New gingham for dog beds, exasperation with big brother and the Cheltenham Christmas Gift Fair

What fun we had on Monday morning! SagePay decided, in its infinite wisdom, that it was going to "upgrade" all of its payment arrangements and we, along with millions of other customers, were left wondering what the hell was going on when we couldn't log in, access payments or reconcile accounts. Our increasing frustration and feelings of bewilderment came to a head when a regular customer wrote, by email, to say she couldn't put through a payment and please could I telephone her. Fortunately we managed to help Natasha but goodness knows how many other customers were deterred by the utter ineptitude of the whole thing. Maybe it's because I have passed the magic 50 milestone, but I feel increasingly at the mercy of larger organisations imposing "stuff"- most of which has not been requested and has been imposed for their "security" and our inconvenience.

More fun and games yesterday when we discovered that Guy's private Barclaycard had been used fraudlently and various unauthorised transactions had gone through. Oh the joys, but in this case, we had to eat humble pie and acknowledge that actually the whole thing was dealt with very well and we were grateful to have been watched over by "big brother" ...

On a much more enjoyable note, we now have gorgeous new French navy/biscuit gingham for our dog bed material and we all think it is exactly what we have been searching for over the last three years. I have bought as much stock as we can afford, because experience tells me that as soon as you like something, it becomes discontinued! Anyway, the very first dog bed to be made with it was for Rosemary in the Isle of Wight who wanted an extra, extra large, so that it would fit inside Hugo's basket and go all the way up the sides. Sue diligently sewed on Sunday and off it went on Monday, looking really fantastic.

Friday and Saturday this week are taken up with the Cheltenham Christmas Gift Fair at the Racecourse- we don't often do Shows these days, so I am looking forward to it, but quite how we are going to transport all the things that are currently sitting waiting to go, remains to be seen.
We have made lots of gorgeous little cellophane wrapped sheep soap gifts and I am hopeful they will be really popular. We love these little soaps and they are now a permanent fixture on our stock list- made with shea butter, almond oil and sheep milk they are very appealing.

Sweet Apple & Ginger Chutney and Sheep Soaps and The Campaign for Wool

Here is a delicious recipe that I first saved from the newspaper whilst we were on holiday this summer- I don't know where it went, but when we came home it was missing. I knew I wanted to use this recipe for this year's Christmas presents, and luckily happened to mention it to a fellow chutney enthusiast! Mrs Musgrave in Ireland duly came to the rescue and photocopied it for me, having seen the same article... having finally managed to make the chutney on Saturday morning, I can definitely confirm it was worth waiting for!
In the words of the recipe "This makes a beautiful peachy-coloured preserve, neither too sweet nor too acid, with a gentle kick from the ginger".

Sweet Apple and Ginger Chutney
Makes a generous 2 pints (I doubled it to make about 10-12 jars)

3lb British dessert apples
1lb onions
4oz crystallised ginger
2 cloves garlic
1.5lb granulated sugar
1 tablespoon salt
1/2 pint vinegar (I used White Wine vinegar)

Peel, core and chop the apples into peanut sized pieces. Chop the onions to the same size. Finely chop the crystallised ginger and mince the garlic.
Place all the ingredients in a large pan and heat gently, stirring until the sugar is dissolved. Bring to the boil. Cook until the mixture is so thick that, when you draw a spoon across the bottom of the pan, you can see the base for a full second before the chutney covers it again.
Carefully fill the chutney into hot, clean jars and top with a disc of waxed paper. Cover with lids or clear seals and store in a cool dark place.

Last week was very worthwhile- We have spent quite some time trying to find some Sheep Soaps for Christmas and, at last, on Friday a consignment duly arrived all the way from Austria. We now have a gorgeous big box full of chunky sheep shaped soaps that we can add to our product range in time for Christmas. With a likely price of £3.50 each, we hope they will be a perfect little gift for everyone. Within the next two weeks, Sally and I will be wrapping and packing some to be ready for the Cheltenham Gift Fair which is on 28th and 29th October. We may even wrap them and pack them in wool, which links in nicely to:

Wool Week was very well supported and we were very pleased to be invited to an event in London where we were given a gorgeous pop-up display by the Wool Campaign to help spread the wider word about the benefits of wool. As suppliers of licensed Woolmark products, we are proud to sell the highest quality wool from a particular specialist licensed manufacturer. Sadly this is not the case with many competitive wool products on the market and we were really pleased to have our commitment to genuine quality noticed and acknowledged.

Singing the praises of our local suppliers and why they are so good to use

An absolutely fabulous autumn afternoon, everything looking beautiful and not a cloud in the sky ... Box Clever have just delivered the next consignment of cardboard boxes for us and they make everything so easy that I decided they would be the theme of this particular blog. Box Clever are based in Mitcheldean (The Forest of Dean) and they are endlessly accommodating and helpful. They make all our packaging for us, all bespoke sizes and, in my opinion, even better, they take away all our waste cardboard. Steve and Julie (not forgetting Rob!) make our lives at White Cloud very straight forward and they never let us down. It is what makes using local suppliers so worthwhile.

This is an opportunity to also mention Perpetua Press in Newent- Ed, you are wonderful at interpreting all of our ideas and transforming them into reality. This can be anything from stickers for the Yellow Eyed Penguin Trust, to size labels for cartons, to Pillow Tags for our French customers. We have also been working together on new Cashmere labels for our new White Cloud boxes which are nearly in the pipeline and will be with us by mid November. Ed, the service you offer goes beyond the call of duty- you have even been known to drive to bring us artwork out to us if deadlines are running tight. I think that is what makes for great customer service and we feel extremely fortunate to have such great local businesses to help us.

Sue- you are getting a special mention in dispatches and it is definitely a case of "last but not least". You have coped single-handed with manufacturing an exceptional order of pet beds this weekend for Achica customers and somehow you managed to make about 18 without any fuss at all. Despite running out of material on Friday and then piping cord, between us we managed, and it means we have fulfilled our order book- a tricky thing to do when we didn't know how many we were going to sell! You are an integral part of the business and your Invoice has gone straight to the top of the pile...

Period House Competition, Welcome to Sally and Pipers Farm exemplary service for hungry students

Audrey Feltham in Shropshire and Robert Woodcroft in Dunstable are the winners of a competition run by Period House to win 2 single Autumn weight wool duvets- both seem to be delighted to have won; it's always rewarding when deserving people win prizes!

This has been a busy week- we have found a wonderful person called Sally to help us organise gift fairs and shows... in the early days we tried to do everything ourselves, but soon came to realise that it was/is almost impossible to be away from the office and do a good job of running the business. Over the years we have turned down a lot of opportunities to do Christmas gift fairs, but, hallelujah, I think Sally is just the person we need. She loves selling, she loves people and, even better, she doesn't seem to mind considering doing anything. Our first venture together will be The Cheltenham Christmas Gift Fair on 28th/29th October. Two minds are definitely better than one, and already we are talking about doing little Christmas "puddings" with soaps wrapped in wool, tied up with ribbon with White Cloud gift tags... Thank goodness for Sally, she has been worth waiting 5 years to find!

Finally, with our eldest son back at University in cold, dark Newcastle we started to think about resuming food parcels this week. Friends of ours run a wonderful mail order meat business in Devon and we decided to hand the whole problem over to them- the task was to feed 4 seriously hungry, active Army students (sorry Dave, I know you are RAF sponsored). Henrietta had carte blanche to choose what she thought best; we parted with some money and the very next day a food parcel had arrived on the doorstep. You can't ask for better service than that! Highly recommended: www.pipersfarm.co.uk