Whatever happened to that band you liked? You know… The Pixies?

Crikey! I’ve been very, very busy between sewing my ass off and working. Lates this week, so my days have been a whirlwind of embroidery thread and Jeremy Kyle.

Tomorrow I have a market – well, of course I do, it’s a weekend. It’s at Nude on Ashton Lane and it’s on from 12-5 – an unknown quantity but hopefully busy if the rain keeps off!

Here’s what I wrote about it on the Glasgow Craft Mafia Blog:

 

This Sunday sees the launch of a new market by popular West End venue Nude, on Ashton Lane.

From 12 – 5, there’ll be a selection of clothing, jewellery, plush, stationery, accessories, homewares and much more on sale to bring you a little Bank Holiday cheer!

The market is being run in association with Glasgow Craft Mafia and will showcase independent designers as well as being a great atmosphere to relax and enjoy a few drinks in – the cocktails are renowned!

Pop down and say hello to our members, including Asking For Trouble, Pistol Whip Vintage, Madness Of Many and Carrot Coriander.

Where? Nude, Ashton Lane, Off Byres Road

When? Sunday 3rd May, 12-5

How Much? Free entry!

****

Swing by and say hello! I’ll have some new designs with me, all things being well and it should be fun. I hear there will be chocolate moustache lollipops – how could you refuse?

You don’t take a girl into the woods unless you’re up to no good

I have a weather application on my Google homepage which I have a few different places plugged into, regardez:

 

This is how it looks at 20.00 on Wednesday evening. That means it’s 2am in Bangkok and 22.00 in Rhodes with Cincinnati behind us at 15.00. 

Although I’ve not lived in Bangkok for a while now, I still like to keep an eye on the elements and I am still so amazed that I managed to survive for so long in the sort of weather that sees it being hotter than hades at 2am. I caught a glimpse of it this morning, when it would have been around 4pm there and it was 38! Celsius! Crikey.

Anyway, that got me thinking about what I was doing at this time last year. It turns out that was the weekend that I went with Liz and Rob to Prachinburi, the little town that they had taught in the year before.

What a weekend that was! It was not only blisteringly hot, but it was also my first go on a Thai train and the first time I’ve spent all night in a bedroom with the lights on, fully clothed with no air conditioning scared to move in case the lizard behind the wardrobe decided to come out and eat my face. It’s fair to say I’ve had better nights sleep.

Anyway, I thought I’d relive the whole thing by posting a link to my post about that weekend – here it is. Enjoy whilst I go back and wrestle with Jeff.

Have you seen the Cornish flag? It’s ridiculous.

This is what Jeff’s been busy with -  making tea towels. They are, on the main, turning out pretty well, but it’s not without it’s teething problems.

I managed to get about 6 done last night before I had to give up arguing with him and go to bed. Sometimes he thinks he knows best but really he’s just whining.

Common problems seem to be:

shedding his hair net and refusing to go on (there is a net that goes round the thread spool to regulate the thread unravelling).

thinking the bobbin has run out when it hasn’t

trying to over sew the same bit and then getting loads of thread wound round the bobbin – I have no idea how he manages that but it can be very messy.

breaking needles because he’s got thread wound round the bobbin but doesn’t see fit to tell me until it’s TOO LATE.

I have to admit that several occasions of the good old E1 error yesterday was my fault for not threading him exactly correctly, so I forgave him for that. But he’s put holes in one too many tea towels for my liking, so I’ll be double and triple checking everything when we get back to it later.

The most frustrating thing is sewing a longer design and him doing the first 80% of it faultlessly but then stalling near the end. Sometimes it can be rescued and sometimes it’s a write off. That’s when I want to throw him out the window – lucky for him, he’s too heavy.

Anyway, I perservere as I am convinced that we will get there in the end. In between needle breakages and thread untangling, I did manage to crack on with the badges I so desperately needed to get made.  Here is a selection:

There’s been a flurry of orders for In Case Of Emergency Breakdances this week, so I must crack on with those after a trip out to get some more frames.

Craft Fair Season Is Upon Us!

I interrupt this broadcast to bring … gasp! Yes, a crafting post! Which might actually be useful. I know, I know, I promise to get back to random whinging soon…

Seeing as it’s now well and truly craft fair season, I thought I’d share my top tips for getting prepared for market with you. I’ve been going to markets and craft fairs as a stall-holder now for almost 4 years and have learned a lot along the way. I hope these tips will be useful, especially if you’re taking the plunge for the first time this year!

Bring a piece of material to cover your table!

This could be a plain table cloth, or even an old curtain that is big enough to cover the table at the fair. Remember that some of the tables supplied by venues are older than you are and have served more craft fairs than you’ve had hot dinners, so it’s best to cover them up!

 

You can also use your table covering to show off your wares too – e.g. if you have silver jewellery, a dark table covering would show off your lighter items. You can store all your junk, boxes, packaging, lunch, etc under the table, and use your covering to drape over the front to hide your stuff – clever, eh?

Bring Sellotape!

It’s amazing how useful sellotape is! You can use it to stick stuff to walls, fasten bags closed, tape stuff to your table … bring some and keep it handy, you’ll never know when you might need it. You might also want to keep some blu-tak and/or white-tak handy for fussier venues. Always check with the organiser before sticking something to the wall!

Other useful things to have handy are mulitple pens (you WILL lose one), scissors and a notepad.

Bring a project!

Bring along a craft project you are working on to keep you busy during the day. Nothing too elaborate, but, for example, if you’re a knitter, then bring your needles! Your potential customers will love to see you working on something – let them see how the magic happens!

If the worst happens and it’s a day for poor attendance, then you will have something to keep you occupied, but don’t bank on getting your project finished – hopefully you’ll be too busy raking in the cash!

Bring carrier bags!

It’s often overlooked in the excitement of seeing your stock ready to go, but make sure you bring something for your customers to take their purchases home in. This could either be shop bought bags or even recycle your own stack of carriers (I know you’ve got loads under your sink). At Miso Funky, I like to keep any interesting bags from trips overseas to use for my wares. I also use new recycleable paper bags to cut down on the old landfill.

Smile!

It sounds daft, but people are more inclined to buy stuff if you smile! I’ve been to events before where people sit with their arms crossed behind their tables looking surly and really, it just puts people off. If you’re shy, bring along a chatty friend to help – they can do the sales pitch, whilst you beam with pride in the background and wrap the goods!

 

The organisers of the events do the hard bit in getting people in the door – you do the easy bit, working your charm and showing off your fabulous stuff! After all, no-one knows your stock better than you. Don’t be too pushy though – friendly, polite and helpful is the order of the day.

 

Chat to your fellow stallholders – you’ll find them to be a mine of information about other events, their experiences of markets, packaging suppliers, where’s best to get lunch nearby… You’ll also hopefully make some new friends and get involved in your local crafting community.

Have a price list!

Again, it can be overlooked, but make sure you think about how much you want to charge for your stuff. Remember to factor your time in when you are coming up with prices, as well as materials. It’s a good idea to have at least a mental idea of what you want to charge for things – you can always haggle with your customers on the day!

For new products, I often print up two lots of price cards – a maximum price and a lower price that I’d still accept for my product. That way, I can experiment with pieces I’m not sure what to charge for and see what the customers think.

Bring your card!

If you have them, bring a stack of them to hand out to everyone, customers and fellow exhibitors alike. If you don’t have a card, then make sure you’ve got something with your website address or email address on it, a flyer, or even handwritten cards. That way, everyone will be able to find out where to go to buy more of your stuff!

There’s no excuse not to have a card in this day and age! It’s your cheapest and most effective way of getting your name out there for little effort. I get mine printed at Vistaprint and designed by Asking For Trouble, both for extremely reasonable prices.

Leave a stack on your table for browsers to take – they may not buy anything today, but more than likely they’ll take your card, visit your website, tell a friend or just remember you til next time.

Be able to make change!

Remember to bring some loose change, especially one pence pieces, if you have x.99 prices. Better still, eliminate the need for change by charging whole number prices. Obviously you’ll still need change, but only then a couple of fivers and some pound coins. It’s better to be able to give change than someone not buying something because they only have a tenner.

Make sure you keep your takings secure, especially if you’re at an outdoors market. Don’t turn your back on it for a second! Invest in a market traders’ apron and keep it close to you – it’s handier as well as more secure. Just don’t compromise and use a bum bag!

Remember to keep a note of what you sell for your accounting records and also to help you evaluate what sells best and what’s not-so-popular later.

Pack your stuff well!

You don’t want to worry about humffing your stuff around in carrier bags – so pack a suitcase! One with wheels is a great idea, so you can roll it along behind you. It looks more professional too to have one well-organised bag than lots of carriers.

If it’s a hard-bodied case, you can also stand things on top of it, or lean things against it. If you’re not using it, then you can close it over, and stick it under your table out of the way. You could even keep bags and change in it out of the way, to give more room on your table for your wares.

Also, of course, a well-packed bag means your stock will be in tip-top condition when you arrive to set up. Remember to repack it well at the end of the day to make life much easier next time!

Practice makes perfect!

Take the time to think about how you want to set out your table. If you have a lot of stuff, decide what will be best to go at the front to catch the customers’ eyes. Consider leaving some stuff off the table if you have loads – you can always restock later in the day, or swap less popular items over.

Common sense applies here – if you have tall items, put them at the back so they don’t hide any smaller items and put light objects against a dark background and vice versa.

Get a few friends to have a look and give their opinions – you can always tweak it as your stock dwindles through sales over the course of the day! Practice at home on the dining table, kitchen counter or even on the ironing board.

I’m not saying you should follow this to the letter, but these things are all points I’ve picked up on through my own experiences and I hope they w ill help you too.

One last tip – HAVE FUN! Remember why you’re doing this, and have a great day. Good luck!

Jack, you’ve got a bit of tin foil on your arse

Introducing…Jeff!

That’s him at the front. He’s my new embroidery machine! What a guy he is. He arrived on Saturday in a box that could easily house a small family. I thought the postman was going to need a lie down before he went back down our four flights of stairs:

 We unpacked him and oohed and aahed over the 150 bucks worth of free accessories including 7 billion spools of thread in every colour the rainbow, no less thatn FOUR pairs of various scissors and various other bits and bobs.

Then I read the instruction booklet and we went out and forgot about him for a bit. When we got back, we spent NINE HOURS setting him up and generally working out our differences. We finally agreed to do things Jeff’s way though.

Actually, I had had an inkling that it wasn’t all going to be plain sailing setting him up as I’d done some research before buying him and found on an American blog that  a gal who’d also bought one had problems with an error message which after a lot of faffing about, we managed to get round.

The main problem was threading it up and at some point in the future, I am going to do a tutorial and maybe even a video about how to do it as it’s really not as obvious as you’d think. We spent several hours unthreading, rethreading, and so on only to discover it was one tiny little detail that was out.  If it hadn’t have been for this blog, we’d have killed Jeff and then each other/ourselves. So, thanks Dena!

Most amazing was the fact that we didn’t just put him back in the box and weep at the lowest point. Instead we went for dinner and came back and it was a bit easier with refreshed eyes.

The other downside is that my tiny toty laptop doesn’t have a big enough screen resolution to run the software but thankfully Old Faithful, my old laptop manned up to the job. Pity I spent 35 bucks on an external CD/DVD drive before I found that out.

On the plus side though – it looks great! The things we’ve produced so far are fantastic. Unfortunately for you (but fortunately for me), all the good ones have sold already! But here’s a peek of a test run:

This is exactly the font I had in mind on tea towels when I started embroidering these things several years ago! It was quite something to see it finally come to fruition!

The first one came out pretty well but there was a small problem with the hoop placement (my fault) so it didn’t come out properly at the end. I managed to make 2 proper ones and they both sold on Sunday. To sew a tea towel by hand like this would take me roughly 3 hours. This took 11 minutes. To say I was a bit giddy after this discovery would be an understatement.

I’ve run out of tea towels now so have been experimenting with different fabrics. He doesn’t really like loose weave or thin cottons but I need to try out the backing stabilising stuff to see if that might help.

I also made some little samplers including a candy pink make tea not war that came out with a flock effect which whilst not intentional, looked ace! That sold instantly too.

It will be interesting to see where it goes from here as I have approximately 17 billion ideas for new products. Also, I’m looking into setting up a new side to the business offering personalised table linens and that sort of thing on a separate website, as well as working up a new line of stuff for Miso Funky which will translate my hand-sewn designs into machine-sewn ones.

I’ll continue with the hand-sewing too of course, but this will free up some time and give my poor arm a break, as it’s been really quite painful over recent weeks. All in all, so far, it’s a WIN!

Expect this to be the first of many posts about the wonder of Jeff. I must go and show him some love right now.

Did you see Britney Spears in the paper this morning? I thought it was Vanessa Feltz. They could be sisters.

Yeah, once again I have been slacking on the blog front, although not as much as some I could mention, ahem!

I have been pretty busy with markets recently, first at the Raspberry Beret event, then the GCM market and then Made In The Shade.

Here’s some photos:

Stall set up at Raspberry Beret. I shared a giant table with Tracey.

A quieter moment in proceedings at Raspberry Beret. It was actually pretty busy for the most part.

Catherine and Marceline enjoying themselves at the other end of the room. I forgot to take photos at the Mono market the next day and at MITS on Sunday! But they were great too, I assure you.

In other news, I’ve been laid up with the flu over the weekend and the start of this week too. I’m starting to recuperate though. Which means I am able to spend some more time with Jeff.

Who’s Jeff, I hear you ask? Well, you must wait until next time to find out. How intriguing!

She’s got hair like in a music video. Curly and wavy. You know what I mean

It’s not an April Fool’s joke. Me and Marceline’s other project, Super Cute Kawaii has been given a really fantastic boost today as our guest curation has been posted over at Etsy!

Click here to read it and marvel at the comments! Everyone loves it! How fantastique, as Monsieur Le Bun would say!

What do you like doing at weekends? Do you do the crosswords?

Give the crossword a miss this weekend and come to these! (Or, you know, bring it with you or leave it til later.)

It’s going to be another busy weekend for Hamish and me. On Saturday, it’s a spinky  new market called Raspberry Beret at Nuarts Studios in Glasgow.  It’s just off Trongate on King Street and is on from 12 til 5. I hope these Lego dudes are there to greet everyone as they arrive.

Then on Sunday it’s the first Glasgow Craft Mafia market of the year at good old Mono.  It’s taking place between 1 and 6 is open to all! You can come along, shop, make, eat, drink and try not to buy too many records in monorail.

Hopefully there will be a good turnout this weekend to make my very hectic week worthwhile. I’ve been sewing my ass off and even got so engrossed in it I managed to be 1.5 hours late for work today. Oh yeah and it’s past midnight and I’m not even done yet. Guhh.

Anyway, hope to see you there!

Never fear, there’s another chance next weekend to see Miso Funky in the flesh – more news very soon!

It smells like elephants down here

Although I didn’t resist the lure of the charity shops yesterday, it was very slim pickings.  I think I’ve over-fished in Partick, like those Japanese folks with yellow fin tuna.

Instead I found myself cleaning the flat and tidying up the spare room so Mum has somewhere to sleep when she comes to visit next week. It is MILES better now I’ve put everything in the wardrobe and shut the door.

I did get loads of sewing done though, including finishing and framing my two new designs:

They’re both heading for the shop shortly.  I’ve also made these:

Can’t stop! Must sew some more!

I think it’s Tanya Donnelly, who was in Belly

Would you believe since my last post there have been even more charity shop finds?

I got both these teapots last week in local shops. The first I loved the shape of, and the colour too.

The second is a Govancroft teapot.  It’s nice to have found a piece of local history which has stood the test of time, as although this is almost definitely from the 70s or before, the shape and matt look of it makes it feel ultra modern.

You can find out more information about Govancroft here. The pictures are fantastic – you can almost smell the clay as the photos are very informal. They were taken in the late 70s – my teapot might be one of the ones in the kiln!

Both teapots are going to be for sale in the Miso Funky shop I think. I am saving them for the 2 markets I have coming up in April which will be vintage orientated, so will take them to those too.

Now, I must get out to the post office and try to resist the call of the charity shops on the way!

Rihanna. Tsk. She better watch what she says about Chris Brown

Some charity shop finds from the other day.

Found these vintage frames on the way to work – they are perfect for emobroidery.  I need more like this, so keep your eyes peeled!

Stand back Superman, Iceman, Spiderman.  Batman and Robin too
Don’t wanna cause a fracas, but BA Baracas, have I got a match for you.
She makes them look like a bunch of fairies.
She’s got more bottle than United Dairies.

Hang about – Look out! For Supergran.

Ahh, Supergran! Remember that? I used to love that show so was pretty pleased to spot this box set stuck behind some Barbara Cartlands for just 99p!

 

And finally, look at this! The twee-est thing I’ve ever seen! An original ’70s print – framed at the Boots photographic lab and everything. It’s quite something and is now for sale over at Miso Funky – too good to keep to myself!

Not bad for a whistlestop tour on the way to work!

I never do my bedding in a drier. I put it on the line.

Did I ever mention that I love tombolas? Well, I do. And what is the blog giveaway if not merely an online tombola that you don’t even have to pay to enter?

Glasgow’s newest crafterette, Laura Donald, is having a giveaway to celebrate 100 posts on her blog. If you’ve not read it before, then you really should, as it’s very entertaining and also full of inspiration.

Pat and Dot up there are just one of three prizes that you can win in the raffle. The others, the Hulder print and the Big Daddy print are both available to buy over at Miso Funky if you are not lucky this time.

Everyone’s a winner!

My phone’s ringing. It’s probably a paedophile alert.

Amongst the very many wonderful gifts I got for my birthday, this was certainly the biggest surprise.

Would you look at that?! I cannot express just how amazed I was to open the box and find this inside!

He is made by the king of sock monkeys, Siansburys and incorporates my 2 greatest passions – monkeys and Hi-De-Hi!

I’ve named him Spike, as he looks just like camp comedian Spike Dixon with his side parting. For those who can’t recall what he looks like, click here.

The detail is really quite awesome. Sian is such a talented lady! I feel ashamed that I ever tried to make a sock monkey having seen one of Sian’s in the flesh. I insist that if you ever require a monkey, that you go straight to her!

Now, I must go – I’m taking part in a Who’s Got The Knobbliest Knees? Contest in the Hawaiian ballroom shortly.

This is Suzanne. It’s her birthday today

Happy birthday to meeee, etc.

I have so far opened a mountain of presents, which you can see some of over there on Flickr. I had to trek to not one but two post offices to collect them, but it was worth it!

I have spent the rest of the afternoon trying to update the Miso Funky shop which has been slow progress but long overdue. I was going to do a blog post about that but it will need to wait til tomorrow or Friday as I am running out of time before I go to cinema.

I was planning on a solitary jaunt but am going to meet Jo and then maybe have some food afterwards.  Then tomorrow I will be making sausage rolls and seeing who turns up with presents to amuse me as long as I am not called into work.

Right – more presents beckon!

And what did he give himself for his 27th birthday… a tattoo of a transformer. Its not cool man, just not cool.

Tomorrow is only a day away, originally uploaded by mooosh.

Loads of post waiting when I got home tonight – or not waiting, as I apparently have 5 parcels at the post office. That’s tomorrow’s lie-in settled then!

I have been rather down in the dumps this week, but I am determined to shake it off for tomorrow. A trip to the cinema to see Young Victoria, I think – I am quite into all that history shit. I love the old queens and all that. I saw today in some magazine that Princess Beatrice has a cameo as an attendant to Queen V – who in real life is like her great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother or something. Must have been weird.

In Miso Funky news, I hope to spend the morning getting my wholesale orders finished and if it’s a nice day, photographing all the new stock for the guest designers spot. I picked up the latest stuff from Laura tonight on the way home from work, can’t wait to get it in the shop.

This evening I had thought on maybe having a soiree but that’s not come to fruition so I am off to roast some lamb and do some sewing. This is how it’s got to be now I’m almost a grown up!