News from L&F

GO TO WORK ON A VASE
Have you seen our new Vases?  Oh my life.  We’re pairing them with the bang on trendy faux foliage that seems to be all the rage – and we do see why.  We had a great time finding these lovelies...
IT'S ALL OVER
THANK YOU, to everyone who sundanced last week!  What a cracking afternoon we had: the sun may not have been dangerously hot, but it didn’t pour – which, this year, is a definite win.  Businesses sold stock, people ate and...
ON, ON
The leaves are falling at L&F HQ, and nothing makes us feel more autumnal.  Except perhaps our divine little felt pumpkins, which we’re doing again this year in homage to our own homegrown offerings: if you could only see the...
SUN DANCER REQUIRED
Don’t anyone mention it, but the weather tomorrow is kind of important to us.  We don’t ask much – we don’t want grilling heat and glorious blue and gold, nice though those would be.  We’d just like no rain please,...
THE FINAL COUNTDOWN
No, not to Christmas – to the inaugural Late Summer Fair, here at L&F HQ.  The excitement is definitely building as we prepare to host 15 stalls of local businesses in a final flurry of buying and selling before we...
KEEP DRY AND CARRY ON!
Well, it has been an epically wet month in Argyll.  We and the land are truly and biblically, spectacularly sodden – from where we are, right on the edge of a sea loch, you see the next belt of rain...
IT’S ALL JUST NUMBERS…
The eagle eyed among you will have spotted that we have just had the second of our August birthdays.  Mr I is … well, a year older than he was around now last year – and he put a very...
UH OH...
And here we go again.  August: the most expensive and fattening birthday month of the year here at L&F.  Three male birthdays to be squeezed in, all (rather satisfyingly) on multiples of 5.  The fifth, tenth, and twenty-fifth to be...
STOCKTAKE TAKEN
Since last we spoke, dear Reader, the deed has been done.  Our automated inventory has been tested and not found wanting, which is both a relief and a slight disappointment: it’s always fun to find fault.  As I moved boxes,...
AND NOW WHAT?!
Well, what a torrid time we all seem to be having.  Bizarre weather, Wimbledon drawing to a close, the little matter of a footie match tomorrow I gather – oh, and there was an election a couple of weeks ago,...
TENNIS TIME
I should tell you, I am an awesome tennis player.  (That simply isn’t true, and never was.  Even before my arthritic shoulders gave up.)  In my heyday however I had a backhand to fear – I certainly did: it was...
ALREADY?!
It’s nearing the end of June, so of course our thoughts turn to … Christmas.  If you feel that the whole world is Christmas mad, and you think it starts too early, my only words of advice to you would...
MOVING ON...
‘June just rains and never stops’ – so sang the wonderful Flanders & Swann a million years ago before we knew anything about climate change.  Well, they may have had a point, and I’ve long thought that the wonderful Wimbledon...
AN OFFICIAL APOLOGY
Ladies and Gentlemen, it’s all my fault.  I can only apologise, most sincerely, for the truly awful weather: I take full responsibility.  Not only did I foolishly buy more clothes pegs two weeks ago to enable me to hang out...
IAN THE PAINT
Ian the Excellent Painter has been again.  L&F HQ is a bit like the Forth Road Bridge before they invented a self-restoring paint, or whatever they did.  No sooner has he finished than he has to start again – and...
GARDENER'S WORLD
It’s too easy to be distracted into it from L&F business and Isobel is patience personified (except when she isn’t, which is when it gets scary).  
POLLY’S LOVELY LEMONY MUFFINS
Right.  That’s it.  It’s properly May now, and as believers in the power of positive thought, we are determined that the rain has finished: enough.  And to celebrate?  Well CAKE, obviously.  Or in this instance, cakey muffins – we find...
KEEPING IT SIMPLE
May in the L&F HQ garden is just about the most beautiful month.  It’s not yet the fully greened-up, thick and heavy garden of June and July ...
AND THEY SAID IT WOULDN'T LAST...
We’re nothing if not consistent here at L&F.  I’m writing this from the wilds of Argyll, looking out at wind and waves and SUN – yes, real actual sun in a blowy sky that’s blue and white and really exactly...
FAIR ENOUGH
And incredibly, it’s that time of year again.  We’re booked in to four HUGE ones this year, and paid up and hugely excited – we’re restocking and planning and all systems are very definitely, officially, ‘Go’.  (As if they weren’t...
OH REEELLY?!
We’re trying to be very on point, and are steeling ourselves to make some reels.  To waft about in front of a camera goes right against the grain, but those who know say it must be done, and we have...