A “Quiet” Week at Larkswold (Apparently)

When we looked at the diary on Monday morning, we both agreed it was going to be a nice quiet week at Larkswold.

No workshops in the studio until the weekend. Plenty of time to catch up.

Of course, what we conveniently forget every time we say this is that actually running workshops is only one small part of what we do. The rest of the week is spent feeding the great Larkswold machine. That means dreaming up new workshop ideas, tweaking existing ones with our tutors, unloading kit from last weekend’s off-site events, ordering supplies for the next round of workshops and attempting to keep our marketing looking awesome.

And somewhere in all that, we squeezed in a meeting with our favourite accountant. Admittedly she is also our only accountant, but still — she’s excellent.

She very kindly reviewed the numbers and then gave us some “homework”, largely designed to ensure we don’t accidentally end up in prison for tax evasion, which is always reassuring. We may also have had a small and entirely sensible conversation about buying a Larkswold van. Watch this space.

New Workshops on the Horizon

One of the real highlights of the week was meeting a wonderful new tutor who will soon be running a Silversmithing Sea Glass Ring Workshop with us. If you know anything about us at Larkswold, you’ll know we get disproportionately excited about new crafts. Particularly shiny ones. Sea glass jewelley has been high on our wish list for a while, so we’re very excited to add this to the growing collection of silversmithing and silverclay workshops we run here in the Cotswolds.

Old shot of Pip Pickly warming hers paws by the fire.

Heating, Oil Prices & Log Fires

The rather staggering price of heating oil also prompted Mr Larkswold and I to dash around turning off the oil-fired heating with some urgency. On the upside, I do rather enjoy an evening with the log fire going and a glass of vino, so all is not lost.

Glitter Kicks & Craft Planning

Emma, meanwhile, has been sporting her Dorothy-style glitter red shoes this week — what we now refer to as her glitter kicks.

She even wore them when we popped over to the Mole Inn to meet the team from Holland & Green for a planning meeting. We’re very excited to be running a selection of creative craft workshops for their team there in a couple of weeks, including:

• Leather dog collars and leads

• Paper cutting

• Candle making

• Block printing

Naturally we squeezed in a small working lunch afterwards (purely for planning purposes, obviously) while mapping out our ideas for the Cheltenham Science Festival.

This year we’re hoping to deploy our newest favourite toy — the Chomp cardboard cutter — which has already brought us an unreasonable amount of joy although is a smidge noisy!

The Cake Situation

In a shocking twist this week, we had to make our own cakes for the studio.

Because the week looked “quiet”, we thought it would be perfectly manageable.

All I can say is that I’m very pleased next week is not a quiet week and we can return cake duties to Holly and her frankly excellent baking. I had quite forgotten just how much washing up I personally manage to create.

We have also just been on the phone with Sally from Brown Cow Events, who will soon be helping with lunch catering on some of our full-day craft workshops. Which frankly sound delicious.

The Weekend Ahead at the Studio

Now we must dash, as we have a busy weekend ahead in the studio with workshops including:

• Willow weaving

Willow Foraging or Sweet Pea Basket

£150.00

Book Now

• Block printing

Block Printing

£75.00

Book Now

• Candle making

Intro to Candle Making (1.5hrs)

£40.00

Book Now

• Japanese bookbinding

Bookbinding: Japanese Yotsume Toji

£65.00

Book Now

Exactly the sort of organised creative chaos we love.

A Little Mother’s Day Thought

Have a lovely Mother’s Day if you’re celebrating this weekend. And if you’re not… may we gently suggest booking a little creative “me time” instead? The business is currently being bank rolled by our number one guest Jennie Craven, who appears to be single-handedly attempting to book every workshop on our website. We admire the commitment.

If you fancy joining her, you can browse all our upcoming workshops here:

Larkswold Website

Have fun,

Melinda