Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to all my US friends! I am very green-eyed (as in envious - the fact that I do in fact have green eyes kinda complicates the expression but there we are) thinking of everyone tucking into large slices of pumpkin pie - I'd make it all the time if we had a longer pumpkin harvest here in the UK!

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I'm glad that I decided to do a post on thanksgiving. It's been all to easy to focus on the negative recently, but thinking of things to be thankful for has brightened my outlook on life somewhat.

I'm thankful for the friendships I've made in recent years and months. I'm thankful that I have a roof over my head, enough food to eat and enough money to get by. I'm thankful that I have a large stash of fabric and yarn and plenty of Christmassy ideas up my sleeve to keep me busy over the Holidays!

What are you thankful for??

Getting to Know You: Eve Barnes

Ok so my second crafter interview was scheduled to come far far sooner than this but there we are - it's here now and it's good! This time it's the turn of Eve from Minifelts - tea and biccies at the ready and I'll hand you over. Take it away Eve!


Introduce yourself:

Hello, my name is Eve, I'm from the Isle of Wight and I make Minifelts. I run my own website and have a shop on Folksy selling handmade animal themed accessories all made from felt.

Tell us a bit about your creative background:

When I left school I studied music at University and hae played the drums for several years. I've been in many different bands and had quite a lot of success as a musician, playing big festivals and having my music played on the radio. When I finished University and struggled to find a job, I found myself with a lot of time on my hands and randomly stumbled across the Folksy website. I was really inspired by the wonderful things people were creating, so I decided to teach myself to sew. I started making things from felt as it was easy to work with, and now I'm completely hooked!

Who / what inspires you?

As you can probably tell from my shop I love animals and cute things! I'm also addicted to reading craft blogs and endlessly browsing Etsy an d Folksy. I really enjoy reading about people's different creative processes, and looking at other people's creations really motivates me to create my own.

Tell us about your creative space:

Unfortunately I don't really have a creative space at the moment, as I'm currently flat hunting, so my sewing tends to just follow me wherever I go! In the summer I really love sewing outside, and on more gloomy days I tend to completely cover the sofa with my sewing and sew whilst watching DVDs or listening to music.

As for tools and materials I really love working with felt, as it's so versatile and comes in such a wonderful array of colours. I've never learned to use a sewing machine so all my creations are made completely by hand.

What is your greatest achievement to date?

I think my greatest achievement in terms of Minifelts is quite simply how much I've learned in such a short period of time! Before setting up my own website I knew nothing about web design, or anything about how to take a good product photo, or how to get my shop to come up near the top of a Google search.

But over the past few months I've worked really hard to make my online shop and website look as professional as possible. I'm now really pleased with my photographs and I'm starting to get the hang of blogging, branding, marketing and loads of things I knew nothing about before! When I first set up my shop on Folksy, my photos really didn't do justice to the products, but I have put a lot of time and effort into improving them and I'm really happy with the results. I also now find my work regularly featured on the folksy front page which lead to me being offered the chance to have my work stocked in a gallery in Lincoln, which all happened not long after I'd updated my photos, which just goes to show how important they are when selling online!

What are your hopes and plans for the future?

I have so many big ideas that I don't know where to start! Minifelts has only been up and running for less than a year, so I really want to expand the business, firstly by making a new range of products (I'm currently working on camera and Nintendo DS cases). I'm planning to open a shop on Etsy to try and attract more international buyers, as well as getting my Minifelts stocked in more "bricks and mortar" galleries and shops.

I also really want to get my work featured in magazines, so I'm working on that at the moment, and of course I'm sure like a lot of fellow crafters my ultimate goal is to make a living doing something I love!

Thanks a lot Eve - I love to find out a bit more about my fellow crafters. Eve's story is really similar to mine actually (minus the drumming success that is).

You can find Eve on facebook and twitter, check out her shop, blog, website, or contact her at eve(at)minifelts(dot)com

Shiny New Toy

So my return to blogging hasn't gone quite according to plan. My 6 year old laptop wasn't being very co-operative if I dared to ask it to do more than one thing at a time, so I've bitten the bullet and gotten myself a shiny new toy to play with. If only my health was as easily fixed! Not sure that I'm still fit enough to be let lose behind a sewing machine but needs must. If your in North Pembs and hear a rattling noise coming from an old farmhouse that'll be me!

I'm loving being back in the countryside I have to admit. It's so beautiful here! I can't believe it's been a whole 6 years since I lived here last - I'm not that old surely?? I only just finished school didn't I??

Anyway I actually do have plenty of blog posts for your enjoyment this week - they're written and all! So I'll leave you with these pics of my lovely new surroundings and I'll be back with a crafty instillation soon - pinky swear!

Relocation

Testing, testing, one, two, three. Does this thing still work?? It seems like all I've done recently is apologise for my lack of blogging. I'm back now I promise! I can't believe it's been a whole month since my last post. Without launching into a 12 hour explanation of events let's just say that things haven't exactly gone to plan lately and I've found myself moved back to Pembrokeshire for the foreseeable future. Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes! You really can't complain when you live minutes away from views like this though can you?

Anyways I can't tell you how much I've missed being my usual crafty self - I haven't done more than a wee bit of knitting for weeks! There's so much to share with you - I have a couple of friends to introduce to you, a few books to review and lots of sewing to be getting on with. As soon as I dig out my sewing machine from the piles of boxes I have to unpack! And I haven't told you about my trip to Canada at all - here's a sneaky peak of things to come:

Before I go I just need to say a mahoosive thanks to my amazing friends who've helped over the past few weeks - you know who you are!

Wish List Wednesday: Wool

So this week it's national wool week. I didn't actually know that until today but I've seen a few tweets flying around twitter and decided to have a look see. It's part of the Campaign for Wool headed up by HRH Prince Charles and is a worthy cause indeed.

My childhood is documented by the various hand knitted jumpers my mother and grandmother made for us, by woolen toys made by relatives- the more I think about it the more wool played a massive part in my life before I even started knitting myself!

Now I use wool for knitting, crochet and felting, and most of the crafts that I enjoy use some form of felt. So for this post I thought I'd mix my wish list items with a showcase of woolen lovelies that I've admired in the blogosphere.

Lucy's hooky makes over at Attic 24.

Claire's felt accessories over at The Rainbow Room

Pompoms galore over at HonestlyWTF.

Eskimimi Knits' hand dyed yarns

Betz White's felt flowers.

The "knitting is for grannies" school of thought is well and truly over - it's cool to crochet and I am enjoying wool's new found vogue. Especially all the fair isle that's around this autumn. So get those needles going, reach for your roving and get working on those winter woollies!

Checking In

Hello all! Yet again it's all quiet on the blogging front. I'd like to report that everything went great last week, I'm on the mend and being looked after really well. And my brain is in full working order so no sitting in front of the keyboard umming and ahing about what to write so that's a plus!

Anyway I'm definitely feeling a new found respect for pin cushions this week. Fabric definitely reacts better to being stabbed by needles than skin does. And being sewn up myself when all I do is sew is a bit surreal. Quite impressed with the stitching though! :)

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I'm very happy that I'm able to manage a bit of knitting and sewing already - I thought it would be a while before I'd get anything like that done. And when I'm forced to just sit and do nothing I have lots of lovely things to keep my brain occupied. Today is Thanksgiving in Canada and my Great Aunt is planning on making a second thanksgiving dinner next week for when we're there. She's making pumpkin pie and I've never tasted it before so I'm so excited!

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Anyway I tuckered myself out this morning stumbling around town looking like a zombie (hey it's nearly Halloween right?!) so I'm going for a wee lie down. I'll check in with you again tomorrow - have a lovely day!

Poorly Play List

Well for once I had a quiet weekend. A lovely one too I might add. A friend of mine came up to Derry for the day on Sunday and we drank tea, ate cake, walked around the city walls and discussed noetic science and other such light hearted topics! (Don't we sound so grown up??) We managed to get some X-factor in there too though don't worry!

But since then there has been a lot of flapping at Jemima HQ I have to admit. Lots of baking, laundry, cleaning, tidying and a wee bit of sewing too. But I'm not in the mindset for blogging today, so instead I thought I'd share with you some of the artists on the play list I put together for my hospital stay tomorrow (yikes!).

There we are - a little bit of what makes me smile. I wonder whether my musical soul mate is out there somewhere - anyone able to recognize all of those?? If not, here they are (left to right): 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12.

Right best get back to the flapping and faffing and trying to distract myself from thinking about tomorrow!

Folksy Friday

Look at the time! It's a late one from me today but I thought I wouldn't make it to the computer at all so thankfully I'm here! Right concentrate - what are we doing? Folksy Friday (is it Friday??) Ah yes well today's offering is my fave screen prints on Folksy at the min - here they are:

Tree Climbing Screen Print by lovelittle.

Plantlife original screen print by summersville.
Maze of Sparrows print by Kate McLelland.

Sleeping Foxes by Dee Beale.
Robots in Love by Mengsel.

That's that done then - phew! One thing to tick off the to-do list. Can you believe it's October already?? I don't know whether I'm coming or going these days but it makes for a nice distraction from my ever looming date with a surgeon.

My weekend shall be spent tidying, cleaning and finishing chores. I may even manage to squeeze a bit of sewing in there somewhere too - fingers crossed!