With all these fluffy items about the office, adventure dog Harvey, who is in dyer need of a hair cut, was on his guard in case he ended up being labelled too.
Gorgeous day at Toft today. Felt workshop office jolly tomorrow, is it Friday again already?!
Apparently this piece of Horse Chestnut was admired & stroked by the Queen herself at the first ever Royal Show. She was alleged to say it was the most beautiful example of Horse Chestnut she'd ever seen. Well who knows if this really occurred or indeed how many other examples of this wood type the Queen had seen on order to form this opinion!! Hell who cares, what a great story!
It's quite a wet and gloomy day here at the farm, so these two photos were not taken today, mainly because we don't want to get wet and cold outside! The first is a shot from the recent Toft Manor/Toft Alpacas photoshoot. As part of which Rob, Kerry and Shirley were asked to pose with three handsome male alpacas in the courtyard of the Manor. You can read more about these three 'pet' boys on Toft Alpaca Stud Posterous blog. The full shoot and 4 page article will appear in Warwickshire's Image magazine soon.
Harvey Spandangles, show stand adventure dog, has been telling us all about his new pad, however he was far too mucky after an adventurous walk this morning in the rain and mud to pose for a photo, so this one will suffice. Taken in the late summer he's modelling, rather superbly I think you'll agree, a pixie style hat. They've not quite taken off as successfully as dog-coats this year but it's only a matter of time apparently!
With visits from Cheryl, Elizabeth and Pauline today our Toft office was full of knitters and their knitting. As we are working on new designs at the moment we have hot and cold running samples overflowing out the doors.
Amongst dozens of new socks, scarf and adult and baby garment designs for winter 2011 we also have a GIANT button sign (and we mean giant- over 50cm diameter!) and we have cast on a big union jack project in our natural colours.
Tomorrow morning we have a journalist and photographer from Image magazine coming for an 'at home with the Bettinsons' feature. Followed by visit from Kate with some new mitten patterns, another 150 buttons from Albert and then finally the arrival of our design samples for 2012!
In between everything else we are catching up on lots of sewing up and felting...but not a show in sight this weekend. Just enough time to walk the dogs and grab this video of the views across the top of Toft overlooking Draycote Water.
Sent from my iPhone
It was a 'three nutella' morning as we fed ourselves up on our final round of baguettes before heading off to our tourist thang.
We got back on the Chunnel and headed into London late Monday. It seems very odd to be sitting back behind a desk with no 'parce que', 'avec' or 'alpaga' to explain.
The full story of Paris to follow shortly, complete with speed knitting videos, metro adventures and an abundance of lace creation images.
A bientot Paris!
It was a stunningly crisp and bright day at Toft Manor on Saturday, just perfect for a tour of the farm with the newest alpaca enthusiasts! Helen was a great help to Carrie, who would have needed wings to fly around the table of mild knitting catastrophes! Everyone managed at least one ball for their knitted necklace, but most of all we all had a really fun day!
The next intro to knitting workshop is set for 1st April, book your places soon!
Already 'big' buttons are sold out, and the chunky yarn in dangerously low.
Next year we will be making limited edition buttons avec le nom de bois en francais for this show. One hundred if each size and when they go they're gone.
We will need quite the specialist dictionary for this one...or answers on a postcard!
Perhaps we should host our own competition in 2011...
Meanwhile plenty of couples getting 'valentined' in the city of love this evening.
A romantic day back on B3.5 planned for us ...the final day squeezing out long-forgotten verb declensions for another year.
We had some very trendy visitors to stand B6 & Carrie took the opportunity to snap this unusual wooden brooch.
So after a good day's work we went back to the hotel dodging the rain & marvelled again at the crazily long chandelier chain in the foyer. Supper was delicious, the service & location at The Restaurant on John Dalton St was so good! We finished off the night in the trendy Panacea with a glass of fizz & a taxi back, lovely!
The stand looks great even if we do say ourselves & people are already booked onto our workshops- can't wait!
Supper was scrummy by the way & we inadvertently celebrated Chinese Luna New Year in China Town, Happy New Year!
