Thursday 4 February 2016

A caravan and a kitchen

Thank you for all the lovely comments on my last post, I was surprised that anybody is still out there reading this blog, I'd neglected it so badly.

This is our temporary workshop, an old, rather dilapidated caravan in the garden of our house. This picture was taken a couple of weeks ago, there's no snow at the moment thankfully. We're using this as a place to work while we await baby's arrival, so that we don't have to drive to our usual workshop, fifteen miles away. That said, we have to go there tomorrow to glaze a batch of pots and pack the electric kiln .

I've been making piggy banks for The New Craftsman Gallery in Mayfair. I don't enjoy making them really, but they sell very well and just at the moment we need to think about feeding an extra little mouth, so if they sell, I'll keep making them. I can't wait to get on to making some proper pots again.


Hannah has managed to keep making a little bit, but the baby is due in six days and now she's beginning to feel very tired. She has a big order that is to be sent to Japan in May, so she's trying to get as much of it done as possible before baby comes.


I have been rather distracted from potting by trying to get the house sorted out. This is a picture of the kitchen just before we bought the house. I've been rebuilding it over the past few days.


There's still a fair bit to do, I've been burning the midnight oil trying to get it done.


I'm revamping all the old cabinets and making new doors. The worktop is slate. A lick of paint to all the wooden paneling has made a huge difference and most importantly of all, shows the pots off a treat!

So, in the forthcoming days, week or two weeks, we two will become three. It's surreal and exciting. I can't wait to meet our new little son or daughter. I wonder who it is, what it looks like? I'll keep you posted

Monday 25 January 2016

In case you're still wondering, we did it!

Well it's nearly nine months since last I blogged, some of you may wonder what happened.

I didn't blog about our magical wedding day. Life just took over. It was amazing beyond words, full of magic and bursting with love and happiness.

So all these months later, here are some pictures.


Hannah and her Dad, leaving by the front door, on the way to the church

And here are Hannah's Mum and Dad and sister and bridesmaid, Sarah. I'm so happy to be a part of this lovely family. It feels like they have always been my family.

My beautiful bride. She looked gorgeous. It brings tears to my eyes to see these pictures again.
The vows. We were married by our friend Bob. He recently retired as Canon of Westminster Abbey. The little Kirk in this remote Scottish village must have provided something of a contrast to the scale and bustle of Westminster Abbey.

This is straight after the service. We look so happy. We still are so happy.
These are the jugs that we made for the church, filled with flowers and greenery by our friends.

Hannah's necklace, made by our jeweler friend Natalie Vardey. These are seventeenth century slipware sherds, set in silver. Natalie also made our rings and completely restyled and rebuilt the dress that Hannah had bought from a charity shop in Edinburgh.

We didn't want a lavish wedding, we couldn't afford one, but we didn't want one anyway. We wanted a day surrounded by all of our most special friends. It was just how we'd dreamed it might be, but better. Our friends just made it quite amazing. They traveled from all over, even all the way from the States, it made us feel quite overwhelmed that people would travel so far to share our special day.


After the service we were piped through the village in the rain, from the church to the village hall for the reception. Our Cub Group formed our guard of honour. The rain didn't matter at all, in fact it gave me the opportunity to shelter my beautiful wife safely from the elements with a brolly, which in my opinion, adds atmosphere to the picture!


Everybody brought food, so we had the most wonderful banquet. Our friends Amanda, Helen and Elinor had decorated the hall, it took our breath away when we arrived.


This jug was made by Hannah and decorated by me. We sold it on ebay afterwards to help pay for a few special days away on honeymoon.


 It was a bittersweet day for my Mum. My poor Dad was too poorly to come, so although she was happy to see us wed, she missed him, as we all did.


This picture was taken a few days later in my Dad's care home. We took a few days honeymoon nearby so that we could visit him in our wedding clothes. As you can imagine, it turned a few heads in the care home and brought a lot of smiles from the residents. I'm so glad we got this photograph.


Sorry, this post jumps about a bit in chronology. Here we are at the front of the church having just signed the register.


Behind us are the Castle Douglas Feral Choir, who filled the church with the most beautiful music, all unaccompanied. They sang Hannah down the aisle with a specially composed piece written by the choir leader Ali Burns and they sang us back out again. Cookie, the singer from my old band The Love Daddies, recited a special poem, which had been one of our songs and our friend Hazel did a reading.



My boys were our witnesses which was really special. Here they are with their girlfriends at the reception.


This is my Best Man Frank, who did a sterling job. I don't get the chance to see so much of him as we're in Scotland a lot at the moment and he lives in Cornwall, so I miss him.

There are so many great pictures I could put on here, but it seems Blogger won't allow any more on this post. It's wonderful looking at them again.



The following video is our friend Gwen's band, The Misdemeanors performing at our reception. They put a poem that I wrote for Hannah(you can find it on an earlier post), to music and performed it as a lovely surprise.





It seems like such a long time ago now. So much has changed.


Since then we have bought a fantastic house.



And most exciting of all, in two weeks time(or possibly before/after), we are expecting this little wiggler to enter our lives.

I am the luckiest man in the World