Where's Christmas come from all of a sudden? It's all been going so fast that I wasn't really sure whether I'd get the time to do anymore craft fairs this year. But it turns out that I do, and I am...
Plus, it's the first one I'm going to be doing ON MY OWN! I'll be selling a selection of my jewellery at the Stockport Market Christmas Art & Craft Fair tomorrow (Saturday, 19 December). We're going to be outside the main indoor market, along with all the usual street stalls. Apparently we'll have pop-up marquees, which I can't wait to see. I'm just praying that it doesn't snow!
If you're in the area, please come along and say hello.
2009 (or the last three months of it anyway) has turned out to be really exciting in terms of making things, meeting other makers and getting some really positive feedback on my work. There should be lots of exciting things coming up in 2010 including more fairs, an exhibition, a new website and perhaps even a few events. So keep watching this space!
Friday, 18 December 2009
Sunday, 22 November 2009
Sew Sew
I've been so busy making stock for craft fairs that I haven't had the chance to put anything online recently! So here's a little bit of what I've been stitching...
Friday, 6 November 2009
Contemporary Christmas Craft Fair
Our first craft fair went so splendidly well last week, that Fi & Me have decided to do another one... this weekend!!
We're going to be at Fuse Crafter's Contemporary Christmas Craft Fair this Sunday, 8 November at Bolton Market Place Shopping Centre from 11am-3pm, selling our wares.
We're going to be at Fuse Crafter's Contemporary Christmas Craft Fair this Sunday, 8 November at Bolton Market Place Shopping Centre from 11am-3pm, selling our wares.
Pictures of both events will hopefully be coming soon. And more fairs in the near future, hoorah! It feels like things are really starting to take off for us, which is exciting and a tiny bit scary. Watch this space...
Wednesday, 28 October 2009
Vote The Pud!
It may be a little early for talk of christmas things but this is with good reason, I promise.
For the last couple of months, myself and some ladies from work have been knitting little hats to go on the tops of bottles of innocent smoothies. Basically we make 'em, send them to innocent HQ 'Fruit Towers', they put them on bottles which then get shipped off to Sainsburys and for every bottle sold, 35p will go to Help the Aged and Age Concern to help them to fund cooking clubs and get-togethers for the elderly.
You can see the fruits of our labour on our Flickr group. Unfortunately being the intermediate knitter that I am, I could only stretch to stripey bobble hats. But my friend Alison 'Needles' Steadman created a wonderful array ski hats, fruits and seasonal themed knits.
We've been waiting to see if her crochet masterpiece - a cascading arrangement of grapes - will make it to the Hat of the Week vote. Alas, it hasn't... but her Christmas pudding hat HAS!
P.S. The hats are supposed to go on sale 4 November, so get buying and keep an old lady warm!
For the last couple of months, myself and some ladies from work have been knitting little hats to go on the tops of bottles of innocent smoothies. Basically we make 'em, send them to innocent HQ 'Fruit Towers', they put them on bottles which then get shipped off to Sainsburys and for every bottle sold, 35p will go to Help the Aged and Age Concern to help them to fund cooking clubs and get-togethers for the elderly.
You can see the fruits of our labour on our Flickr group. Unfortunately being the intermediate knitter that I am, I could only stretch to stripey bobble hats. But my friend Alison 'Needles' Steadman created a wonderful array ski hats, fruits and seasonal themed knits.
We've been waiting to see if her crochet masterpiece - a cascading arrangement of grapes - will make it to the Hat of the Week vote. Alas, it hasn't... but her Christmas pudding hat HAS!
It would make her year if she won.
P.S. The hats are supposed to go on sale 4 November, so get buying and keep an old lady warm!
Thursday, 15 October 2009
RIP GeoCities
It was with a twinkle of nostalgia that I read about the demise of GeoCities today. It's not like I've even logged into a Yahoo account for at least eight years, but that's not the point. It's like finding out that your favourite childhood playground's been bulldozed, or that your mum's sold your train set... you may not want to play with it anymore, but the fact that it's gone makes you feel gutted and, well... a bit old.
Like many an internet nerd, GeoCities was where I learnt to make websites. Ok, I'll admit that they weren't very good websites, but we all have to start somewhere...
When I was sixteen, there was no Facebook or Myspace and hosting your own advert-free website cost a small fortune. Instead, the internet consisted of forums and chat rooms and weirdos and endless midnight chats on ICQ with pretty much complete strangers and 'BRB' while I'd go and make another coffee so I could stay up all night making my 'homepage'. 'About what?', you may ask.
About myself, of course! I was not remotely interesting, but everyone else had a homepage about what music they liked, who they loved and generally how angsty they were. Very much like Myspace, actually!
This abundance of apparent pretention that anyone out there cared if you listened to Fiona Apple and could quote bits of Heathers verbatim was also coupled with a lack of understanding of privacy, my own safety and a general flouting of copyright and libel laws.
Plagiarism abounded, as did crappy prose, white text on black backgrounds, tiled backgrounds, marquee text and blinky animated gifs, all of which I hope -for everyone's sake - are long buried along with GeoCities when it goes.
However, for all the rubbish that proliferated our numerous homepages, the late 90s and early 00s were exciting times for someone discovering the internet and realising that the world extended further than one's crappy little northern town.
And it wasn't a completely misspent youth. From making sites on GeoCities and sharing them with people on the other side of the world, I learnt what looked good and what didn't, about standard fonts, web safe colours and so on. I learnt HTML and CSS, which eventually helped me to land my first job out of university and it's knowledge that I still use on a daily basis.
I can't even remember my Geocities URL and I'm sure it'll be long gone by now anyway due to almost a decade of inactivity, but I guess a part of me is also a tiny bit grateful at the thought of someone at Yahoo HQ hitting the giant delete button on evidence of my cringeful teenage narcissism; gladly gone but never to be forgotten.
Like many an internet nerd, GeoCities was where I learnt to make websites. Ok, I'll admit that they weren't very good websites, but we all have to start somewhere...
When I was sixteen, there was no Facebook or Myspace and hosting your own advert-free website cost a small fortune. Instead, the internet consisted of forums and chat rooms and weirdos and endless midnight chats on ICQ with pretty much complete strangers and 'BRB' while I'd go and make another coffee so I could stay up all night making my 'homepage'. 'About what?', you may ask.
About myself, of course! I was not remotely interesting, but everyone else had a homepage about what music they liked, who they loved and generally how angsty they were. Very much like Myspace, actually!
This abundance of apparent pretention that anyone out there cared if you listened to Fiona Apple and could quote bits of Heathers verbatim was also coupled with a lack of understanding of privacy, my own safety and a general flouting of copyright and libel laws.
Plagiarism abounded, as did crappy prose, white text on black backgrounds, tiled backgrounds, marquee text and blinky animated gifs, all of which I hope -for everyone's sake - are long buried along with GeoCities when it goes.
However, for all the rubbish that proliferated our numerous homepages, the late 90s and early 00s were exciting times for someone discovering the internet and realising that the world extended further than one's crappy little northern town.
And it wasn't a completely misspent youth. From making sites on GeoCities and sharing them with people on the other side of the world, I learnt what looked good and what didn't, about standard fonts, web safe colours and so on. I learnt HTML and CSS, which eventually helped me to land my first job out of university and it's knowledge that I still use on a daily basis.
I can't even remember my Geocities URL and I'm sure it'll be long gone by now anyway due to almost a decade of inactivity, but I guess a part of me is also a tiny bit grateful at the thought of someone at Yahoo HQ hitting the giant delete button on evidence of my cringeful teenage narcissism; gladly gone but never to be forgotten.
Wednesday, 14 October 2009
Jewellery and Craft Fair, October 31st 2009
I'm very excited about my first craft fair. Me and one of my sisters have a stall at the Jewellery and Craft fair at Stockport Town Hall on Saturday, 31st October. Halloween and craft fair in one day... fantastic! Stockport is our home town also, so it's a kind of fitting debut for the both of us.
I'm going to be selling my jewellery, brooches, cross stitch, embroidery, knitted handwarmers (my current obsession) and a small selection of cards. I really don't know what to expect and am currently swinging between thinking I don't have enough stock to thinking I have too much that no one's going to want to buy anyway, EEK!
Either way it will be FUN and a good learning curve. If you're in the area then pop in to say hello, bring us cake, or buy some unique handmade christmas gifts.
Sunday, 23 August 2009
43 Things
I have been reading a lot about 'digital communities' recently (and, alas, how to get market to them... thus is the nature of my job) including this book by Larry Weber. It's very American in its focus but hey, we're in a global economy and it has opened up a whole new world of websites I may never have heard of to waste my time on.
One of them is 43things.com, where you can make 'life lists' of up to (you guessed it) 43 things you want to achieve. These range from the inane ("get a haircut"), the ludicrous ("be a pimp"), obscure ("laugh along with my wife"), sensible ("set realistic goals") and the sheer brilliant ("milk a cow"), right through to those ongoing epic struggles ("sort my whole bloody life out").
It just so happens that I do love making lists. In fact, I probably spend more time making lists than I do actually doing the things on them. Procrastination to the max. So here for your delectation - in no particular order - are my 43 things "to do".
1. Start a magazine
2. Work for myself
3. Write a novel
4. Do a Masters degree
5. Learn to speak Italian
6. Learn to drive (or more aptly, stick with lessons long enough to pass my test!)
7. Read all the books on my reading list
8. Learn PHP programming
9. Take up yoga and pilates again
10. Spend more time outdoors
11. Live in a foreign country
12. Own a Dansette record player
13. Make my own clothes (I have the sewing machine... which is surely half way there, right?)
14. Go interrailing
15. Learn how to bind books
16. Learn how to screenprint
17. Take creative writing classes (starting in September)
18. Remember how to play the guitar (uh, restring my guitar)
19. Take riding lessons
20. Run a 5k race for charity
21. Interview one of my heroes (one that is still alive, of course)
22. Find somewhere I feel settled and stay there
23. Volunteer
24. Go rock climbing
25. Visit Amy in Japan
26. Go walking every day
27. Be more sociable
28. Visit Amsterdam (again)
29. Finish building my own website (as opposed to building other people's)
30. Live in Manchester (I'm getting nearer...)
31. Plant a tree and watch it grow
32. Visit the Outer Hebrides (should hopefully be doing this next spring)
33. Live a simpler life (chuck out pretty much everything)
34. Climb Snowdon
35. Have my writing published (in Bust or some other equally cool magazine...)
36. Record a podcast
37. Make my own zine
38. Get another cat (keeping the one I currently have, of course)
39. Sing live with a band
40. Find an old school gameboy that still works
41. Exhibit my work
42. Visit New York and San Francisco (I don't care about the rest of the US)
43. Get my own studio space
And then I'll be happy and fulfilled... or something like that.
One of them is 43things.com, where you can make 'life lists' of up to (you guessed it) 43 things you want to achieve. These range from the inane ("get a haircut"), the ludicrous ("be a pimp"), obscure ("laugh along with my wife"), sensible ("set realistic goals") and the sheer brilliant ("milk a cow"), right through to those ongoing epic struggles ("sort my whole bloody life out").
It just so happens that I do love making lists. In fact, I probably spend more time making lists than I do actually doing the things on them. Procrastination to the max. So here for your delectation - in no particular order - are my 43 things "to do".
1. Start a magazine
2. Work for myself
3. Write a novel
4. Do a Masters degree
5. Learn to speak Italian
6. Learn to drive (or more aptly, stick with lessons long enough to pass my test!)
7. Read all the books on my reading list
8. Learn PHP programming
9. Take up yoga and pilates again
10. Spend more time outdoors
11. Live in a foreign country
12. Own a Dansette record player
13. Make my own clothes (I have the sewing machine... which is surely half way there, right?)
14. Go interrailing
15. Learn how to bind books
16. Learn how to screenprint
17. Take creative writing classes (starting in September)
18. Remember how to play the guitar (uh, restring my guitar)
19. Take riding lessons
20. Run a 5k race for charity
21. Interview one of my heroes (one that is still alive, of course)
22. Find somewhere I feel settled and stay there
23. Volunteer
24. Go rock climbing
25. Visit Amy in Japan
26. Go walking every day
27. Be more sociable
28. Visit Amsterdam (again)
29. Finish building my own website (as opposed to building other people's)
30. Live in Manchester (I'm getting nearer...)
31. Plant a tree and watch it grow
32. Visit the Outer Hebrides (should hopefully be doing this next spring)
33. Live a simpler life (chuck out pretty much everything)
34. Climb Snowdon
35. Have my writing published (in Bust or some other equally cool magazine...)
36. Record a podcast
37. Make my own zine
38. Get another cat (keeping the one I currently have, of course)
39. Sing live with a band
40. Find an old school gameboy that still works
41. Exhibit my work
42. Visit New York and San Francisco (I don't care about the rest of the US)
43. Get my own studio space
And then I'll be happy and fulfilled... or something like that.
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