Christmas Fayre

Hello dear friends and readers!

Argh another long absence, sorry sorry sorry. Hope everyone is doing ok and staying nice and calm during the silly season. I've not been calm at all (nothing new there then ....), I've been madly making things for our school's Christmas Fayre, and also had some custom orders which took all of last week Not to mention having an 11 year old's birthday and, of course, party, but also dealing with our naughty "Elf on the Shelf", seen here photo-bombing a photo while Little Miss opens her birthday pressies.

The school Fayre went very well, I am donating my proceeds to my London Marathon fundraising pot for the National Autistic Society, so I was really pleased :)

Here are a few photos of the things I made to sell at the Fayre - not all crocheted, in fact most aren't, mainly cos I can't crochet fast enough!

Christmas wreaths - these ones are the size to hang on your front door ...

.... and these mini crocheted ones are to hang on your tree ...

.... loads of owl keyrings - these were very popular ....

.... festive pencil cases ....

.... and tissue holders ....

.... and the best-selling item - felt pencil toppers ...

The custom orders have included a couple of felt Christmas trees for littlies to decorate, with felt decoration included ....

I personalized the little felt presents for one customer ....

.... and decorated some baubles with musical notes for another customer who wanted to use hers in her toddler music classes ....

.... I also made a retro style half-apron/pinny for another lady, loved making this, it was so different both in colours and style to other things I've done. It's for her Mum hence the embroidery on the pocket ....

These 3 orders were all from complete strangers who contacted me via Facebook, wow that is a whole load of different pressure, to make for actual customers and not just friends! I'm really pleased with how they all turned out, especially the apron, I reckon my ruffles are pretty damn good, what do you think ....

I still have a few orders to complete this week, so it's still busy busy busy!!

On another exciting note I ordered some business cards - oooo fancy - what do you think ....

I love them :) Happy happy happy!

And my final piece of news, which I've saved until last cos if you'd seen these photos first you'd have got no further ..... we've just got our very first pet ... meet Snowflake the hamster ....

Isn't he the cutest thing ever ?? He's an albino, though we didn't realise that til we got him home and saw he has red eyes, plus, he's massive, a right big fluff ball. Gorgeous though. And I can't believe how besotted I am with him! He's already had one adventure, he escaped one night but luckily the children spotted him in the morning! Well, I say "escape", really it was more of "walk through the cage door that some idiot left open". The idiot being me! Oops! If it had been one one of the kids I'd have gone bonkers!!

Think that's it for today folks, off to do some long over-due bloggy catchup :)

Jillxxxxxxx

Running

Hello dear friends, and a big happy welcome to my new readers - I've been meaning to thank you for dropping by for ages!

Just a quick update from me this evening, I've been crafting madly but don't seem to have too much to show for it. I'm making stuff to sell at a couple of craft fairs in a few weeks - lots of these owl keyrings ...

.... a load more Christmas stockings from upcycled sweaters ....

.... with my own label lovingly sewn in ...

.... and a really sweet doorstop for my friend's birthday ...

.... this was made from upcycled jeans, I do love a bit of re-using :) I'm planning to make a few more of these to sell. I'm filling them with Asda smart price rice - 40p for 500g - great value! I can't decide whether to make a load of different designs or just the cupcake in different colours. That might be a bit quicker so maybe that then.

My other big news ...... is ....... I got a charity place in the London Marathon!! OMG!!!! I mentioned aaaaaages ago that I'd applied for a place, and only found out last week that I was one of the lucky (I think ?!) ones. I'm running it to raise money for the National Autistic Society, in recognition of my amazing son's challenging year at school last year, and of course his ongoing battles with everyday life, bless him.

All the money from my craft bits being sold is going to the NAS (over £100 so far) and I have a few other fundraising ideas going round in my brain too. Oh and I must set up one of those just-giving page thingies.

So anyway when I'm not crafting I'm training. Or recovering from training lol. And then I have to sort out other fundraising. And of course cook, clean, be a Mum's taxi, and so on and so on. And tomorrow I'm helping at school (argh why did I offer to do that, I have to fit in a long run tomorrow - luckily a long run is currently only an hour for me). But its all good fun and its great to have something very specific to focus on.

Right then off I go, got about 30 heart keyrings to assemble!!

Jillxxx

Facebook

Oh my goodness it's been 4 weeks since my last post!! Where has that gone?! It's properly autumn now here, all beautiful colourful falling leaves and crisp first thing in the morning. Only this week to go then it's half-term, the year's flying by .....

My big news since my last post is that I've launched my Facebook page .... www.facebook.com/jillemeraldcottage :D Launching it makes it sound like it was a massive event, well it wasn't. Although I did have to make sure I had a few things lined up to share on there. I'm hoping to use it as a platform for selling a few bits, my aim really is just to fund my yarn habit. I've made a couple of sales already .... 

I hope I can keep the momentum up, and that it wasn't just beginners luck. 

If you fancied visiting my page and giving it a Like or a Share that would be lovely thanks, so far it's my real-life friends who have Like'd and bought things, and obviously that's quite a limited market place. Some Likes further afield would be really great :)

The upside of a blogging break is that I do now have lots of things to show you here.

Last time I posted I was making Sewing Kit Jars. I sold two of these ....

... and having had a little production line ....

.... I have another few ready to sell ....

I've made another memory cushion, for the same friend as the last memory cushion (http://emeraldcottage.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/everyday-cowls-and-more.html). My friend has a Dalmatian, and her late Mother had done a beautiful Dalmatian cross-stitch. The cross-stitch was very grubby and had rust marks and black pen marks, plus one side was stitched with about 4mm between the stitching and the edge of the fabric, making it really hard to secure. But I managed to sponge out the marks, and turn the skinny edge under just enough to make it usable.

I've had the dark blue fabric in my stash for about 14 years. I bought it as a tablecloth years ago but it never fitted my table. I used part of it 12 years ago to make a drawstring bag for my son when he was at nursery, and the remainder has gone through a couple of house moves with me, like a faithful friend.

The airplane fabric was bought for another project but there was just enough left to make this cushion cover.

I braved the button-hole foot thingy on my sewing machine for the second time in 20 years :) And I did 5 buttons in the end.

Here's the final result ... quite a good job if I may say so :)

On the crochet front I've made a couple of little children's granny square bags, which my friend in Scotland ordered. I love making these, they are a really good one-evening project and simple enough to do in front of the telly :) The remit was - one girl likes pink, the other likes purple, and they both like turquoise as that is their Mum's favourite colour. I think I've met the brief ....?

They're both lined and have a button fastening, just like the ones I blogged about here http://emeraldcottage.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/children-granny-square-bags.html

I've also been making key rings. Owls and hearts. Lots of pieces made but not quite assembled.

I'm doing a stall at our school craft fair at the end of November so I need a lot of small ticket items. I'm thinking mug cosies, Christmas stockings and decorations, fabric-covered note pads, pencil cases, doorstops, etc. Today I made my first Christmas stocking. I found this jumper in the charity shop ....

It's so soft, and the stripes just screamed Christmas stocking at me :)

It took a while to get the pattern exactly as I wanted it, as each stocking is made from 13 pieces, but now that I've made one (and it looks quite good if I do say so myself :) it should be easier to run up a few more.

The stripey bit is a knit fabric, the red bits are plain old cotton. I've always been scared of sewing with knit or jersey fabrics but it worked like a dream.

Now my dilemma is how much to charge ? I asked a couple of school Mums and floated the idea of £10 and they looked at me as though I'd said a thousand. I don't want to under-value the amount of effort I put in, but equally there's no point in even making the effort if noone wants to buy the thing. Little Tomboy helpfully suggested that a price of £2 might be better. Aaaah bless her. But no.

I have so many ideas, I find it really hard to focus on one thing at a time, but I'm hoping that the deadline of the fair will focus me. My friend makes cards and we are sharing a stall, I think our things will complement each other nicely. 

Oh one other thing I wanted to show you .... I was doing a bit of clearing out old stuff and look what I found - the ceramic nameplate from my bedroom door from when I was little. Can't believe I still have that, isn't it fab :)

Quiet in the cottage

Good evening from a very quiet Emerald Cottage dear readers and friends :)

I've been cosying up inside this week, summer and holidays seem a distant memory now that Autumn has officially started, and temperatures have dropped accordingly.

My nest is feeling very empty - I have one child off on a residential school trip for the week, and one husband off to the US on business. The remaining Little People keep asking "When is Daddy back from holidays ?". Hmmm. I know there are presentations to be given and customers to schmooze but there also usually are in-flight movies to be watched, beer to be drunk and food cooked for you. That's a holiday in my book :)

Back here in Blighty I've nearly finished Sofia's baby blanket .... if you remember this is a gift for my neighbour's totally gorgeous little baby girl, Sofia. The rippling rippled along at quite a speed. I'm already planning another for a friend's baby, but really I need to finish Sofia's blanket first. It needs pesky ends dealing with - yes I know I could have done them as I went along but I do like a picture at the end with all those tails! Maybe it's just me ....? - and I need to decide on the border. I'm thinking a 3 row border of dc or perhaps htr, just not sure of colours. What do you think ?

Since I cannot possibly just have one project on the go at once I started a granny-square cushion yesterday. These two colours - pomegranatey-red and silvery-green are two of my favourite colours, and I think they work quite well together. The third round will be a darker green, I was going to use cream arran for the final round but I'm not 100% happy with it so as usual I'm dithering about the last leg as it were.

And, since 2 crochet projects on the go is nowhere near enough, I also have this pathetic little morsel to show for myself ....

.... but I'm hoping it will turn out veeeeeery sweet, I'm going for the "aaaaaaaaw!" factor. You will have to keep visiting to see what it turns into.

I can't remember if I mentioned before that I'm making up some little "Sewing-kit-in-a-jar" thingies to sell. My prototype worked quite well, the fabric is b-o-r-i-n-g but I didn't want to waste the good stuff!

I'm loving these, I would love to be given one, they are just so cute :) I think I may have seen them floating around on Pinterest, but if I owe someone specific some credit for the idea please do tell me :)

I've spent most of today in and out of my craft room chopping up fabric and cardboard for pin-cushion tops for the jars. Lots of fun! Here are a few of the fabrics I'm using. Which is your favourite ? I'm torn between the cream and red flowers in the middle, or the green and white polka dot. Or then again the lime green leaf print is pretty too. I just like them all :)

Each little jar will contain a pin-cushion-too, pins and needles, coordinating threads and trim, needle-threader, thimble, tape-measure and a selection of buttons. Oh and scissors. I bought some really cute little scissors but they were so rubbish it wasn't even funny. The handles bent and they wouldn't even cut anything. Useless. So the replacements that I've gone with are bigger, but they fold-up, and they do actually cut stuff! Amazing!

I'm making some wee needle-cases to match the pin-cushion-top fabric. It's like being back at school, I'm sure I made my Mum one of these at some stage. Probably with gingham since that's all we ever seemed to use at school.

Don't you love the little wooden bobbins - sooooo cute :). Currently they are sporting some funky stripey twine. I tried hand-winding thread onto the wooden bobbins - what a mess. I might see if I can use my sewing-machine bobbin-winder to do it instead, the wooden bobbins are way nicer than the mini spools I've used, they are on black plastic reels and, whilst practical, are not that pretty.

I have another project in mind for these little bobbins too, can't wait to share it with you, you'll have to come back after the weekend for that I think, I've promised the girls that they can help, and there may be paint involved, so it could get messy ....

Til next time,

Jillxxxxx