Making Friends at Markets

At markets some of the best people you'll ever meet will be your fellow stallholders. They'll cheer you up when you're having a bad day, they'll chat to you & make you laugh when it's a slow day, they'll cheer you on when you're making loads of sales & they'll help you pack up when you're on your own & taking a hundred years to pack your gazebo down!

So this is a shout out to some of our lovely fellow stallholders of all ages who have made some really dire days hilarious & some really great events even better.


In no particular order we have:
Dakini Leathercrafts - Handmade leather items with a funky twist bags, belts & kindle cases sit along side winch holders for canal barges
Madame B's Boutique - Handmade origami jewellery
Artwork by Emily Brady - mixed media artist, cartoonist, illustrator & designer of all our Lovely Fairies
Daisy Chain Baby - gorgeous organic baby clothes
Sixteen - Retro tin signs, reconditioned painted wooden furniture
Ruth Milliam London - Designer clothes from floaty dresses to feather & sequin encrusted boleros
Ambrosia Chocolate - Some of the most gorgeous you'll ever taste
McGrumpy & Snuffles - a dog & cat bakery that also sells fab toys & useful pet items
Popcorn Box - Retro style goodies for you & your home
Anaya Trading - Gorgeous Indian Tunics designed by the owner & scarves & jewellery
Violets & Butterflies - Homemade fudge & cutsey bits from vintage tea sets to jewellery
Ardwood - fab Handmade furniture
Aroma Candles - Scented candles for every occasion by a trained aromatherapist
My Sisters & Me - funky crocheted jewelry & accessories & handmade soft toys made from your drawings 
Amy Psychic Medium - Psychic readings, crystal healing sessions & loose Crystals to buy
The London Crepe Company - for those essential market crepes - my favourite is nutella & strawberry yum!
Usborne Books at Ruislip (although we know her from other places too) great books at affordable prices
Phoenix Cards at Ruislip - a great selection of cards
Handmade Cards by Lorna Kyle - some of the nicest handmade cards you'll ever find
Mamacha - Fair trade Peruvian knitwear
Ella Jane Gifts - groovy gifts at prices to suit all pockets
Paisley Camel - Great Henna & fair trade goodies from India from scarves to rings to bags to wallhangings!
People Puppies - Now sadly emigrated to New Zealand but still selling gorgeous handmade children's clothes
Talyana Hair Bows -  hair bows & headbands handmade with Mummy love

All these stallholders (and we're very sorry if we've missed you off the list) have made it onto the Lovely list of Stallholder friends & we hope to meet more soon!

The highs & lows of market trading

It's been a week of contrasts...Emily went & did a stall infront of the restaurant at Milton Keynes hospital & with the exception of a couple of incredibly rude people (honestly we don't mind if you don't want to buy anything but a bit of politeness goes a long way!) had a pretty good day. We'll be going there again next month for sure.
Then we had a shopping evening on Friday at the Sir Henry Floyd school in Aylesbury with triple the amount of people who attended last year, a good percentage of which were in the mood for shopping which we always appreciate!
We split up over the weekend & on Saturday Emily went along to support our brother Harry at Tough Mudder, a 12 mile asault course through mud & raising money for Help For Heros...

while I had a great day at Bloxham May Festival, on a street with three pubs, next to a hot chocolate stand (not pictured) whose owner took pity on me freezing in the bitter wind & gave me warmth restoring hot chocolate!

I was opposite a crepe stall whose owner had come from France for the fair - that's dedication!

& the two Rosses who had a stonking day with their slow roasted lamb baps & had sold out by 3.30pm.

It was a beautifully organised & friendly festival, great music, a supportive public & organisers who were genuinely interested in looking after their stallholders (always great when you're doing a stall by yourself). Definitely one we'll do next year, we're thinking that next time if we're together, we'll pack up, repark the van & then go join the party & listen to the bands.
My favourite moment? Packing up to a band doing a rocky cover version of MC Hammer's 'You can't touch this'...hilarious!

Yesterday we split up again & Emily had a slow but ultimately good day at Aston Clinton's School Fete surrounded by lots of great stalls including our friends McGrumpy & Snuffles who provided giggles, company & kindly picked up the contents of her table when the wind blew them all off! 

while I spent the day at Flexmore Farm's Honey Festival where for the first time in three & a half years of trading I didn't make a single sale...It was a friendly event, nice location & there were some great stalls there but it was one of those days where unfortunately the people who came were not feeling 'Lovely',

happily I had good company

& Silke had a better day than I did!

It's the best feeling in the world when you do a good event & then the most demoralising feeling ever when you drive to an event, set up your stall & stand there for 6 hours before packing up with exactly the same amount of items that you went there with. Fortunately so far the highs have outnumbered the lows & we'll put this fair behind us & move on, hopefully to successful events next weekend. We'll be at Rickmansworth Canal Festival both days next weekend & at Ruislip on Sunday, hopefully the weather will be good & the shoppers will be friendly!

Save Goldhawk Road!

Last week we went back to Goldhawk Road for another shopping expedition! How many bags can you count?

We bought lots of gorgeous fabrics to cover Emily's flower cushions:

& at Shepherds Bush Market we found these amazingly priced trims for added gorgeousness.



It feels so exciting to have discovered this treasure trove of affordable & good quality fabric, the tragedy is, that Shepherd's Bush market & the businesses from
30-52 Goldhawk road are under threat of demolition. The local council & developers are looking to "regenerate" Shepherds Bush Market & surrounding area & are basically
forcing these family run businesses out of their freeholds. Ostensibly they've been given the chance to come back to the shiny new shops with greater retail space once
the redevelopment has taken place. Ofcourse they will be renting rather than owning their shops & the rents will reflect the premium rate development & be way out of
their price range. 

So much for the supporting small businesses drive we've been hearing so much about...

Even more so as these shops are thriving, we could barely get in to some of them as they were thronged with fashion students looking for samples & costing designs, people looking for that perfect fabric for that dress that's going to make them feel fabulous & small businesses like ourselves taking advantage of the opportunity to buy fabrics at wholesale prices without having to buy 25 metre rolls!

That's just it though isn't it, it's not just the families who'll be losing their livelihoods, the ramifications will spread outwards like the cracks in a pain of glass & reach much further...all for money, admitedly a great deal of money, but money that will not be helping the amount of people that will be affected but money that will be lining the pockets of a few.

There will be a judicial review next week, 15th & 16th May so there is still hope...
There is a facebook group where you can show your support & follow what's going on just search for: Save 30-52 Goldhawk Road From Demolition

Exploding with creativity!

It's been three thousand years since we last wrote anything on this blog but we thought that we'd share some pictures of what we've been up to: Emily is making flower cushions for which she's carving petal shapes out of an enormous piece of foam

she's also started beading centre pieces for these flowers - isn't this gorgeous?

We also recently went to Goldhawk road & went crazy in the fabric shops as you can see here:

and here:

which I will be making into dresses & skirts & all sorts of scrummy things (hopefully) for the summer weather, when it arrives! Today I've been resizing patterns for small people dresses putting into practice some of the pattern drafting advice I received at one of our Stitch & Bitch groups.

There's loads more exciting new lovely things coming soon, we're really enjoying having the time to be making more for Lovely & exploring where our creativity can take us!

We've also cleared space in the disaster that was the sewing room & it's now a beautiful space for me to work in

Somewhere in all of that we also found time to take our vintage cars away to Wales for a weekend of driving up hills & through valleys & having really nice food & drink in & around our hotel. All five of  us went (for anyone reading this who doesn't know our family that includeds Mum, Dad & our brother Harry who is the middle child between me, the eldest & Emily, the baby). This photo was taken before we left to come home & shows my little Austin 7 Meadowseet all set to trailer Dad's Marlborough, Miss Molly home:

only kidding we'd never have made it up the hills, even if Emily had got out & walked!

More soon, have a Lovely evening! x