We're lucky enough to live in a wonderful village, perched up in the Chiltern Hills in Buckinghamshire, north west of London. It's an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and we are surrounded on 3 sides by woods and the rolling hills of the ancient Ridgeway as it snakes it's way south along the chalk downland.
Wendover is a busy village with a pretty High Street. If you look up above the shop fronts you see wonderful buildings from the timber framed pubs to perfectly symetrical Georgian houses. We get to look down on the busy High Street from The PlainStitch Workroom, up on the first floor of a lovely Georgian townhouse. We see friends and family coming and going along the high street, popping into the post office, walking up to the weekly Thursday market.
We love Wendover. We think it's a special place. We like to shop local and believe that it's important. We're really proud to show you some of our recent local collaborations.
Eleanor lives in Wendover. She and her husband Paul keep bees in their garden. We use lots of Beeswax at The Workroom as a thread conditioner to stop threads twisting and knotting when we hand sew. We asked Eleanor if she would supply us with Beeswax. She was delighted to and now you can buy her perfect little nuggets of golden beeswax in a fabric pouch at The Workroom. They look fab ( a lovely gift for a sewing friend) but best of all they smell divine! A mixture of honey and warm summer - I promise you this little beeswax will conjure up summer for you in the middle of next winter - if that's not worth £4 I don't know what is! Come and have a sniff for yourselves before we sell out.
We also have a limited supply of their lovely honey - look at the colour of it - we won't have it for long so if you fancy a jar ( local honey is also brilliant for hayfever sufferers btw) do pop in and get one before they go. Check out their facebook page to see the honey being made.
Our other lovely local collaboration has been in hot demand today at our Granny Bag class. If you've been reading the blog you'll know that recently I was seized by a strong conviction that I HAD to have an old fashioned clackety-clack handled craft bag like my Nana used to keep her knitting in. Despite an extensive charity shop search no such thing could be found. I decided to make my own - but I couldn't find a wooden handle that made that magical comforting clack.
Bob lives in Wendover, in fact he's the Chairman of the Parish Council. He has a workshop in his garden where he makes wooden ornaments and puzzles and toys with his company Wendover Wood. We asked him if he could make us a modern sleek scandi inspired pale wood handle. He said he could and 45 mins later he popped back in to the Workroom with the first prototype. We loved it, and so do our customers. In my next blog post i'll be sharing the 15 or so fabulous Granny Bags that we made in the last 2 days. We'll be running another class on Thurs 11th Sept 10am so if you'd like to come along and make a modern vintage craft bag drop us a note as this class sold out in a week this time around.
If you're reading this blog from far and wide do check out our village website online here to explore our lovely area more - well worth a 40min direct train journey out of London if you're visiting the capital x
