The bright sparks over at Crafteroo organised a challenge with a twist at the end of January, the premise being that members were paired up and had to then produce a gift item utilising both partners’ crafting skills. I was paired up with the very lovely Debbs and we decided that she would make a brooch which could be pinned onto a knitting bag that I’d make but which could also be removed and used elsewhere. This is the final result (with apologies for the not fantastic photograph!)

The bag will be going into the Comic Relief shop on Folksy which is stocked with donated handmade items from Crafteroo members – please have a look! There are some absolutely gorgeous items there from some really talented crafty people.

So what do you think? Would you buy it?

Posted under general crafty updates, sewing

I’ve mentioned before that I am a member of Crafteroo which is a UK-based craft forum, and how inspiring a place I have found it to be. The forum has liased with Folksy to open a shop for Comic Relief. It will be stocked with donations handmade by Crafteroo members and all proceeds will go to Comic Relief. Folksy have generously agreed to waive fees for these items meaning that all your money will go straight to the cause.

Please click on the photograph to go to the Crafteroo store for Comic Relief on Folksy and check back regularly as more items are being added on a frequent basis. I will be donating an item in collaboration with Kerry from PennyDog and I’ll let you know when it’s there!

Posted under general crafty updates, recommendations, site stuff

My husband is an absolute superstar, he really is. I’m really enjoying this blog at this location although I still have a bit of work to do in terms of designing the template, reordering my categories & tags and so on. I have also been keeping an eye on the visitor stats for the blog using Google Analytics and have had a really nice trickle of visitors over the last few days. Please, say hello! Otherwise I don’t know what you like and/or don’t like!

Anyway. Over the last couple of days I’ve also been exploring other UK-based crafty forums and blogs which has been really exciting. Of the 93 blogs I subscribe to with bloglines 35 of them are UK based. Why do I find this so exciting? Simply because our counterparts in other countries have access to a wide range of materials that we just can’t get here, and I like to see what the UK crafters are able to do with what we have available.

On that note, I was extremely excited to read this blog entry by Manda at Tree Fall Design. She is going to be editing a brand spanking new sewing magazine being published for the first time in October called Sew Hip. If you’re not a regular reader of Manda’s blog, I urge you to go and look – she is enormously talented and her blog is just a thing of beauty.

I’ve also joined a couple of UK crafting forums – Crafteroo and Crafts Forum after being linked to the latter by Jen of Flurogoddess fame. All very exciting and hopefully places I can learn great things.

So, in other news I am leaving work at the end of October. I love my job but it has been a very different job than I really want so when I was told the funding had run out for my contract it was actually a relief rather than a shock. There is so much I’ve had to sacrifice doing in order to work and once Bob & I worked out we were making less than £30 a week by the time we paid childcare and travelling costs we decided it wasn’t worth me going back to work for the moment. I have applied for a part time evening job but we’ll see how that pans out too. This of course means I’m finally going to be able to return to the knitting group at Tchai Ovna with Purple Jen and Angela which I’ve sorely missed with being at work.

My last interesting piece of news is I’ve dyed my hair pink! With the help of my good friend Kat, I’ve gone ‘Flamingo pink’. It’s… different, to say the least! You can see it in the last entry, that pink-haired demented looking freak is me clutching my new niece. Haha.

Posted under general crafty updates