Clapton Festival June 10, 2011

Next stop on the rolling juggernaut that is the Summer Market Round-up is a new one for us: Clapton Festival

This Saturday Alex and Scott will be heading off bright and early to Clapton to tout our shiny goods to the lovely folk attending Clapton Festival Market.

We just got sent through a flyer for the event and it looks utterly amazing.

 

 

And that’s just the first page! There’ll be food – LOADS of fantastic looking cakes and plenty of options for veggies and vegans (not that I am in ANY way biased!) There’ll be vintage stalls, accessories, crafts people, local information stalls and lots of stuff for the mini people to do as well. Plus there’s a classical music concert in St John’s and a dub reggae gig in the Round Chapel nearby. All in all it looks fairly darn fabulous.

If you’re thinking of heading along, it gets started at 12 and runs until around 4pm, in the gardens of St John-at Hackney Church. There’s a google map here.

If you do decide to swing by and spend your afternoon browsing the fabulousness, make sure you go and say hello to Alex and Scott!

Sarah

 

Christmas Market roundup December 8, 2010

Okay, okay, it’s not a post with photos of the Yarn Party. Soon, I promise, my pretties, sooon. We’re still rounding up photos and all that sort of gubbins.

But I just wanted to let you know of a couple of Christmas markets we’re doing this week. They’ll most likely be our last ones for the year as we’re all exhausted!

First stop on the Christmas market juggernaut isThe Museum of London, Docklands. Alex used to work there, it’s a fab museum with some great exhibits and they’re holding a Fair there tomorrow evening. We did last year’s Museum of London Fair and it was a hoot so we signed up for this one. If it’s anything like last year, it should be great fun. Christmas carols, loads of great makers’ stalls and best of all a museum to have a look through. All details on the link.

 

Then this weekend we are dividing and conquering on a local scale as we hit both the Brockley and Ladywell Christmas Markets. We did these last year as well and they are such lovely events. Alex has been helping to organise the Ladywell one this year so she and Scott will be shivering by Ladywell Station, drinking mulled wine and enjoying the atmosphere. Whilst I shall be hauling my butt to Brockley to stand in the street as a purveyor of fine handcrafted wotnots for your Christmas purchasing.

We’ll have a wide range of stuff, as always, including some of the new lavender sachets we’ve been working on. Who says practical objects can’t be pretty? Ours are made with offcuts of the fabrics we use in all our other designs and we think they are rather fun. Plus, Alex found a really good lavender supplier so they smell absolutely divine – as long as you’re not a moth.

Details, details:

Brockley Christmas Market

 

Ladywell Christmas Market

Ladywell Station Forecourt

Railway Terrace

Ladywell

London

SE13

11th December 2010 – 10am-4pm

 

As usual we’d love to see you, if you’re in the area. If there’s something particular you’d like us to make up for you, why not let us know ahead of schedule and we can have it tucked away somewhere on the stall for you!

 

And that concludes this little public service announcement. The small child juggernaut rolls on too and I need to go bathe two paint covered miscreants who’ve been making a pirate island out of half of the mince pie box from the other night. Photos of their amazing creations later.

Sarah

 

Bom bom bom bom Ba bom bom Ba BOM November 16, 2010

Look what I made!

Come to the DARK SIDE

M is for menacing. S is for Sith...

Oh Mrs Vader, why your boy he turn out so bad?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I learned quite a lot from making this wallet.

1. The pockets need to be slightly deeper and the method I used for folding the lining is ridiculously overcomplicated. Useful.

2. The main body of the wallet probably needs to be about an inch wider than it is and could probably be about an inch or so higher as well. Just need to tweak the seam allowances.

3. I freaking LOVE this fabric. It’s so atmospheric and above all uber geeky.

 

I am keeping this one just for myself because I WANT to. And don’t argue or I’ll turn my death star on you.

I’ll be working up some more of these using my improved techniques for Collectormania in 2 weeks time. If you want one, let me know. I have about 2 metres of this fabric left and it is awesome. (Even if it does have General Grievous on it Sorry, my inner nerd is overwhelming me slightly this afternoon.)

Sarah

Fantastic week November 6, 2010

It really has just been the most amazing week.

Monday, I got to sit down with Alex and catch up on the aftermath of Fibre Flurry. You guys, you’re amazing! I cannot believe how many of you took home our bags or stitch markers. I almost cried when I saw how few we had left! (Yeah, I am a wuss. Shut up!)

On Tuesday I went for my 20 week scan and everything’s progressing nicely. The owlettes were very excited to be spying on their new sibling “on the hospital TV”. Sadly, I don’t have a photo to share as the technician didn’t ask us and we didn’t get a chance to hassle him about it. He did however take the time to ask me at least three times whether I wanted to know what I was having. To which I replied, ‘a baby?’ I don’t really want to find out the gender, I didn’t for either of the existing owlettes and they came out healthy and safe. Don’t want to mess with the formula.

Friday morning is my ‘time off’ when both the kids are at pre-school, so Alex and I went down to Oscar’s in Ladywell and drank tea, ate cake (Mmm, carrot cake!) and had a good planning session.

We’ve got quite a lot of stuff coming up in the next month or so, not least the Christmas Party. We’ve got a few Christmas markets and in about three weeks we’re doing Collector Mania. We’ve got a bunch of stuff planned for it, including an exclusive run of messenger bags.  Alex and Scott have been trawling Ebay for awesome new Lego to make into some fab bits and pieces, so if you’re coming along make sure you come and visit our stand.

Apart from Monday, I’ve been to the post office every single day this week with parcels for wonderful customers. I’ve had a few custom pouches and things to send out and we finished off Friday with selling another yarn pouch on Etsy. I didn’t really think anything could top that.

Until this morning.

I had to take our sewing machines into the shop over in Deptford – I cannot recommend them highly enough. The guys who work there are incredibly helpful and do a really great job making sure that you buy the right machine. They don’t try to foist off a more expensive, less appropriate machine on you, if they don’t think it’s the right one for you they will tell you.

Anyway, Alex’s machine was having some tension problems and my machine has been making strange noises since before Knit Nation. I’ve been putting off taking it to get serviced for ages on the grounds that we’ve had fairs galore and custom orders and all the rest and it was easier to just carry on. But no more. With Alex’s machine out of action, we really need to make sure that mine’s okay, just in case.

So I popped in while Jake waited patiently in the car with the owlettes (not so patient about waiting.) The guy looked at Alex’s machine, laughed and promptly re-threaded the bobbin, explaining that we hadn’t caught the thread on the tension arm properly.

Very very embarrassed.

And just as he was laughing at me, Alex phoned.

To tell me that we’d made our HUNDREDTH SALE on Folksy this morning.

I still can’t quite believe it but the number is up there on the stats for our shop so it must be true.

As if that wasn’t enough, she also said she’d noticed that our blog stats had a lot of people coming in from the Simply Knitting website. So she’d gone over there to check why and found that the blog had been reviewed on their website!

I only just got to read the review, but I cannot imagine a nicer way to round off the week. I really can’t. We’re still kind of getting used to people coming up at shows and telling us they read the blog and so on, so it’s an extra layer of weird – but wonderful – to find people reviewing it!

So, there you have it. An utterly fantastic week and what a brilliant finish!

Sarah

 

Veni, Vidi, Vici – I Knit Weekender September 14, 2010

Sarah has already written her quick thoughts on the Iknit Weekender but since this was my second show and my first as a shopper and buying yarn for my first project, I am writing a blog post on my experience of the I Knit Weekender. I will write this under two headings: as vendor, and as shopper.

Vendor

I actually didn’t spend as much time on the stall as I thought I would. I had to work in my Monday to Friday job on the Friday and only got to the venue at 5.15pm after having dropped a stand off in the morning before the marketplace opened. On the Saturday we caught the train from Crofton Park to Victoria and were at the venue early so that Alex could make a custom bracelet for one of the Knitting Noras.

On the Friday evening though it was great to be able to go and have a drink with a number of other vendors and to have dinner with John from Easyknits and the other people who were working at his booth, Marleen, Sarah and her husband Chris. I had a great laugh and we had a lot of fun freaking out the waiter, but I shall say no more.

We had a successful two day show both in terms of sales and in terms of meeting people and getting feedback from people.  A lot of really interesting feedback was received on the envelopes and needle rolls and some new lines will be coming out in time for Fibre Flurry. They won’t be much different but just slight variations at the moment. We also were selling badges for Stitch London and they also sold very well.

The moment of the weekend came when we pushed Sarah to have a chat with Gerard  about how our hand sewn items were going in his store. Sarah went over and had a chat to Gerard, and 5 minutes later Gerard and Sarah came back and all I heard was that whatever yarn pouches we didn’t sell by the end of the day he would take from us. To say that we were stunned and left speechless is an understatement. All three of us had huge smiles on our faces during the cab ride home. It really made our weekend and as a new venture it did help to reinforce the idea that we are doing something that people like and want. So if you saw a yarn pouch you liked but didn’t buy it at the I Knit Weekender, then please visit the I Knit shop as they now have all of the stock that we have left. This will certainly keep us busy making new yarn pouches for our next show which will be Fibre Flurry in Birmingham.

Shopper

This was the first time looking for yarn for my first project which will be for a blanket for a friend made out of knitted squares and was specifically looking for variegated colours as the person that I am making the blanket for is not a solid squares kind of person.

There was lots of shiny yarn that wasn’t variegated and I would have loved to been able to afford it all,  but I went shopping on a budget so saw stuff that I may buy in the future.

Phil from the Natural Dye Studio allowed me to walk away with two skeins of yarn that I wanted to match to some yarn from Jon at Easyknits so that I could put the colours together and make sure that they would match. This was lovely to be able to do and gives me an excellent starting point for the blanket I am making. The other item that I wanted to purchase was the Knitting Nora’s postcards as I stumbled across their blog and read what they had done and that the proceeds were going to charity. If you want to get some of their postcards for yourself you can get them from their Folksy Shop.

These are the shinies that Alex and I bought between us:

So I bought 3 skeins from Easyknits, 2 for the blanket and the yellow one because they have a bit of an Aussie yellow to them but I have not worked out what I want to do with it yet. 2 skeins from the Natural Dye Studio and I won a prize in the p/hop raffle and picked up some undyed camel and silk yarn from the knitwitches. Alex bought two skeins of the Carousel Yarn from Easyknits which unlike at Knit Nation was not lost on the way home and I surprised her with a present of interchangeable needles which she really likes. Finally we bought the Knitting Nora’s postcards and got a free 2010 calendar with it.

If I was looking for laceweight or solid colours then the other shops that I have seen before at Knit Nation but personally really like their stuff as well are:

Fyberspates

Sparkleduck
Knitwitches Yarn
There are others I am sure who I didn’t look at properly when I was wandering around but these are the two that I specifically remember that I didn’t buy anything from this time but really wanted to.

I will mention the one thing that really annoyed me as someone who has worked as a paralegal with media and IP lawyers. I overhead someone talking about “reverse engineering” items rather than buying the patterns. I just got the feeling that this was being done to make a monetary gain, rather than just making something for personal use. This may be the norm, I don’t know but to me if you are reverse engineering something, then you are taking someone’s idea and making it your own. If the person then passed this off as their own work rather than giving credit to where the original idea came from, then to me this is tantamount to stealing. I didn’t say anything but left me quietly seething for a few minutes.

So my first experience of the show as a shopper was a positive one and I am looking forward to going to Fibre Flurry and getting the opportunity to sell our items but also to have a look at everyone else’s.

I Knit, You Knit, We All Squeal for IKnit September 5, 2010

I Knit Weekender, that is! It’s less than a week away and I haven’t really started doing any kind of a build up on the blog which is terribly remiss of me as we are ENORMOUSLY excited about being there as vendors this year. It’s such a weird feeling for us, as knitters, to be attending shows as vendors rather than fondling our shiny money in the hopes of exchanging it for yarn. (Not that we won’t be looking for more yarn… Ahem. Stop that!)

Anyway I thought I’d share a few pictures of some of the stuff you can expect to see from my side of The Owl next week. Some of it’s listed in the shop and some of it I’ve not had time to put up there yet. My computer is somewhat less reliable and sophisticated than Stone Henge and it takes me hours to sort out photos for both Etsy and Folksy ‘s requirements.

Luckily, WordPress is less picky!

Amazing Spiderman! My knitting senses are tingling. (Ok, that was fairly unforgivable…)

Check out the wee cars!

Totally wicked biker tattoo needle roll

Smaller size of reversible bucket bag

Reversible bucket bags

The yawning maw of a bucket bag. You can fit a heck of a lot in these bad boys.

Alex and I both love these stripes. So summery

They’ll also hold your interchangeable needle cables and some of them come in delicious icecream-y colours!

Double width envelopes are perfect for holding your circular needles

Double width envelopes

So neat and tidy, those sock needle snugs!

Sock needle snugs

Foldout needle envelopes

Reversible yarn pouch with pocket

This is our sock size pouch. You can fit 2 skeins of yarn in there easily.

Sugar skulls. I love these creepy weird little guys and their flowery skull eyes.

Leonardo! Donatello! Raphaello! Michaelangelo! Heroes in a knitting pouch…

We’ve still got a few bits and bobs to get done (labels to sew, brand new plastic poppper stops to put on all the yarn pouches, a few more bags and envelopes to make up) but I think we’re largely ready to roll.

Alex just got back from Australia so she may be half asleep but we’ll both be there bright and early on Friday morning ready to have a great weekend, full of fabulously friendly knitters and amazingly beautiful yarns, buttons and what have you.  So, as always, if you’re coming along to the IKnit Weekender, do please stop by, say hi, pet some of our shiny wares and have a chat about yarn, sewing, knitting, or whatever. We love to meet new people, especially yarnies and we love to natter!

Right, I’m off to drink tea and carry on knitting the next row of my new Winter hat. I couldn’t face doing another pair of socks right now so I am making myself a sort of floppy beret thing to cover my hair on Bad Hair Days. Very useful as I have major early pregnancy hormone hair at the moment!

See you on Friday!

Sarah

Sneaky Peek June 7, 2010

All of us are exhausted – Scott worked the stall with us on Sunday and carried stuff for us on Saturday, Jake had the kids and the kids had Jake. Alex and I stood on our feet for two days straight, drank an awful lot of iced water and squash, danced to some awesome music whilst dispensing handmade goodies left right and centre, gave out a bajillion business cards, took in some custom orders (including 2 hats for the lovely Heike who was in charge of the stalls at Brockley Max), met some amazingly delightful people and some how managed to not get sunburn or collapse in a heap from exhaustion. And in addition to all the fun we had, loads of people went home with shiny new items made by us. Which is always a good thing!

I know Alex took lots of photos and she will almost certainly do a more detailed post at some point but I just wanted to say that I had a fantastic time. As always, if you were one of the people who popped by the stall and said hi or commented on our wares or even bought something from us, thank you very much! Chatting with the lovely folks who wander past is one of the things that makes our job so much fun.

And we even had a few repeat customers, including one of the lovely girls who bought earrings for her friend who was getting her ears pierced. She stopped by to let us know that the earrings were a hit. Which put a big smile on our faces.

Also putting a smile on our faces today is the fact that we just dropped off our first ever wholesale bag order to IKnit!

The lovely folks at IKnit have taken 10 of each of our knitting designs which I believe will be available in the shop and possibly on the website fairly soon.

That includes the new super secret designs which we were going to be unveiling at Knit Nation. If you want to get a sneak peek at them and possibly even buy one for yourself before any one else gets their hands on them, you should be able to see them at IKnit fairly soon.

I took photos of everything before we dropped it off, so I’ll post pictures later.

And now I need to go collapse in a heap. I have a bunch of custom orders to sort out this week – 3 hats and a knitting bag – and Alex has about a million Lego men to put on wires, so it may be a little quiet round here over the next little while. We shall see…

Sarah

Busy little bees June 4, 2010

We’ve been a bit slow on the blogging front of late, sorry about that. Something to do with massive amounts of work…

Exciting stuff happening this week.  Alex popped into the Science Museum at the start of the week to drop off their second order and check on their stock levels. Stuff seems to be selling well – confirmed by the fact we just got a third order today!

And today I finished off the last items for my first ever wholesale knitting bag order! I am thrilled to bits about it and we’ll be dropping it off on Monday.

Tomorrow is Brockley Max, we’ll be up in the lovely park at Hilly Fields, roasting in the sun and having a great time. Lots of music, food, art, what more could you want?

Then Sunday, we’re off to the Horniman Museum for Forest Hill Day, another day jampacked with lots of good stuff.

Always glad to be doing stuff on our own patch, it’s nice to feel part of the community.

And since no post is complete without a little voyeurism, here is a sneak peak of some of the gorgeous hats I’ve whipped up this week.

The shop’ll be going on holiday over the weekend so if you’re in desperate need of a Lego fix or you really need a lovely new tote bag or sun hat, you’ll just have to mosey over to South London and come visit  us on the stall.

The Delights of Dulwich May 14, 2010

Following on from Alex’s post about Misty Moon, here’s my take on our day out at the Dulwich Festival Fair: it was awesome.

What? You want more?

Alex arrived bright and early at my house and for once didn’t catch me sitting at the sewing machine sewing up last minute bits and pieces, panicking about not having enough stock.

(Mostly because I got up early and got that side of things out of the way so she wouldn’t catch me! I am crafty, no?)

Jake gave us and our massive groaning crates of stock a lift over to Goose Green, we found our tables and set up shop:

It was pretty busy even while we were setting up, there were so many other stall holders and so many lovely things on sale. At the end of our row was a stall selling amazing Mexican food. I may or may not have stuff myself on red rice, salsa and quite a few quesadillas over the course of the day. I can neither confirm nor deny it.

Next to us were the delightful ladies from the Make HQ. They were telling us that they’ll be stocking lots of Clothkits kits – they kept pointing people to our stall all day because I was wearing my Trellick Towers skirt, so I had to keep flashing people all afternoon!

First sale of the day was 3 lovely hats, including the black Flutterby one that I had listed a while ago. 2 of them had only just been finished especially for the day, so I’m really glad I got myself in gear to get them all done.

Once we got the first sale of the day, the sales kept rolling. We sold lots of Lego tile cufflinks – definitely one of our bestsellers – lots of baby bibs and we even got a new custom hat order. (Which I will be making up tonight and sending out tomorrow morning, in case you’re reading, Claire.)

I’ve been reading The Pocket Book of Superstitions of The British Isles this week and it’s got a really interesting section on luck rituals, expecially ones to do with money and markets. Apparently there were a whole range of rituals that market traders and buyers used to do, including spitting on the first money taken in the day to ensure it stayed with you. We didn’t do any of that, but we still had a tremendously lucky day.

We’ve got a few more local dates lined up over the summer which we’re really excited about. It’s so nice to do stuff in our own backyard and it’s always great to meet other local arts and crafts type people. Coming up in the next few weeks we’ve got the following:

Saturday 5th June

Brockley Max: Full program for the festival is available from the Brockley Max website, but we’re doign the Art Mart which will be taking place in Hilly Fields. Really excited about that one!

Sunday 6th June

Forest Hill Day 1 – 6pm

Horniman Museum Gardens

100 London Road, London, SE23 3PQ

There will be loads of exciting stuff on at both events: art, music, food, loads of stalls, lots of interactive stuff for the sproglets to do. Well worth a look. And as always, we’ll be there, being fabulous, so drop by and say hi!

Now, I must go and crack on with doing prosaic every day things such as feeding my offspring, putting them to bed and then I have a wild evening of  sewing (and Buffy) planned. I know how to live on the wild side.

Sarah

Horniman Museum Gardens

100 London Road, London, SE23 3PQ

Sunday 6th June, 1-6pm

Market catch up

Nearly a week has gone by since our last markets. Saturday night we attended the Misty Moon Exhibition Night at the Ladywell Tavern. It was perfectly placed for us, as it was very close to home. So between 6 and 10pm, we in the Tank Gallery behind the pub selling our wares. It was a quiet night but we were only there on the Saturday night whereas the event was also on Friday night as well. I was working on the Friday night so couldn’t be there on both of the nights.  We chatted to other stall holders and customers. I sold 4 things which covered the cost of the table – all Lego, and all to people from a single group of friends!

Scott and I hadn’t been in the Tank Gallery before so it was interesting to see the space that they have. It is custom made for art exhibition and upstairs Tim was displaying his artwork for both of the nights.

Our table at Ladywell

Another stall holder we’ve come to know quite well through various markets is Michael. He makes these amazing lamps using old comics. His company is MDL Thomson Design. Here is his table and he does do custom orders:

MDT Design

🙂 Alex