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)

Recent crafting

The final of The Apprentice is tonight, and the Big Cross Stitch is nowhere near finished. Ooops. I think I got as far as week 3 or 4, then my crafting time all but disappeared, and what little crafting time I did have I filled by making stuff for the recent Owl Swap over on Craftster.

Here's what I made for my partner:

A hand-carved owl stamp:

A little lavender bag with a cross stitch owl design on the front:
A covered hardback sketchbook with a ribbon page marker:
And the item I'm most proud of, knitted owl fingerless gloves:These took me forever: first I had to find a yarn in the right weight that didn't contain any animal fibres as my partner is allergic to them (which was a lot harder than it sounds, I thought it would be easy to find a cotton or even an acrylic yarn, but I hunted high and low before I found this one!), then I knitted one glove on the size kneedles suggested in the pattern only to find it was really small (I know, I should've knitted a swatch to check gauge first but I always skip this part...), then I had problems with the DPNs creating ladders up the palm of the glove. But I managed it, and they turned out really well :). And I even managed to teach myself how to cable with very few problems, woo :D

The Big Cross Stitch is still in my to-do list, but unfortunately it looks like it'll have to wait until exams are over as I'm going to be really busy for the next month doing near enough non-stop revision. Once exams are over though I've got a vague idea buzzing around in my head of hopping on a train and going somewhere "up North" for a weekend, partly so I can make a start on crossing off the "visit 5 places north of London" task on my list, partly because I'm fed up of being unable to do things that I want to do because one thing or another gets in the way, and partly because I want to get out and see the world, and what better place to start than with the little island that I've lived on for almost 21 years and hardly seen any of. So I should have plenty of stitching time of the train to wherever I end up going, but it's still going to take me a very long time to complete it as it takes a lot longer than I thought!

This is what my Wednesday nights look like for the next 12 weeks... (a.k.a. the 2011 Big Cross Stitch parts 1 and 2)

... watching The Apprentice while working on some cross stitch.

It's the biggest piece I've ever done, and I've got a feeling that it's going to take me a loooong time.

I thought it would be cool to keep a record of how I'm progressing with it, so I'm going to take a photo of how far I've got every week.

Here's how it looked at about 11:30pm last night...
(it's a 2-page pattern, and that's about half of one page and it's not finished. And I haven't even started on all the backstitch yet...)

I'm aiming to get it completely finished before this series of The Apprentice finishes.
I've got a lot of work ahead of me...

The Catch-Up Part 1: My first finished knitting project!

I’m so bad at finishing craft projects that take longer than half an hour, but this time I actually ended up with a finished product, hooray!

For Christmas Alan got the game Little Big Planet for his PS3, and in a moment of madness one day shortly afterwards I said “I know, I’ll knit you a Sackboy”. For those not up to date on video games (which would include me if Alan didn’t talk about them non-stop), Sackboy is the main character from the game; he is literally made out of a hessian sack material, and in the game you run him around completing levels by avoiding obstacles and running and jumping all over the place.

A quick Google search led me to a pattern, and luckily I didn’t have to hunt high and low for the correct wool as the wool shop in Falmouth had the exact brand and shade recommended in the pattern.

I bought the wool possibly sometime around February and made a start, but something was going wrong with my increase stitches and I ended up with a horribly tight mess that I physically couldn’t do any more stitches on. Becoming disheartened, I shoved all the materials in a bag and gave up.

Procrastination took over, but Alan kept pestering me and asking me how much I’d done and my feeling of guilt was growing. So when I came home for the summer I picked up my needles again and made a proper start on Sackboy. I got one of my mum’s friends to show me the correct way to increase, and then I was off! The pattern wasn’t actually as complicated as I had imagined it to be (although mum told me afterwards that her friend didn’t think I would be able to do something that complicated as a beginner!), and I eventually finished it after a couple of weeks.

And so, I am proud to present...

SACKBOY!

Number 1 of 50 projects in 2010: bird house

I decorated this bird house to use as my "jar" for the the Jar of Whimsies swap on Craftster. I decorated it by hand, hunted high and low for tiny treasures to put in, packaged it up with love... only for it to get lost in the post somewhere between here and Pennsylvania *sobs*.
I'm so disappointed that my partner never received it, I found so many cool little bits and pieces in charity shops that I'm obviously never going to find again - things like vintage postcards that were written and sent decades ago, tiny little photo frames, a tiny ceramic bird, a little wooden owl... all lost and alone somewhere unknown in the postal system. Both packages for this swap got lost, so we're sending replacements. I'm sure I'll still be able to fill the replacement container I'm sending with lots of nice things, but it won't be quite the same and my heart's not completely in it any more. Oh well, such is life. I knew I was risking it not getting there when I posted it by surface mail, but because the house is made from thick wood it made the package unbelievably heavy so posting it by air mail (the more reliable option) would've at least doubled the postage making it cost over £20 to post!

Anyway, that's enough of that. Back to the craft.

I originally thought about painting the design on with acrylic paint, but my painting skills aren't that great yet so my design would've lacked the detail I wanted it to have. In the end I opted for good ol' coloured pencils. This meant I could put in the shading and details needed to stop the tree and grass looking like a brown squiggly mess and a monotone green blob.
It was pretty hard drawing on the wood as I couldn't get completely smooth lines because of the ridges of the wood grain. That wasn't a problem for the tree and grass, but it made it a lot more difficult to do the swallows, especially their tails.
I was really pleased with how this turned out as I've never done a project like it before. I'm really tempted to make another one for myself, it would look lovely hanging in the apple tree in the garden in autumn. I think next time I might try sanding the surface slightly before drawing to see if I can make my lines more smooth.

1 project down, 49 to go!

Next project: tree of life necklace.

50 craft projects in 2010

I've been inspired by other crafters on websites like Craftster to try and complete 50 projects this year. I know, it seems a little crazy starting nearly half way through the year, but I've got a nice long summer break coming up so I'll have plenty of free time for crafting. Plus I'm going to count projects I've already done this year, so it's not a whole new 50 projects from now on. I've only got 29 projects down so far but I'm sure it won't be difficult to come up with more amazing things I want to make.

I'm going to number the projects as I complete them (number 1 is the first project I finished, number 2 the second and so on), and the unfinished/not yet started projects further down the list will just be in a random order and each one will be moved further up the list and re-numbered once it's completed.

On to the list:

Completed projects:
1. Bird house
2. Tree of life pendant

In progress:
3. Daisy chain beaded bracelet
4. Crochet arm warmers

Still to come:
5. Beaded butterfly
6. Jane Austen bracelet
7. Wave bracelet
8. Sophia holdall
9. Beaded poppy
10. Altered jigsaw
11. Photo cube
12. Sock pig
13. Fused plastic sandwich wrap
14. Button necklace
15. Button earrings
16. Knitting needle roll
17. Salt scrub
18. Face mask
19. Bird embroideries to decorate my room
20. Curling ribbon coasters
21. Jewellery holder
22. Knitted Sackboy
23. Recipe book
24. Wool dryer balls
25. Temari
26. Pin cushion thread catcher
27. Decorated tissue box covers – one for home room and one for uni room
28. Turtle pincushion
29. Apron to wear while crafting

Watch this space for info and photos on the finished items!

I’d love to hear from other people who have set themselves the same or similar task this year, it would be great to see how people get on and the variety of things they create.

Om nom nom

The St John pizza eating contest today was quite a success. 10 people took part, and we raised £65.20 (which goes 10% of the way to clearing our £600-odd debt... I only found out it was this much today, I'd previously believed it was only £100-odd. We've got a LOT of fundraising to do). Probably not the best message for first aiders to give out ("Come and frantically stuff your face with pizza until you puke, woo!"), but £2 for a large pizza is a bargain most students won't pass up, and we managed to get some much needed funds for our unit in the process.
It was so funny, and at the same time rather disgusting, watching the different ways people were coming up with to cram the pizza into their faces. Folding it up like a sandwich, stacking slices on top of each other, washing it down with water (without much chewing, eww), dipping it in water
first...
The fastest time was about 4 minutes and 10 seconds I think, and the longest was about 15 minutes and I think a couple of people still failed to finish. One guy looked like he was going to be sick, he was all shaky and pale sat there with a sick bowl in front of him. Lovely.

ETA: I got the role of Treasurer in our SJA unit! All the other newly elected committee members are shadowing the person who is currently doing their role, which is what I would be doing under normal circumstances, but I've been thrown in at the deep end and have taken over straight away as the treasurer before me has left uni. Eep! It doesn't look like as mammoth and complicated a task as I thought it did, but it's still going to take a bit of time to get my head round it. Even so, I'm looking forward to it and it should be good fun.

Anyway, on to a more pleasant topic...

Next year's house is sorted... I hope. I say "I hope" because people could still change their minds, but hopefully that won't happen and we'll just be able to get on with it.
After very nearly 2 weeks of "discussions" and bad feeling we've all managed to come to an agreement. I've also decided that unless next year is amazing I'll be living by myself or with fewer and different people next year, as we don't seem to work well as a group and I don't want the stresses we've already had over this house to interfere with my final year work.

In other news, I'm crocheting myself some wrist warmers using this pattern. I'm very new to crochet, but these are turning out pretty nicely. I somehow managed to lose a few stitches at one end of the first one so its a bit lop sided, but when I sew it into a tube to finish it hopefully it won't be too noticeable. Pictures will be posted upon completion!

My first attempt at embroidery

Ta-daaa! *is pleased with self*

I think it turned out pretty well, considering I've never tried anything like this before. I used what I think are pretty basic stitches so it was relatively easy, and the pattern was made up of nice straight lines so I didn't have to worry about detail work.

Stitches I used:

• cherry stem: couching
• cherry: backstitch for the outline, satin stitch to fill it in
• outline of the frosting: stem stitch for the top and 'scalloping chain' (as it's called in the Sublime Stitching book) or 'lazy daisy' stitch for the bottom (I'm not sure which it's actually called, can't seem to find the right answer with my limited knowledge at the moment. Anyone with more experience care to enlighten me?)
• sprinkles: French knots
• case: split stitch

I've found some pretty cool patterns for birds, so I might do a couple to use as decorations in my room next year.

Speaking of next year's house, we've got our second look round tomorrow. It clashes with yet another thing on my timetable - the St John meeting tomorrow evening. It's kinda important that I go, because it's the committee elections and I'm running for Treasurer (I know I'm the only person running, but still...), and we may possibly miss radio training for the UCAS fair duty on Wednesday. Arghhh, there's always something getting in the way of this house stuff. I just want contracts to be signed and for us to move in so that it's all sorted. But before that we have to decide who's having which room, which isn't going to end well...

Wish me luck, I think I'm going to need it!