Craft Business Heroes

I'm sure you will have seen this book mentioned on lots of other blogs. I've been meaning to post about it for a couple of months but there you go! If you are a regular visitor here you will know I'm not the most prolific blogger :/ I don't tend to read 'how to' type business books or guides and I can promise that this book won't try to provide a formula for how to set up or move on your business. I found it far more interesting than than that!
       Craft Business Heroes by Alison McNicol
(I should mention here that you can't 'click to look inside' because I don't know how to make the picture into a live link - see if I blogged more often I'd probably have figured out how to do that by now)
                   

The book is a series of 30 interviews with successful designer makers. They describe how they set up their businesses, the challenges they faced and how they have moved on. I found the whole book very inspiring - and its goods to know that I'm moving in the right direction! I admit that I found the interviews with British makers such as Kate Hamilton Hunter and Poppy Treffry more interesting than the US makers simply because I'm more familiar with the set up here. When makers used jargon related to selling their products at trade events and how to work out trade and retail pricing I didn't always know what the US makers were referring to,maybe a  glossary would have helped. I also preferred the more direct way the British makers answered the questions but that didn't really detract from a really absorbing read.
I read the whole book in a day but I keep going back and dipping into it. If you haven't already read it I'd really recommend you give it a bash x

Time out

The last few weeks really haven't run to plan. We've known for quite a long time that our wee boy needed surgery for a kidney condition that was identified during pregnancy. Last September he had surgery to remove part of his kidney and we knew then that he would need a further operation to (hopefully) complete his treatment. For a while after this every time a letter hit the doormat or the phone rang we thought this would be it. Time went on, we relaxed, then at the end of May we got a call from the surgical team - could we go in on Monday? Absolutely we could!

 The surgery took 5 hours, it was successful though more complicated than expected. Our poor boy had 4 catheters in place for a week - not fun! Recovering from all of this took a few weeks - far longer than expected. It was really frustrating for him, he really wanted to get up and about but had to take it easy - not something a 5 year old really cares to do!

On the Jubilee Bank Holiday Monday we had to go back into hospital after a bit of a scare. Following this we were all a bit frazzled. So we had a chat, recognised that all four of us were worn out, Sheps and I couldn't work despite our best efforts, the kids needed some proper family time - the solution? We checked with the hospital and shot up to Scotland for a break.

It was just what we needed. We stayed in a cottage over looking the sea on the Fife coast. A place we completely fell in love with.The weather was fairly good to us considering the rain we've had recently! It was a lovely few days, we visited the pandas at Edinburgh Zoo, tripped over graduates / American tourists / golfers in St Andrews but mostly spent our time rock pooling and looking for treasure on the beach.

A month later things are a lot better. The children are now back at school and Sheps and I are back to work. And its good to be back - theres quite alot of catching up to do*! I have plans to develop the Meadow Garden collection. I've already completed this new pendant set, it will be in the shop soon.

*thank you so much to everyone who knew what was going on and sent messages and thanks for your patience and understanding while waiting for wholesale orders.