News Bulletins to end of September 2000
30th September 2000
It has been almost two months since I last updated the web site. We have had a busy summer with several new bears (Bon-bon, Cadarn, Douglas, Hetty, Jed and Rufus) and some sold out editions (Douglas, Crème Brûlé, Wee Jock, Albert and Hetty). Some of the new bears sold before they were finished. Maria was frantically trying to finish them while the new owners waited, and then joined in the singing of Happy Birthday as the bears received their ribbons and tags.
Maria passed her A-Level Art & Crafts, she got a grade 'B' (only 5 marks from an 'A'). She is now going on to do an advanced GNVQ in Art.
The Bear Fair (28th August) went well and a number of bears left to start life with their new owners. We are looking forward to the next fair on Sunday 5th November.
On the 30th August Patchings was visited
by the BBC East Midlands Today team to film a short section on water colour
painting. This was shown two days later. Sara Blizzard (the weather girl) bought
Hetty whilst she was filming. Click
here for a picture of Sara with Hetty
Maria has another commission for a pair of wedding bears (Kate &Lorne) and we went up to Edinburgh on the 17th September (with Lorne) to buy tartan ribbon to make a kilt. Lorne had a wonderful time as we walked around the Royal Mile, he made a special point of looking in all the shops to see if he could find a tartan he liked. Click here to see the finished Kate and Lorne.
Last week Maria, with beadwork from Claire, finished Running Bear a one off special bear based upon photographs of native Americans. Running Bear is not for sale, however Maria will take commissions for similar bears.
8th August 2000
Both
Croeso and Chi-chi
have sold out. We also have a new bear called Crème
Brûlé.
Maria has been commissioned to produce a Bride and Groom pair of bears. We hope you like the result:
27th July 2000
Dylon, a furry rabbit, and An-An, a mid sized panda, had their birthdays yesterday. They are most welcome to our hug.
23rd July 2000
Lola was added to our hug. She is a unusual design and looks great lying down with her head in her paws.
21 July 2000
Neville has sold out, we apologise to all of you who missed out. Tyke and Cherry Dumpling added to the range.
27th June 2000
Kumquat and Neville are added to our hug.
15th - 25th June 2000
We
decided to support Action
Research's "Bring your bear" event
this year. So Maria donated one of her bears, Custard,
who we are raffling with all proceeds going to the appeal.The draw was performed on Sunday 25th June.
The winning ticket is White 142. The winner is a Mrs Barrett.
Next year Maria says that she will design a special bear for the appeal.
15th - 18th June 2000 Patchings Convention
Immediately before the convention (Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday) a new door was installed at the Farmhouse, this left lots of brick dust etc around - we had moved the bears out before hand but there was still quite a cleaning job to do. We finished getting ready for the convention just as the first people arrived.
We had a successful convention at Patchings, Claire visited the bear workshop for the four days and sold lots of her bead work. The weather was very hot but we were lucky as the Farmhouse stayed nice and cool.
Three bear editions sell out:- Ivan, Cariad and Seal - Seal was an edition of two and never even made it onto the web site before selling out. Chi-chi one of our pandas also sold well, there are only a few left from an initial edition of ten.
