Workshops Galore!

This year so far I've been lucky enough to attend a number of different workshops. It's such a luxury to be able to spend a whole day just doing something crafty that's not work related & even if there is an element of learning skills to use for work purposes it's still lovely to know that you can spend the whole day doing it without having to worry about anything or anyone else.

 

My first workshop of the year was Intermediate Crochet with Nicki Trench http://www.nickitrench.com/ This was a whole day spent in the very comfortable surroundings of her neighbour's house near St Albans & we were fed delicious homecooked food & some naughty but lovely cakes & biscuits while I & 3 other learners were able to choose which projects we wanted to work on. By the end of a very relaxing day's crocheting I had tried from left: Tweed Stitch, Diamond Stitch in a laceweight yarn (top), Hexagons, Catherine Wheel Stitch (top) & Intarsia. I loved every second of the day & can't wait to use my new favourite stitch the Catherine Wheel & eventually when I have time I will definitely crochet a blanket made up of Hexagons!

                          

 

The next workshop I did was spread over two Saturdays a month apart as I couldn't do consecutive days but it worked out quite neatly in that I was free for the first day of the first course & the 2nd day of the 2nd course! On these two Saturdays I got to revisit the lovely Paula Watkins' (http://www.paulawatkins.co.uk/) Fabulous Felt Course which she runs for CLP (http://communitylearningpartnership.blogspot.co.uk/) the organisation that I also work for. I enjoyed this even more than the last felt course I did with Paula as this time I came with an idea of what I wanted to do & was so pleased with the results!

 

 This needs embroidering to bring the details out a bit but this is my representation of a river with the sun just glinting off the waves. It's definitely a day that's warmer than most we've been having lately!

 

My felt flower, I emebellished with beeds & embroidery & was most pleased with the results

 This panel below is the one that I am most proud of it just seemed to come together so perfectly & is a meadow scene just at the edge of a wood at sunset.

 This panel needs embroidering but it is a representation in felt of a painting I did at my third workshop, I was so pleased with the painting that I wanted to see how it would look in felt, I'm not quite sure how I feel about this panel at the moment but will reserve judgement until I've finished it!

                                                                  

 

Thirdly I went to my friend Anna Watkins (http://www.annawatkins-artist.co.uk/) for a blissful day of painting Aliums in her new studio. I was apprehensive before this workshop as  this is a totally different style to anything I've done before & I have always believed that painting is not something that I would ever be able to do well. But look at it! I'm so proud of what I achieved in just one day, we worked in stages & slowly built up the painting so it never seemed overwhelming & even the bits I felt sure I'd mess up like the brush stroke grasses & stems actually don't look to bad. It just goes to show that it's really worth having a go even if you're sure you'll be rubbish at it!

 

                                  

 

So I enjoyed my painting day so much that I went along to Anna's weekly Wednesday morning freestyle painting session, clutchin a canvas that I had rather thought would need painting over in white so I could start again (on the left) but with a lot of encouragement to be brave it became this painting on the right! 

 

 

            

 

                                                                               

 It sitll needs some more doing to it but I'm so pleased with how it's going & I can't wait till Wednesday so I can do some more on it!

 

So it's only March & already I've done all this, I can't wait to see what the rest of the year brings!

 

written by Camilla

Reasons to be Cheerful!

It's quite often very hard when you work for yourself to look on the positive side of things. Last summer was TOUGH, it was wet, muddy & people didn't shop. At times like these it can feel like you're throwing yourself against a brick wall & no amount of hard work will get you any closer to breaking through it.

Happily our Christmas season was better than the summer one & we finished the year in a better position than we'd hoped. We're still a long way from breaking through that wall though & 2013 in Lovely HQ started with a bit of a creative slump. Then one of our friend's suggested that, instead of concentrating on what we hadn't achieved yet, we looked at what was positive & concentrated on that for  a while.

So here are our reasons to be cheerful in both life & business:

We are still afloat as a business, that's a big thing, as the news reports that we're entering a third recession & business are failing all around us, the good ship Lovely is still afloat & we're patching the leaks & setting sail for better times.

We had a gorgeous & peaceful Christmas & then an equally gorgeous & not quite so peaceful 2nd Christmas & New Year with our Copenhagen family & Emily had lots of cuddle time with her Odd-daughter & my Oddson fell in love with my ipad!

Back in November I was lucky enough to be offered some teaching work with a company based in South Oxhey called the Creative Learning Patnership. They specialise in making learning fun for Children & Adults & specifically target people who have had a bad time in education. I've been teaching crochet & have been lucky enough to have very lovely learners in my classes!

Emily has gone back to delighting the customers of Little Italy in Haddenham with her cheerful service & fab coffee making skills! Even more excitingly she's planning to turn her love of baking into a cake baking business so it wont just be the traders at our various markets who have access to her delicious cakes. We just have to health & hygiene the kitchen first!

It's also the season of trade shows & we've been to the Spring Fair at the NEC as we always do & discovered that our trusty incense suppliers has a range of fab new smells that we will be stocking very soon. Most excitingly we were invited to go to London Edge Fashion Trade Show by the very lovely suppliers of our reversible skirts & we discovered a whole world of alternative fashion suppliers. I personally fell in love with the 50's inspired dresses & Emily is determined that we'll order a range of tights very soon!

So all in all there are lots of things to be cheerful about & we're cautiously optimistic about the rest of this year. We're booking up our events for the summer & are determined to make 2013 a bright, shiney, lucky & Lovely year!

 

What a Beautiful Time!

This is an amalagamation of the last month or so, we've been so busy that the blog has rather fallen by the wayside. So much has happened!

We went to Beautiful Days festival in Devon the third weekend in August & it was exactly what it said on the tin - our best festival

of the year! It really felt like after a summer of rain & mud & a tangible collective gloom that post Olympics Britain was definitely on the move towards an optimisitc Autumn.

There was still rain & mud (this is England after all) but everyone seemed more cheerful than they'd been all summer & importantly for us people were spending!

Our good friends Amy & Beth came to help us out & we discovered how much easier it is doing a festival with four people helping to construct & deconstruct a stall. There were some amazing bands, our personal highlights were Bellowhead, The Peatbog Faeries, Reel Big Fish & ofcourse the Levellers who seemed in particularly fine voice this year.

The theme for this tenth anniversary of the festival was hearts & we did our best to get into the spirit of it. There was even a unique performance by the red arrows. 

& the floral display was perfect for taking photos

All in all a gorgeous time was had by all!

Next Camilla went to Mosely Folk Festival with our good friends at Sixteen & their gorgeous little girl, the public were emphatically not spending at this festival which led to some severe down moments but we made good friends & managed to have a giggle anway, which sometimes is all you can do.

Emily spent the weekend printing up a storm & we have a Lovely selection of new long sleeved tshirt designs to show you all very soon. (As soon as we've had time to photograph them)

After that it was back indoors for the first time in about 3 months, on ironcially one of the nicest weekends weatherwise of the whole summer. The Milton Keynes Handmade & Vintage Fair was a great weekend, our baby vests particularly found favour with the shopping public so Emily had to frantically reprint all the campervan baby vests as soon as we got home. Our favourite sale of the weekend was to a fellow stallholder who admired the vests on Saturday & said that she'd be back if the baby arrived over the weekend & obligingly the baby was born in time for her to come back on Sunday & bag one of the last campervan vests as a present!

Then on 15th September it was Lovely's 4th birthday & we celebrated with a shopping party, cake & gin cocktails. This year we were really late organising our birthday party & inviting people but once again our friends turned out to support us & we had some new visitors who hopefully will come back again next year. Our good friends from Copenhagen once again came over & spent the week before helping us to get ready which involved less cleaning than in previous years but more marquee & tent erecting as our collection of Lovely structures has gradually been expanding, we couldn't do it without them! Most importantly however they also brought with them my oddson & Emily's odddaughter & we spent the week enjoying having small children in the house, introducing my oddson to the joys of hula hooping & cuddling Emily's odddaughter.

It was very quiet after they left, luckily we were at Ruislip Duckpond market  & our lovely Duckpond friends were on hand to stop us from suffering too much from post visit blues!

So a couple of quieter weeks now to calm down, regroup & start getting ready for Christmas. We love this time of year as evenings get cosier & you can start eating apple & blackberry crumbles & warming stews again. It's time to dig out those warmer clothes & start bringing out our Autumn ranges which include long sleeved tshirts, as I mentioned earlier & courduroy aline dresses...and to start planning for Christmas. I know lots of people hate early mentions of Christmas but this year is all about starting early, making the money stretch as far as it can & making this year's the best ever whilst remembering to enjoy all the beautiful things about Autumn.

We have so many exciting new things to show you!

Lovelies go Away with the Faeries!

'Come Away with the Faeries' in Enfield Town Park last weekend, restoring our faith in events this summer!

Follow the Pixie Doors for the story of a magical weekend. Find us in Pixie Patch behind the blue door.

Behind the Pink door here's Emily off to take part in the Guinness World Record attempt to record the most Faeries in one place, all you needed to qualify was a wand, wings & a tutu! (She was holding my wand too so I could be there in spirit!)

Behind the Purple Door were some of the brilliant things you could do like wand making, useful as it turned out! and Fairy houses, which could only be made out of natural bits & bobs found in the woods

Finally behind the yellow door are all the imaginative touches that make the Fairy Festival such a joy to be a part of!                                                                                                                                                                                               

Don't get stuck in the Frog bog!

 And we even took some money this weekend! Happy Lovelies all round

 

  

Marooned in a deserted corner of the Secret Garden Party

We've waved goodbye to Bob the hire van, washed most of the mud off our various clothes & products & cashed up...Secret Garden party is officially over...

This was the festival that we were most excited about doing this year, not only because it's really hard to get in to but also because it fell on my birthday weekend! We arrived at the site on Wednesday at 10am prepared for a long wait, we'd already been warned that there would be delays in order to protect the ground as much as possible. After a slightly worrying moment when we were parked in a field miles away from our pitch & told we would have to carry everything there the horror on our faces persuaded the steward to give us a delivery pass & we joined the queue waiting to get on...

Four hours later after the ferris wheel had been driven backwards & forwards & finally sited in the opposite field & having convinced the stewards to let us leave our van behind our stall we were on site & ready to set up.

 At first we were delighted with our pitch, we were at the end of a line of food traders on one side & part of a trio of traders next to the kid's area on the other. Perfect! Not in the melee of the main arena with all it's associated issues but in a calm corner where hopefully lots of families would see our stall & be tempted in.

Sadly however at Secret Garden Party this year, calm meant deserted as we spent four days watching for hordes of customers that never materialised even on Sunday after the quagmire had been tramped down & the walkways were passable again. We'd close up around 9pm each evening & head out to the stages in the other field & feel completely overwhelmed by the sheer mass of people who were steadfastly staying close to the music & alcohol & seemed dead set on consuming as many hallucinogenic substances as possible.

So from a monetary standpoint this weekend was a washout ...

But you can never keep a Lovely down for long & there were brightly coloured jewelly moments during the festival too.

Our honorary Lovely for the weekend Emily Brady (designer of our Faeries) was probably the brightest of them all bringing her own brand of joyful crazy to the Lovely team & her artistic skills. Our fellow traders were brilliant company especially 'Mum' next door Janet with her toy stall (whose company name I have rubbishly forgotten to write down) & my birthday twin Theresa & Ellie of Eclectica all of whom kept us cheerful & giggling. We had some very cute customers, who came back modelling their purchases.

The site itself was pretty amazing with wood sculptures, fire pits, bijou stages in bars playing an eclectic mix of music, the bonkersness of the Badger stage, the floating stage in the middle of the lake that you had to take a boat too (we didn't have the chance but it looked stunning) & a giant hay statue of a fox (or wolf...opinions vary). And last but by no means least the boys in the Charge & Store lorry who kept us seeing the funny side of it all, even when we really didn't want to!

My birthday was Lovely too with birthday wishes & presents from our fellow traders &
we had a hilarious afternoon with Gin cocktails, pink fizz & cake followed by some of the best fireworks I've ever seen...just for me naturally!

Now we're home again, Emily is recovering from a hideous cough that plagued her all week, I've caught up on paper work (well I've moved all my filing into one terrifying pile at least!) & we're dusting ourselves off & getting ready to be all enthusiastic about this weekend's Fairy Festival in Enfield...

Wings at the ready!

Mud Mud Glorious Mud!

Well whatever the hippos think I must admit that I've had enough of mud for this year! Our stock is mud encrusted, we've just cleaned our walls off for the second time this year & I'm not entirely sure that my apparently enviable tan wont wash off if I have the opportunity for more showers!

 Our stall at Penn Festival

Having spent the second weekend in July at the lovely but ulitmately very muddy Penn Festival with our friends Nic & Frank of Sixteen I thought we might have done our mud for the season but after a weekend where a trip to the toilet
felt as Frank described it 'like taking a treck through the Amazon jungle' honestly I'd hoped for some better weather...

Now Emily spent this week again with Nic of Sixteen doing a handmade & vintage fair in Milton Keynes shopping centre as part of the MK Fringe festival. Now you'd have thought that Emily had the better end of that deal wouldn't you...

But...Nic's car died on the way to day 3 of the MK fair & our Dad & Brother came to the rescue driving over to get them to the fair & home again & apparently Thursday brought all the rude people out to complain about our products...But on Sunday she went to our regular Duckpond Market in Ruislip, where she caught up with our lovely Duckpond friends & generally had a Lovely time.

And I spent the week at Larmer Tree Festival, up to my eyeballs in mud!

 

Silke in the flood outside my stall

 But...

I got to glory in a double rainbow after a what felt like a hundred years of rain
& to appreciate the dam that our neighbours built to keep the tide of mud from engulfing our stalls & which over the course of the weekend was added to

 until in the end it was a glorious creation & quite the talking point of the festival
it was even filmed! although we didn't find out what for.

I also found that in adversity traders absolutely stick together, there were three stalls that were particularly affected by the flood plains of Larmer tree & yet we had help from other stalls to gather woodchip to stem the tide & there was a real
feeling of solidarity among stallholders that we haven't really encountered at festivals before.

 The Flood, in my stall!

It just goes to show, when the chips are down, mud is thicker than water...couldn't resist, actually when it really counted this week at Larmer tree, there was a fellow trader to laugh, cry & comiserate with!
My thanks must also go to Silke of Dakini Leathercrafts who kindly drove, kept me company & fed me all week & performed her hero feat when my stall flooded & dragged back 3 wheelybin loads of woodchip to keep the tides at bay!

As I'm writing this we're all packed to head of to Cambridgshire for Secret Garden Party Fetival tomorrow & keeping everything crossed that we wont have the same mud issues again.

So I'm going to ask...as Saturday is my birthday & all I would really like is for the weather to be good...please could you all make a wish with me & see if we can all change the weather together & bring on the sun...whatever happens we're determined to enjoy the experience!

Fabulous Felt Part 2

Having had a gorgeous time last monday, we were really excited to go back & have another go at felt making. This week we embellished last week's pieces as you can see below:

I embroidered beads onto my flower brooch & a few flower centre beads onto my felt panel & you can just see (it looks like I photographed this in the dark!) I stitched some detail into the clouds & over the sari silk thread.

 Emily has as you can see needle felted detail into her tree so that the trunk has texture & the leafy top really stands out!
The second half of the day was taken up by designing & making our final pieces using all the techniques we'd learned over the two days. This is mine an abstract tropical flower panel which I'm going to embroider one day very soon when I have time (I'm very proud of it!)

 & Emily did her take on a Mad Hatter's Tea Party with tulips coming out of his top hat & a tea cup on a table cloth. It's all felted together & just waiting for some embellishment.

I forsee lots more felting in my future & we both say a huge thanks to our Lovely Paula for being a fab tutor & the Community Learning Patnership for being a great organisation & running such inspired courses!