After a certain amount of craftiness and utter neglect of home/friends/food groups, I now have stockists!

My lavender bags, conceived through cheap/cheerful present necessity last Christmas, have hit the big time and are now happily residing in some of the Major Retail Outlets of These Parts. These include Castle Howard Gift Shop (I nearly trod on one of their ducks as I delivered my first batch – could’ve been a bad start…), Scampston Hall, the Yew Tree Café and several others.

And I, for the first time in years, am

a) ‘holding (a bit of) folding’ = not skint

b) the proud owner of a rubber stamp

This kills two ducks with one footstep as it enables me to live out my librarian dreams (stamp, stamp “Due back in 3 weeks.”), as well as make my products look professional (if only they knew!!!). I now rubber stamp anything that doesn’t move at all/much.

The normally v. shuffly Arlo, so far, is the only thing remaining un-emblazoned with the Lotts Design logo. And I could’ve got him earlier too but didn’t notice in time. He has taken to eating things naturally-occurring but previously unrecognised as food-stuffs. He can seem to be playing very nicely then will look up from the sand pit with sand pouring out of his mouth and a whites-of-the-eyes grin. Or he will eschew his tommee tippee cup and slyly lap a puddle instead (the muddier, the more glee). Having removed him yet again today from these tasty treats, I found him motionless, simply grazing the lawn. He giggled and trotted away skittishly when I approached, but the tell-tale blades of grass were merrily dangling out of his chops. I should have left him – could’ve given him a quick stamp and got the grass cut. Must think more quickly – probably why I’m not yet the Alan Sugar of the cut-throat lavender bag world…