I spent last Thursday at a photography workshop run by Ray Cox, one of Scotland's best garden photographers. It was a good opportunity to spend some time improving my photography skills (which so far have been rather suck it and see!) and to get ideas and direction on garden and flower photograph from Ray. When there was a break in the rain we managed to get out in the nursery to take some photos - these are a couple of my favourites from the day.


The course was run at Glendoick Garden Centre, which we are lucky enough to have just down the road from us. The nurseries there specialise in rhododendrons and azaleas and the Cox family have spent two generations plant hunting for them. The garden is also open when the rhodos are at their best, in about May, and are really worth a visit if you can get there.

The T aftermath ....

These photos really make you think. I was driving back up the M90 from Edinburgh when I suddenly saw the most unbelievable sight near Kinross. This is now two days since T in the Park and what you can (hopefully - click on the photo to see a blow up) see here is not a festival in the process of being set up but acres and acres and acres of abandoned tents after the event. I felt almost sick. It's one of those things that you really have to see to believe and I really couldn't get close enough to properly show you - but it's just extraordinary. It honestly looks as if no one has taken their tent with them - and the other rubbish left is monumental. It seems to me that it says everything about our society - 'proper' things like tents, which in the past would have been kept for years and years and reused endlessly, are now so cheap that they are basically disposable. We've just bought a 2 man tent for our son to camp out in this week - and it was £14.99. So many things spring to mind - how do Tesco's produce a really pucka tent for £14.99 - what on earth are they paying for it, and just how little are the people actually making it being paid? And, look what happens when you make things so cheap - people just stop caring about them. All these people couldn't see the point in spending the time to pack them up. It's just horrible.

And the really depressing thing is that I read in the paper that, unlike some other festivals, where the abandoned tents go to charities, at T they go into landfill. Ugh.

Caroline

Jane does it again ....

We've just come to the end of another wonderful workshop given here by Jane Lindsey of Snapdragon. Today's was Cutting Flowers and everyone learned how to cut and condition flowers from the garden to give them much more vase life and how to put together a hand-tied bouquet. Jane gave some great tips - such as how to tie the bunch up easily without having to put it down which is one of those things where, once you know how to do it, you can't imagine how you could have been so stupid before. You'll have to come to the next workshop if you want to find out how! And we also now know how to put the bouquet in water for travelling - another very clever trick. Anyway, as you can see, we were all surrounded by these beautiful flowers from Jane's own garden all day and everyone made a hand-tied bouquet and these gorgeous table centres. A great day all round - enjoy the flowers ....

Way out west ....

I have just spent a few days escaping on the West Coast with my mother and my aunt - wonderful to get away for a bit for some real R&R - and made possible by the wonders of technology. It never ceases to amaze me quite what's possible now - I happily sat at the top of a mountain replying to emails and checking the website for orders on my iPhone! It has to be one of the best things about our modern age that so many people are no longer tied to a desk five days a week. Anyway, this is the view that met us each morning - bliss.

If you've read the article in this month's Homes & Interiors Scotland you will have seen that we have taken a share in the rental of a little cottage near Oban with some friends. It is just wonderful to escape there and we are loving discovering the area. Last week was one of the best finds yet - about 10 minutes north of Oban we found the fantastic Kintaline Farm - I can't begin to tell you how wonderful it is. On the first and third Thursday of the month they have a little farmers market for local producers - we bought delicious salmon en croute and homemade shortbread. For the rest of the time, Tim and Jill Bowis who own and run Kintaline, must be run off their feet running a nursery with some of the best plants I've found for ages at some of the best prices and also breeding traditional utility pure breed chickens and ducks. It was fascinating to see all the different breeds - kept completely separately obviously to avoid cross-breeding. The traditional breeds really are very beautiful - although the lady above seemed to be suffering from a real case of 'comb over'! I can't tell you how happy I am to have discovered this farm - and I know I will be driving home after each visit to the west laden down with exciting plants. Do have a look at their website - it's definitely going on my list of favourites.

So, the nursery plants near Oban are great, but I have to say that the wild flowers run them a pretty close race. This is a sweet little patch of thrift that I found on rocks near the sea.

Back in the office now and I am very excited to tell you that we are now very close indeed to the launch of a new website for Twice. I loved the current one when it was done and it has served the business well, but everything has to move on and so it is for this - we should be going live around 20th June. At the moment it feels like the new BBC weather map did - slightly shocking and rather unnecessarily detailed - but I am already getting used to it and realising that it will be much more user friendly than the last one. I look forward to your feedback!

Something for the hound fans..

I know that there are a few of you out there who like the odd update on my deerhounds, so I thought you might like this photo of them in the bluebells the other day ....

Tired but happy ....

So, I've just come to the end of our two day Preview Sale, held here at home. The idea was two fold - firstly to give local customers a chance to see everything 'in the flesh' and secondly, to put new products in front of people and see how they went. I have to say that it has been a great success from my point of view - many thanks to everyone who came and many thanks to everyone that helped me (Jackie, Paul and James especially).

I was really pleased with the reactions to alot of the new things I've sourced and developed. Log baskets were a great hit and will be available on the website soon and then in the next catalogue. The new range of china that I developed with Susan Kemp looked absolutely wonderful and people loved it. I'm too tired now to run through many things individually, but it was a really worthwhile couple of days for me and Twice on all fronts. I think I'll definitely repeat it for Christmas, probably in late October, early November.

We also managed to raise nearly £80 in donations for the MS Society which is great.

Workshops start next week, so preparing for that now.

Following on from my last blog about the Lord Robert's Workshops I just thought I'd mention that any email/postal support from anyone about this would be great - I have just emailed Alex Salmond at FirstMinister@scotland.gsi.gov.uk to ask for his support for the workshops. Obviously the more people he hears from, the better.

We have a really useful boot stand which my mother gave me a while ago - but there are only pegs for four pairs of wellies and we are five, and often many more, so I thought I'd buy another one to go alongside. Happily there was a sticker on the base of the stand telling me it had been made by the Lord Robert's workshops, so I Googled them and ..... wow! What a find! It turns out that they are based just outside Edinburgh and not only do they make welly stands but a wondrous range of beautiful TRADITIONALLY MADE brooms and brushes of every sort imaginable. What could be better for Twice!

I shot off down to the factory to meet Chris Denny who runs it. What I found was both fantastic and depresssing. The workshops were founded in the 1890s to give employment and training to disabled ex-servicemen. At one time there were 11 such workshops but this is now the last one. They men make brushes in the traditional way - which, of course, means first class quality. Everything from clothes brushes to library brushes to yard brushes. Really beautiful stuff. As a business, it runs as a significant loss and so the charity that runs it - SSAFA Forces Help - have decided that it must close at the end of June this year. So, in the same moment, I had found a source for some of the best products that I've come across for Twice and lost them too.

All is not quite lost for the 11 disabled servicemen currently working there - the Scottish Government is aware of their plight and things are being done behind the scenes to try and save the workshop - but at this stage it doesn't look too good.

I went down again on Monday to order brooms and brushes and, walking around the workshops, it seemed really senseless that the workshops are closing. The cost to the state of having to pick up financially where the workshops leave off will be very close to the shortfall that they are currently have each year. Plus, because there has been the Sword of Damocles hanging over them, there has been very little marketing or selling going on which only increases the shortfall. The thought of losing not only employment and purpose for the men working there - all of whom have more than done their bit for us - but also losing the knowledge and skills that go into making these beautiful brushes - is really awful. Once it's gone, it's gone.

I'm not sure what I, or anyone else, can do to help, but if there is anything I will be doing it and I'll post on this blog so that you can keep up with it if you're interested. I am pretty sure that there is a good market out there for what they produce, with some decent marketing.

Aside from that, I have recently put together a series of workshops in May and June and sent out invitations for a two day sale here on 12th and 13th May and I am now panicking big time about how much has to be done....

The office reborn!

Slightly later than anticipated (isn't it always?) I am now back in my office and couldn't be happier. It's like a completely different space. Before it felt ramshackle and inefficient and I could never find anything. Now, I've got this wonderful workspace with room to display some of the Twice products, a huge table for designing and working on fabrics, a wooden floor rather than carpet, which as you might imagine, was a nightmare when you're working with fabrics. All the packing has moved into another room next door where there's ample space to keep all the packing materials together, which has freed up loads of space in the main room. The loo, which used to double as storage for alot of the packing materials is now just a loo again. I can't tell you what it all feels like - mostly it feels like a totally new office - it's just as therapeutic as a total move.
As you can see, I've got a crackling log fire going right by my desk - what a joy! There's a fabulous view through the two big sash windows out into the garden - which is about to be a sea of daffodils - and every so often I see our two deerhounds, Flint and Romy, trotting past the window. There was a very good article on our daffodils in yesterday's Scotsman Weekend Magazine - and that's what I'm about to look out on while I work. Next year we're going to be opening the gardens for the National Gardens Scheme at daffodil time. I'll try and remember to put something on the blog about it as a reminder early next year for anyone local who might like to visit.


And then we've put in storage for lots of the vintage fabrics so that I can see them while I'm thinking up new products and designs - I could see them before, but somehow through the chaos of everything else that was in the room (I wish I'd done proper before photos so you can see just what an improvement it all is) I couldn't see the wood for the trees.

Time will tell as to whether my new environment has a positive effect on my work, but I can't help but feel that it will.

A Spring face lift .... for my workroom!

Because of the way that Twice has grown, I have taken over spaces in our basement in a very piecemeal way. The room I now work in used to be the au pair's bedroom - which I then took over a couple of years ago. Since then I've spread to the next door bedroom (packing room), to the kitchen next door (warehouse) and into the bathroom (storage). I suppose because there wasn't a particular moment when Twice changed from a hobby into a business I carried on working in this room just as it had been as a bedroom. Infact, I seem to remember that for quite a while it still had the beds in it. It was pretty scruffy and certainly didn't look very businesslike - and I have found myself using any excuse in the book as to why people can't visit me at work.

Sometimes you just need a shove to get on with things and mine came in the form of a feature that has been commissioned by a big magazine on me and Twice. That focused my mind! I couldn't bear the thought that photos of me working in my room as it was might find their way into print. A couple of weeks ago I opened up the fireplace and started to use it - it's really gorgeous working with a log fire crackling away nearby. Then, last week, we took down the very old and shabby curtains and pelmets - and what a difference! Suddenly the room seemed so much lighter with it's big shuttered sash windows. Then at the beginning of this week we did something I've been longing to do for ages - ripped up the carpet. I can't tell you how boring it is having carpet on the floor if you work with fabrics to the extent that I do. I was slightly nervous about what we'd find underneath - but I needn't have been - it's a wonderful wooden floor in really good condition - and best of all, there are no gaps between the boards, so the room shouldn't be any colder. The floors have been sanded and then waxed and polished (thank you Paul!) and I'm thrilled with them. Couldn't be better.


The final thing is new paint - and that's what I've been doing today. Out with the primrose yellow (just too bedroomy) and in with an old white. The place already feels much more 'me'. It's funny just how much of an effect easy changes like this can have on a place and the people in them - it already feels much more work-like and I'm sure I will be more organised and productive in it.

I'll post some photos when it's finished and I've moved back in - hopefully sometime later this week.

The mother of all vinegars!

There are several reasons that we stock vinaigriers at Twice. They are very traditional, having been made in France, by the same potteries, for centuries, particularly the lovely salt-glazed ones that we have. I first came across them at my mother in law's house. She has had one for years sitting in the larder and any leftover red wine is popped in the top and then from time to time we would all be given jars of vinegar to take home. A few years ago, she very kindly gave us the one pictured above one for Christmas. A few weeks later a jar arrived here filled with something horribly gloopy - this turned out to be the vinegar 'mother'. This is the starter that is one way of making your vinegar - you can look it all up on Google, but essentially it is a form of acetic acid bacteria that causes alcohol to turn into acid. So, we plopped it into our vinagrier and then started to add bits of red wine from time to time - if there was any left in the bottle! It takes several weeks to start to smell anything like proper vinager and we would often forget about ours entirely for weeks at a time. But then, after a while, whenever I needed any red wine vinager I would just take it directly from the tap.

About this time, I started trying to source the vinaigriers for Twice. It's quite a thing because French companies don't really seem to want to do business with anyone! I searched and searched and found companies but no contact details. Then I finally did find contact details and sent emails. Many just didn't reply and those that did weren't very helpful. Finally, I discovered the Renault pottery that makes our lovely rustic jars have an agent in the UK - at last, someone who actually wanted to sell something to me! Once I'd got them in stock I started to research the actual vinegar making in more detail because someone was bound to ask me how to do it.

We provide instructions for making vinegar with each vinaigrier that we sell and there are several ways of starting off - 1) get some vinegar mother from a friend, 2) make your own mother or 3) start with a mixture of bought vinegar and wine. The bottom line is that is boils down to trial and error and working out what works best in your vinegar's environment. Web research has thrown up a great blog in the States where a lady called Kim Adams gives the most down to earth advice on making vinegar that I've come across. Click here for the link. She will tell you how to make vinegar from whole bottles of wine or from bits and pieces.


The way we've made our vinegar has been very hit or miss but this week we finally got to the stage where we had a full vinaigrier and it was time for bottling. I turned on the tap and emptied the whole thing slowly into jugs, waiting all the time to find the globulous mother sitting somewhere in the jar. But .... none! I don't know where it's gone but we have perfectly good vinegar and no mother. I think that what might have happened is that because we kept tipping bits of wine into the top, this can cut off the air supply to the mother and kill it and it then sinks to the bottom - not sure what happens when it gets there, but ours disappeared. So now I am embarking on making my own mother from scratch and we'll see what happens then. In the meantime, as you can see we have several litres of really good red wine vinegar and no wasted wine!

To see the vinaigrier on our website click here.

Back to normal ....

.. so, children back to school, decorations down and house nearly back to normal and time to assess the Christmas season for Twice and think about the year ahead. All in all, it was probably as good as I could have expected. Sales were slightly down on my expectations but the catalogue was a huge success so, on balance, things worked out pretty well. However, people are still very nervous about what's round the corner so for us, like most small businesses, the way ahead for 2009 has to be to cut costs, and not make any unneccessary expediture. That translates firstly into not attending the fairs that we usually do - mainly because the costs involved in travelling and moving stock are huge from Scotland. We're going to concentrate on building up the mail order side of Twice and expanding our range.

I'm not quite sure what to do about workshops - it's possible that people will feel they can't treat themselves so much this year. The workshop series are expensive and time consuming to set up so I am going to send out an email to test the water - and depending on the feedback we might just wait until the Autumn and see how people are feeling then.

Just to get myself feeling a bit less wintery and sniffly and thinking about spring, the photo shows the snowdrops here last year - should be like that again any minute - can't wait!

Home again after a month on the road ...

One of the things that stops me blogging very often is that I arrive at a computer and realise that I don't have the wherewithall (?!) to upload photos of whatever it is that I want to blog about and so I just don't do it. But I am realising that photos aren't necessarily what it's all about and so I am determined that I will post more regularly with or without photos.

I am sitting in my workshop tonight having finished my last Christmas fair yesterday afternoon. That was the culmination of the best part of a month on the road - I have got lots of photos of the month, but haven't worked out how to download them from my wonderful, life-changing iPhone yet - will do that later, but for now the thing to say is this: retail life is definitely suffering in the current climate, but being out and about and getting to meet and re-meet my customers is great. Such good feedback and lovely comments about what I'm trying to do. While I was in London, the new and much improved version of the catalogue arrived and has since been sent out to a fairly limited list of customers - about 1800 in all. I have had so many messages from people saying really lovely things about it - thank you if you were one of them. The best thing is that this is now translating into orders and that is so gratifying - all those hours and days of work putting things together were worth it and people are liking what we're offering.

The past two weeks since the first catalogues went out have been slightly mad - I've been doing Country Living in London and Glasgow and the 'pick and pack' has been left to my unbelievably supportive husband here in Perthshire. There have been a few teething problems - mainly to do with stock levels - but we seem to be getting on top of those and a day back in the office has definitely helped. But I can't tell you how exciting it is to see piles of orders going to the Post Office at the end of the day - makes it all worthwhile.

Met up again with lots of great people on the 'tour' - it feels like a bit of a family now. Had my brother up from Somerset helping me in London - so great to see him and spend some time together and such a treat to have help on the stand - I suspect I took too much advantage of being able to wander off. (And, Tim, huge congratulations on the latest news!)

Had a great treat this evening when we went to hear Sarah Raven talk at Glenalmond - can't believe how much useful information she managed to fit into a one hour talk. Inspirational. And then a delicious dinner in Perth ... feeling very happy to be home.

Will I ever get off a learning curve?

Running Twice I have had to grasp so many new skills - photographer, graphic designer, web operator, manufacturer, designer ... and on and on. Everything that can be done in house is done in house. Of course, in order to be able to do these things there is a steep learning curve - and I always come out better off somehow but sometimes things get thrown at me that really have me wondering what I am doing. Yesterday just such a thing happened when the much anticipated first run of 5000 Twice catalogues arrived ..... all absolutely unusable.

I have been very successfully using on-line printers for a while to produce leaflets and postcards and invitations and have worked hard to improve my abilities in desktop publishing. So, when I made the big decision to do a catalogue I looked for the most cost effective way of doing it which was for me to do the design and then get it printed by the same printer. However, I could see I might struggle with formatting of the artwork and I wasn't comfortable that I would be talking to someone in Germany to finalise the proofs, so I changed to a UK company, who cost more but assured me that that bought me first class customer service and hand-holding. I thought it was a price worth paying and went for them. I was sent about four samples of different paper finishes and plumped for one that looked wonderfully matt which I thought was very fitting for Twice. What I now know is that this particular finish (called offset) leaches colour out of photographs - the result for my catalogue is that all the wonderfully vibrant colours have just disappeared. When you are asking people to choose a product on colour, that's really not a runner. Anyway, there was a sad little puddle of me sitting in the office last night at midnight having just got back from a two day sale in Yorkshire, wondering what on earth I was going to do with 5000 unusable brochures. I wrote the printer a very sad email and got one back this morning basically saying that it is like that because I chose that finish. As the experts, do you think that they could maybe have advised me that that would happen? I do.

So, where are we today? Well I'm feeling a little more chirpy and have called my local printer for help (who I didn't use in the first place because I thought they'd be much more expensive) and they are going to match the price and we are going to go again.

In the meantime, there are an awful lot of boxes in the hall that the online printers don't seem to want either!

Feeling really autumnal and scrumpish ....

We have just spent a really fascinating day up the road from here at Glendoick Garden Centre on a cider making course. It was run by Michael Pooley who has written a book called "Real Cider Making on a Small Scale" and was really worth the effort. It was part of an Orchard Weekend that was put together for the Carse of Gowrie, which is the area surrounding the River Tay just before it hits the sea - and is also where we live. We have masses of apples and a couple of years ago embarked on making apple juice - it worked to an extent but we weren't any good at getting it to store, so ended up freezing it. This works well as a preserving method but I can never remember to get it out of the freezer at the right times. So, last year we thought we'd have a crack at making cider. This was done by following instructions in books and, as we discovered today, really only got us so far. The cider (gallons of the stuff!) ended up sitting in the fermenting barrels for far too long and the results were really pretty disgusting. So the idea of a day spent finding out what we should have been doing was too good to pass up.

The first photos shows the apples being washed prior to being mushed up in the musher - electric one seems a much better idea than doing it by hand, and infact we had already discovered at home that a garden shredder is pretty effective.

Then the mush (proper name pomace) is put into nylon bags which are then put in the press. A quick twist and delicious fresh apple juice starts pouring out of the pipe at the bottom, straight into the demijohn ready to become cider.

After about an hour of processing we had filled 11 gallon demijohns with applejuice - it really wasn't too bad, although there were 10 of us, so I'm sure it will take us longer at home. It's a really good thing to get the children involved in - so that's half term sorted!

The other thing happening as part of the Orchard Weekend was that two fantastic old chaps were on hand to identify apples - the photo below shows Willy who instantly named three apples from our orchard. However, he was temporarily stumped by one delicious eater and we had to produce four apples from the same tree before he got it - and it was finally pronounced to be a Red Melba. Willy grows an unbelievable variety in his own orchard and he is shown standing beside just a few of them.

All in all a really great day - I feel inspired and love the idea that we can now turn all our wonderful apples into something delicious without getting it wrong. There was talk about putting together a co-operative apple day in the Carse - that would be good!

I've just added the Follow This Blog option, so feel free to join up!

Caroline

Lots to catch up on as it is a ridiculously long time since I posted - apologies for that - but I am sure you will understand. It has really been so busy I can't believe it. Not only am I getting ready for Christmas, which gets bigger every year for Twice in terms of fairs and stock levels, but I had also rather bravely organised the second series of workshops to kick off in September and run through October. It's great fun but, of course, does mean having the house presentable and the little matter of cooking lunch for up to 14 people twice a week! Anyway, it all went off really well and everyone who came gave me such lovely feedback that it makes it more than worthwhile. We had people from all over the place - and as far away as Cumbria - this time. The first workshop was the return of the Foragers which you can see above - it was amazing how many edible goodies everyone found on a fairly nasty, rainy day. And the cookery demo in the afternoon was really inspirational .
The photo above is the second workshop which was Nicolas Arcedeckne-Butler (pronounced Archdeacon), Master of Wines, giving us (I joined in!) a wonderfully informative and fun day on wines. We tasted 10 different wines over the course of the day and I came away knowing so much more than I had - I feel I really know something about the different grapes and which go with which foods and so on. It was a fantastic day and I can't recommend it highly enough if we do it again. Nicola is a great teacher - so knowledgeable.

Next up was Craig McAlpine doing a day on 'Easy & Impressive Dinner Parties' - he cooked rack of lamb, roasted butternut squash puree and boulangere potatoes for our main course for lunch and followed it up with Chocolate Fondants with Blackberry Syrup - that is the impressive chocolate put which should explode with runny chocolate when your spoon goes in - which it did! In the afternoon he ran up some delicious starter ideas - warm quail salad with caramelised beetroot -yummy!

These two photos show our final days - 'Preparing for a Hand Crafted Christmas' with Jane Lindsey. As always Jane gave everyone a really inspiring day - bulb planting, how to get your bulbs flowering when you want them, how to make a mossed wreath (see above) and, in the afternoon, these wonderful table centres and candle holders. She even had time to fit in some ideas on present wrapping.

I can't thank all my demonstrators and teachers enough - we had some great days and some really positive feedback - which is all I can ask. There are already enquiries about the next workshops, so I will have to get myself going for a Spring series.

Wow - can't believe that it is six-odd weeks since I wrote a post for the diary. Lots has happened - we spent a really wonderful two and a half weeks in France. The first week was spent in the Ardeche - mountains and rivers - glorious. Then for the second week and a bit we did a house exchange with two French families. It's the first time we've done an exchange and so we were slightly trepidacious (?!) - but we needn't have worried. Because you are in each others' houses everyone treats everything with enormous respect because you hope the same is happening at the other end. So two families came here to Inchyra and we had two houses fairly close together in the Drome. We invited friends to come and stay and had a really great week with swimming pools and perfect huge lunches and dinners. I have to say, these parents in hotter countries really have got it made - give a child a swimming pool and you really don't ever have to find them anything else to do.

We also kayaked down both the Ardeche and the Drome. It is a great day for everyone - a little bit of danger (rapids), beautiful scenery, some exercise and at the end of it you really feel you've earned that very large dinner and lashings of wine! The photo shows James and Ellie on the Drome.

After one day spent frantically trying to catch up with Twice we headed up to Beauly near Inverness where we go to the Tartan Heart music festival held at the Belladrum estate every year. Well, we've done it for the last four. It is always a resounding success. We camp with the children, listen to music, meet friends, drink and eat too much and generally have a ball. I think it's really good for the children to have their first experience of something like that with us around and Silvie (now aged 9, but 5 when she first went) is such a seasoned festivaller now she gets quite cross when we want to keep an eye on her. The photo shows Silvie and her friends getting the best seats in the house for a bit of Country & Western!

Anyway, now it's back to thinking about Twice and, unbelievably, but inevitably, Christmas. I really need to have all the stock for Christmas sorted out by the end of this month and so I am in a right flap. Hopefully by the end of this week I might be able to see the wood for the trees. Husband James is coming on board in a slightly more formal way which is a great help to me as it means there is someone here to throw ideas and numbers around with - and with a bit of luck means I don't have to do the dreaded books any more. (Not sure if he knows that bit yet!) In addition to all the usual fairs (Country Living in London and Glasgow, Living North in Newcastle etc), this year we have got the workshops running from 16th September until 9th October, we will be doing a Christmas sale here at Inchyra sometime in October and we are launching our first catalogue, so I have no idea how busy it's going to be - but I think 'very' might be the case.

If you would like us to send you a catalogue just email us using the link on the homepage of the website.

Oooooh! I booked the final person for our autumn workshops this morning and I am SO pleased with the line-up for September and October. We have got:

~ 'Autumn Foraging' with the Forage Rangers

~ 'Appreciating Antiques' with Jeremy Gow, a restorer well known across Scotland as one of our foremost authorities on antiques.

~ 'Understanding Wine - an introduction' with Nicola Arcedeckne-Butler (pronounced Archdeacon) - one of the most respected female Masters of Wine in the country.

~ 'Preparing for a Hand Crafted Christmas' which sees the return of the wonderful Jane Lindsey.

and finally, booked today, 'Dinner Parties Made Easy' with Craig McAlpine, winner of Channel 4's Come Dine With Me, who runs a company called Bespoke Caterers which teaches dinner party cooking across Scotland.

I don't know about you, but I feel that we have a really good range here and some fascinating speakers. The flyer goes to the printer in a couple of days and then we're off again! I have to say, I find the whole thing so much fun - it really doesn't feel like work. And, actually, that was the whole point - to bring Twice home a bit rather than running around all over the country doing those blessed fairs. I have managed to contain my Christmas selling to three big fairs - Living North in Newcastle and Country Living in London and Glasgow. That means only three moves, which is heaven.

Once the flyer is out, I can slightly put my feet up and enjoy the children and the summer holidays. Big sigh of relief.

Here at Twice Towers the produce is really starting to stream in and yesterday I came home to find that happy husband had been busy bottling. The result looked so wonderful that I thought I'd share it with you. The line up on our kitchen table is Damson Gin, Damson Vodka and Elderflower Cordial (not sure in which order). There's also some Blackberry Whisky cooking away somewhere which should be interesting. Today he has added 12 2 litre bottles of Elderflower Champagne, a la Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, that promise to be quite delicious once the bubbles have come in and will be ready for drinking in about three weeks.

The gin and vodka have been brewing for quite a while. Just a sip of either of them makes me feel completely autumnal - and then, I expect quite quickly if I had much more, rather happy!