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From London I headed north to Lancashire, to spend two days at the studio of our wallpaper printers. They have recently invested in new digital printing machinery - a significant and exciting development - but one that brought with it an exacting piece of work: the recalibration of every single one of our wallpaper colourways, to ensure that what comes off the new machine matches precisely what came off the old, and matches in turn the samples that specifiers and designers have been working from.

It is a painstaking undertaking.  Some colourways come right almost immediately - a strike-off or two and you're there. Others require endless rounds of adjustment, infinitesimal shifts in tone, density, warmth. And what strikes you, standing in the studio watching it happen, is how a tiny difference can change everything. A fraction of a degree in a colour, and a whole room - as it will eventually be hung - looks entirely different. Ultimately, there is no shortcut to this: it comes down to my eye, and so I have to be present at every stage of the process. No one else can sign it off. It is this kind of invisible, obsessive precision that sits behind every roll that leaves the printer, and it is why being in that studio for two days matters as much as anything else I do.

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Then down to Gloucestershire for the first of this year's LineUp interiors networking events. We were at Chavenage House - that extraordinary Elizabethan manor familiar to many as a location for both Poldark and, more recently, Rivals - and it was, as these days always are, quite wonderful.

The format is beautifully simple. Our showroom partner brands, along with a number of friends of LineUp, each take a six-foot table and lay out their collections - new designs, new launches, the things they're most excited about. The event runs from ten until four, invitation-only, for interior designers across the west of England. There is delicious homemade food, the kind of unhurried conversation that a long day allows, and a room full of people who genuinely love what they do. For meeting new designers, reconnecting with those we've worked with for years, and for our brands to show their work in a setting that does it justice — there is really nothing quite like it. We came home tired and very happy.

If you'd like to make sure you're on our mailing list for future LineUp networking events do email us. 

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And finally back to Scotland and a weekend on the west coast with family, up from the South.  A celebratory birthday lunch at the Crinan Hotel - pure Agatha Christie - and walks by the wild coast.  This place is everything to me - the sea, the quiet, and just enough distance from everything to remember why you do it all.

Much love