Tales From Pixie Wood

A Draw And A Thought

Ahhhh, that's better! I was getting into a muddle a few days ago and needed to step back, work out what needed to be done first and simply begin. As soon as January arrived I think LBH and I both realised that our wedding was to take place in exactly seven months and we still had heaps to do before then. We counteracted feelings of stress by popping out yesterday and coming home having bought my wedding ring. I wasn't sure whether I'd ever actually find myself skipping down a crowded street again but I did yesterday. LBH made me laugh by saying that he liked that kind of shopping as he got to sit in a chair and have things presented to him. I'll have to take him shopping for diamonds more often!

And of course the babies are now here, oh the babies, my goodness we had no idea that our hearts were capable of such outpouring. My entire family has become a cliche in the truest sense of the word with statements like "are they not THE most perfect children you've ever seen?!?! I'm serious, I have never seen SUCH beautiful babies" falling from our mouths whenever we so much as wipe a bit of vomit from their mouths or smell something 'nutty' coming from their nappy area! I'm saying it loud and I'm saying it proud, I'M AN ADORING AUNTIE AND PROUD.

Anyway, on with the magazine draw. Thank you so very much for entering your names into this draw. I believe that we now have four copies to give away and I'd like to thank Ms. Maxwell, Barbara, Diane (could you email me your email address Diane so that I can send you the address of the person to send the mag to? Thank you sweetie!) and WritersHand.

So I will pick two people from the USA, one Canadian person and one person from Australia using the random number generator.

Cheryl is our Canadian winner.

Poppy is our Australian winner

Jan Fraser from California is an American winner.....

as is Zee from the fabulous Pixie Blossoms, Arizona.

Congratulations ladies and thank you so much to everybody who took the time to enter. I need the four winners to send me their postal addresses and I shall then pass them on to the folks who offered to post out an issue to a winner. All of this will be done in the strictest confidence you understand.

After blogging a little hint of the projects I have been working on in my last post I had some really lovely emails asking me when I would be opening up my shop again. Well, having scrapped a previous collection that I started before Christmas I am only ready to go with these hand embroidered lavender and rose hearts right now as the rest of the collection is still a few weeks away. Although as soon as my shop opens up again, proper, I'll be telling the members of my forum a few days before I post it on the blog as I promised them I would. We now have over three hundred members over there, all chatting away about their adventures, swapping tips, stories and homemaking tales. Hello, ladies!

However, on Tuesday I will be selling these ubiquitous items through this blog so do feel free to pop back and make a purchase if the mood takes you. I have made a finite amount of them so they won't go on forever but I have enjoyed taking my stitching with me on my travels, it lulls me into a sense of wellbeing and for that they hold a rosy place in my heart. Besides which they are entirely seasonal and feature blossom aplenty, so it would be rather unfortunate to still be selling them in August!

See you on Tuesday.

Cherry xoxox

UPDATE
This product has now gone on sale to members of my forum!

An Act That Is Almost But Not Quite Together

I'm not quite sure how I got into this much disarray so early into the year! The two words that run through my mind the most right now are 'oh' & 'crap' as I remember something else that has to be done. So this post is super short. I know we have business to take care of and a magazine draw to do but I also know that if anybody understands a juggling act, you do. We are also smart enough to know that it's not the act of juggling but the attitude towards it. Mine's a bit stinky right now!

Here's a metaphor for ya - instead of freshly laundered bed linen it's all becoming a bit 'slept in'

I KNOW YOU GET THIS! PLEASE TELL ME YOU GET THIS!

Therefore I shall take myself away, FOCUS, sort my bits and bobbles out and arrive back fresh and ready to go again.

Cherry xoxox

*exhale*

The picture in this post is part of my new collection of embroidered pieces. Coming soon.....

Muted Craving

 

It often happens this way so I know to recognise the signs. First of all there's an itch like sensation that begins move inside my thoughts. A stirring is probably a better description. At this point I have no idea what will become of it but I have learnt to keep an eye on it as it grows. Then I usually see something in nature that inspires me. In this case it has been the pale pink of blossom. I subsequently go on to think about the feel and theme of a new piece I may, just may begin working on. What materials should I use? Canvas, pastels, oils, watercolours, thread, fabric, yarn, wood?

How can this project/design make people sigh with contentment when they look at it? What will make others want one should they see one in the street or at the market? Will it calm or excite? How can it be used to save our environment, if at all?

How long will it take me to make?

Ah, now there's the rub.

As a crafter working alone I sometimes have to figure in the length of time it will take me to produce something before I finally put it onto my site for sale. If I can only produce one item a week then folk will end up waiting a very long time for anything they buy from me and lets face it my name isn't Hermes. But lately I have had a craving to get deep down and intricate. I have fantasised about producing a piece that takes AGES to make. With detail so fine that you have to hold it up close to your eyeballs in order to see all thats going on within it.

So finally today, after thinking about this new project for a while, I have decided to go with fabric, the threads you see in the picture, a needle and my own fair hand.

Thats it.

I'm excited about what I may come up with. Excited but hanging on to my chosen colour theme which is muted.

I guess that would be a muted excitement  that is pervading the air at Pixie Wood right now. Well sort of. It takes an awful lot of strength for me to remain muted about anything for very long unless I'm mad about something, which I'm not right now. So as soon as I have drawn up the first sketch I'll stop whooping again.

I promise!

Homemaker Time!

It's Spring time and that means an injection of freshness is needed in the house. As the weather creeps up by a few degrees here and there I suggest that you begin to open certain windows in your house for a few hours at a time. If you start by opening up your bathroom window by just a couple of inches the fresh March air will begin to circulate through your house. Remember that the inside of your home has probably been re-cycling it's centrally heated air since last October. I have suggested that you open the bathroom window as that is the room that you spend the least amount of time in on average and if your bathroom and bedroom are both on the same floor you will inadvertently be refreshing the air in the room in which you sleep. A vital ingredient for a great nights rest is fresh air!!

Love to you all

Cherry x

 

Following Your Bliss : Women Doing Just That

Yesterday I was reading Juju Loves Polka Dots and Juju mentioned a video on YouTube that Lynn over at Molly Chicken had posted about. You can see it here. In the video Joseph Campbell talks about following your bliss. Staying true to what you want to do and be in your life and not deviating from it. I think that everyone will agree it can sometimes take a few years and a good many trips down other paths before we finally find our calling. But, I also believe that once we find it or, and this is true of lots of people, admit to it then the sense of peace can be overwhelming. It's like coming home. You are no longer on a dusty road to Nowheresville in the town of Unhappiness. You have left behind the folk in Timewasting, a small place on the outskirts of Whatareyoudoingwithyourlife. You know the place, it's right next door to Howmuchlongercanilietomyself.

It took me so very long to become comfortable with the knowledge that all I really wanted was to be a homemaker, look after LBH and have a family. Who would know that I was doing it? I would rot in the depths of suburban hell! No, worse than that........I would be ORDINARY!!!!!!

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Do not blight my mind with that word. To be labelled as ordinary was akin to being invisible and in my more masochistic (read: trying to make it as an actor) days, to be ordinary meant you had no future.

Wow. How wrong can one person be? It's now 6.14am and I have been at the computer since 3am. I had a Diet Coke before bed and this is the result. My own fault, but being up for half the night has you thinking about all kinds of things. I love all the different ways that this blog and the website have gone but it's really important that I remember why it is that I'm doing this. The internet and blogging has opened up a whole world to me. One that I didn't know existed. I have found people that are so similar to me in their hopes and dreams. I have found others who are also following their bliss. Many, many others actually. And this amount of people cant be wrong no matter what the press and society say about housewives, stay at home mothers etc .

A woman who is following her bliss at the moment is Victoria. Victoria lives in Cornwall with her partner and her daughter Pebble Daisy May. I'm sorry but has there ever been a cuter name for a little girl? No, I hadn't heard of one either.
Victoria says in her biog  "we love living near the beach, Pebble can run about with other hyperactive toddlers in the fresh air, and eat buckets of ice cream, and we can all have fun together as a family. " That is where it is at for Victoria. That is life. But it is also very simple. To do those sorts of things does not take a great deal of money or thought. You don't need unlimited finances to enjoy the fresh air and an ice cream. We all know how much pleasure there is to be had watching fairy cakes come out of the oven smelling wonderful or finding something new to knit, sew, crochet or cook.

This post is not meant to sound twee or sugary sweet. I KNOW it can sometimes be very hard to follow your bliss. I have experienced what it is like to still have to do a full time job while trying to get my company off the ground in the evenings and at weekends. I know what it is like to set your alarm 90 mins earlier than the time it used to go off simply to update the website, finish off an article or do some research, and my alarm has always gone off early enough as it is thank you!!! It is the same for women who have children. I marvel at the women who have a family and still get the time to conjure up such amazing craft projects and have the energy to blog about them.

Where do they get the energy? How does time allow them to do this? I'll tell you, they are following their bliss. You know as well as I do when you want something you do all you can to get it. I wanted my own company, I did not want to be an employee any more. What I felt I had to say and what I felt I had to do was worth giving up my time for.

And I am only one of millions. That makes me ordinary. THANK GOODNESS!!!!!!! If you read any one of the blogs to the left hand side of this post you will find women from all over the world who are seemingly ordinary. If you take one peek at their lives you will see that ordinary doesn't really exist when it comes to the lives that are being led. They are all extraordinarily ordinary. And that dear reader is a label I like. Ordinary and proud. Bring it on.

Victoria, as well as raising Pebble, has created a line of candles in her Cornish kitchen. She has created the English Country Garden collection especially for me and my site and it is this collection that you can see throughout todays post ( or throughout todays stream of consciousness, whatever you wanna call it). You can view all of Victoria's candles here. I know you'll love them.

Another lady that is firmly on the road to following her bliss is Charlotte. We all know and love Charlotte for her work and for her blog and now I love her even more for her tea cosies.

Charlotte has added two more cosies to her current collection and you can see them all here. Charlotte's current blog post is beautiful and I'm lusting after those vintage looking terracotta plant pots she has as her first picture. There is a warmth that radiates from the blog and it has me returning time and time again.

I'd like to finish this post by saying that I know how devastating it can be when you know what path it is you'd like to follow but something, for one reason or another, gets in the way. It could be children, finances, a relationship, education, a lack of contacts in your chosen field, bad luck, awful timing. Following your bliss is not easy, it is hard, very hard. It often means that you would like to be doing something that only very few people get to do in their lives. As somebody who searches and searches until she finds a way to do something I'd like to offer this.....

I believe that our wants, hopes, dreams and desires are often a great deal simpler than we think they are.

I believe that life allows us to experience incredible, life affirming sensations when we just stop and stand still for a few moments.

The planet itself, and by that I mean the outdoors, has more to offer us than any magazine, TV show or, dare I say it, blog.

And lastly, I believe that one of the ways to find yourself on the path to bliss is to know yourself pretty well, be very organised about what you spend your time on and to keep on keeping on. Bliss can arrive in a bowl of hot soup, the sun on your face on a day in February or the first daffodil you see on your way to the office or school run. I need my eyes to be open to these things or I will miss them........and I don't want to miss them.

Have a wonderful day.

Cherry xx

Coming Soon to Cherry Menlove : Summer Bunting, Garden & Kitchen Boxes, Peg Bags, Daisy Pots and a new line in Aprons.