Established in 2019, Wide Open Sea is a small indie publisher, making beautiful books, prints and more from our cottage in the Scottish Borders.
Our approach is collaborative, feminist and a bit maverick.
🐾 Christmas escape 🐾
The last day I’ll be posting orders is 22 December 🌟
Then there will be no despatches until 4 Jan 2022 🌙
🌲 So get your orders in today if you need them soon.
🌚 From 23 Dec the Wide Open Sea shop will be open but your order won’t be sent until the New Year. I am off on the road for a wee while!
🎄 Happy Christmas everyone 🎄
⚔️ Things are really moving with Ossian: Warrior Poet ⚔️
🪨 The last couple of months have been taken up with moving house and new jobs my end, while Eileen has worked on all the maps and coloured illustrations.
🪨 We’re now at the VERY exciting stage of sending things to print ⚔️
🪨 The last week I’ve done the typesetting for Druids, an extra little book we are giving to everyone who backed Ossian on Kickstarter, or pre-ordered a copy.
🪨 It’s an introduction to Druids ancient & modern by with black&white illustrations
🪨 Any more pre-orders before publication automatically get this gift, to thank you for your support.
🪨 link in bio or go to wideopensea.co.uk and follow shop links ⚔️
#996
If you are looking for a lovely, chatty audiobook to keep you company for a couple of hours, check out Keeping Hens, A Chatty Guide to Chickens. 🐥
Jane Furnival, her husband Andy and son Will share their years of experience keeping chickens in their back garden. Full of good advice and good humour, Keeping Hens is a great listen for complete beginners or experienced hen keepers.
"A great compact and informative manual especially useful to those thinking about starting a life in the company of hens."
- Bake Off winner and hen keeper Nancy Birtwhistle.
https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Keeping-Hens-Audiobook/B09BFPJ7CW?source_code=AUKFrDlWS02231890H6-BK-ACX0-270299&ref=acx_bty_BK_ACX0_270299_rh_uk
Check out this great listen on Audible.com. Keeping hens is easy. This friendly, chatty book gives you all the everyday information you need to keep your hens happy and safe. It covers all the questions you might have: How many hens to keep? What to feed them? What about a cockerel? Will they get .....
The first printed proof for Ossian: Warrior Poet has arrived! Always so exciting to see a 📃 word doc turn into a 💾 pdf turn into 📖 a book!
Now we check every page of the layout to make sure it's perfect for you all. Lots of post-its required.
Another old notebook discovery.
🕸 nodes of voluntary motherhood
🦚 Cover reveal 🦚
What do think of the cover for Letters From a Field Hospital?
🏥 Mabel Dearmer volunteered as an orderly in a unit of women medics in the First World War.
👩🏻⚕️ They went to Serbia to treat wounded soldiers amid a devastating typhus epidemic.
📮 Dearmer’s experience was recorded in her lively letters. But tragically, she died after two months at the camp hospital.
For this new edition, I have written a new introduction with a history of the Women’s units in the First World War, to share more stories of the woman who volunteered alongside Mabel.
Mabel is quite a character and I’m looking forward to sharing this for pre-order soon.
🐌 Top tip from Jane 🐌
A timely tip from Keeping Hens author Jane Furnival. I’ve spent months cultivating a friendship with some hedgehogs, hoping they’ll do the job with the slugs this year. 🦔🦔🦔🦔
🐔 Keeping Hens: A Chatty Guide to Chickens is full of sensible tips and advice, for embracing life with chickens.
🐥 If you are at all curious about establishing a backyard flock, this book is a great place to start.
🐓 For every copy sold direct from wideopensea.bigcartel.com we give a donation to the British Hen Welfare Trust.
Cheerful Chard
24 hour zine (a year in the making)
A little one-sheet zine on yellow paper.
3 seeds
How to sow, grow, harvest and eat this cheerful pot herb
Folds out to A4 poster
🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱
You can get one through the link in bio
🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱
🪴Char’d 🪴
I’ve wanted to start a little seed zine for like a year and I joined ’s 24 hour zine making challenge to make me get started 🌱
It was fun to paint some leaves and now I’ve put it together
🌿 every zine will come with a little seed
🌱 but what colour paper???
Now that lockdown is lifting, rescue chickens are being re-homed again! We've been sending out a few copies of Keeping Hens to new chicken owners. I hope that Jane's chatty guide will give confidence and company during the first wee while with a backyard flock. 🐥🐥🐥🐥🐥
For every copy of Keeping Hens bought direct from us, we donate to the British Hen Welfare Trust so they can keep doing their great work finding homes for rescue chickens.
https://wideopensea.bigcartel.com/product/keeping-hens
Keeping Hens: A Chatty Guide to Chickens by Jane Furnival Paperback, 134pp. ISBN 978191611482 Keeping hens is easy. This friendly, chatty book...
When I'm not making books, I make zines.
This little one-page folded zine is a direct response to the government's recent attempts to censor historical research.
Recently I was horrified by the right-wing responses to the National Trust in England’s (long overdue) work to state and explain links between slavery and property. And the Tories’ attempt to censor heritage organisations through threats of funding cuts, and malicious litigation. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/mar/11/national-trust-report-uk-slavery-links-did-not-break-charity-law-regulator-says
📑 Then the disingenuous Race Report came out last month, and it kicked me up the bum to get some stuff on paper.
So this little zine is a fold out map and information sheet, with illustrations of houses round here.
🤺 it’s a tiny kickback against the censorship of our history.
I’m sending them out at cost - here's the link if you'd like one: http://wideopensea.bigcartel.com/product/material-legacies-scottish-history-zine
🌱 Off the beaten track 🌱
🍄 I’ve been having a little look at The Unschooled Life and enjoyed rediscovering this contents page, made with the author Lizi Gambell back in 2019.
🍄 We’ll be updating the book with a new introduction, reflecting on the homeschooling experiences of the last year.
🍄 But this lil map will stay cos I love it!
🗺 Maybe I could sneak a map into every book?
🌱excited to get started! 🌱
Last year, at this time, planting seeds felt like a desperate act of hope in the looming darkness. This year I’m gonna sow a whole bunch of stuff and we’ll see what comes up...
(Though I’m really, really hoping the parsnips thrive like last year.)
Let’s go!
🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻
Who would you include in a Golden Book of Famous Women?
🌞 E F Brickdale included Joan of Arc, Catherine of Siena and Guinevere...
🌞 EFB was on the fringes of the medieval cosplay club known as the Pre-Raphaelites
🌞 and went to town on beautifully detailed illustrations of period dress.
🏵 The Wide Open Sea postcard project celebrates forgotten women illustrators with curated sets of postcards. Send them out into the world!
🏵 Shop link in bio or go to wideopensea.bigcartel.com
🦚 Spring goals 🦚
Imagine walking through a rolling green landscape like Guinevere and not sinking to your knees in mud!
🩲 spring dreams right?
This postcard is an illustration from The Golden Book of Famous Women by Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale, 1919.
They’ll be listed in the shop soon and I’ll do a wee giveaway cos these postcards deserve to fly out into the world!
🍃🍃🍃🍃🍃🍃🍃🍃
🐓 A new review for Keeping Hens:
“I’ve kept chickens for over 10 years and this was a fun and relatable read. The additions from her son Will really cement the chattiness of the text as you can almost hear the conversation between mother and son. This conversational style is so different to many other chicken keeping guides and underlines the fun element of the chicken keeper’s role and the joy that Jane clearly had in her flock.
Jane’s no-nonsense approach really resonated with me as hens are not a tidy pet and they will decimate your garden given the chance. However, the entertainment they provide and the joy to be gained from getting to know their personalities means, like Jane, you will let them away with it. It is almost impossible to keep them purely for eggs and not fall under their spell.
The book concludes with a couple of additional chapters from Jane’s husband Andy which contain a fantastic guide to building your own henhouse. I daren’t show my girls as they would be green with envy.
Overall a great read for prospective and existing chicken keepers, but a fun read for anyone. I dare you to read it and not want to join the chicken keepers’ gang.”
A perfect summary of Keeping Hens. Have you read your copy yet? What did you think?
Every copy sold from our website includes a donation to the British Hen Welfare Trust and supports our wee indie publishers 💛
🥚 link in our profile or wideopensea.bigcartel.com
Today on BBC Radio Kent just after 5pm, hear Will Tribble talk about rediscovering and finishing his mum's book "Keeping Hens".
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0922t2v
Jane Furnival's Chatty Guide to Chickens tells you everything you need to know to keep happy, healthy hens at home - and every purchase from our website includes a donation to the British Hen Welfare Trust!
Check it out here: https://wideopensea.bigcartel.com/product/keeping-hens
Keeping Hens: A Chatty Guide to Chickens by Jane Furnival Paperback, 134pp. ISBN 978191611482 Keeping hens is easy. This friendly, chatty book...
Thank you everyone who backed Ossian: Warrior Poet during our kickstarter campaign!
We cannot wait to get the book to you next year.
Now the book is certainly funded, anyone who missed out on the kickstarter will be able to pre-order Ossian: Warrior Poet from our online shop (for delivery next summer).
https://wideopensea.bigcartel.com/product/ossian
Just 8 hours to go on our kickstarter for Ossian: Warrior Poet!
It has been an epic journey so far - and we are just getting started.
We are rekindling these stories from Gaelic oral tradition; the flames were fanned by James Macpherson in the Poems of Ossian; they continued to burn through the Celtic Revival and the Romantic movement; smouldered and sparked during years of controversy; and now ignited by artist Eileen Budd, whose illustrations bring Ossian's stories to life once again for a new generation.
Check out the kickstarter here:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wideopensea/ossian-warrior-poet
A new illustrated edition of the epic tales of ancient Scotland. Rekindled for a new generation.
With only 48 hours left in our Kickstarter campaign, we introduce you to Ossian.
Ossian is the warrior poet at the heart of James Macpherson's Poems of Ossian. He is the blind bard who recounts the tales of battles past, honouring the fallen by remembering their names and deeds.
In this video, Eileen Budd introduces us to our storyteller.
https://youtu.be/kCuTzQOOcYQ
Ossian is the title character and main voice throughout Ossian: Warrior Poet.Eileen Budd has created a new illustrated edition of James Macpherson's Poems of...
Eileen Budd, the creator of Ossian: Warrior Poet, has today released the Battle Map of Alba.
The map combines her research into placenames and archaeology to locate sites of combat, homesteads, and the routes between over land and sea.
This map appears in the book, but kickstarter backers can choose this richly coloured and detailed version as an A3 print, to add to any pledge.
Thank you for the support - we have reached over 220%!!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wideopensea/ossian-warrior-poet?ref=5j4zio
The White Rose Guild hosted a blog post about Ossian: Warrior Poet this week. We wrote about how storytelling connects us to the past, and adapts to the present.
We also remind readers to question the Romans' account of the Caledonians and Picts. Recent archaeological discoveries have uncovered so much about the creative and well-connected people of ancient Scotland. The illustrations for Ossian: Warrior Poet use these new discoveries to imagine third-century Alba afresh.
https://www.thewhiteroseguild.com/ossian-warrior-poet/
Artist Eileen Budd and publisher Alice Sage from Wide Open Sea are on a mission to rekindle stories of ancient Scotland. Their new book project Ossian: Warrior Poet is live on kickstarter until 15 December 2020.
Banging the drum today as we confirm that Clanadonia will be playing at the launch of Ossian: Warrior Poet in August 2021!
https://youtu.be/ZQ_3hsCDp7k
Everyone who has chosen the book as a kickstarter reward will be invited to join our worldwide live-stream to celebrate the launch!
Get your copy before 15 Dec https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wideopensea/ossian-warrior-poet
Clanadonia going through their paces for a Commonwealth Games promo
Ossian: Warrior Poet has reached the final week of kickstarter!
⚔️There is still time to support our kickstarter campaign to rekindle these epic tales of ancient Scotland. Battles, bloodshed, betrayal and heartbreak - deeply connected to Scotland’s land and language. A new edition by
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wideopensea/ossian-warrior-poet?ref=5j4zio
🔥How does it work?
Most simply, pledge £30 to pre-order the book and we will send it to you next year when its published.
🔥On kickstarter, you can choose different levels of rewards depending on how much you pledge to the project. We have 8 levels from £1 to £5000!
🔥Everyone who chooses the book as a reward will have their name published inside and will be invited to an online launch party.
🔥There are also add-on rewards, to mix-and-match on top of your pledge. They include another copy of the book, a map print and a triskelion badge.
🔥If we make it to £10,000, everyone who has pledged £10 or more will also receive a FREE extra gift - an Illustrated Guide to Scotland’s Third Century Druids.
🖤What are the levels?
£1 - Ghost Wall
£10 - Burning Oak
£30 - Brazen Shield (this is our most popular reward - just the book, plain and simple 🖤)
£40 - Gleaming Sword
£60 - King of Spears
£75 - Fire of Loda
£300 - Meteor of Trenmor
£5000 - Spirit of C**a
🖤Thank you for the incredible support you have all given already. We’re so excited to share this book with you!
We are rekindling the epic sagas of ancient Scotland!
Join us by supporting the Kickstarter campaign for Ossian: Warrior Poet. Only a few days left!
These are epic tales of 3rd century Alba - stories of battles, of unrequited love, betrayal, tragic loss and glorious victory. Brought to life by Scottish artist Eileen Budd in meticulously detailed illustrations, hand-drawn maps and new introductions and commentaries. 🏴⚔️
We have ignited these stories - will you help us spread the flames?
Pre-order the book for £30 and choose from an awesome array of kickstarter rewards, from postcards and badges to unique personalised maps and more.
We are a Scottish indie press we appreciate every pledge - thank you for joining us on this incredible campaign! 🖤⚔️
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wideopensea/ossian-warrior-poet?ref=5j4zio
A new illustrated edition of the epic tales of ancient Scotland. Rekindled for a new generation.
The kickstarter campaign for Ossian: Warrior Poet is in the final stretches. Thank you to everybody who has pledged and helped our journey to publish the book next year.
We are SO CLOSE to our £10k stretch goal. If we reach it, all backers of £10+ will receive an extra wee publication for free 🖤⚔️
This Illustrated Guide to Scotland's Third Century Druids, will be full of drawings and research by Ossian artist Eileen Budd. It will introduce elementals, ancestors, and the rituals of ancient Scotland.
I cannot wait! You have until 15th December to back the project. Please share with anyone you think might like a book of epic battles, lyrical language and awesome illustrations.
Thanks for all the support so far! 🖤🏴
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wideopensea/ossian-warrior-poet
Made at Home
A Celebration of Creative Resilience
🌿 Just a few copies left of the special hardback edition of Made at Home
🌿 Created in spring-summer this year, this book brings together over 100 personal stories of creativity in lockdown, from cooking to drawing to making YouTube channels
🌿 In lockdown, people shifted their perspective and looked to their own environments and capacities, reflecting on the meaning of home.
🌿 All proceeds from this book go to to help people facing homelessness.
🌿 A time capsule, a souvenir, a way to remember a unique year of all our lives.
£30 including UK postage.
🎁 Free gift wrapping and message if desired.
Link to our shop in bio or go to wideopensea.bigcartel.com
💚💛💚💛💚
🎁OSSIAN for Christmas!
Are you thinking of backing our Kickstarter project as a gift for someone else?
🎁 We have designed an Ossian Christmas card that can help you!
🎁 At the end of the Kickstarter campaign, I’ll send you the card in 2 forms:
💌 a black&white PDF that you can print at home (for those that want an actual physical thing)
📧 an animated e-card that can be shared by email (for those who are keeping their distance)
⚔️ both include an original illustration by and information about the book.
⚔️ This is available at all backer levels - choose from the book by itself or add on postcards, stickers and map prints, badges and more!
🔥 and if we reach £10,000 (we are so so close) everybody will get an extra little book for free!! We will gift an illustrated guide to Scotland’s Third Century Druids to all £10+ backers!! 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
Thank you so much for all the support so far. We cannot wait to make this book and spread the flames of Ossian’s stories 🖤⚔️
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wideopensea/ossian-warrior-poet
The Borders glowing in the misty sunset.
Happy St Andrews Day 🏴
Introducing Degrena, warrior woman in Cuthullin's army.
Did you know that women fought alongside men in the armies of ancient Scotland?
Artist Eileen Budd introduces us to one of these formidable warriors in this latest video. Dagrena's story will be told in Ossian: Warrior Poet, a new illustrated edition of these sagas of ancient Scotland.
https://youtu.be/yCvjtalp0Co
Degrena in a warrior in the army of Fingal's ally Cuthullin, alongside her husband. As featured in Ossian: Warrior Poet. Rekindling Scotland's ancient sagas....
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