Yesterday we were on telly for the first time!    Some time ago we were asked to be part of a 60 Minute Makeover on ITV.   John Amabile, the Glasgow interior designer, made over a house in Blackford, Wales for a lady with serious health issues.  With great difficulty walking and breathing, not to mention a very bad phobia about insects, Carol rarely spent time out of her house.   We were asked to be part of it because the programme wanted to change her garden so that she would use it and they asked to use items from Twice to dress the outside dining area.   John transformed the garden into a Mediterranean feeling terrace and cleverly used faux grass and hedging, together with gravel and non-flowering plants to keep insects to a minimum.  We sent one of our pretty covered baskets, our ever popular tin plates, French bee glasses (you see, even the insects in Carol's new garden are fake!) and, just in case, a wasp trap.  

You can click here to see the episode.

One of our trade customers, Jan Hadley, contacted us to show us the delightful things she makes from our linens - I thought you'd like to see them. I love quirky and Jan's creations certainly are that! Gorgeous.

Nearly home

This is what I woke up to this morning. What bliss. I'm half inclined to keep this to myself but I am staying at a little B&B which really is one of life's well kept secrets. Amazingly, Kelleth Old Hall is just 3 miles off the M6 at Brough and can properly be described as quirky. With huge log fires, a hotch potch of mis-matched antiques and truly amazing views over the fells, I might almost stay here rather travel on home!

Our Country Living offer can be yours too!

This week at the Country Living Spring Fair we have been giving away one of these gorgeous Love Hearts (worth £9) with any purchases over £40 - and we'd like to offer it to you too. Just quote LOVE at checkout and we'll include one in your order. Happy Saturday!

We bought their faces!

You may have seen some of the huge press that Ed and Ross from BuyMyFace have had over the past few weeks - we heard about them on Radio 2 and thought it was just up our street. To pay off their student loans they are selling their faces for advertising - and have already made over £32000! We thought they would be perfect to advertise our presence at Country Living so yesterday the boys were here in the first day of the fair. Inspired idea - well done to them and many thanks for helping to launch our new Jubilee cushions here.

We've had a very busy day in the workshop finalising designs that we've been working on for a while. Among them are these little Needle Cases in Ivory, Duck Egg and Old Blue Posy. The case is lined in pink merino wool and it closes with a little horn button. We think they're very sweet. They'll be in our new catalogue and available on the website shortly.

We're getting Christmas stock underway in the workshop now - Hayley and Marie have been working on this year's Noel Lavender Heart -which are in a lovely deep red this year. It will be available on the website when our new catalogue goes out shortly. If you don't think you're on our mailing list just drop us an email at info@twice.co and we'll make sure you get a copy.

This weekend we are very pleased to have been asked to be part of the very first Hopetoun International Horse Trials at the beautiful Hopetoun House near Edinburgh. The forecast is for good weather, so we are looking forward to a great weekend. It's an ideal event for us as we can work while the family enjoys themselves at the horse trials - and the children are all keen riders so it couldn't be better. It's a great chance for us all to see some of the best riders in the world in action and show Twice to a new audience at the same time. We look forward to seeing you there if you're planning on going - we'll be on the West Lawn.

Little did I know when I designed our Mr & Mrs cushions quite how popular they would become - definitely this year's favourite wedding present. They seem to be selling as fast as we can make them! We've used our gorgeous Natural linen and they are embroidered with our lettering which has a Scandinavian influence and with piping in our Old White linen. The neutral tones work in a multitude of interiors.

Congratulations to Georgie Futong and Clare Alexander of Kilgraston School, Perth who have produced the first issue of an outstandingly good magazine, The Habit, as a school project. It is a really professional publication.

Georgie and Clare approached me a while ago for an interview which is reproduced below. If you double click on the image you should be able to read it.


The girls have so far been nominated for 5 awards for their magazine including, rather amazingly, Scottish Magazine of the Year. Looks like there are some journalists and editors out there who should be watching their backs!

OK, how on EARTH did we not notice this?! Prepare to say 'Ahhhhh'.

This is where the children keep their riding hats. Some of them are too small now and so they don't necessarily get moved that often. Some of them obviously not very often at all because yesterday we discovered something in the hat right in the middle -

Right under our noses in a place where people are coming and going all the time a blackbird has produced this:

It is the snuggest nest you have ever seen, taking up the whole of the inside of the riding hat. It's got bits of baler twine and lots of hay and leaves and even some bits of plastic in it. And tucked in tight are four blackbird chicks.

I looked up blackbird nesting on the interweb and found this:

"The nest is an untidy cup built by the female from vegetation, such as grass and twigs, and bound together with mud and finer grasses. The nest is usually in a hedge or bush, though they will use shelves in huts and other outbuildings."

Apparently the incubation period is 10-19 days, so it's possible that she's done this in under two weeks. It is extraordinary that we haven't noticed as we've had two horses in the stables for most of that time. As you can imagine, we're all amazed, amused and doing a lot of 'Ahhh'ing!

Every so often there are real milestone moments for our business and yesterday provided one of them. I went down to the mill in Fife that we work with to make our linens to see our first woven linen ticking and ginghams on the loom. It was just amazing to see the fabrics that we have worked on for the months and months, choosing yarns, dying yarns, finalising patterns, actually coming into being. The quality of this fabric really has to be felt and seen to be believed. It genuinely doesn't get any better than this. It feels really good to be part of this process.

This image shows Angus at the mill showing me how they pick up a broken warp thread. Just look at all those metal droppers - each one has to be threaded by hand to set up the loom - and then if one breaks, it has to be found and reknotted before the loom can set off again.

This is a roll with the warp threads for our new navy gingham waiting to go - they will be attached to the ecru gingham that is currently being woven so that the blue follows straight on from the ecru.

Here you can see the back end of the loom with all the warp threads of the ecru gingham.

And this is the finished fabric coming off the loom - just wonderful!

Once they've been woven, the linens then go to be 'finished'. This softens and slightly shrinks the linens, and gives them the 'antique' feel that we are always striving for at Twice.

These new linens will be available in our new catalogue which should go out at the end of April. I cannot wait to see what they look like when they're used. Very exciting days.

Great news - at last our beautiful wooden Porridge Bowls are back in stock! I know lots of you have been waiting for them. There's a long story attached - looking back at my emails we started talking to our new makers last August - and it's a good illustration of some of the problems of trying to get things craftsman made these days. We did originally have our bowls turned in the UK but it became impossible to have them made at a price that we could work with, added to which there were problems with wood supply. I had resigned myself to the fact that we would no longer be able to offer them when someone brought wood turners in Slovenia to my attention. Wood turning is the oldest and largest home craft in Slovenia and particularly in the Ribnica region which has been known for it's wood work since the 1400's. These makers are right up our street! I have been working with the incredibly patient and helpful Stane to get the bowls just right - and we are thrilled with the result - the first bowls arrived here this week. And as a bonus, we have actually been able to reduce the price to our customers!

It's always rewarding to get feedback from customers and I was really pleased to receive this email today from Mrs L: "I just want to thank you for responding so promptly to my request for posting my daughter's birthday gift 'yesterday'. (I had left it rather late to order) I didn't think that was possible, but seemingly it was - because the parcel arrived the following day! And that was the day before....She loved her fragrant soaps and the dish ... has found a home in her lovely kitchen. Thank you again for your customer care - a rarity these days." Happy to be of service!

Today is the last posting day for Christmas orders and so we would all like to take this opportunity to thank all our customers old and new for their wonderful support this season. It's been epic on many levels, from the weather to the sheer number of packages we've been getting out to you and it will definitely be a Christmas to remember for us - taking orders out by quad bike through the snow being one of the abiding memories! Things have slowed to a trickle on the ordering front and I imagine that you, like us, will be taking some time out to spend with family and friends - it just remains for us to wish you a warm, safe and happy Christmas and a very jolly Hogmanay.

We have mountains of snow here and haven't seen the postman or a delivery driver since last week. Given that yesterday was the busiest day yet for web orders Twice HQ has been overflowing with packages going nowhere - we're about 1/4 mile from the nearest public (and therefore cleared) road. Relief came today - thanks to Alan our local farmer and his tractor. He very kindly cleared our drive which means that we might get a collection soon - but we can definitely start ferrying orders to the Perth PO and Parcelforce sorting offices. This is our trusty 4x4 loaded up and ready to go a moment ago. Fingers crossed that the packages leave Perth quickly once we've got them there.

Twice has hit the BBC! Our beautiful spurtles are being given out as prizes on Paddy O'Connells Radio 4 programme 'Broadcasting House'. The programme has been talking about the Golden Spurtle World Porridge Making Championships which were held in October at Carrbridge in the Scottish Highlands. In honour of the Championships the programme has decided to give out our spurtles as prizes in their weekly 'Spoon Competition' instead of spoons! We have branded them especially for the programme and they will be going out to the lucky winners over the next few weeks.

I've always been drawn to old fabrics and, as you may know, the nascence of Twice was in the old fabrics and blankets that I found when we moved into my husband's family house in Scotland seven years ago. I love used fabrics infinitely more than new ones, however beautiful the pattern, because of the wonderfully soft feel and dimming of colour that use has given them. I had always hoped for Twice to produce fabrics based on the huge archive of antique fabrics that I've built up over the years but, when we finally started doing just that this year, just printing fabric wasn't enough. I wanted to try and replicate the gorgeous 'lived-in' feel of old linens. It has taken a long time and a lot of perseverance by many people along the way but I think we really have cracked it. Our linens now go through several processes (which for obvious reasons I'm going to keep secret!) to achieve a wonderful softness and subtlety - but with all the strength of a new fabric.

At the moment, we have our beautiful Framboise linen alongside natural and bleached linen, all of which have been given our special treatment. Our next pattern is in the pipeline and I have plans for many more which will appear at Twice over the next year or so.

Here's the thing. When I started Twice what we did was re-use old things and give them a new lease of life, hence the name. I remember looking at a pile of pretty cups and saucers and thinking - those would make good candles. I made about 20 and took them down to the Country Living Fair and sold out. At the time I hadn't seen any anywhere else - but now, of course, they're everywhere. I'm not saying anyone got the idea from me - I'm quite sure it had been done long before I did it, but my problem is that now I find myself not wanting to make them because so many other people are and, yet, they are so quintessentially Twice. What to do? Not sure.

Just arrived! Our new notecard wallets have just reached us - it's always fantastic to see things that have been in development finally in the flesh. We're really pleased with these - showing two of our fabric designs, Framboise and Posy (fabric coming soon), the cards are of the best quality and come in a pretty wallet containing eight cards and envelopes. Wonderful.