Well what a year 2020 has been. Not the best for any of us, I expect. But if you’re anything like me, you try to forget the bad bits and just remember the good bits.
Here are a few of them.
January
Planning ahead for a sustainable year in terms of packaging (we moved to all paper packaging in late 2019) and promoting our No Waste policies.- A business planning weekend for Shona in London with Actually which lead to lots of brilliant ideas for the rest of 2020 and beyond!
- Planning the shipping of a delivery due in Feb, containing lots of lovely ethical & fair trade conference bags for the fabulous One of Many, plus several other trade customers.
February
- Our campaign to get people to send a ‘useful’ Valentine, instead of a card, went down well.
- Hopefully there are many people around the UK using their Valentine’s heart keyring and remembering their loved one (or secret admirer) every day!
- We’ll be doing something similar this year, so watch this space!
March
- Holiday time!!!
I don’t want to mention ‘it’ but my skiing holiday finished on March 13th… just in time to get home before the un-mentionable…
April
- With new designs in production ‘stuck’ in India, there wasn’t much we could do apart from wait.
- And wait…
- And wait…
This video is from the Jan/Feb 2020 production of our Harris tweed designs, most of which got ‘stuck’ in India until Autumn!
May
- To celebrate our ethical & fair trade workshop in rural India and to help them get through their hard times, Shona launched a fundraiser for India to help pay the worker’s wages while they were unable to go go work due to lockdown.
- She had her head shaved
- We gave 25% of all sales to India
- We auctioned one-off samples, end of lines and some stock designs to contribute to the fundraiser
The fund raised over £6500. So a huge THANK YOU to everyone who contributed. Watch the whole Head Shave on Facebook here.
June
- Still in lockdown, things got very busy when Shona’s dog, Mika, had 9 puppies!
- So it was puppy heaven for 8 weeks.
July
- India starts to go back to work. Yayyy!
- Work starts again on production of our designs that got ‘stuck’ in the workshop, half made, in March.
- We get commissions to make bespoke designs for Complement Coaching
August
- The thing about not going out is that you don’t often need a handbag!
- The shops don’t need any more stock.
- No sales, nothing much to do.
- Time to leave the country again…
This is a wonderful temporary sculpture on the riverside in Normandy, France. It’s ‘Untitled’ but to me it looked like a family having a picnic. A reminder of things we used to do…
September
- New commissions for bespoke designs came in. Not for handbags, of course.
- Still… no one wants a handbag!
We made some organic cotton food/produce bags – to be used as re-usable and recyclable packaging. And a set of keyrings for a classic car company. More about these projects and the lovely final designs in posts to come soon.
October
- Quick last minute designs sent to India, to use up some of the ‘left over’ leathers from previous orders. As I said, we don’t like waste, so we use everything we can…
- Photos arrive from India, showing us everything that’s coming in the November delivery that was delayed from March!
It was great to see pics of all the Harris tweed designs that were being made way back in February. I’d almost forgotten what they were going to look like!
November
- Delivery! It was due in March. It arrives in Nov…with a few extra things added on in the meantime. Luckily, our trade customers were happy to wait and didn’t cancel their orders, so delivery number 2 (!) in 2020 came in.
- Shona starts handmaking new ‘Furoshiki’ wraps – sustainable and reusable fabric gift wrapping.
Just in time for Xmas, the furoshiki wraps, were and are, available online as a set of 4 or to purchase as gift wrap for your gift.
December
- Time to catch up with my favourite puppy pics of 2020, from all the new owners who keep in touch!
Happy New Year to all. I hope that 2021 is a FAR BETTER year than 2020 was.
x
