It has been a busy week. I went to Beverley in East Yorkshire on Tuesday to a workshop run by Business Link: "Social Enterprise, is it for you?". It was an excellent event facilitated by Paul Nevin who has run successful social enterprise businesses in the past. Laura and I have been discussing the possibility of setting up a social enterprise business in Harrogate. It is a long-term plan but something we would very much like to pursue in the future. We will be sharing more about this venture shortly. In the meantime, if anyone is interested in our thoughts so far, we do have a consise business outline which we can send to you for review, feedback and suggestions. Send us an email request at ameliagreenheart@yahoo.com

I spent another brilliant day on Wednesday working at Henshaws Yorkshire in Knaresborough helping to prepare gifts to exhibit at their forthcoming Christmas Gift Fair in December. There are details of all their arts and crafts public events on their website.

Today I have been beavering away at making our new Christmas decoration bowls which should be on sale in our Etsy and Folksy shops at the beginning of next week. In the meantime we have added two new items: a large bowl entitled "Queuing for Tea in Harrogate" and a new design "Harrogate Stray in Autumn" which was inspired by walking across The Stray recently and the amazing colours of the autumn leaves.

This evening we have finally registered our web domain name. Now we have a very, really very basic web page which can be found at http://www.ameliagreenheart.co.uk/. The web pages have been created using Great British Business On-Line (GBBO). During the next few days we will be making the pages look beautiful and we will let you know when the site is looking good. For now the contact page on the site has all the basic information for getting in touch with us.

Best regards, David

One of our bowls, Night Trees and Stars (which is available in our folksy and esty shops) was featured on a very cool blog over the weekend: The Simple Melody which was very kind of them.

I will be attending a Business Link workshop tomorrow in Beverley, East Yorkshire: "Social Enterprise: is it for me?" I have been thinking about how we could incorporate a 'social enterprise' element to our business in the future and I'm hoping that this workshop will be a good starting point for considering this idea. We will keep you in touch with our plans and I will write about the workshop when I have a moment for anyone who is interested.

Our friend Linda Henderson suggested we look at a social enterprise project on the west coast of Scotland near Skye (where she lives) called Rag 'n Textile. I was very impressed with the work they are producing and will definitely keep an eye on what they are doing. Thanks Linda.

Finally we are hoping to be joining a Christmas Gift Fair at St Aidens High School in Harrogate on December 3rd. It is an evening event which should be really fun. We will post details when (if) our place there is confirmed. Best regards for now, David

We had a great day at the made-it Craft Fair in Weatherby Town Hall. Laura wasn't able to get up to Yorkshire today but she was definitely there in spirit. Mark Griffiths kindly came along to give me a hand and we are very grateful for his help. The visitors to the fair really loved Laura's Fascinators and Tie Bags and we made some good sales of those and my bowls.

We launched a new product for Christmas which we will have up on the Etsy and Folksy shops very soon (well as soon as I have replenished my stock!). The new bowls are small paper clay bowls which are designed to hang on the Christmas tree as decorations which can also hold little gifts! Look out for them, the people at the Fair seemed very pleased with them and we hope you will be too.

There were some brilliant exhibitors there with some beautiful and innovative handmade products for sale. We especially liked Skiprat Creations who make original, contemporary furniture and gifts handcrafted in Yorkshire from reclaimed or recycled materials and recommend that you take a look at their shop on Folksy. You will not be disappointed.

Our stall was next to an excellent and very creative photographer, Brian Hull who combines his love of history with a very professional and creative approach to the images he captures, so definitely check his web site Quadriform out.

Finally we would really like to thank Debbie and Kirsten who organised the craft fair for inviting us to join this one, it was a really valuable and very enjoyable experience. They are holding several more made-it Craft Fairs leading up to Christmas and you can see the details at their website.

Great news for us today. We will be exhibiting at the "made-it" Craft Fair in Weatherby Town Hall, Yorkshire this coming Saturday, 25th September. The event starts at 10am and ends at 4.30pm. We would love to meet you there. ameliagreenheart will be selling a selection of our gifts including the lovely tie-bags and fascinators made by Laura and the bowls I make.

We have also joined Twitter! I went to a Business Link "Be Inspired" Seminar last week in Doncaster. The speaker was Emma Jones. She was lovely and inspirational! A great combination. She has a website called "Enterprise Nation" which promotes homeworking and small businesses. Definitely worth a look if you are running a small business from home. Emma is very keen on social networking as a way of connecting with people who need whatever service or product you are selling. I have enjoyed twittering so far. I must admit that I have avoided it until now but actually it is such a good way to keep in touch with new ideas and share what you are doing with like-minded people. If you are interested in following ameliagreenheart on Twitter search for us via our email ameliagreenheart@yahoo.com or our name ameliagreenhart (yes spelt that way on Twitter).

I'm enjoying working at Henshaws Yorkshire in Knaresborough. I am there one day a week and learning to handmake paper with my colleague Helen. I have met some brilliant people who have given me some fantastic ideas for my own work and who make me laugh and dance and sing. What a great bonus! I would like to have a go at making paper for ameliagreenheart product labels. I was thinking it would be interesting to make it out of leaf fibre and I plan to try oak leaves first. I have been talking with our very good friend Dr Allan Hall about trying to make paper from woad leaves. When we can find a source for these we will give it a go.

On my train journey to and from Knaresborough I have been reading a very interesting book "Viral Loop: The Power of Pass-It-On" by Adam L Penenberg. It analyzes the power of 'word-of-mouth' recommendation and gives examples of the rise of some of the businesses we all use such as Google, Facebook and YouTube. I am finding it very engaging and funny sometimes. I especially like the description of how the website "Hot or Not" came about and how it became an interweb phenomenon in a very short period of time. If you haven't come across it yet where have you been?

Seriously though, it is a good read. It reminds me of the buzz I got from reading Malcom Gladwell's "The Tipping Point" and "Freakenomics" bySteven Levitt and Stephen Dubner.

We will also be exhibiting at at least two more craft fairs this year: The FLARE Artists and Makers Craft Fair at the Hotel de Ville (Town Hall) Ripley in Yorkshire on Sunday November 21st (from 11am until 4pm) and The Chapel, Cemetry Road, York on Sunday 28th November (also from 11am until 4pm).

FLARE are also holding a Craft Fair at The Tithe Barn, Church Lane, Nether Poppleton, Yorkshire on Sunday 14th November between 11am and 4pm. We are really looking forward to these events and hope to see you at them too. Best regards, David.

Hello! I've just finished listing another of David's rock pool bowls on our Etsy and Folksy pages. I love these bowls and how they capture the feeling of looking through the bottom into another world that rock pools give you as a child. There is another bowl ready to be listed tomorrow, so look out for that!

I've been busy for the last couple of days trying to work out how to make an iPad bag out of ties. It's proving to be more difficult than I had imagined, but I'm getting there slowly. I've also made a couple more regular tie-bags, which I will try and list tomorrow. Again, not enough hours in every day!

There are some more of David's bowls listed on our Etsy and Folksy sites!