Yesterday we traded at one of our favourite fairs of the year, the Nottingham Bear Fair at the lovely Patchings Arts Centre. It was definately a challenge to get there, reminiscent of two years ago when we didn't in fact succeed in getting there at all. The forecast for yesterday was very mixed, some places were going to have heavy rain and others, heavy snow. Unfortunately for us to get from where we live, Cheshire, to where the fair is, Nottinghamshire, you have to get accross a rather large hump in the middle of the country known as The Pennines!! What was heavy rain at the bottom turned to heavy, (and I mean heavy!) snow on the way up. We our first two attempts were unsuccessful, at one point we were following a snow plough which helped but unfortunately he turned off (very inconsiderate I thought) and so we had to turn back again. Our third attempt was via Ashbourne and Belper which is a longer way round but not quite as high. By this time we had accepted that we were going to be late, we set off at just after 6am and two hours later hadn't progressed very far! We were determined though that we were going to get there and so we persevered through snow, rain, slush and fog!! We finally arrived at around 10.20am and our lovely loyal collectors were waiting for us so the journey was worth it and lots of Haven Bears found new homes. The rain continued off and on all day so thankfully the return journey was less stressful, although there was still a lot of snow around the roads were much better. We did pass around six vehicles abandoned in hedges and ditches so clearly some people didn't fare quite as well. Hopefully that's the end of Winter, which does seem to have lasted forever! 

The fair was very well attended considering the awful weather and everyone had a great day. We do have a couple of bears left and I have put these on the New Bears page of the Website Shop today so do have a look and learn more about them. Our next fair is a brand new event, The Berwick Bear Fair on 21st April in the lovely border town of Berwick-upon-Tweed. This is a new area for us and we are really looking forward to the visit. To learn more about it visit the Fairs Page of the Website.

I know, it's been months since I last updated the Blog, and I promised you so faithfully that I would try and do better in 2017 - so much for that!

At the start of the year we decided the time had come to move from our much loved home of almost 30 years. So we did a few jobs and then put the house up for sale at Easter, thinking that it could take some months to sell which would give us time to sort oursleves out and get rid of 30 years of clutter! Much to our suprise, the house sold almost immediately which was sort of great, except that we hadn't done the necessary clearing out and had only a few weeks in which to get rid of stuff and pack up. We found a house we loved only down the road from our beloved Delamere forest and our offer was accepted, great we thought, but it all went a bit wrong and so we have had to go ahead with the sale without having a home to go to. Mum came to the rescue and offered to put a roof over our heads until we find somewhere. Packing up all our belongings was a nightmare, you don't realise how much stuff you have accumulated until you have to fit it into cardboard boxes and a 20 foot steel container! So this summer has sort of passed in a blur of visits to the local tips, (sorry - household recycling centres!) charity shops and our storage centre. All the fur and bear making materials have been packed and come with us to Mum's and here we are, exhausted but moved!  

We will be hard at work for the next few weeks as we have a couple of big fairs coming up, The Nottingham Bear Fair on Bank Holiday Monday at Patchings Arts Centre, and Hugglets on September 10th at Kensington Town Hall, London. As soon as we can we will be doing a Newsletter and putting new bears and our exciting new Haven Hares, onto the Website so do visit again and see who is new.

Please note our new telephone number is: 07948 200031, our email address has not changed.