News, moves and an exciting New Year!

 If you look closely you can just make out Helen painting her famous ceramic tiles through the window of her pottery where she and her partner Paddy create some amazing work - I have been friends with them since moving to Suffolk in 1985. 

Their Old Piggery Pottery is at Alder Carr Farm in Creeting St Mary and as I like to keep things as local as possible before I had the allotment I used to pick fruit there for my jams!

When I opened HH HQ in Station Yard I had to have Old Piggery Pottery mugs as there is nothing quite like a hand-thrown, handpainted mug for your cuppa and with their wide bases they appeal to a practical Virgo like myself...observant visitors to HH HQ will notice however that the designs are a little different and that is because they have flowers in HH colours, red and blue in place of the usual green leaves - Helen designed them especially for me and I love them!

 I'm extremely fond of the farm and indeed used to make curtains and cushions in the same building that now houses the pottery! I even picked fruit for money there but clearly was not as good at it as I had been as a child growing up in Tiptree, Essex as I'm pretty sure Nick sacked me...luckily that was a very long time ago!

 We included this photograph of the pumpkin harvest in a blogpost back in 2010 and it remains one of my favourites to this day - Jacui and I had called in to the farm to grab something lovely to have for lunch whilst doing the final edits to A Green Guide to Country Crafts and couldn't believe how beautiful the squashes looked in the autumn sunshine!

I was reminded of the picture the other day when I spotted this years harvest so thought I would dig it out and post it again, hope you like it!

Anyway...I thought it was time to share some exciting news with everyone at last!

The old mill building in the photo below is soon to become HH HQ, isn't it pretty?! I'm so excited to be making the move to Alder Carr Farm, and hope that all my customers who have managed to find me in Station Yard will enjoy coming to visit me there!

The mill is currently home to The Suffolk Garden Mill but at Christmas Andrea and Andy are closing the physical shop and only selling their gorgeous gardening gifts and plants online.

 

I have been extremely happy at Station Yard but it IS the coldest place on earth and so Christmas Eve is the last day the old shop will be open and when it re-opens in the New Year it's surroundings will look a little different!

A few other exciting changes will be taking place and I'll reveal them as they happen, the first of which is that instead of only being open Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturday mornings I will be open Tuesday through to Sunday!

Thank you to everyone who has ever followed my funny little hand-drawn map to find me down the alley, right at the bins and behind the kebab shop, I hope you'll like HH HQ #2 as much as the original!

I've already started packing...

Nic x