Garden, beauty and tag teams

We have had a good weekend - getting long stretches at the new studio space, and also enjoying time in the garden and around the block.

After working in the yard on Saturday morning, this is where I landed: down near our small fire pit, sitting on a log, with my work boots on.

As I sat there, I looked to the left..

And I looked to the right...

 And I thought not a bad place to be self-isolating...

We had checked the veggies and the seedlings and collected lots of good looking limes and some excellent avocados.

 And so to the studio and cracking on. Barry has been making lots of product. Although we can't really open our studio/gallery/shop/doors yet; we are using our time preparing product and stock for when we are able to again. Barry has made lots of leaf spoons, leaf tea caddy spoons and leaf pate knives and the tag team part comes about because I do his swing tags.

They add something to the look and feel of the product and lots of folk like the handmade nature of them.  So I thought I had better get in front and make about 50.  Very much the most I have ever attempted in one hit!

First up I do an italic H and Barry's name.  This highlights him; and also leads into the Handmade opening line which follows.

You might be able to see in this shot (second from the right at the bottom) that I got a bit tired writing these out 50 times and for some unknown reason my mind turned to Happy Birthday, so a couple of times I started to write Birthday rather than Barry.  One got tossed but I caught myself on a couple of others and managed to turn the i into an a.

After they dried overnight it was time to add the rest of the words to the front, and later to the back.

 I wrote "from reclaimed and recycled materials' on the back; and then they were finished!  Barry chose two different thread for tying them onto the spoons/knives and so a hole was punched, thread cut to length and tied through the hole. Now all that needs to be done is to attach the tags to the spoons and knives - just like this.

They are available for sale in his shop for $40 each and I think they make great gifts.

I love playing with displaying the swing tags, like this.

And Saturday's sunset offered the most remarkable sight.  We had been out doing a few chores and came inside, looked out at the light and thought wow!  I have never seen such a thing - a rainbow fireball sunset.