Giveaway reminder and a big thank you

There's still time to enter the competition to win a Haunt lip lust. Just click here for info and post a comment on the original post by midnight UK time on the 31st May!

Also I'd like to say a huge thank you to my lovely friends and readers who have voted for me over on Heartsy. I have another 6 days to wait for the decision on whether I'll be featured in a deal, during which time my vote is still live, so you aren't too late if you'd like to give it a shot. Either go directly to Heartsy.me, sign up and click on my deal, or go direct via this (affiliate) link which will get you $5 off if you decide to buy one of the daily deals.

Unfinished business

Nothing quite focuses the mind like knowing you're back at your day job in 12 weeks, and your MSc dissertation is due just after Christmas. In the meantime, I have a ton of unfinished projects around the house, some for home, some for Girl Industries and I really need to pull my finger out and get them finished. One of the projects I've been working on for a while is a rag rug for Amelia's room.

In true upcycling style, it uses worn out t-shirts from all of the family that we really couldn't have given to the charity shop or popped into the Salvation Army hopper at the supermarket. I've just about finished chopping up all the t-shirts, and the next steps are:

Check there are no more t-shirts to use up.
Chop up all remaining useable t-shirts.
Decide on size of rug and cut rug canvas to size.
Use spare canvas offcuts for a bit of a practice.
Go at it on the main canvas.

I'm not knitting as much these days as I find most of my crafting time is in the evening and is often interrupted. Amelia is pretty good at going to bed and falling asleep, but occasionally is woken by the light-ish nights, noises outdoors (curse you, ice cream vans), or a runny nose, or the threat of teeth coming through. So it have to work on something that is easy to put down and even easier to put away. As she gets more mobile, the putting away aspect is going to become even more important, wish me luck! I'll try and keep you updated on the rug as it develops, but if it's anything like the still unfinished but in constant use curtain I made for our front door, you could be waiting a while!

Collective craft buying with Heartsy

I'm sure you can't use the internet these days without stumbling across collective buyer sites like Groupon, Itison, and the like. It's no different in the crafting sphere, with new site heartsy.me. However, there's a twist in the heartsy process, deals are juried by site users and of the 20 or so submissions received daily, only 4-6 make it in to the daily newsletter and deals.

I'd had a few referrals show up in Google Analytics from heartsy but it was only recently I did a bit more investigating, and of course, had to submit my own deal for consideration. If you want to vote for me and take part in other prospective deals (clicking on whether you like the sound of a deal or not does get pretty addictive!) you can sign up here. This is a referral link, so you should get $5 for signing up, redeemable against a future deal, as should I.

You do need to sign in to be able to vote on specific deals, as well as to see those deals running today, but if you'd like to do this without taking part in the referral programme, go straight to heartsy.me, or the link to voting for Girl Industries, which is here. You can also sign in via facebook, but personally I'm a little wary of linking anything 'monetised' to facebook. I like to keep my finances and my friends separate!

I'd be delighted if you could vote for me, my pitch is open for the rest of today. If I'm successful, I'll let you know all the about the deal as soon as I can. Hitting 'publish' on this post is breaking me out in a little bit of a cold sweat because the Englishness in me sees asking for votes rather than getting them on my own merit as not quite cricket. And I can't help but feel a little bit like hmmmmm for setting out my stall for Heartsy, while I don't know the outcome of whether I'll be featured. Or maybe I'm just jealous that I never thought to set up something similar first! However... Heartsy is a pretty nifty operation and I did get a great deal on supplies recently via a Heartsy deal so it's worth your while to take a look at what's on offer. It's definitely brought a good few shops to my attention that I may well shop with in future, too. And I do rather like having a website in my life that I can obsessively press F5 on for a few days until the novelty wears off (while I see how my votes stack up!)

Haunt lip lust giveaway

Hi everyone! To celebrate the summer opening of wonderful bath and body emporium, Haunt, I'm giving away two of the shop's wonderful products from my very own stash.

First up is Bettie, a lip lust in a delightfully exotic flavour, evocative of the glamour of days gone by. Secondly we have the fresh zingy flavour of Vanilla Pear, sweet and clean. Both soothe and moisturise your lips, giving them that little extra shine, too.

I'm going to give the pair away separately, so that's one tube for each of TWO LUCKY WINNERS. This is your chance to see what I've been going on about for the last couple of years, Haunt products rock!

But of course once you've perused Erin's shop, to see her description of the two flavours, I'd like you to tell me in the comments here which flavour you'd prefer to win, then hop over to my etsy shop and tell me which of my products you like the best. I'm having a big sort out in my craft room and want to streamline the things I sell, with your input.

Please tweet, blog and repost about this giveaway to your hearts' content and most of all, good luck, I hope you win! Closing date is 30 May at 12 midnight British Summer Time.

UPDATE: Giveaway will remain open until 31 May at midnight due to accidentally putting that date on my update post. I am an official idiot.

If the baby ever naps today...

... I will do a giveaway right here! Clue: it's something to do with the fact that Haunt is having a summer sale this weekend...

Coming soon... buttons!

The crafty destash continues... look out for a whole new section of reclaimed and vintage buttons in the girlindustries etsy shop soon.

What's cooking?

The book...

The recipe (we used macadamias because we don't have any hazels right now)

And....

The results - yum!

With apologies for the terrible light at the far end of my kitchen, but you get the idea.

Treating myself

picture by Lu Summers of Summersville

I decided it was time to behave more like an adult and less like a student so I treated myself to a wonderful matching set of mugs from Summersville. If you'd like to upgrade your mug cupboard, visit the Summersville Etsy Shop to buy a Bloomsbury mug or six!

Now here's something I never knew about

The BBC has picked up this blog on its Open Country page. I'm an avid Radio 4 listener and blogged about one of their programmes which discussed the decline of Fair Isle knitting last summer when I was a pregnant insomniac.

Thanks, Statcounter, for bringing this to my attention - I've had visitors from all over the world since being featured there! Follow the link to find other bloggers talking about Fair Isle knitting and other issues discussed on Radio 4, as well as listen to the original programme.

Craft destash!

I'm starting an uber-clearout in the countdown to returning to work. First up, on eBay, is a huge chunk of my collection of knitting and papercraft magazines, finishing in fits and starts ('cos that's how I list 'em) over the next 10 days. Just look me up, I'm called Kippersmum - my ginger cat is called Kipper and I thought I would be a memorable name!

I was given a huge partworks collection of crochet and knitting patterns from 1989/90/91 called Creative Needles and I'm selling it off as a 10-pattern lucky dip via my Etsy shop. Coming to both eBay and Etsy will be button packs, trims and ribbons, surplus fabric and more bits and bobs over the next few weeks as I get my craft room organised before I go back to my day job. 11 weeks and counting!

I've also rejigged my craft paper destash item and have 12 sets packaged up and ready to go. Now with 50 different paper ephemera pieces which all fit into a lovely repurposed A5 box for you to keep nice and safe once they arrive instead of loose in a folder or envelope. The collection now includes spare 5 x 7 inch photographs from my travels around the world, including this sepia-tinted shot of the Bethesda Fountain in New York's Central Park, where I used to spend many a happy lunch hour back in the day.

Let my loss be your gain, and stock up on craft goodies while they're at a bargain price. Buy three or more items and I'll refund your postage (UK or international) via PayPal if you mention 'blog' in your notes to seller or a convo before 17 May 2011.