Stats

So my little Etsy shop is a little undersubscribed at the moment as far as sales are concerned, but I love how Etsy reassures you that people are looking at your work, and even bookmarking your items or shop for a return visit.

A neat little tool over at Majaba.org takes this a step further and with its Heart-o-tron 3000 can pull all your hearts, views and numbers together so you can drool over your stats to your heart's content. I'm slightly amazed I've been sucked into this but numbers can be addictive, just check out http://www.spudworks.com/ to read through the aspiring author's rejections log. I feel a little like him at the moment, I might not be having any sales success yet, but creating and not selling is, in itself, a project to track and discuss right here.

A sunny day - at last!

And where am I? No, not at home taking photos to make my blog and flower brooches look a million times better, but stuck in the office, hoping the weather holds out until home time...

London Town

I've been away in London to bid a fond 'au revoir' to a friend who is off to Nepal for a good six months. Being in travel mode, we were at the London Transport Museum in Covent Garden and I got slightly obsessed with the old fashioned posters.

This one, in particular, struck a chord...

Winning streak

Tonight I want to take time out to reflect on my recent good fortune. I've been entering competitions and to my surprise I've scooped quite a few goodies over the last couple of months from crafty types out there in the blogosphere.



First up is this awesome tapestry, gifted by Carrie aka Lady Wurlitzer, at one of her recent Fuzzy Felt Folk events. Since my road trip across the Smoky Mountains, Nashville and Memphis last summer, I'm more into country music than ever before. We have our very own Opry here in Glasgow, which I'm itching to visit and compare to the one in Tennessee! Anyway, I love this rendering of Kris Kristoffersen, especially the colours - I even redecorated my hall to match! While Fuzzy Felt Folk arranged the event, the artist responsible for the tapestry is Clare Nicolson, and you can see more of her creations here. It took Clare more than 50 hours to work on this tapestry, and I'm glad to display it in my home.





Honorary mention goes to Marceline Smith, who sent me a lovely gift pack just for signing up to her blog's mailing list. What a sweet surprise! I'd been sporting this tree badge of hers for a little while since happening upon it at a local craft fair, but had been coveting the daschund badge on her website. I mentioned this and, lo and behold, it arrived in the post just for me. I love Marceline's trading name, askingfortrouble.org - awesome!





Now, as you know, I'm destashing, and buying new wool is reluctantly off my agenda. So I was delighted when the very lovely Sylv of Chez Plum picked me out of the hat for her summer raffle. Just look what I won - my own hand-dyed and hand-spun yarn in my two favourite colours, lovely rich shades of grey and green. I have a feeling that using Sylvie's yarn will be a little bit like that one time I was upgraded on a transatlantic flight, ever since then, economy just hasn't been that much fun. Once I'm destashed, I think I'll be back to Chez Plum once my destashing project is complete. And I'll be blogging about my adventures in sock knitting right here. My yarn has been posted and should arrive any time now, exciting times!

Grrr, day job

Today my day job (and my freelancing work) put a halt on daytime creativity, but this evening I'm continuing with the washcloths. Here's a shot of the work in progress.

Buttery soft washcloths

Today I'm working on my huge collection of cotton yarn. I got into knitting with cotton after collecting some supplies from a freecycler in Tollcross and finding a mini-stash of variegated orange yarn. I've been knitting up eco-friendly scourers and dishcloths today, and moved on to a lovely Debbie Bliss cotton yarn this evening. I'm going to use hers to make some facecloths and washable make-up remover pads. So much nicer than cotton balls and you get to wash and use them many times over again.

Only one problem, I don't know if I'll be able to part with them and put them in the shop.

Day 2 in the big destash flat - and a giveaway

Day 2 of the big destash is underway. I’ve collected all my paper and cardmaking supplies together and will be offering them in my etsy shop as mystery craft packs. Each pack comes to the lucky recipient with a selection of 50 items from this table. This includes gift wrap, origami paper from Japan, lightweight card in a range of colours and sizes, heavier corrugated card, coloured notepaper, stickers, luxury wallpaper samples, and some paper goods which are ripe for upcycling. By this I mean pages from day planners, calendars, and other printed goods, like the Winston Churchill speech, which might be inspirational or make an interesting accent for a card, collage or other decorative items.

As much as I love working with paper, I am going to focus on knitting next, as I find it very relaxing and items I’ve made in the past have always sold well at craft fairs. Eventually I’ll rescue back my fabric collection and get more into that – it’s a relatively new and therefore exciting area for me.

Back to the paper packs – each of them is no bigger than A4 in size and they are available in my etsy shop now. Mention my blog when you check out and receive a 10% discount on the item cost. First comment on this post gets a freebie pack…

Too much fabric

So you might be thinking ‘who has a supply of lovely notebooks just sitting there ready to go?’. If you aren’t thinking this, then, like me, you’re a hoarder. My craft stashery is getting out of hand and my one bedroom flat is being taken over! I’m due to move to a bigger house on the outskirts of Glasgow next September, and I feel like I have a house-full of stuff already.

In light of this, my challenge for the next 365 days is to use up all the craft materials I have, and try my darndest not to accumulate any more.

Day 1 is a bit of a cheat, I have packed up my fabric collection to go into temporary storage at my friend’s house. Bye bye for now, lovely material.

Mmm stationery good

Today was tax return day – I took the day off to get a few things checked off the ‘home admin’ list. My return is due in September so I decided not to procrastinate any further. I also took steps to register Girl Industries and find an ‘accounts’ book from my supply of lovely notebooks.

There’s nothing more satisfying than a crisp new notebook to start a new project with. Next time I’m in the market for a new one, I’ll be sure to check out lolaandemilin, katysshop and pumpkinsputnik on etsy.com. Lovely!

Where to start?

I've been wanting to start this whole 'girl industries' thing for ages, but I'm a world class procrastinator and I genuinely didn't know where to begin.

I'm a big reader, and I've attended enough English classes to know about beginning with a significant event. But that doesn't translate suitably to something I've been doing for more than 25 years. I've gradually become more crafty this year, as my day job workload has decreased I've become better at managing my study time. This coincided with the start of a project to transfer all the family video tapes to DVD. Naturally I found myself knitting more and more, you can't beat a vintage BBC serial or television play and the old needles and wool for an hour of relaxation.

But back to the question, beginnings, and how does one go about them? Having graduated in Lit some 8 years ago, I'm on my way to starting a PhD, and what has preparing for this taught me... do your research!

So I hopped on the internet to take a look at some of my daily must-reads. Usually I take a look when I need colour, trend or technique inspiration. If I'm super-busy I like to do a quick tour of my favourite blogs just to feel creative or crafty without having to pick up needle or scissors. Today I'm looking at their first ever posts to see how they did it...