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

Two years and a bit

Its 2 years and a few days since we moved here to Exmoor.
Although it seems like only yesterday I also feel I have been here forever and only have hazy memories of the trauma's that lead to us leaving Suffolk in the first place.
Lynton is now my home and I am beginning to feel like a local, I know I still have years to go before I can claim complete localship, but its enough for now.

I could write pages and pages of what we did last year, but instead I will share a few photo's instead or I should say a lot of photo's.

The day after Wonderwool 2013 we drove to Cornwall to pick up my new puppy Tinkerbelle

Ted Bad Poodle died in January 2013, Phil didn't want another dog and told me so many times right up until the moment he saw her tiny puppy face looking up at him.

In June it was my 50th Birthday, we had lunch at Hartland Quay and ate Thai in Dulverton in the evening with all our friends.

Then Daisy met her Adam and finally found happiness

Lynton and Lynmouth come alive in the summer, the place is full of tourists doing happy holiday summery things.

So the locals join in and have fun too.

There's the dog show, Tinks won first prize for best puppy

The annual Lynmouth raft race

The girls went on a boat trip to see the sea cliffs (including Tinks)

The boys went kayaking

And the dogs played in the river

We confused a lot of tourists by having an impromptu cocktail party on a boat in the harbour.

The boys sat around on the harbour wall in the evening summer sun, enjoying a few pints and talking utter nonsense to each other.

In August we visited Fep and her Moonpie in London 

And then we went back to Suffolk for a few days to see family and friends and re-visited Shingle Street with Fred. Moors Farm overlooked Shingle Street, so it was our local beach.

The first summer after the move I was too scared to go back as our last couple of years had been nightmare ones, I felt like I would be going back to the nightmare and wouldn't be allowed back to the moor.

We met a local lady on the beach who had lurchers, so had a chat about our dogs (it seems all lurcher owners are very proud of their dogs).

She asked where we came from and when we said Exmoor it suddenly struck me that Shingle Street wasn't my place anymore, even though I had lived there for 16 years it was no longer my home, it made me slightly sad to think I was an outsider. 

But I belong to another place that I love, so it was ok to leave it behind for her and her dogs to enjoy.

In September Daisy drove us to London for a surprise visit to Fep at the opening of her exhibition.

The winter was full of storms and sea surges

We had impromptu surge parties and Beaujolais night and Christmas and New Year, all of which were very drunken affairs at the Rising Sun on the harbour wall.

And then we began 2014, busy, busy working, too busy to spend much time gallivanting around.

We're still busy, busy, busy, but very much looking forward to the summer after the long months of hibernation

Billy and the book blankets

Just a quick post about nothing.....

Firstly Billy likes to test everything I make, luckily he doesn't moult like normal cats as he's a Maine Coon, so its safe to let him test them.

Here he is testing book blanket NO 1 which is half finished

And book blanket NO 2 which is completely finished.

And while I'm blogging I might as well share Daisy's and my new blog.
Its a irreverent take on food blogs, don't read it if you are a devout foodie and think you might be offended, but if you are domestically challenged you'll love it :-)
Today's post was about my cake making skills
You can find the whole blog by following the link below.
LUNCH AT THE NATURAL DYE STUDIO

Wonderwool 2014

We spent last weekend at Wonderwool, its the second show of the season and we were slightly more organized than we were for Unravel.
But I blame the disorganization on moving house 2 weekends before the show, plus trying to work on the book at the same time.
My advice is NEVER EVER EVER move house just before a big wool show, its exhausting and I spent a lot of time being incoherent to my customers and seemed to be incapable of using the till.

This year we had a much bigger stand, that was really daunting when we arrived, we stood and looked at the huge expanse of white walls and it seemed impossible that we would fill half of it, let alone the whole stand.

Then we unpacked and started constructing and we quickly realised that we didn't have enough space.

Plus I had stupidly planned my art gallery and hadn't allowed for tables to put the kits and books on - DOH!!

So I need to do some re-planning for Woolfest, I have a tabletop idea for the cabinets, hopefully Phil can make it work.

And we need more grids to fill the spaces, which means we can put more on the girds and give ourselves more table space.

We have been doing shows for nearly 10 year's, you would think that by now we would have the perfect stand and not have to add to it or redesign it every show.

But the space is different at every show and what works for one doesn't necessarily work for the next - sigh.....

However even with all the issues that need to be resolved I was quite happy with my art gallery.

I think the customers liked it, I know Wonderwool did as they awarded us the second place prize for best triple stand.

One of the highlights of my show (apart from meeting and chatting with lots of our lovely customers) was meeting some of my Kaleidoscope blanket club members who had brought their blankets to show me.

This is Sue and Denise meeting for the first time and the first time I have seen 2 blankets together.
I'm amazed at the difference the different dye lots have made, even though the blankets look the same, you can see that each blanket is unique to their creator.
The size is different due to the fact that Sue has just finished March and Denise has finished April.

There is someone missing from this photo and that is my beloved Valerie, she brought her blanket but somehow there we were either too busy or too busy talking with her to remember to take photo's.
So her is the photo of her April that I have stolen off Ravelry

However even though we didn't photograph her she did photograph us, as it was our 28th wedding anniversary on Saturday, if you've been following this blog you'll be aware of our anniversary adventures.
Daisy had made us special anniversary crowns, luckily mine covered most of my hair and the fact that I had forgotten the hairbrush and the Coop at the garage in Builth doesn't sell hair brushes, so I was sporting a lovely rats nest hair do.
And given us wine and chocolate, and Valerie gave us more wine and a card and we had several other cards, for the first time in years it actually felt like a anniversary and I'd like to thank everyone who made us feel special :-)
Oh and I forgot to thank The Mulberry Dyer's who were our near neighbours and gave us a lovely bottle of more red wine as we were breaking down the stalls.

I know there's lots more to say, but my brain has just gone blank thinking about all the wine and chocolate :-), so thats it for now.