Busy Bees

Amanda and I have been as busy as this little bee which was in the garden today.
The week started with a trip to collect our cushion inserts from the manufacturer.
Amanda discovered the company right here in Perth after she had made online contact with what seemed like every cushion insert maker in mainland China and, even more importantly and amazingly, they are cheaper than those from China. We are now so thankful that we didn’t order from China because our minimum order would have been 1,000! As it is, we have ordered 150 and we are overwhelmed by the work ahead of us to cover all these inserts. Not to mention the space they take up. My car will be parked in the driveway for months to come.
We collected these three huge bags in the morning in a borrowed van and in the afternoon had to go back for another bag full, but as the van had been returned by then we had to take the car. The red fuel light was showing as we left, but as we had only a short amount of time to get there before the factory closed and as I knew that my extremely organised husband kept a small container of petrol in the boot, we decided to push ahead. Big mistake! We were on the freeway when the car started shuddering and died. Not to worry I said to Mandy, we will just top up the tank. Yes, you guessed it – no petrol in the boot. John had removed it a few days before to make room for chairs etc which we had taken on a picnic. A frantic call to the RAC and twenty minutes later they arrived with the precious fuel. We had expected to wait up to an hour for them to arrive so were very lucky. Although we arrived at the factory after closing time, it was still open. It took three men to stuff this giant slug into the back seat - one pulling and two pushing, by which time Mandy and I were hysterical with laughter.
When we arrived home Mandy pushed and I pulled and the car finally gave birth.
In addition to all this we have visited a printer to discuss the printing of our business cards, finalised the artwork for our labels, got sidetracked by the new Amy Butler Lotus fabrics which we love and, biggest breakthrough of all, have talked to a screenprinter about producing our own range of fabrics. This is now a definite possibility as Janet, Mandy’s sister-in-law, and an extremely talented designer, has agreed to join us. It is all very exciting, but we have been so busy with all this that very little time has been spent actually producing anything. This will have to change in the coming days and the steam will really be rising from the sweat shop as high temperatures are predicted.