My first craft fair!

Last weekend I did my very first craft fair!

The Market House in St Austell was hosting the MAKE Christmas Fair, and I had a table which I shared with my friend Lizzy. Even though we shared it was pretty expensive (£15 for each of us) so I was really worried that I wouldn’t sell anything and I would’ve just wasted a load of money.

Before the fair I got busy making lots of bits and pieces to sell – I ended up taking necklaces, earrings, coasters and bowls made from recycled magazines, rings, covered notebooks, a reversible tote bag and lavender bag.

Steve came up with me and helped me set up. I was really glad I had an extra pair of strong hands to help me carry my stuff! :P. He stayed for the first hour or so but then I think he got a bit bored and felt out of place being the only young guy in amongst a bunch of women haha.

The day started off pretty slowly – a steady stream of people were coming in and most of them looked at my stuff, but most of them just carried on walking past, not really looking interested at all. A few people stopped at my stall long enough to have a closer look, and I got quite a few compliments on my necklaces, but no one looked like they were going to buy anything. Lizzy made the first 2 sales, both before 1pm (the halfway point of the fair), and I was feeling slightly disheartened at this point as obviously no one thought my stuff was good enough to buy.

A couple of young girls came over and looked at my stuff for quite a while, then disappeared, then came back and asked how much a necklace was before disappearing again. As the hall was freezing I decided to nip out and grab a hot chocolate, and by the time I came back I had made a sale! Trust me to miss my first ever sale haha. But I was really pleased, and felt that the day’s target had been met.

The next target became selling 2 items, which I did just half an hour later when someone came and bought a set of 4 of my coasters, bringing the day’s total to £12.50. So the next target became covering the cost of the table...

Later on that afternoon I sold an individual coaster, bringing me to £14.50, just 50p short of my target! Luckily I managed to sell a bowl and a ring before the end of the fair, bringing my grand total to £21. So not only did I sell something and cover the cost of my table, I even managed to make a profit. Mega chuffed right there.

Some photos from the day:

I had a really good day (obviously made a lot better by the fact I made a profit haha) and definitely want to do another fair. Maybe not the same one if the price stayed the same, but I’d definitely do another cheaper one. It’s also spurred me on to take the plunge and become self employed so I can open an Etsy shop and start selling properly, which is something I’ve been wanting to do for quite a long time but have felt completely daunted by. If anyone reads this... do you think I should go for it? And the question I’ve been stuck on for a long time... what should I call my shop?

(Also as I didn't sell loads I have a lot of this stuff left over, so if you see anything you'd like to buy then let me know :P)

Izzy and Steve's weekend away

Instead of buying Steve a present for his birthday back in May, I promised I would pay for a nice weekend away somewhere for us both. We decided to go on Saturday 27th and Sunday 29th August, which was probably a bit silly as the bank holiday weekend probably made everything more expensive, but it was my first weekend of freedom after exams and I desperately needed to get away and unwind, so we just decided to go for it.

I let Steve plan the whole thing, so I had no idea where we were going until we got there. All I knew is that we were getting a bus, then another bus, then another bus, then a boat, then walking about 8 miles. So that could mean we were going absolutely anywhere...

We made an early 7.45am start on Saturday morning, stopping off at Tesco for some breakfast then walking round to the Moor to get on our first bus of the day, which I found out at that point was taking us to Truro.

About 45 minutes later we arrived in Truro and hopped on our next bus to St Austell.
When we got to St Austell about 45 minutes later, we had a 40ish minute wait for our next bus, so we wandered down into the town and had a look around. As I somehow always manage to do, I spied some craft shops that I’ll have to go back and visit sometime soon haha. Our next bus was only a short 10 minutes or so, and it was to take us round to Mevagissey. The views along the road out across St Austell Bay were really pretty, but by the time I managed to get the camera out and turn it on we’d gone past the clear views so all I managed to get was a photo of some bushes haha.

We had time for a quick wander through Mevagissey before walking down to the harbour to get the boat, which was going to take us round to Fowey (which I’ve now learned is pronounced “Foy”, not “Fow-ey” as I’ve always pronounced it, and how the spelling of it makes it look like it should be pronounced!).

The boat ride was lovely and smooth (which I was really glad of as I end up feeling really queasy on bumpy boats), and we got some lovely views on our 40 minute journey.
When we arrived in Fowey we had a quick look round then stopped for tasty crab sandwiches in a cute little café. After another little wander round while we digested our lunch, we headed out of town and along the coast path to start the walking section of our journey.
Although the sun we’d had earlier in the day disappeared it still stayed pretty warm, and it was actually quite busy along the coast path. The first half of the walk was a lot of up and down hills, so being as unfit as I am I got worn out pretty quickly, but once we got to Par the rest of the walk was pretty much flat and went pretty quickly.
At one point “nature called” so I went round a corner into what I thought was a deserted field, as you do, and it was just my luck that as I was half way through an old man walked slowly over the hill towards me. It was clearly obvious what I was doing, but I couldn’t exactly stand up and try to pretend that I was doing something else. Major cringe. What then made matters worse was the fact that the man then decided to stop and talk to Steve, so I had to just stand around in the field waiting until he’d gone. I didn’t feel so bad when the man eventually left and Steve told me that the man had only started talking to him because he’d accidentally said “Hello sexy” to the man thinking it was me coming out of the field :p

At about 5.30pm we arrived at our hotel in Carlyon Bay. It was really posh, and there we were with messy hair, sweaty from the walk and slightly muddy. We looked just a tad out of place, the people at reception looked as if they’d never had walkers turn up at their hotel before haha. We checked in, and when we made our reservation for dinner the receptionist said she’d make sure we got a seat by the window. Talk about service! Haha.
Our room was amazing. Lovely big bed, massive TV on the wall, comfy sofa, big fancy bathroom, and our own balcony with chairs and sun loungers. We realised later on that we must’ve been given the wedding suite (which would explain the seat by the window at dinner), and our suspicions were added to by the fact that all the hotel staff who served us seemed to know which room we were in even if we’d never seen them before haha. We reckon they thought that either we’d just got engaged or Steve was going to propose to me :p.
After having showers and getting changed into non-walking clothes we headed down for dinner. I forgot to take photos of my food, but I had a trio of smoked fish (which I think were haddock, trout and salmon) to start, chicken with spring onion mash, root vegetable pureé and green beans with butter and pepper for my main, and lemon tart for dessert. I was so full afterwards, but it was all so delicious and really well presented.
In the morning I had a tasty full English, then we set out to make our way home via a stop in Charlestown. Charlestown is quite small, but it was packed with people. We round the Shipwreck and Heritage Centre, which had lots of interesting information and artefacts from shipwrecks, then a random section about natural gas in the middle which was slightly odd. We had fun being kinds and playing on the remote control boats though haha.
Afterwards we went on board the tall ship docked in the harbour which has been used as a set for lots of films and TV programs including Mansfield Park, the new Tim Burton version of Alice in Wonderland, Doctor Who and loads more.
There was a slightly random comedy sketch going on next to the ship with a bunch of people dressed up as pirates acting out an execution. I don’t know if there was really a point to it, but if there was neither of us got it, and the acting was quite bad and the costumes were a bit rubbish.

After a bite of lunch we got on a bus back to St Austell (which was only a couple of miles up the road, all of our travelling the day before had taken us in a big circle!), then got a train back to Falmouth.

I had such a lovely weekend, and it was a nice reward after the stress of exams. I think I could easily get used to staying in posh hotels, but sadly my budget won’t allow it :P

Royal Cornwall Show 2011

I spent a few days at Royal Cornwall Show with St John again this year. I went up earlier this year though, because I'm far too keen and volunteered to help with the setup before the show started. 3 of us travelled up on the afternoon of Tuesday 7th June, and we were joined by 10 others on the evening of Wednesday 8th June. The show itself was on Thursday 9th, Friday 10th and Saturday 11th June.

I decided than rather than have a post full of writing, I would give a run down of this weekend in pictures. Here we go :D

At Royal Cornwall Show 2011...

... we ate far too much junk food (trololol at this awful photo, I really don't know why I'm sharing it with the world, but just look at the concentration on our faces over our burger van dinner haha)

... we tried to cool our drinks with an ice pack (note: sadly this does not work :( )
... I got suspended from the roof of the tent by my oh-so-lovely boyfriend (this is the first of many fails I made that week...)
... we borrowed Liskeard's Landrover...
... and made the first Tremough LINKS road trip... to buy 18kg of cheese (costing £80). Oh the looks we got as we walked out of the cash-and-carry :P
... we worked hard cleaning the medical centre
... I discovered I cannot roll under metal barriers, and thus I would make a poor Mission Impossible-style spy. This also goes down on my list of fails that week
... we were not impressed by the rain on our first morning on duty
... we saw alpacas :D
... we carried on working hard in the kitchen, helping cook for 150 people in SJA, the Red Cross and the Police

... we discovered Barry, our first "interesting" looking bird of the weekend, in the Young Farmers tent

... we saw some cool birds of prey (a Bengal eagle owl and a Eurasian kestrel)

... we found our next interesting bird, which looked like it had a cool mop of hair haha... and a bird with a really long tail!
...we watched some camel polo
... we celebrated the end of 3 days of hard work on duty by picking up Frankie (who clearly LOVED every second of it :P )
... and then, having lost all our energy, we collapsed into heaps on the grass before packing up tents and piling in the minibus to come home.
I hope you enjoyed my little photo rundown of this year's show :P

Obviously this is only a very brief snapshot of what I actually did that week(end), as I was either too busy to be taking photos, or I was out on duty and treating people which I obviously can't take photos of. I spent quite a lot of time in the medical centre this year which was good, because it meant I actually got to do some first aid rather than just doing nothing as usual! I also got to treat a fairly serious casualty while out on a foot patrol, so it was good to put some of my PTA skills to the test.

Overall I had a fab time at the show once again. Bring on next year! :D

Winter is definitely here.

Over the past week I've been greeted rain, rain and yet more rain every time I've stepped out of the house.
However, we did get a beautiful double rainbow last week (only one shows up in the photo, but the second was above it).
Rainbows don't make up for getting drenched though... my walk to the post delivery office the other week in a coat that I thought was waterproof ended up in me being getting soaked through 3 layers of clothes, my feet got soaked today on the way to and from a lecture because I was stupid and decided to wear plimsolls, and tomorrow morning I've got a practical session which involves walking around outside for an hour looking at birds - I'm making sure I'm dressed appropriately for that one (waterproof coat that is actually waterproof, waterproof trousers, walking boots, the works haha)
The days have been getting colder and colder too, and most evenings I find myself sitting in bed under my duvet plus another blanket so I don't freeze while trying to work (or browse the internet...). Because we're all "poor students" the issue of when to turn on the central heating is a hot topic (hah I made a funny), so it looks like most of this winter will be spent wearing as many clothes as is physically possible.

I just bought myself a bat detector on eBay, and I'm rather excited for it to arrive. I've been wanting one for a while, but kinda got put off because they're not cheap. But today when a lecturer said that people who know how to properly use them are pretty much guaranteed a job within a year my enthusiasm was rekindled and I got straight on eBay when I got back haha.
I've gone for a Magenta Bat4 which was £54 with free postage. When I was paying I got a nice surprise when I remembered I still had £15.80 sitting in my Paypal from a bunch of online surveys I did, so only a grand total of £38.20 came out of my bank account. I shouldn't really keep spending money like this, but I'm passing it off as a "birthday present" haha.
It should be here in the next 2 or 3 days, and I'm quite excited about getting to go out and use it. Bats are still a novelty to me as I'd never seen one before I came down here, and I think they're pretty amazing creatures. Plus it's kind of appropriate with Halloween coming up haha.
Yay for being able to buy fun, expensive things and being able to pass them off as educational!