Back to the workshop - Happy 2024!

It's back to the workshop for us on this bitterly cold January day. I've spent the morning catching up on admin - it's been lovely to receive so many emails from customers delighted with the weathervanes they have been given for Christmas, and we especially love seeing photos of the ones that are up already! For us the end of last year was really busy - much more so than last year which is great. We did a fair few bespoke designs which added to the challenge, and I had a mad rush of last minute gilding towards the end which was a struggle as it is very labour intensive. As  well as gilding lots of letters, I did a whole Hare, which looked fantastic and I really hope we get a photo from that customer! Gilding a small celtic arrow was the trickiest bit as they are so intricate. Still though, once all of our parcels were out, we managed a full two weeks off work with our very over excited 3 year old twins which was lovely but chaotic. Glad to be getting back to normality today!

We have a few weathervanes to produce that were ordered too late to deliver before Christmas where we sent vouchers out instead, and also a few fixings that need swapping over where the poles were not long enough for example, so this it what we'll be doing the rest of the week. I'll also be looking through our file of entries for the best Black Fox product photo of 2023 & announcing the winner next week!

One of my favourite bespoke weathervanes we produced during the Christmas rush is shown below, and is based on Alice in Wonderland. It features a scene imagined from the mad hatter's tea party, with a pocket watch design cut into the tail, as this would have been too small to be noticed if kept as a part of the main design on the sail. I love how the design stands out against the snow covered ground and pale blue winter sky!

The snowdrops have started appearing in our garden, so when I am TIG welding stood on a block of wood to keep my feet off the heat sink that is the workshop floor, I'll be very much looking forward to Spring around the corner.