In which I very nearly begin to act like an actual grown up but get distracted by furniture joy

New desk, avec half-made Doctor Who cushion cover. Note Useful Pen Tray to right.

It's been a while since I last blogged (bless me internets, it has been many days since my last confession). And that is because I have been terribly busy building my All Conquering Sewing Empire.

My little virtual shop has become a doorway to a veritable virtual world - a new, bright, shining, slightly geeky world of Folksy forums, Facebook business pages and, let's face it, a lot of sewing.

So much sewing in fact, that my Significant Otter decided that he had had enough of carting the kitchen table the length of the flat to the living room, where I can sew in the light of the massive windows (they of the legendary curtains), and, more importantly, in the light of the television.

So he trollied off to the Oxfam and bought me my Very Own Desk. I can't begin to explain how terrifically exciting and important this is. Right now I am typing this on a laptop, on my very own desk, with my very own ANGLEPOISE DESKLAMP. Imagine! This is what proper grown ups do when they work at home. I've got a cutting board on one side - which one day I will even use - and my sewing machine on the other, and a huge pile of papers in between to make me feel important, and there's still room for the laptop!

This stamp makes everything better, even filing. Thanks skullandcrossbuns

And what's more, there's drawers. Mmmm. Storage joy. You know that lovely feeling when you get a new handbag and you allocate a whole afternoon to emptying your old one and reordering everything into all the new pockets and bits of the new one? Yes, you do. Don't pretend you don't. Well these drawers are like a humungous version of that. I don't know where to start. I've even got one of those little shallow ones at the top with the little bits in for paperclips and wotnot and I've already spent a happy half hour finding little thin things to fit in it.

Earlier this evening I even did filing. For fun. Now I have an accounts folder and a desk. I've got to get a swivelly chair and then I'm pretty sure the next stop is total domination of the world of business.


Must go. I've just realised that I can fit all my bobbins in the pen tray.

Playing at Post Offices

Right at the beginning of this blog I said "I'm not Etsying or Folksying". Well, that's now only half true. In a U-turn that I would compare to something to do with politics if I knew anything about politics or could be bothered to think of an example, I have given in to the capitalist machine and started to put my wares up for sale.

This partly came from the fact that, as mentioned in my earlier post, I can't stop buying pretty fabrics and making stuff from them. After a while, this becomes unsustainable. That's just maths. Having had some nice feedback from a few friends who have received items of mine as gifts, I was finally convinced that maybe I could try and recoup some of my outlay by garnering a few pennies from the paying public.

Also, I've always wanted my own shop. Like Emily in Bagpuss. Damn I hated that smug little bint. How did she even get a shop? How was she paying the business rates? What, if anything, did she ever sell? I digress.

Actually, there was a time before I wanted my own shop. When I was very little my mum had a friend who worked in Debenhams and I thought that was the most impossibly glamorous thing in the world. Debenhams smelled of perfume and the leather from new handbags, and everyone had to wear a silk scarf as part of their uniform and use tills with an immense and unfathomable amount of buttons that were incomprehensibly exciting to a small proto-nerd like me. When I grew up, I wanted to work in Debenhams.

A thing. From my shop. Maybe someone will buy the thing.

Sadly Debenhams isn't like Grace Brothers any more and the excitement of the till system has waned, but I still have a deep-rooted sense of unfulfilment that I never got my own shop. I want a tea-and-gift shop, where I would sell all sorts of wonderful kitschy things and serve tea from real china and have book clubs on Thursday afternoons and go next door to the bookshop every day for long liquid lunches with my friends Bernard and Manny and develop a new laugh with a turn and I'd be a summer girl.

But since apparently I can't live in an episode of Black Books I'm doing the next best thing for now.

Because I am an expert in digital marketing and computermabobs, I have managed to get a clicky box thing on the right of this page to link to my little shop.

It's called 'Lemur Lady's Awesome Emporium'. Because I like things that are awesome and I also like saying the word 'Emporium'. That's the sort of sound business judgement that will make my tea shop a success. One day.