Spring has most definitely Sprung!

Yesterday I ventured to Brixton whereupon I discovered the Crafty Fox Market. BTW I'm not currently doing any markets, I'm working on building up my range, sorting out my website and selling outlets. Christmas burnt me out and it's no longer wool season, but I'm still making and selling, just not at the constant pre-Christmas rate.

I'm starting to love going to these events and seeing faces I've met from previous craft fairs (and the Knitting and Stitching show). Zeena Shah of HeartZeena is doing tonnes of workshops people can get involved with. James Ward of Jimbobart (click the plate) has started selling prints (wicked wicked), so I'm now the proud owner of this crafty fox. Beautiful! Forgotten Stitches, who also won a place at the Knitting and Stitching show last year, has extended her range with bigger deers and more brooches.

Other things:

I've been looking at past notebooks and sketchbooks, partly to throw stuff out, and to see if there were any ideas I'd missed. I found what is best described as an externalised inner dialogue from before I came up with the biscuits. You can click on it if you want to read it.

The Miro exhibition at the Tate is dense and rather wonderful. In particular I was fond of the "moustache picture" (can't remember the real name :-/ ) in the second room with the gridlines showing. I found his roughshod-vs-meticulously neat approach both bloody minded and brilliant.

If you haven't, check out www.petehindle.com , he's a creative type with some interesting insights. And a completely different blog www.katielovesthis.com/ lists weird and wonderful designs from the good people of internet.

I also made a quite lovely cardigan, photos when I find the charger.

FIVE GOLD RINGS

Last night I took a little time out to go to my Dad's Christmas Concert (Bromley Concert Band). It was super christmassy with jingle bell medleys and some carols to boot. We've got a lovely christmas tree and the winter foliage is coming in to adorn the house.

I've been so rushed off my feet that I failed to address the "you must order by now to get it for Christmas" issue. 

Here's the drill:

Order before Tuesday 14th December for postal orders and Greenwich market collections

Order before Friday 17th December if you live locally and can collect from Beckenham

I will also put up a list of things I have in stock that I can mail out before on/before Friday 17th December

If you are local to Beckenham, send me an email or phone me about coming to my Christmas pressie party on Wednesday 16th December

Merry Christmas, kids

ps. if you haven't been following Roz Inetts Advent Drawings, i suggest you make that your next internet stop

New Accessories Sections & Some Up Coming Events

First off - Thanks to everyone who found me at Bust Craftacular, and to the organisers. It was a jolly event which had my sister grooving along to tunes and smiling at customers for me (ta Sheils). 

Secondly - I've finally got the accessories section up. More accessories and colourways to come!

Thirdly - Events (woop)

LONDON

Find ME at Greenwich Market on Saturdays, weather permitting. I am still planning on coming tomorrow (brrrr), I will tweet if unable to come (twitter feed to the right)

Jaina of Polka Dot Sundays won a stall alongside mine at the K&S show, and makes quirky colourful animals out of paper and tape - bringing the process to something of a fine art. Find her and other crafty delights this weekend at 

We Make London

when: SATURDAY 4th December 2010 11.00am- 5pm

where: Chelsea Town Hall,
Kings Road, London, SW3 5EE

If you can't make it to Chelsea because of the snow, why not have a look at her etsy store instead? I love, love, love the Christmassy birds 

BRISTOL

Kate Hindley graduated from Falmouth the same year as me and we happened to both be at bust craftacular last weekend. She's making all sorts in the way of print with mini poster prints, cards and badges and even a postcard book collaboration.  She'll be at Start the Bus from 10th Dec in Bristol, deets here

BRIGHTON

Emilythepemily is as delightfully mischievous as her name suggests. Find her at the Assembly Rooms this weekend

I'm off to make some stuff for tomorrow. If you've made an order recently and it's for slippers or booties, I'm waiting for the rubber grip stuff to arrive as i ran out last week.

PS despite ruining travel plans and causing there to be no post (yeah i know, right? postie's going to break his back with all my parcels building up this week), the snow's quite pretty, eh?

ready to trans-mitt

Grey/ Blue Snowflake

In German, the word for gloves translates literally as hand-shoes (Handschuhe). This feels appropriate for my handslippers - the fingerless mittens. I love gloves and I like mittens too, but I'm constantly taking them off and dislike having a system for putting my coat on.

Pink/Red "I heart Robots" with bike

The design process was slower than I'd like but I'm happy with the result. I came from making full mittens and semi felting them, which creates a slightly less warm but more flexible fabric - important if you are wearing all-encompassing mittens but less so if the design creates its own wriggle room. There's elastic round the cuff (not tight, it's not going to create a sorry imprint everytime you wear them, just enough so it doesn't stretch out of shape) and some around the top too, and a contrasting gusset, call it off-kilter if you like, I just think it looks more interesting.

Yellow Polka Dot (Grey contrast) with Louise Doherty Toaster mug. 

 Okay I got a bit carried away trying to get a good picture of this mug. Louise Doherty's robots, astronauts, toasters and other flights of illustrated fancy are simultaneously comic and stylish. I want her to design a t shirt! She doesn't have a website, not yet anyway.

White/ Green Graph Paper with contrasting Brown trimming, and Purse.doc

 Mittens.doc My office at work is freezing, so I do end up working in gloves sometimes

 Which picture should I use? I want to print one off to display on my market stall

Also Makers online gave me a little feature :-)

Busy day

Now that H & A have sent their wedding invites out and all the guests have received them and admired them, I can blog about them!

All three of us harbour elements of geek, and a love of the tv show The IT crowd. We wanted to incorporate elements of that without alienating the less computer literate of our guests (not sacrifice aesthetic for nerddom).

The design mimics the Windows 3.0 browser windows with some artistic license harnessed to set the font as the readable-but-fixed-type-font Consolas.

I used a the same box for the details, but changed the browser heading to "Invitation Information"/ "Evening Invitation".

I created a dialog box for the reply slips. I think this bit might be the coolest bit, I love the OK button! Technically I created the image separately then incorporated it into a mail merge (the bride is very organised).

Tah Dah!

Knitting and Stitching

I was selected by Craft Guerrilla to exhibit at the Knitting and Stitching show at Alexandra Palace last week

They're led by a lovely trio of (rather glamorous) ladies who make stuff. They are based in Walthamstow and lead crafty evenings. Their manifesto can be read here. I hope to hang out with them again at one of their craft fairs.

The event was exciting, massive and incredibly tiring. I am so pleased that I exhibited alongside 5 other lovely crafters.

Ariane of Peppermint Twist is a member of the Craft Guerrilla and makes patterned bags and purses. She sold so many she ran out of paper bags to put them in! 

Forgotten Stitches by Rebekah boasts a selection of meticulous embroidery inspired by the 40s and 50s and often featuring vintage fabrics.


Off for some tea. Will fill you in later xx
 

6 fest, more things and knitting and stitching

In the build up to the knitting and stitching show, I got my new feather cushions online. I'm loving the pink and red for the robots, and I'm thinking it might make a good colourway for the slippers too. I've had requests for girlier slippers and would love to grant them.

The Knitting and Stitching show was mad, I'm still recovering! In the course of it, I met too many crafters to mention in a skim through list, hopefully in time I can mention them all. Lauren of Stitch London (formerly Stitch and Bitch London, one can only assume they ran out of things to bitch about and just concentrated on the craft in hand), who said some lovely things about my work here.

I'm mulling over the idea of creating some knitting patterns, hopefully not too complex, which is tricky, as a lot of my processes are a bit complicated, for example, the stuffing of the digestive is a very delicate procedure which I often have to do twice. Small knitted biscuits are ten to the dozen out there, so scaling it down is not an appealing option either.

For the record, I'm blogging more personal (but not too personal) entries here and I'm aiming to update in a more official format on my news section. That said I've bought the stuff they use for slipper socks to put on the soles of my booties & slippers, so they'll be suitable for the running children and unsteady old folks.

In other news.

My nephew can officially say my name and said "Happy Birthday Sarah" to me over the webcam. He didn't say "belated" but he did get out the blanket I made for him when he was born and sat with it on his lap running toy cars over it. It is nice to see him enjoy something I made for him and I'm really glad it's part of his everyday life, as opposed to sitting in a cupboard as a keepsake.

I managed to find time to go to 6 fest. It was awesome, and definitely a reason for being on twitter! Highlights included: Metronomy (cool), Sweet Babou (indie), Adam Buxton (hilarious), Modified Toy Orchestra (edgy) and the Jim Jones Revue (loud). Modified Toy Orchestra piqued my interest in particular. The clue is in the name, but more so than you'd think. They don't use synthesisers, just the sound the toys make, amplified. I think it's more complicated than that, the sound is darker, more beautiful and less "quirky" than you'd think. Check them out:

Black Star (Live Hong Kong) from Modified Toy Orchestra on Vimeo.

Joseph Mount of Metronomy described the even as looking like a disaster shelter, referring I think to the diversity in the crowd, or maybe the fact that we looked like we'd just walked in off the street. Anyway the atmosphere was fabulous and wholly joyous at saving 6 music, which was a wonderful boost in my otherwise relentless mission for the show.

Goodnight Friends