howies®

September has only just began and…

the car parks are empty

the beaches are quiet

there are no queues in the supermarket or coffee shop

the mornings are clear & crisp

the berries are bursting out of the hedgerows

the evenings are drawing in

there’s a nip in the air before the sun goes down

jumpers are coming out of storage for snuggling into

there’s some surf on its way

hurray hurray hurray I love september

Yesterday I set out with a car full of spring summer 2011 womens collection set for Jo’s place near Brechfa.

I met up with Geraint at the dodgy car park on the way and follwed the GPS.

However I had made a bit of a mistake in true Mel style and set the GPS up slightly wrong and we almost ended up in Swansea (we were too busy talking  about clothes and stuff), so we turned around and headed back the way we came before turning off into the Brechfa forest.

The rain poored and the view was white, untill we got to the smaller lanes winding in and out of the valleys, then we we could see bits of mist drifting through the hills.

The roads got smaller and smaller until we went past the post office and up the hill I had seen on the google satellite view, we dropped down the hill, through the ford and up to Jos’ studio which is most definitely out in the wilderness..

We poked and proded clothes into the right shape for hours and when we popped out for lunch we met the dogs.

They took a shine to Gerait and jumped all over him, luckily or unluckily he was wearing a howies hoody (don’t tell Lisa) which got covered in mud.

Here are the lovely chocolate Labs, they watched us untill the evening when we finished and the sun was shining for the journey home.

Thanks to Jo for coffee, good music, lots of dog talk and your expertise in shooting clothes.

Here’ s Neil Stuke, from Celebrity Masterchef sporting our Fredrik shirt from last winter and our classic howies t-shirt.

Watch it again here on iplayer http://bbc.co.uk/i/tfcz2/

There are a lot of companies that make clothes out there.

Now I live in Cardigan Bay it can be quite overwhelming visiting shopping and town centers, there is so much choice, so how do you choose?

Why we do what we do, is at the heart of howies, we don’t just make clothes.

Here’s some why we do’s:

We are passionate about our doing our sports

We want clothes to suit our lifestyle of being outdoors, getting hot, cold, wet and exhausted

We  beleive in not spreading our cotton with chemical spray to keep the bugs off when there are friendlier methods available

We believe in not using petrochemicals for base layers when there is a sustainable alternative which works better and doesn’t smell

We beleive in making better quality products so they are not thrown away in a few weeks, they are treasured for years to come instead

We make local wherever possible

We use natral trims and fastenings wherever possible

We love nature and watching the seasons change

We like to wear our denim in and make our own history

We like stuff which works

We love tea made in the pot, with cake

We like telling stories about our clothes

We like going for a run, ride, swim at lunch time

We like telling stories about our adventures

This morning I came into the office and had an email about Nick Hand who has helped howies with numerous things, he’s worked on our catalogues and taken hundreds of amazing photos and is generally a great guy.

Anyway last year he cycled around the coast of Britain taking photos, meeting artisans around the coast and making sound slides about them, well Nick is now off to carry on the journey around the coast of Ireland.

He starts next Tuesday from Belfast and again he will be raising money for Parkinson’s disease society, so far he’s raised over £6,000 and he’s hoping to double that over the next couple of months.

You can donate here http://www.justgiving.com/nickhand

You can follow him here http://www.slowcoast.co.uk , the site will be updated this week with the Ireland route so you can track him and you can see his blogs here http://nickhand.typepad.com/

Good luck Nick and have a great journey, I for one am looking forward to seeing new photos and hearing about how you get on along the way.

Take care, from everyone from howies

We have just invested in a bread maker and it has been a life changing event.

I will never buy bread from the supermarket again.

I have been told about them sooo many times and we have now finally got one.

It was so easy and quick to make and tastes amazing.

And you can’t beat a sneaky slice of the crust with butter, as soon as it comes out of the oven.

Last weekend, when some of us were racing around Ramsey Island in rowing boats, a couple of friends of ours were not to far away kayaking near Ramsey and a near by group of Islands called ‘the Bishops and Clerks’.

I have kayaked there once when the weather suddenly changed and the breeze turned into a force 6 gale and I didn’t think I would ever want to go back.

However in this video it really does look beautiful, so I must go out there again sometime.

Great vid and Music Tom and Lou, looks like you had a great day and it’s what summer in Pembrokeshire is all about.

A trip to the bishops & Clerks

Every year for the last 5, Porthgain rowing club have created a race for pilot gigs, long boats and any other craft willing to negotiate the challenging course around Ramsey Island off the coast of St Davids, Pembrokeshire.

I have rowed it with the girls nearly every year, but this year I wasn’t in the team who had been training together so I didn’t think i would get to row. But then one rower could not make the event so I volunteered to stand in their place. At the time of offering I didn’t realise they had a hope of winning this year, then I got a bit worried to say the least as I had not been in a boat for over a year.

With only a few weeks untill the race I only managed to get in a half hour row to see if I could do that, then an hour row which I managed to do and then a final half hour sitting in a new position, a slight technique change and double checking seating position was comfortable in the boat we were racing in.

On saturday we were all nervous, but this turned to excitement as more and more boats turned up on the beach, in the end there were 21 boats competing which was the most we had ever seen, the weather was fantastic, even with a fairly strong breeze it was welcomed to cool us off in the blazing sun.

We started the race at 3 o clock, keeping it a steady pace untill we got a third of the way around to the most critical part of the race where we have to go single file through a gap in the cliffs called the tooth. By that point we had put in a huge effort and just managed to overtake the leading ladies crew and then we managed to sustain it after the tooth. Thanks to the fantastic coxing of  Tom, taking great lines around the cliffs we managed to put more and more boat lengths between the two ladies boats.

Before we knew it we were leaving Ramsey Island and were heading back to Whitesands beach, where we put in another effort to take a mixed crew just before the finish line making us the winning ladies crew on the day, 9th overall and in a time of 1 hour and 14 minutes.

We were all very happy and proud we’d finally had a win after 5 years of trying. We all got trophies, had quiche and beer on the beach and then headed off to the Celiedh for more merryment and celebrating.

My trophy

It was an early night last night as Ade mentioned, due to the paddle into work this morning.

I was up at 5am trying to sqeeze my kayak in the car, then off up to misty cardigan.

We met at the bridge, unloaded and got on the water. It was pretty shallow to start,we got to a rapid and we were all good doing cheesy grins for the camera, until Tidy and Ade found that rock and then it got a bit wet. Luckily Ade got out in  time and saved his camera, shouted “don’t panic!”, I fished out flip flops and Scottie helped empty the canoe. We met up with Kim and Ruben on the way down.

We saw herons, kingfishers, a buzzard but no otters today.

Here are some photos, it was gorgeous, we have to do it again soon.

Talking of books its Hay festival this week coming, if you’re off to Hay, have fun in the sun, if you want to know more have a look what’s going on on their site.

http://www.hayfestival.com

Lots of inspiring thing to see including the amazing Laura Marling, she’s playing tonight, if you’re going to see her have a great time.

If you don’t know about Laura check her out on her website, watch her videos, they’re gorgeous.

http://www.lauramarling.com