the garden, bringing in poorly birds and animals to try and nurse them back to health. I was always in my element when we had pet lambs to feed, I often got up in the morning to find a lamb in the bottom oven of the Rayburn thawing out! Today I went back to being about eight years old again, I had come across a drying up puddle of tadpoles, a writhing mass of black jelly about to bake in the sun. So I returned with my bucket to rescue the tadpoles, putting some into our neighbours pond and some into my makeshift pond, a big blue plastic trug with rocks in the bottom and some pond weed will be gathered tomorrow for them to feed on. Fingers crossed they all turn into little frogs, but they'll need to stay out of the way of the chickens as they have a bit of a liking for fresh frog! Why is it that a supposedly grown up 30 year old can turn into a child for the day so easily? hmmmm......

I'm also going to let you into a little secret I have with my ducks, although I don't think they know that I know...............

One of the female apricot call ducks has gone off and made herself a little nest just up from the ford at the bottom of our garden. As of tonight there are 9 eggs in the nest and she has started to line it with feathers! It's close enough to the water so she can go and wet her feathers to keep the eggs moist while incubating them. The only problem is we don't want to leave her out overnight or she'll end up fox fodder. So, the plan is, once she starts to sit on them we will try moving her and the nest into our little broody coop, but to be honest I'm really not sure if she'll like us disturbing her and it may well put her off. If this is the case we've got a couple of broody hens waiting in the wings to take over, one of the French Cuckoo Marans and a Blue Laced Wyandotte. Hatching little duckings would be superb so watch this space........

I ended the evening planting some more seeds in the greenhouse, lettuce and rocket into some old guttering that we found behind the stables, another one of Sarah Ravens ideas!

Ooh, we also had our first customer today, a lovely lady who lives up the road from us on the next estate, she came and bought two dozen eggs! I managed to contain my excitement and refrained from asking if I could take a photo of her for on the blog, I am thankful for having a little bit of sanity every now and then.......................

L xx

The Easter Weekend

Easter has come and gone in a bit of a whirl wind in our house this weekend, but a very enjoyable one! From the first visitors arriving on Friday morning until yesterday afternoon, the kettle was working overtime! It was lovely to see all our friends and family over the weekend, so thank you all for taking the time to come and visit.

Hasn't the weather just been superb, I can't remember the last Spring we had that has been this glorious, and by all means it's to last for the rest of the week, fingers crossed! We've even had to start watering the pots!

We managed to get a few things done outside, Gregg and Allan felled a tree on Friday morning, don't boys just love playing with chain saws and making lots of noise!

In between visitors I managed to get this made.....

........I have been looking forward to this moment for sooooooooooooooo long! This time last year we started off with 5 chickens, a cockerel and 2 geese. We now have a bit of a menagerie, producing loads of eggs and hopefully some little chicks soon. We have a couple of broody chooks so we're planning on setting them on some eggs this weekend, very exciting, as our attempts last year were a bit late in the day and didn't produce anything. We also have more interesting news on the poultry front but I'll keep that for tomorrow.

At last I have passed the "planning" stage of the veggie garden and have progressed to the "just get on with it" stage! I got my first lot of potatoes in yesterday, early Duke of Yorks, and planted sweetpea seeds, varieties "Matucana" and "Painted Lady". I also got a tub of basil seeds planted so that'll be interesting to see how they come along. Only about another 20 packets of seeds to go now..............

Hope you all enjoyed your Easter break too.

L x

The wild flower garden

As you all know, when we moved up here to what we now refer to as "the shack", it was a bit of a tip. Certain parts of the house needed gutting as the smell of dogs and other nasties was pretty horrendous. The outside of the cottage was just as bad, if not worse. The garden had been left unattanded for probably 6 weeks or more in the height of the summer, this left us to tackle a rather rampant wilderness as well as getting the inside of the cottage livable - not a task for the feint hearted! Dealing with 7 ft high nettles and dockings meant that Gregg would go armed with strimmer into areas of the garden and not be seen for a few hours!

We battled on enjoying the fact that we were very clearly stamping our mark onto our little piece of the Perthshire countryside but soon realised that an acre of land is not something that you turn around in a few months (timescales have never been my strong point!)! I had a huge list of jobs to be done over that first summer, we're still knocking them off the list! Our neighbours continually comment on how we've imporved the place so much but we only feel as if we've scratched the surface!

I have always been a keen gardener, very much influenced by my grandmother, she had me weeding at a very early age! Both her and my grandfather were and still are great gardeners, but more about that in another post. It's only really now that I feel as if I'm getting to grips with the scale of our garden and that for once I seem to be organised in my seed planting! I sat last night and planned the veggie plot and read up on each vegetable that I'm intending to grow this year, at last I felt as if I was actually doing what I came here to do.

Gregg and I also got discussing another area of the garden last night, the wild flower garden. I shouted up to him to do a search for a company called Scotia Seeds. Diane at our local Organic Hut had recommended them to me last summer when I was talking to her about growing wild flowers. They are based not far from us and produce native wild flowers to Scotland. It has always been a dream of mine to grow a wild flower garden and at last we are ready to plant some seeds and see where it goes...........

We are planning on sowing the wet meadow mix along the burnside,

the woodland mix on the banking over the burn,

and the short mix around the edge of the paddock.

So we'll have hopefully have turned an area that looked like this......

into something a bit more eyecatching and appealing to nature.

I read this post today and felt truely heartened to see that there are others out there who understand exactly how I feel, sadly, there are so many people out there that just don't get it.........

Beautiful days

Spring is well and truly here, isn't the weather just fab? We had such a lovely weekend just pottering around in the garden, life is good. I spent a good part of the weekend tidying in the garden, the greenhouse got blitzed, it still had the remains of christmas wreath making lying around in it! I had so many pots with lilies and dahlias from last summer starting to show signs of life so I repotted them in fresh compost, fingers crossed they bloom this year.

Gregg was getting on with the edging down the drive so hopefully we will soon be able to get some gravel delivered and get sowing some grass seed, at last we will have a presentable front garden instead of a mud bath!

We also headed up to Glenshee Pottery, Diana was opening on Sunday for the season. As usual the place was looking lovely, full of all her gorgeous pottery and lots of other finds. Hopefully the good weather will be bringing the tourists north and she'll have a busy start to the season. If you are up this way do pop in, you'll get a cuppa and some home made shortbread, they are open 7 days a week from 10am - 5pm, just off the A93.
Today, I popped down to the village to post a couple of parcels, I enjoy going to the post office as I generally always bump into someone I know. The service is dreadfully slow but I would be really sad if it was one of the rural post offices that is likely to be shut down. It is always busy, has a great selection of cards and has recently opened up a small gallery through the back. I presume this is another way for the post master to make a living from it so lets hope it works. Is this happening to your rural post office - is it likely to be closed?

I also popped into our fab hardware store, they have everything and anything, a real Aladins cave of goodies, shops like these are sadly few and far between nowadays so we are very lucky still to have one in the village. I went in looking for seed potatoes, red onion sets and a little tin of red paint. They didn't have any red onion sets but had the other two things I was looking for - I'll show you what the red paint was for in my next post hopefully!

I came home all excited and desperate to know what to do with the seed potatoes, I bought early Duke of Yorks I think, I should have paid more attention! So, I made myself a big mug of coffee, took myself out onto the bench in the sun and read my two favourite books at the moment, Sarah Ravens "The Great Vegetable Plot" and "A Greener Life" by Clarissa Dickson Wright and Johnny Scott. I think between the two books I should be well prepared for what lies ahead in the veggie plot over the next few months. I really am looking forward to getting my teeth stuck into it all and writing about our progress.
Well it's far too nice a day to be stuck inside on the computer so I'm off outside to sit and do some work - hope you are all enjoying the great weather too.

L x

For Robin........

Robin, as requested, here's the recipe for the sponge and butter cream icing from my previous post..................

Victoria Sandwich Cake

175g butter or marg. softened

175g caster sugar
3 medium eggs beaten

175g self-raising flour, sifted

Grease and base line two 18cm sandwich tins.
Beat the butter and sugar together in a bowl until pale and fluffy. Add the eggs a little at a time, beating well after each addition.

Fold in half the flour, using a large metal spoon or a plastic spatula, then fold in the remainder.

Divide the mixture between the two tins and level off the surface with a palette knife.

Bake in the centre of the oven at 190 degrees C (375 degrees F) or gas mark 5 for about 20 minutes. The cakes should be well risen, golden on top and spring back when lightly pressed in the centre.

Loosen the edges with a knife and leave in the tins for about 5 minutes.

Turn them out of the tin, remove the lining paper and place on a wire rack to cool.

Putting it all together.

For the buttercream icing put 75g of soft unsalted butter in a bowl and beat with a wooden spoon until light and fluffy. Gradually add 175g of seived icing sugar, a few drops of vanilla essence, a splash of milk and the tiniest little drop of red food colouring. Beat well until nice and smooth.

I used some home made strawberry jam to sandwich the two sponges together or alternatively you could use rasp jam too. Then spread the butter cream icing over the top of the cake. I used mini eggs dotted around the cake but frosted violas would also look very pretty.

Mass baking

Last night I took myself off into the kitchen to have a mass baking session. I love baking, especially when it involves using up lots of our free range eggs. So, I asked the birthday boy (Gregg) what kind of cakes he would like for his birthday as I was planning on making him one to have tonight and one to take into the office with him today. The request was for a carrot cake and a sponge cake and I also suggested I'd make him a tray of mars bar crispie cake as he rather likes that too.When we were at the CL Fair last week he kept pestering me for mini eggs as I'd made some little jars of treats - jam jars filled with mini eggs with a fabric lid, tied with a ribbon and a cute little hand written tag. Like last year they sold really well and we also had a little bowl of eggs on the counter for people to help themselves to, quite a nice little touch I thought. So he knew I had a bag stashed in one of the boxes but I wouldn't tell him where they were as I knew he'd eat them all! I'm such a spoil sport aren't I?!! So I've made him what looks very much like an Easter cake for his birthday to make up for my stingyness last week! It's just a simple victoria sponge with home made strawberry jam in the middle and pink butter cream icing on the top, not quite sure what he'll think of that little touch!!

As promised, here are some photos of the pots that I did for display at the fair, just another little touch that I though looked rather sweet dotted around the stall. So many people asked if they were for sale and there were nearly a few flower heads pulled off as people were convinced they were artificial - really, what next?

Birthday boy and I are are heading out tonight, we thought we'd head down to Dundee for a bite to eat, we've been recommended to go to a Turkish restaurant, so we might give that a bash.

Speak to you all tomorrow!

L x

The pottery range

Seeing as all you eager beavers are desperate to get your hands on our lovely new pottery range, I thought I'd give you all a little treat this morning and put it up for sale on the blog today. It'll be a couple of days before Gregg and I can sit down together and put it on the website, plus I'd like to get some better photos of it taken before I do. So here it is.....

Mugs approx. 7.5cm high. £10 each.

Heart design all the way around the top of the mug and a little heart inside the mug too.

Little jug approx. 9cm high. £12 each.

Heart design all the way around the top of the jug and a little heart inside it too.

Tea plate approx. 20cm dia. £12 each.

Heart design all the way around the edge of the plate.

Bowl approx. 7cm high. £12 each.

Heart design all the way round the top of the bowl, plus either one, two or three hearts inside the bowl too.

T-light holder/vase or whatever else you fancy using it for! (Comes with a t-light in it)

Approx. 6cm high. £7.50 each

Heart design all the way around the top.

Each piece of pottery is hand thrown on a potters wheel, the little heart is imprinted into the clay, the hearts are then hand painted and it is glazed. Due to this, no two pieces are ever the same and all have a very rustic, organic feel and look to them.

Not suitable for the dishwasher I'm afraid!

If you would like to enquire/order any of the above pottery please drop me an e-mail at info@primrosehillinteriors.com and we can take it from there. The above prices do not include postage. We've not got a huge amount of stock left so it'll be on a first come first served basis and then I'll have to take orders. As Diana makes it all herself it will be next week before she can get started on any new stock!

I'm now off out shopping as I completely forgot that it's Gregg's birthday tomorrow, oops! I shall have to make him an extra large birthday cake tonight I think! If it's a success I'll post the recipe tomorrow.

Bye for now,

L xx

Home from the fair.....

Aaaaaah, home at last and into my own bed, but returning a very happy bunny having had the most amazing few days down at the Country Living Fair! This is my second attempt at this post, I sat last night for almost 2 hours typing out this huge post with loads of pictures, only for it to disappeared into thin air, bloody blogger, so here goes attempt no. 2!

The cars were rammed full on Tuesday night as well as a roof box and we thankfully had a more successful start than last year (the battery in my car was flat- picture it, me having kittens and a major panic - not good!). We headed off down to the "big smoke" and were setting up by 8.30am. We painted the stall again this year, trusty F&B, it makes a huge difference as our customers always comment on how much we stand out from the others that don't paint. We were a lot better prepared for it all this year so I think that's a big reason why we enjoyed it so much more, plus knowing what's in front of you is a huge help! Even though you get 12 hours to set up, it's still never enough, we were still titivating by 8pm and had lots to do on opening morning!

I had the help of my friends Ann-Marie, Ali and my sister Nicola, so between us all we made a fab team over the four days. Thusday and Friday were pretty busy, but nothing could have prepared us for the madness of Saturday, it was soooo busy but totally fantastic! I also met a few blog friends, including my cyber twin Rachel, more on that another day! So thank you to you all for coming and introducing yourselves and purchasing a little bit of Primrose Hill, it was lovely to put faces to the blogs at last!
The best bit for me about the fair is getting to chat to all of our customers, many returning from last year or having seen us at other fairs, often to buy something for themselves as they'd previously bought for friends or vice versa. They love chatting away about our adventures in the country, doing up the "shack" and about our brood of chooks, I even had some interesting chats about our problems with the mink! But the best bit of all was that so many people have commented on the quality of our hand made products, head and shoulders above others in the same game. Now I'm not one to blow my own trumpet, but receiving a compliment like that is just fab, it means that all those hours of hard work that go into designing and making our products special has really paid off, so thank you all for that, it really does mean a lot to me.

So many of our products sold out very quickly, especially the little china cups and saucers filled with violas and spring bulbs, they recieved so many lovely comments! I had plonked some branches of flowering currant into a jug on one of the shelves, the heat of the hall had brought the flowers out and they looked stunning! If I'd had a £1 for every person that wanted to buy them I'd be a very rich girl! Why is it that people always want what they can't have? As you can imagine, the pottery went down a storm too, the fact that it is completely hand made and hand painted gives it a very rustic, organic feel and each piece is completely individual, one customer has already commented on how she loves her mug! As is always the way, I only got a very quick chance to look around on Sunday afternoon (to buy some sausages actually!) and chat to other stall holders. I was so pleased when I found out that Hume Sweet Hume had won the Best Stand Award, I feel they truely deserved it, they design and make the most amazing knitwear collection from hats, scarves and bags to cardigans, cushions and purses. The girls come all the way down from a tiny island in Orkney and exhibit at both the London and Scotland Fair, so by the time I got to their stand on Sunday afternoon it was looking a little bare! (sorry I don't have a decent photo of their stand on the first day as that would have shown it at it's best!) The girls make the most wonderful little brooches that look like thistle heads, they had had this made into a stencil and also a beautifully handwritten slogan "handmade in Orkney". This had been hand painted all over the walls of the stand and gave it a really special touch, but you had to look closely to notice it. I think it's the little details like this that make you stand out from the rest. They also took the time to display their wares nicely on painted and aged shelving, so many of the clothing companies just roll in the clothes rails and off they go.

A lot of people probably don't "get" why they won - to me it's quite simple - they are what Coutry Living Magazine is all about. They are a small rural business based in probably one of the most remote places in Scotland, yet they have succeeded in running a successful business from there. They could have quite easily chosen to stay on the mainland but they didn't, they returned to the little island that was home and set up their business in the old Fish & Chip shop - how fab is that? Also, every piece of their work is completely hand made, nothing on their stand is bought in to fluff it up (unlike myself!), even down to the buttons they use, they are pebbles collected from the beach with two holes drilled into them - you don't get much more original than that. Also, they employ a team of what I call "little sewing ladies", so by doing this they are supporting what is probably a very fragile economy on a tiny island in the Orkney Isles. Well done girls, I think you totally deserved it.

So, now that the fair is over, it's time to get back into work, it would be so easy to just have a couple of weeks pottering around, but we've got to hit the ground running I'm afraid! The website needs to be updated with all our new products that we launched at the fair, plus I've got loads of orders to get out the door now - no rest for the wicked! I am looking forward to getting to spend a bit of time in the garden though, it has been seriously neglected - but at least the front door is looking particularly fetching at the moment as all of my display pots are flowering away, I'll show you a picture of them all tomorrow!

L x

Hi Ho! Hi Ho! It's off to the fair we go.....!

At last, we are nearly at the end of March, Spring is well and truly here, as is the Country Living Spring Fair Scotland, aaaargh! We're nearly all organised, although I've still got a million and one things to do tonight, including filling and sewing up another 10 door stops! I spent part of the morning doing something I've been looking forward to for ages, I had planned to do them last year, but as usual ran out of time! What do you think of these.....................?

My friend Diana who has Glenshee pottery sold me some of her old china, she used to have a tea room on Mull, so had plenty going spare! I think it's such a sweet way to recycle old cups and saucers, I just hope the Country Living visitors think the same! Although if I was bringing them home to dot around the house I wouldn't be too sad! As you can see I've got a bit of a production line here.....!

I'm really looking forward to meeting a few of the Scottish bloggers at the fair so please do come along and say hello, we're at stand C34. Tomorrow is set up day and the fair runs from Thursday 22nd March until Sunday 25th March at the SECC in Glasgow.

I'll be back next Monday with all the tales from the fair and lots of photos!

Right, I really must go and get on!

L x

New job & CL Fair London

Just a quick post today about a couple of things. For all our friends and family that read the blog Gregg got on fine in his new job yesterday. It was quite surreal sending him off with his packed lunch (made by me I hasten to add!) all suited and booted, looking very smart! They all seem like a nice bunch in the office so he'll hopefully settle in quite quickly. It has certainly got me into a far better routine as it gets me out of my pit in the morning! Well so far so good, we are only on day two I suppose!

Sorry to go on about the Country Living Fair again, in a couple of weeks time it will all be over for another year! Two of my blog friends are heading down to the London Fair today, Samantha over at Plump Pudding is heading down from Wales, you can go and visit her on stand H17 on the mezzanine floor. Caroline over at Twice is travelling all the way down from up my neck of the woods, you can find her at stand G1. Do go along and say hello to the girls, I'm sure they'll give you a very warm welcome! The fair is on from tomorrow through until Sunday at the Business Design Centre in London.

At last the geese have started to lay again this year, they lay the most wonderful, huge white eggs, great for baking with. I've had to rescue one of the geese twice from the nesting box as she gets so excited whenever I go into the run she gets herself all stuck inside it, stupid bird!

Thank you all for your encouraging comments about the new pottery range, fingers crossed it goes down well next week!

Off to get on with yet more sewing and tagging, a week to go until we head down to Glasgow, I hope all the Scottish bloggers have it in their diary!

L x

Glen of the fairies and a pottery range

Today I got to drive one of my favourite journeys up to Glenshee. From the end of the farm track you can either turn right to go down to Alyth or turn left and head for the glens, referred to by the locals as the back road to Glenshee. It's a beautiful drive taking you high up over the hills looking right up the glen, until you meet up with the A93. I was lucky enough to see three roe deer today and numerous cock pheasants that had managed to survive the shooting season for another year.

Glenshee is special because there is nowhere in the world quite like it, wild, romantic, beautiful, and steeped in history and legend. It has always been known as Glenshee, or as it is in Gaelic, Gleann Shith, the Glen of the Fairies. It has never had any other name, and until the old tongue died out the inhabitants were known as Sithichean a' Ghlinnshith or "Elves of Glenshee".

The reason for my trip up the glen today was to collect our latest addition to the Primrose Hill Interiors range. I've always wanted to have my own range of pottery, but as I'm not a potter (although I have often been refered to as a bit potty!) I didn't really think I'd ever get round to it. There are a number of beautiful ranges of pottery out there but I didn't just want to go and buy it in like everyone else does.

The summer after we moved up here I took a trip up to the local pottery, Glenshee Pottery, as they were holding an open day with a local girl who does felting, she had her yurt set up and was telling us all about her recent trip to Mongolia. I signed up for a day course "Hats from the Hills", a days felting where you learnt how to make a felt hat, inspired by something from nature. I also got chatting to Diana, the lady who owned the pottery as she was interested in stocking some of our products in the shop. I have to say, the pottery is one of my favourite shops, it's always lovely and cosy as there is a huge red AGA in the middle of it, there is generally at least one cat sitting sleeping in a chair and you get a lovely cup of tea or coffee made for you to have while looking around the shop. The pottery workshop is through the back but as there is a stable door separating the shop and the workshop you can see everything that is going on through the back. They have a fab range of products including knitwear and other crafts, as well as all of the beautiful pottery handmade by Diana.

So, I gradually got to know Diana over the next few months as she came along to quite a few of the fairs that I was attending in the run up to Christmas. You know how it is, you meet someone else who is crafty, has their own small rural business and there is a bit of a connection, plus the two of us could talk the hind legs off a donkey! After the madness of Christmas I had my thinking cap on for new ideas for the Country Living Fair, I wanted something different that no one else would have, exclusive to us and handmade in Scotland, *PING*, light bulb moment, why don't I ask Diana if she'll make me a range of pottery! The two of us got our heads together, and with the help of her ever so delightful assistant Nicola, the new range was born - all that was left was for Diana to make it all. In a couple of months. As well as getting all of her own stock made for the shop opening in April. I take my hat off to her and the team (Nicola & Jennifer), they have worked their little socks off up there, maybe with the help of some of the fairies from the glen. They have created me a range of beautifully hand made pottery, each piece being totally individual, I LOVE it.

So here it is, a little sneaky peak for you all, it will be going up for sale on the website after the fair.