Archive for November, 2008

tired now!

Sunday, November 30th, 2008

Today is Williams birthday, and it went well, could have done better, maybe if the woman at Pizza Express had been more helpful, but maybe another time for that small rant!

But this evening after their bedtime I have updated the shop!

Oh yes, I have added 50 corsages! Feel slightly tired now!
The ones above are a new range, aimed at little girls, or anyone young at heart! And! There is a special offer running on them!!!
There are normally $4.50 each, but you can get two for $8, or five for $20!!! Go take a peep and see you what you think : )

Also many of my ‘normal’ handmade felt corsages, all featuring lovely freshwater pearls in the middle of each merino and silk flower.

So go take a look, and remember those postal dates, the are all in the shop too!

found some!

Wednesday, November 26th, 2008

phew!

I suddenly found some inspiration last night, as this was a birthday gift to be given today! So not only did I find the idea, I managed to finish it, yay!

Going to be finishing off my back-tack swap : ) I won’t be able to show you anything until Amanda has received it!

But I hope I will be able to show you other stuff as well, if I can get my head round it all!!

inspiration

Tuesday, November 25th, 2008

sometimes it is there is front of your eyes, jabbing you with a pointy finger, and you can see it immediately, and then other times you have to search and search, and search some more, it is like that right now…..

…..I need it now : (

week/weak

Monday, November 24th, 2008

Yes, it is a week, and maybe I’m weak, certainly weak-willed, too many bad things have passed my lips this week, and my gut is swelling at an alarming rate, food is not a great thing for me : ( And, I have to make mincemeat and Christmas Cake soon!

But anyway, who wants to hear about my gut, I don’t!

So a week has passed, sold lots of corsages, done another fair, Baggy has had his stitches out and I’ve been busy doing ’stuff’, you know what I mean ’stuff’ that ’stuff’ that fills up your time and you have not much to show for it!

Lets start at the beginning, another week, another fair, last weeks was at Western Primary School in Winchester,

It was very successful, sold 13 corsages, and a framed piece of felt art, hurrah!

But it was a little odd, the people around me didn’t seem to be doing that much selling, and they were re-sellers on the whole, and one lady did comment very loudly to me how nice it was to buy handmade items! She did say it very LOUDLY! And I just smiled : )

So that went well, and so more got wiped off the Etsy shop, and I have now made some more, which I will try to list prior to Friday when I have another fair, at Williams school!
This could be great, or awful, I think, very difficult to judge how it will go it is straight after school for almost 2 hours, so the first 30 minutes could be manic, and then silence!
Also it will be interesting as this will show me in a very different light to most of the parents, most of them know me as the mother with the two ‘difficult’ boys, and now they will see me differently maybe?

Onto Baggy, well he has been discharged from the care of the Vets!!!

Not the greatest of photos, but all his stitches are now out, and we are only putting the collar on him when we are all out, or at night. Also he can now go outside, but I think I will wait and see if we are going to have a slightly drier day this week. I am worried about letting him out, and he will not be allowed out after dark to start off with.

So fingers crossed he is now sorted!

I will leave you with this,

This is me, as drawn by William as ‘Craft Liberty’ which is the craft version of the Statue of Liberty, that is not a cocktail in my hand, as I first thought, no, it is my ‘torch’! But mine is made of a pair of scissors and a pencil!

Have fun, and I’ll try not to leave it a week this time!

cor blimey guv

Sunday, November 16th, 2008

what a load of those fancy flowers you got there!

Actually I’m about as cockney as Dick Van Dyke! But there are an awful lot of corsages now in the shop,

There are 32 new ones in total, I guess I owe John a big kiss for photographing them all : )

Of course it is now Sunday, but I haven’t gone to bed yet, so I will say that today (Saturday) has been pretty good, kept the boys from fighting for 90% of the day, William helped me with ‘chores’ rewards were a choccies and a jaffa cake, with a £1 at the end of the day. I think he is beginning to understand how it is not pleasant to deal with some of his pants, as he didn’t want to pick them up either!!

Anyway, I hope you like the corsages, the shop will shut on Tuesday for 24 hours as I have another fair, and at that one I do tend to sell mainly corsages, so if you see one now you like, I would buy it now rather than waiting!

itchy

Wednesday, November 12th, 2008

yep, itching created more stuff with Baggy on Monday, but I will come to that in a moment!

Last night I had the ‘Christmas Shopping Evening’ at St Pauls Church in Winchester, and to say it was different to the one in Oxford is a slight understatement!

There were at a maximum 20 tables, and at least half or maybe a bit more were ‘resellers’, now I’m not slating them, just explaining! The rest were people like myself who make, create handmade items, so it should have been a nice evening in a really lovely location, but no.

If anybody reading this ever is going to organise an event such as this, these are my suggestions;

Advertise!!! Stall holders do not expect to sell to one another all evening, they like to have proper customers!

Price the tables accordingly to the length and location of the fair, and how many people you expect through the door.

After charging your stall holders a small fortune, do not expect a raffle prize as well, maybe offer them a cheaper table and a raffle prize. Then remember to sell tickets to stall holders!

Think about your layout, so if you know you have one stall holder (Phoenix Cards for example) that will be very popular, put them at an end of other stall so everyone will have to walk past them.

If you are in a difficult location to park, think about that when organising the evening, also think about the hours you are offering, just because it is convenient for the organisers, doesn’t mean your customers will think so.

ADVERTISE! ADVERTISE!

So please try to remember that, and then your stall holders might return and make a bit more than 90 pence!

Right Baggy!

He is currently sitting wedged between me and my laptop, I don’t think either of us are at all comfy!

As I reported last week Baggy had his stitches taken out, and all was fine over the weekend, but on Monday morning he had become a bit more flexible! Now he could reach the sealed wound, and lick it! And lick it so much, that he re-opened it! I guess it must have irritated him, or maybe he just wanted to do what comes naturally and clean himself.

So off to the vets again, and another small operation. If you are eating or drinking I would suggest that you come back later to read the rest!

After the draining of the abscess, they left a hole, and the fluid that had come out had been clear, or just a bit bloody, well inside there was more than this that greeted the vets! There were chunks of solid pus!! Urgghhhhhh, and they had to pick all these pieces out and flush out the wound again and make sure it was as clean as possible. they also removed the stitches that had been holding some of his muscle together as they though this may have aggravated the infection. His muscles have gone back together well so this was ok.

So here he is, a neater wound, more stitches, now in lovely blue nylon, and he had to have more fur shaved! He doesn’t look great does he! And of course this is all topped off with the the highly fashionable plastic cone collar!

This is the thing which is most annoying for him and us, he bangs into stuff, and finds it quite hard to eat, and the first night he was back I had to sit on the kitchen floor with a spoon with his food on!

So he will be like this for maybe another 10 days : ( Then, I hope, I really do that it will be done for him, he wants to go outside and be normal again, and you can’t really explain to a cat why he can’t do those things : (

Right onto lovely things, corsages, and Etsy etc. I have lots of new corsages to list, I will try to do this over the next few days. I have also adjusted all the prices in my shop, as they had all gone a bit haywire since the exchange rate changed so dramatically!

I will do another post when the corsages go into the shop : )

fantastic

Sunday, November 9th, 2008

that was what today was : )

Yep, after all my nerves and getting up 2 hours late (!) Handm@de went perfectly!

We manged to still get into Oxford on time, the location was very easy for us, and then I managed to park ok, but is £15 really a good price for parking in Oxford all day!?!

Setting up my table was a bit of a mare, mainly because I was behind on labeling everything, mounting corsages etc, and so John really helped with this!

Once it was all set up, I think it all looked great, and at least thanks to my father in law I did have some way of showing my bags. They are a real pain, and I think I have to look at a better way of showing them in a way that they can be seen and touch, tried out etc.

The corsages as always were my best seller, so much so that I had John cutting out new ones while I sold 26!!!

I would like to say a big thank you to everyone who came and said hello, and told me they read this blog, it was a fantastic experience, and to meet people in the flesh was lovely too. It was just all so busy and mad, I’ve never had a fair like it, and wonderful that there are people out there who appreciate good quality handmade items!

If you want to see more photos of the event have a look at the Flickr group here.

Gosh I’m going on aren’t I! Well I have another fair on Tuesday evening in Winchester at St.Pauls Church, so if you are around please come and say hello!

Just a quick Baggy and school update, Baggy has had his stitches out, I’ve been trying to get a photo of him, but his colouring and the terrible light/weather has not helped this! On the school front, we have decided where we want Edward to go to secondary school, and this has made life so much easier for me, the decision was obvious, no wringing of hands, so smiley faces all around!

ps John, you were wonderful today, and made a great day even better x

time?

Thursday, November 6th, 2008

where does it all go?

I can’t believe this is my first post this week, but I really do feel that I have not stopped at all!

Today is Edwards 10th birthday, and he will have some friends round later for some film watching and popcorn eating : )

So much has been going on, but a brief catch-up!

Baggy has had an abscess, which has been drained, they think it was due to something yukky that happened when he was shot. He still has hole to let it continue to drain, and it has, all over me last night! He goes to the vets tomorrow for a check up.

Visited another school this morning for Edward for a secondary school, very impressed, another visit to a different school tomorrow!

Sunday is handm@de, am I ready, no I’m not! Panic has begun to set in! Have made loads of felt for corsages!!

Tomorrow night is book group, I have another 300 pages to finish it, will I? NO! We were given an extra month, but I’m sorry Nelson Mandela I cannot finish you at the moment!

That is a small amount of all the stuff that is going on, sorry it has been so short, but now have to go and hoover and tidy for Edwards friends to come round!!