My lovely customers

Last week, one of my customers emailed me some photos of pictures and cards that she needlefelts using the wool roving she buys from my little website. Her work is absolutely beautiful and I asked her whether she sold her work and I was amazed when she said that she just tends to give them away to friends !! So, after admiring one of her pieces in particular I told her that she really must think about charging for her work and not keep giving it away !

Yesterday morning, when I got home from the school run I found a box addressed to me sitting on my doorstep.

Hmmmm - what could it be ? I was pretty sure all of my stock had already arrived for next week's show

Ooooh - how exciting - a beautifully wrapped parcel

A wonderful hand written printed card - hang on, I recognise that seagull

Oh WOW - it's the washing line picture I'd admired !!!

THANK YOU MORVEN - I absolutely love it !! But you really MUST start charging for your wonderful work !!

I LOVE my customers. Thank you to all of you who send me photos of your work - I promise I will try and update the customer gallery page on my website once I'm back from the show and give you all credit for your wonderful work.

Talking of next week's show ... advance warning that all orders received between Monday 5th October and Monday 12th October inclusive will not be processed or dispatched until Tuesday 13th October. All orders will then be processed in turn and I do apologise if you have to wait a little while for your order to be dispatched. Your patience is, however, greatly appreciated.

And one last thing for today - it's my little man's 7th birthday today. 7 years old !! I can't believe it - where has the time gone.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SAM - LOVE YOU xxxx

Slow Progress

Maybe I'm just being lazy or maybe things aren't happening as fast as I would like, but progress for the Knitting & Stitching Show in October is very slow. With the show being just over 6 weeks away now, I'm starting to panic that I won't be ready. It's getting so bad that I'm actually starting to have nightmares about it now !

I've heard horror stories from other exhibitors that you can sit for 3 hours in a queue at Ally Pally just waiting to unload ! Apparently they only let 12 people unload at a time which means that with over 300 exhibitors, it takes forever to get near the front of the queue before you can even start to unload, let alone start setting your stand up.

I've made a start bagging up supplies, but am now starting to run out of stock and that won't do for my loyal website customers, so I've had to stop bagging things up for the time being and wait for new supplies to arrive.

So far I've managed to bag up felt shapes, hearts, pebbles, plain balls and beaded balls.

I've been to the old fashioned sweet shop and begged to buy their empty for victorian style sweet jars (this is just half of them !)

I've been thinking of ideas on how to pretty up my stand - like the jars of felt balls aren't pretty enough - and this is what I've come up with

Lovely felt flowers complete with spotty buttons in the centre. Hmmm, maybe I should make up some sets of these along with little brooch pins for people to buy as kits?

I've painted the wooden letters that I purchased from Michaels when I was in Florida at Easter

I've bought lovely candy stripe paper bags for the "small, individual items" and am waiting on costings for printed paper carrier bags from the printers. I've signed off the final version of my flier and these are at the printers as we speak.

I've designed some lovely felt ball and button jewellery sets - which just need the final component adding to the little bags and then they're all ready to be labelled up. No sneak peeks of these - if you want to see them, you'll have to come along to Ally Pally !

I'm waiting on my biggest button delivery ever - unfortunately I ordered so much that I think I cleaned my supplier out and only managed to get half of the order earlier this week. Hopefully the rest will arrive very soon so that I can start counting out and bagging up buttons.

My giant felt supplies order is currently being made to order and is scheduled to arrive in the middle of September - until then, bagging up of felt goodies is on hold.

I've printed out thousands of label tops for all of the grip seal bags which we be filled with felt and button goodies and need to sit and cut them all out !

I need to get Public Liability Insurance and sort out the electrics for the stand.

I need to order a chip & pin machine and work out how to use it !

I need to make up a couple of the felt ball and button necklaces for me and my friend to wear at the show so that people can hopefully admire them and we can then sell them some of the lovely little kits.

I need to do a "dry run" and check that all of my goodies will actually fit on the shelves in the stand - if they don't - I'm stuffed !

Oh - and a few other little things that need sorting before the show - Grace's 4th birthday party, Sam's 7th birthday party (a week apart !), new school shoes, new ballet outfit, finish the Questseekers Reading Scheme at the library, entertain the in-laws, make time to see my sister who I haven't seen in a whole year ! Make up some pretty little button hairclips for my friend's daughters who also have birthdays in the next couple of weeks.

Is that it? Probably not, but for the moment it will have to do. My head is nearly bursting but maybe I can use this blog post as my checklist.

ooh, ooh - another thing I just remembered ! Some new special offers have been added to the website - little boxes of buttons - all half their recommended retail price - check 'em out here . And, some cotton tote bags that I bought ages ago with the intention of prettying up and selling on. Needless to say, I've never had the time so am now offering them for sale at 80p each. I'm sure you will be able to do much more with them than I ever planned : EDIT - SORRY, ALL BAGS NOW SOLD !!

Right - gotta go - those label tops won't cut themselves out !!

Sarah x

WOW !!

This evening I went out to water the plants at the front of the house and was confronted by this sight

It was amazing, the balloon went up from the field almost opposite our house and then gently floated over the top of us

there were about 20 people in the basket and they all waved as they went over - how jealous was I ??!!

We have FINALLY got the hole in our roof sorted out ! We had a leak and the rain came through, landed on top of our boiler (which is very stupidly in the loft) and completely broke it, so we've had no hot water (only on the immersion) or heating for the past 3 weeks. The scaffolding is still up so I was very brave (and nosy) and ventured onto the roof last night to inspect our 250 year old tiles and to see what the view was like from up there ...

Remember me telling you about the local shop I was going to visit? Well, I went in this morning and took these with me (as well as some of my textile pictures)

The owner really liked my stuff and is keen to have it in her shop (sadly only on a sale or return basis), but she's confident that it will sell (as am I), so I need to get to work putting a whole range of stuff together for her.

I also produced these the other day and they're both available for sale on my website if anyone's interested - the bracelet can be made in different sizes (toddler, child or adult), or even as a necklace - just let me know.

When we were down in Cornwall the other week I picked up a leafelt about the Knitting & Stitching Show that is on later in the year. I've decided to treat myself to a day out in London and have signed myself up on a Felt Flower making course, a Creative Embellishment course, a Rag-Rug course and also a business skills for textile artists workshop. I love to go to to things like that and am really looking forward to it. If anyone has been to this particular show before I'd love to hear what you thought about it.

I've also been working on some felted christmas decorations which I'm just putting the finishing touches to - I should hopefully be able to post pics on my next post.

And now I must go and make some more loopy corsages.

See you soon xx