Ysolda Teague

Reading the latest edition of the alumni magazine from Edinburgh University, I discovered that knitwear designer Ysolda Teague studied on the same course as me! She graduated with her MA in English Literature 8 years after I did, however, but I too remember knitting in my lectures while no doubt my fellow students thought 'who's that granny over there?'.

I had completely forgotten about the option to study printing and making books as part of the course - tutorials held deep in the basement of the library. My own degree was combined with French, so I had fewer options to choose from, but my favourite module was 20th Century Feminist Fictions - we watched and critiqued the Alien films, great fun! As part of my French course I studied the linguistic development of babies and children, so it was a pretty broad brush approach to each subject. And of course Edinburgh was a wonderful place to live, work and study.

To find out more about Ysolda Teague, visit her online at http://www.ysolda.com/ - there are PDF patterns to buy and download for free, too. Unfortunately it looks like they are all knitted in the round, which I can't do, and you have to go through the knitty sign up process to access the free patterns, but fun to look all the same.

Lucky dip

I'm such a sucker for tombolas, lucky bags and surprises. So how could I resist when the proprietor of Hannah Zakari was having a clearout of her fabric stash, prior to the exciting launch of her new bricks and mortar shop in Edinburgh?

After placing an order yesterday, I was delighted to see a little red van pull up outside the house this lunchtime with a big old parcel just for me!

And here is a selection of the delights inside:

I've been itching to get back behind my sewing machine for a while, but I have a feeling it needs a service and a new needle before I let it loose on such lovely fabric. If you'd like to score a similar (but entirely different) addition to your own fabric (and notions!) stash, hit up HZ's ebay shop, where you can pick from entire bolts of designer fabric, alongside the mystery bags. To visit the new shop in person, keep your eyes on the website for launch details.

Photo via SBJM

And speaking of good times in Edinburgh this summer, why not do your bit to improve cross-pond relations and help two Brooklyn-based comedians on their way to do almost daily free shows at Whistle Binkies during the festival? I'm hoping to get along to catch a show and say hi, as long as I'm not busy having a baby while they're on, I can manage the stairs and remember if any embarrassments from my student antics preclude me from entering WBs. Last time they were here, Leah and Katie were named "Biggest Revelation" by The Guardian, became addicted to haggis and deep fried mars bars, and even got SUED! Help them make all their dreams come true, and more, by pledging as little as $5 to help them on their way.

As a side note, I'm really impressed with Kickstarter.com as a model for creative types to fund their endeavours - have a look at the main page for an explanation of how it works. It's kind of a justgiving site for the arts rather than charitable organisations. I wonder if Wired UK or one of our Dragons might be interested in a British outpost of the same type of site...

Stockists round up

Although I'm all about my zine project at the moment, I'm sure loyal readers might remember that I make a few other crafty bits and pieces besides. I have a range of stockists and try to ensure that my range of products is broad, yet organised enough, so that I can offer different outlets the opportunity to host different types of my work.

For example, I love to focus on supplies in my etsy shop, and the base theme for that issue is participating in and supporting others to take up the process of upcycling, as well as all kinds of general craftiness. There are products for paper workers, knitters, seamstresses and the kind of people like me who enjoy a little bit of everything.

So you'll find supplies like plarn for eco-friendly knitters, and hand-punched paper hearts (a by-product from my envelope-making). You can find my envelopes ready to buy in a 4 x 4 inch (10 x 10cm) format, and available on request in a 5 x 5 inch format - this is the perfect size for CDs or DVDs. I've been known to use my envelopes for keeping my PC back-ups organised and dust-free at home, and I've completed several custom orders for wedding photographers to distribute copies of their finished products. They also keep my mix-tape CDs from getting too bashed up in my car. The 4 x 4 inch envelopes are perfect for keeping my crafting supplies organised when I'm sending out mixed orders to customers, and smaller envelopes from my range help keep business cards and thank you notes together in larger packages, too.

So far, I have a limited presence on folksy.com, where I'll be focusing mainly on gift wrap and tags for special occasions. I also regularly destash supplies over on the dreaded eBay, where I'm known as Kippersmum.

If bricks and mortar is more your thing, you can find me at my local independent fashion emporium, Rachael Albert boutique at DeCourcey's arcade in Glasgow's trendy West End. I'm honoured to have my knitwear (gloves and baby jumpers) stocked alongside that of Flossy and Dossy. I find that knitwear does so much better when the customer can smoosh and stroke it, and I also make sure to carry a stash of fingerless gloves with me every time I take part in a craft market, too. No matter what the weather!

For a full range of dinky little treats, in pounds sterling, hop over to The Oriental Magpie. I'm in good company there, with goodies from Hungry Designs and Laura Baillie, too.

A limited range of stock (to be expanded later this year) can be found at new Scottish venture Vertiline in Love.

And just to come full circle, I have a new stockist for my zines. Over at Asking for Trouble, Marceline is expanding the range of zines in her shop with guest publications as well as two new self-penned zines, and the entire Answers on a Postcard series as it progresses.

Happy shopping, however you choose to do it!

Happy New Year!

Here I am, as promised, with the Girl Industries manifesto for 2010!

It looks as though we are going to be moving house and it could well be a renovation job (I'm spending a lot of time looking to A Home for All Seasons for inspiration here), so for the first half of the year at least I'll be scaling back the crafting and making for the shop. One other pressure on my time at the moment is the fact that I absolutely must complete my MSc dissertation by the summertime so there is time for all the administrative process to take place before my final deadline at the end of the year. It's a really prestigious course with the Royal College of Surgeons in Edinburgh, so I don't really want to mess it up. It's also pretty important for my day job, and is on a really interesting topic, so I have a lot of time and effort invested in it, it would be such a shame to fall at the last hurdle.

So for 2010, I'll be concentrating on the upcycled envelopes (which are such a joy to make and really becoming very popular), a few little wedding themed bits and pieces, including a wedding zine that I've been working on, a craft kit that I've been putting together (with some help from Marceline of Asking For Trouble) over the last year or so, and, of course, there'll be an Answers on a Postcard zine to look forward to at the end of every month.

I'll be doing very few, if any, markets this year as my weekends will be taken up with research, writing and evaluating for my dissertation study project and I'll have to stop the destash as I start to pack all my crafting hoard away over the next few weeks! I'm sure no-one will want to buy the flat we currently live in with piles of half finished projects and random tins of haberdashery (as lovely as it is) taking over the place. I will be continuing to blog, though, and will bring you updates on my crafty new home as I go.

No doubt I'll be tweeting, too, so you won't miss a thing.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Happy Old Year!

Photo by The Jersey City Independent via Flickr

What a year 2009 has been! So much has happened that I hardly know where to start for a recap. But first of all I want to say thank you to everyone who has read my blog over the last year, joined in on a challenge, left a comment, subscribed to be notified when I post, or been inspired by one of my tutorials. Thank you to my fellow bloggers who have invited me to write guest posts, featured my work or arranged great collaborations for the New Year.

My stats show that over the year, more than two and a half thousand people have visited my blog, and about a quarter of my visitors have actually come back more than once! Wow! So hello to you, if you're reading this in New Westminster, Beverly Hills (seriously?!!), Lisburn, Queensferry, Groningen, Princeton (Jersey represent!), Kópavogur, Obregon, Doncaster, and yes, even you, Brooklyn.

In terms of Etsy sales, I started off the year just doing my thing, testing things out and seeing what would work. My sales really started to take off towards the end of this year, and I've been listing a few pieces on Folksy, too, where there's been quite a bit of interest but no sales as yet. Next step will be setting up my own site and shop, but I'm putting that on the back burner for a little while as I have so many projects lined up for next year, I want to try to focus on doing a few things well rather than a lot of things, um, acceptably. I've been interviewed on BBC Scotland (radio) and I've co-presented a craft segment on STV, our local TV channel, and I'd love to do some more of this in the New Year.

On top of all this, I've been plodding away at the day job, I planned and did a whole heap of crafting for my own wedding, and I had the most amazing honeymoon in Seattle, Portland, Astoria, Mt. Hood, Vancouver and points in between.

I can't help but compare where I am and what I'm doing now to where I was and what I was doing ten years ago. I was lucky enough to be working in New York for a business incubator, which financed and supported tech start ups with business advice and contacts. I don't think I appreciated at the time quite how much that environment fostered in me the actual mechanics of running a business. I've always had an entrepreneurial spirit, but because I wasn't brought up around anyone who was self-employed, I never really thought it was for me. Working in NY around the time of the dotcom crash also instilled in me the very real prospect of great ideas going horribly wrong, or being way before their time. If you ever get the chance to see the movie startup.com, you should. It's very much of its time and what's more, it's based on a company some of my friends worked for, too, so a very real slice of life.

This very day ten years ago, I was getting ready for a big night out, much in the same way I'm getting ready today. Except then I shared an apartment in Jersey City with five other girls, and now I just have to contend with the cats and the husband - not quite as much getting ready fun. It was frosty outside (same as today) and we were going to a restaurant (same as today). We'd considered doing Times Square but being British and sensible, we were a little wary of crowd situations and personal safety, plus the fact that we thought something was bound to go wrong, severe weather causing cancellation, security threat closing the area, millennium bug causing panic/crushing...

I think we had a fab time, but it was so long ago I honestly don't remember too much now - I do have some photos tucked away which I will post at a later date - that's another thing about this year, we are very much trying to move house as soon as possible so lots of things are packed away in storage right now. I also have some amazing black and white photos that I took the next day of our apartment building from the obs deck at WTC, we took a ferry from the marina outside our apartment over to WTC and made a real day out of it, good times. Some of the fall out from that weekend was that we had to leave the apartment and move somewhere else... but that's another story for another day!

So inbetween that new year and this new year so much has happened. I finished up the first year of my MBA and came back to Edinburgh, in the UK and continued to work in business, this time for a major retail company. After a period of illness I gave it all up to use my brilliant young, dynamic business mind to improve the NHS... that particular project is ongoing, shall we say? All the while I was making stuff in the background, and when I bought my first flat in Glasgow, I started to build my crafty stash in earnest, still making things for a hobby and wondering if there would ever be some kind of market for what I do. Eventually I met my wonderful husband, around the same time that I travelled to Tennessee and saw first-hand how it was possible to make a living from craft and spend all your time doing something you love. I signed up to Etsy later that year and set about making it happen. I couldn't have got as far as I have without belonging to the Glasgow Craft Mafia, too. It's going to take a while before I experience success on a large enough scale to even do this for a living part time, so I can't quite quit the dayjob yet (which, I must admit, I do rather enjoy), but I've hugely enjoyed this great experiment so far, and long may it continue!

With good luck to all of us for a happy and crafty 2010! I'll be back early in the New Year (possibly tomorrow...) to give you an update on my plans for 2010. Whatever you're doing tonight, I hope you have a wonderful time. And thank you again for reading, shopping and sharing over this past year. It has been a real pleasure to get to know you all.

Update on the festival experience

Last night was so much fun! We had a quick walk along the Royal Mile, which became annoying, fast. We hurried around to Teviot, which was such a strange experience. I don't think I'd ever been in there without having a drink first, I could just about remember where the middle bar was, I thought that every single part of the building seemed *way* smaller than I remembered, especially the staircase. I forgot where the toilets were. Obviously I would have known all this had I had four double vodkas before I went in, but I'm old now.

The show we were booked to see was great. I don't want to spoil it for anyone else who is going, but there was one bit where I tried to heckle, but was too quiet. Janeane Garafalo was doing a bit about how she looks at modern art and thinks to herself 'I could do that', and I said (not loud enough) 'but you didn't'. This is kind of a new mantra for me, I tend to only say it quietly but I do say it when people pick up things at craft fairs and say 'Oh, I'm just looking so I can work out how to do this when I get home', or 'these are so easy to make, aren't they' - basically variations on a theme of 'I could do that'. Which is annoying. So anyone else who is going to see Janeane Garafalo at the Edinburgh Festival, or to see her when she tours the US in the autumn, please sit down the front, or at the sides of a row, and put her straight.

Also, I tried to take a 'ten years later' photo in front of the same place as below, but I didn't quite get the right place and ten years haven't done me any favours, so I decided against posting it. Here's a shot of the castle and the Bank of Scotland HQ to make up for it!

The Edinburgh Festival

It’s always more fun when you don’t live there! I’m off to the city where I went to university (and where I work a couple of days a week) to catch some comedy today. I’m so excited because one of my all-time favourite actresses and comedians, Janeane Garafalo, is playing at my former student union – the first place I ever DJed live, by total coincidence. Ha ha, yes, I have been known to make new tunes out of old tunes.

In fact, that's just to the left of where I'm standing in this photo, on my graduation day. Ten years ago last month... Look at me, all young and interested in Derrida. And slightly obsessed with the opening scenes of Reality Bites, too.



And here’s a still from my favourite film. You know, the bit where they’re graduating. Oh dear. I would so totally wear that dress tonight if I still had it!

Star-spotting

So, aside from all the superstars of craft that I met at the Handmade Haven this weekend, I also saw some real life celebrities over the weekend, in Edinburgh.

First up, that historian off the telly, doing a piece to camera on Hanover Street.

Fact fans should note that I once did some modelling for a well-known line of toiletries in the building with the pillars, in the background.

Then we saw the lovely Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, swoon.

Halfway through his cookery demonstration, some lucky people got to taste his strawberries. Almost getting carried away with jealousy, imagine my surprise when I noticed my chief bridesmaid in the crowd.

Also on hand was this guy, who I think does the wine on Saturday Kitchen and is just about the most irritating/watchable person on TV. I wish they'd had the guy who does the voices on Come Dine with Me, just wandering around with a loudhailer, commenting on people. Are you reading this, Channel 4?

Whatever you've been up to this weekend, I hope you've had a good one, and that the sun was just as shiny in your part of the world.