Moving On

Dear Readers

Now you'll all be aware that this is Amanda's blog where she happily rants for hours about her wonderful world of work and life in general. 
Whilst we see each other every day, we've tended to work apart as I've been winding four days a week at home and in the office on a Friday doing paperwork and she's at the office Monday-Wednesday, and home Thursday and Friday....so despite working together it's been 'ships in the night' as far actually spending time together, and in the evening she's crocheting and I'm knitting, and we snuggle down into our own little worlds despite being a few feet apart on the sofa.
So for me reading Amanda's blog is always and exciting experience as I have a chance to catch up on where her brain has got to, and this is quite tricky, trust me! (she has an amazingly active mind!)

So today I've hi-jacked the blog to tell you my news.

After three and a half years of working alongside Amanda I've been given the opportunity to return to the big bad world of the real workplace.  A very dear friend of mine, who is the Managing Director of a growing design/engineering company, approached me about a month ago with a business proposal.  Since the demolition of my confidence following the liquidation of a company in Felixstowe that I had worked for heart and soul, forsaking everything else, I vowed never to work for another company where this could happen again....it was less like falling from a bike and more like being in a derailing train with no hope of stopping the final impact and knowing you'd never trust the railway again! 
My friend is one of the most engaging and likeable individuals that you could ever hope to meet, and I could see that he desperately needed help to allow him space to develop his business ideas which he was struggling to do as he found himself bogged down with the day-to-day affairs of his job.
I knew immediately that I could work for him, it would be a pleasure in fact, but there was NDS to consider.  When I told Amanda she was like a rabbit caught in headlights - I don;t think she knew what to say, and it wasn't until we met with Daisy the following morning that she was able to rationally consider the possibility of me moving on, which could only happen if Daisy bought in to the change....thankfully Daisy was hugely positive about the whole thing and so we had a platform to work from.

Over the past few weeks Daisy and Amanda have been developing their ideas for the changes that need to be made to NDS to accommodate my departure, and I have been singularly impressed with they way they have worked together to this end.  I'm now 100% positive that they will take NDS on into a new era with a really positive plan of action.
This has left me to pursue my new future, and last weekend I met my friend's business partner and his financial controller, which went well - lunch in a rather lovely family run hotel in Martock, near Ilchester....all culminating on Tuesday night with a pint in the local and an agreement on implementation.

NDS has been an amazing ride for me over the past three and a half years, and we've taken ourselves from personal rock bottom, jumped off the cliff, and landed on our feet again - when I think back to the building of the log cabin in Suffolk, at that time I firmly believed we would live our lives out in a broken down old farm, and at that time I was happy to hide from the world and lick my wounds.
I don't think that some of the wounds will ever truly heal, but this is a step towards a time when perhaps they'll be just distant memories.

My time at NDS will come to an end at the beginning of August, giving Daisy and Amanda a couple of months to recruit a new player and empty my head of all the stuff that's collected there for the past few years!  The process has started with the purchase of new winding gear, and moving it to the dye studio - if you take a look at our facebook page you'll see a short video of the new set up - an important part of the new NDS design.

I know that many of you may be concerned about the future of NDS with my departure but please don't be, it's very much in safe hands and I look forward to watching how Amanda and Daisy take it forward from here (they have already made some important decisions about yarn bases).

It just leaves me to say THANK YOU to each and ever one of you for your incredible support of NDS over the past few years, putting bread on our table, and enabled us to put NDS right at the heart of the hand-dyeing industry.  You are an amazing bunch of customers and I will miss you all greatly when I leave.....but don't worry I won't be too far away and I'm sure you'll still see me at the shows :-)

Best wishes
Phil. x