I'm saving you from yourselves.

This has not, in many respects, been the brilliantest of weeks.

I'm suffering from is-it-can-be-holiday-time-nao ennuie (five working days, and counting); the sun is shining - which should be a marvellous thing but I work overlooking a glorious park full of sunbathing students and Australians who silently mock me as I sit under the artificial office lights; and I have been forced to deal with a greater-than-usual amount of idiots over the last few days. For example, I had this phone conversation with a Local Government Representative yesterday:

LGR:  I'm afraid the application that you put in has been refused, because you didn't give us the mandatory ten working days to process it.
LL: The one that you have already processed and approved, you mean?
LGR: Yes. We are going to have to cancel the approval because you didn't give us enough time to approve it in - we state  ten working days. You only gave us nine - because of the bank holiday.
LL: But, you approved it within two days. I was actually impressed with how quick and efficient it was.
LGR: Yes. That was a mistake. It should have taken us ten days.
LL: So. Because I didn't give you ten days to do something that you managed to complete in two days you are going to cancel that two days of work AND give yourself an extra lot of admin so that YOUR HEAD DOESN'T EXPLODE WITH THE CONFUSION OF THINKING FOR ITSELF??*
LGR: It takes ten days.

*this bit may have taken place only inside my head. 

*sigh*.

The underlying cause of all this grumpiness, however, can probably be tracked back to the fact that my faithful servant, Juki the sewing machine, threw an immense wobbly at the weekend and has had to be put into machine-rehab in order to think about what she has done. I've been like a bear with a sore head about it all week.

Not to be beaten, however, I've been working on other ways of using fabric.The pendants have proved popular and I have now introduced an accompanying range of compact mirrors. Though I say so myself (which I do, look, I'm about to say it right now), these are a fabulous way of showing off slightly bigger prints. Also, a pocket mirror is an invaluable thing to have in your bag. You can use it for:

• doing your makeup on the bus
•  looking under the sofa for lost treasure/Maltesers/cats
• checking to see if someone is dead in a Victorian thriller
• signalling to ships when adrift on a desert island
• peering round corners without being seen to check if the zombies have gone
• lighting small fires in a survival situation

...and all manner of things. I guess what I'm saying, really, is: buy one of my mirrors. It could save your life.

Don't say I didn't warn you.

 

Pick up your Survival Mirror here: http://www.lemurlady.co.uk/ourshop/cat_570128-Compact-Mirrors.html

The Emporium has a new home!

The dust has settled from the wedding, we have realised that married life is much the same as pre-married life just with more credit card bills to pay, and it's back to business as usual here in Lemur Land.

Not one to sit still for long, though, I have been a busy bee, interwebs-wise. After a good while immersed in metatags, photo compositing, Search Engine Optimisation and all sorts of other complicated words that I can't believe I have had to make room for in the already overcrowded dusty attic of my brain, I have built a website!

Me! On my own. Well. OK, with quite a bit of help from the Significant Otter, who does a great line in Making It All Better when I get bored half way through a complicated task, or when I throw a strop and fling the laptop at the cat because I can't get the stupid pictures to line up properly on the stupid page.

He also made all the pretty bits look pretty, while fielding conversations such as:

ME: I think the lemur should have a hat. Don't you think?
SO: Um...ok....what sort of hat?
ME: Well, not all the time, that would be stupid. Just, like, when I have a sale on, he should have a party hat then. And possibly one of those blowy-party things in his mouth. Can you do that?
SO: Uh, yeah, I guess so.
ME: Oh oh oh, and at Christmas he should have a santa hat. Do that too.
SO: *Sigh* OK.
ME: We're married now. This is what you signed up for.

So do please make it all worthwhile by tootling over to www.lemurlady.co.uk and seeing what you think. My main shop is there now, too, so start stocking up for Christmas!

(The lemur does not, currently, have a hat.)

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.