Taking Pictures

I think I finally did it.
I do believe that my felt shop looks quite professional.  And it was all in the pictures!.

As with most amateur online sellers I have read a lot about how important the picture is to views and then to sales.  I have tried playing with the macro button, taking pictures when it's not sunny, replicating how magazines take pictures (in situ), and have plastered flip chart paper over things to make a light box, and yet I have never been happy with the result.  No to say that these things didn't work, because my pictures have definitely improved over time, they were just never as good as everyone elses.  

And then I grabbed the chance to get a free mannequin top.  She is my new best friend. I love her.   Now she has taken over my felt shop, and I like it.

 So much cleaner and easy to look at, I wish I'd done a before and after :-)

Catching Up & Child Allergy....

I was trying to catch up with my blog reading this morning and found out that Google Reader is going somewhere so I needed to read my blogs another way.  Luckily others are more 'on to it' than me and have discovered Bloglovin is a good way to go. So I've been and organised myself over there this morning.  If you fancy you can 
Follow my blog with Bloglovin by clicking on that link.

I've been getting prepared to help out with Buddhas birthday celebrations next weekend.  (last year it upset my child allergies). This year I wanted to do something that didn't need too much 'pre-work', and maybe something that meant the children didn't need to hang around at our stall for so long.  So yesterday, with the help of You Tube I taught myself how to finger knit and made this scarf/cowl thing.

Next step in the preparations is to teach my sister since she's my helper for the day and make sure we can show others.  I know that it a nice thing to do,  the child allergy however, is making me a bit anxious....

I'll let you know how it goes :-)

Chocolate or Jane Austen?

Could have been Chocolate (Juliette Binoche is very cool and does wear some nice shawls) or it could have been Jane Austen where shawls abound.

Either way I've been keeping busy crocheting my first ever shawls.

I've also decided that I should be a fashionista and I think shawls are where it is at this coming season :-)

Here are the 3 so far.. (I've popped them in the felt shop)

Stash Busting

Since I started reading about crochet on-line I've found a whole new vocabulary!

Stash is all the yarn I have.  And I have LOTS!

Lots of half balls, not quite enough to make anything and yet a bit too much to be added to my messy afghan project, (which is coming along slowly).

I've made myself a pact (mainly becasue I'm running out of storage room) that I won't buy any new yarn until I've used up some of the stuff I've got.  Hence there was the fancy yarns made into coffee plunger cosy's, and also in to scarves like this one:

And.... I've started to make a full sized granny square blanket! 

You'd have thought with my love of the granny square that I'd have made one ages ago, it's just that they are so BIG they need so much time, and yet if I ever want to buy yarn again I'm going to have to finish the squares.  I'm going for 6 x 7 to start with.   That's 42 squares, I've done 20 so far, almost half way there, and then it's the border and joining bit (phew!)

Scarfies

The students in Dunedin are nicknamed Scarfies.

I must be channelling a Scarfie at the moment - all I can think of making are scarves!

I have made the cycling gloves, I just need to do the padding bit (I bought some leather elbow patches to chop up and sew on) and of course the fabulous flowers.... with only 2 weeks to go I really need to get these finished and give them a trial run (which would also encourage me to hop back on the bike for a practice too!)

We had fabulous green cup cakes today for St Patricks Day - very talented people that I work with (wish I'd taken a photo!)

Hoarding Brightly

I’m a bit of a hoarder and Andrew is a bit of a collector, I’ll let you create your own mental image of what that means to the inside of the cottage :-)

After a year or so of full-on crocheting I seem to have horded the last meter or so of every yarn I’ve ever used. Those bits that will come in handy for something, sometime. We had a bit of a tidy up yesterday and voila; a plan!

This afternoon I sat and tied it all together to make into a big ball and I now have my crochet hook at the ready to make….. something….. I think I might do a circle and maybe then it can be fashioned into some kind of purse. As you can tell this plan is as clear as mud in my head!

Who knows – whatever it becomes it might be the next BIG thing :-)

I’ve also been attracted to some really bright and fun yarns lately. As a result there are some pretty funky new coasters in my etsy shop all green and orange with a splash of yellow.

I was also inspired to zoop up these brown and green granny squares with some lovely bright yellows and made it into a scarf which I’ve popped into my ArtFire shop.

Rosette & Pizza

It was NZ Safety at Home week last week. As part of the entertainment/education at work there was a colouring competition for 5 different age groups. Yesterday we decided we needed rosettes for the 1st, 2nd and 3rd winners to go with their (incredibly cool) prizes. The commercial ones were going to take 4 weeks to get to us, so I surfed the net and put up my hand. I had great fun, apart from a couple of stabs with the needle, oh and I'd forgotten just how hot the hot glue gun makes the glue :-)
Hopefully the kids will like them. And fingers crossed for Andrew's entry the adults prize is very fab!. He used fabric and made a collage. It's judging day tomorrow. I think his is the best one there, but I may be slightly biased lol!




I just put this in my Etsy shop with the description as "Red and green can never be seen, except upon a beauty queen" which was a saying I learnt from our mam, and it had another version, "Red and green can never be seen, except upon an Irish queen" I have no idea where they come from....

Andrew thinks it looks like tomatoes and capsicum, or maybe a pizza..... I wonder if that would make it a big seller ? ? ?
Maybe uniform for a pizza delivery firm ? ? ? :-)