JUTE ADORE

Hello everyone

Sorry for the pun-ish title, couldn't think of an appropriate one and this popped into my head.

How are your Christmas plans going?  I am no further forward and can see that the bulk of our Christmas shopping will take place during the three days before Christmas.  This is the second year I have been involved in the Christmas emporium at Secretts, but this year has been busier because an extended range of 'makes' has meant lots of lovely extra orders.  We have had some poorly stall holders this week, which as you can imagine has put pressure on others to jump in to help out.  For the second weekend running Saturday was not great for sales, but Sunday was.  I wonder why?

Jute bags completed this week have included 12 butterfly-decorated ones for Lesley, a second Scottie dog one for Denise, a black cat one for a customer at Secretts and another butterfly one (purple) for Carrie, one of my fellow stall holders.  In addition to orders, I am decorating a small stock of bags to take to an event I have been invited to on Thursday evening at Barnett Hill, which is just outside of Guildford.  The event is to promote the venue to existing and new clients and although the advised attendance will be low, fingers crossed they are in a Christmassy buying frame of mind.

As so often happens, I have no photographs to show of bags made - I try to remember and I always so, once they have been passed to my customer!

Another busy week looming although some social things too.  Catching up with a couple of friends tomorrow evening and then I will be having a Christmas lunch/get-together with my pottery group.  Hard to believe another term is over this week - but guess what?  I remembered to take photographs of the pieces I was working on this week and here they are!

This is a very tall wraparound vase, with a slightly fluted top.  I am not sure what colour to use and as I will have the Christmas break to think about it, I might buy some glaze as we have a limited range of colours available at the centre.

This candle holder was made with the left over trim from the fluted vase.  It just seemed a waste to return it to the bag, so I rolled it and lo and behold another piece of pottery.  I have blended some of the edges, made the centre wide enough to take a thicker than normal taper candle, and I am rather pleased with it.  Again, not too sure what colour to go for but rather fancy a bright shiny red.  

I am off to catch up with the Handmade Monday bloggers but I must thank everyone who took part in last week's blog hop for visiting and commenting on my blog post.  I know it is a frantically busy time of year and I appreciate you and all my other lovely visitors/commenters stopping by.

Have a great week - see you next Sunday

Jill