Picnics will never be the same again.

Last week I made a resolution to myself to post a new blog entry every Monday. When I made this promise, I think I was probably overestimating both the fertility of my imagination and the excitement of my social life, as a week has now gone by and I haven't done anything worth blogging about.

Creativity-wise, I have spend the week pretty much chained to my sewing machine like some sort of cobbler's elf, working through a list of custom orders for lovely people who - for their sins - wish to buy items from me to give to their friends and family for Christmas. Which is trusting of them, and I appreciate it enormously.

Apart from a small aberration on Friday night where a cheese and wine party ended - for me - at 6.30am, some hours after the declaration "I'm not going home until we've drunk aaaall this port (hic)", nothing else of note has really happened.

So instead, I am going to steal from the Significant Otter's life, as he has been far more creative than me this week. Hope you don't mind, dearest...

This week he has been mostly making this:

For added value, if you look closely, it also says 'Bush' on it. Snigger.

It is a vintage record player box, with the innards removed, and replaced with a wonderful array of cocktail-making ingredients and equipment, complete with handmade-from-scratch leather straps and moulded leatherette cushioning. Nevermore shall we be at a picnic and face the embarrassment of not being able to provide a properly-mixed Negroni at a moment's notice. Gone are the days of drinking pre-mixed G&T's out of a plastic cup. At the drop of a perfectly brushed hat we can provide you with a vintage Babycham glass brimming with the tipple of your choice.

Of course, it weighs a metricfuckton and he hasn't worked out how to create an ice compartment, but I think you'll agree the Otter has outdone himself this time. 

Pour me a Manhattan, darling, and pass the mini quiches.

What's yellow and black and can't reach the pedal?*

I'm on the right. With the machine that is apparently glowing like it came out of the TARDIS

As should be fairly obvious by now, I enjoy sewing. It is among my top five favourite activities. The others shift according to mood, but currently include eating cheese, drinking Manhattans, and watching the Argos Christmas advert with the blue aliens. However there is no getting away from the fact that machine sewing (much like watching the Argos advert), is generally a solitary activity. The common sewist (I know the word is 'sewer', but I can't get past the effluent connotations), is typically to be found alone, hunched over in the glow of their machine, swearing quietly.

The crafts of knitting, crocheting and even embroidery are enjoying somewhat of a renaissance currently, due partly to their portability to and from clubs and knitting circles and the crucial realisation that these get-togethers can take place in pubs. Wine plus handcrafting may result in the odd dropped stitch, but driving your Bernina when under the influence can be a great deal more painful.

So imagine my joy when, this weekend, I found myself part of a rather lovely sociable get together of machine sewists. It can be done!

My local theatre group, the South London Theatre, is about to put on its annual pantomime. As usual, the pantomime involves an inordinate amount of small children (a concept I find almost as horrid as the idea of pantomime itself). And, as society dictates, small children have to be dressed when on stage - in this case in a variety of medieval peasant garb. Tunics a'plenty.

After years of solitary and frantic sewing every winter, someone had the bright idea this year to gather together all the people who could drive a machine in one place for an afternoon and wrestle with mounds of Lincoln Green material whilst enjoying tea, chat, and swapping gossip.

Granted, the hum of the sewing machines can reach a rather deafening level when you get all four of them going at once, and the vibration is enough to require all pincushions to be sturdily anchored to the centre of the table, but on the whole we were the happiest little pantomime-costume sweatshop you ever did see.

Everyone was fairly experienced, but we also all went away having learned at least one or two tips and tricks from our fellow machinists. I learned that you can sew over pins, if you do it carefully enough, which will save me, I have calculated, 21.2567675 days per year unpinning as I go along. Caroline learned how to mitre ribbon (but only in one direction - we'll have you an ambi-mitreer before long, Caroline), and in turn taught us all that it is possible to use one's knee to press the pedal if there is not enough room on the table for your machine and you have to put it on a chair. We all learned that we have even larger capacities for tea-drinking and mince-pie-eating than we thought possible.

We have all agreed that we had such a lovely time we will regroup in the new year, each choosing one pattern to work on and taking advantage of the moral support, tea and companionship to move on to even greater crafting heights. I might even work out how to get a hem straight.

How about you, fellow crafters? Have you got involved in any 'Crafting Bees' yet? If not, what are you waiting for? You just need some like-minded friends, and in the case of machine-sewing, someone with a sturdy table and understanding neighbours. Oh, and of course your group needs a name. You can't have 'Make It Sew', though. That's taken.

*A sewing bee! I'll get my coat.

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.)

Ebay. Filling my house with tat since 2002

Yesterday, on my way to work, I almost crashed my bike.

Normally, this would be because someone decided to entirely ignore my turning signal and overtake me anyway, or due to an encounter with one of the bafflingly huge number of people who can afford 4x4's the size of Bolivia but apparently don't want to wear their indicator bulbs out in case they have to buy new ones.

Today though, it was all Captain Picard's fault. A charity shop I passed by had this proudly displayed in the window:

Look at it. Just look at it.

I couldn't ignore it. Look at the glorious, awful, hideous brilliance of it. But £25? Hmm.

Then this email conversation happened:

Me: It was £25. And apparently it's not 'done' to haggle in charity shops.

SO: Make it so.

Me: Even I am not going to pay £25 for a commemorative plate of Captain Picard.

SO: You could eat off it at the wedding.

Me: .............

SO: Are you still there?

I was not. I was on eBay.

So. Long story short. Now we own these:

£30 the lot. In your FACE, charity shop.

I honestly think I need help.

Of course, my shopping-for-tat addiction can sometimes cause a strain on our relationship. This purchase, for example, caused some heated words last night:


Me: Of course, I'm having Khan.
SO: Why do you get Khan?
Me: Because I bought them. So I am going to eat cake off Khan's face. That's something every girl dreams of on their wedding day. You can have Riker. Or the stupid spaceship one.
SO: That's a Klingon Bird of Prey. It's from that one where they had to rescue the whales and flew under the Golden Gate bridge.
Me: Oh yeah. [brief silence]. Well, nobody's going to want to eat off that one.

Eventually we decided to share The Plate Of Khan and use it to eat our first slice of wedding cake, together.

Romance. We has it.

Oh, hai Internets! Long time no blog.

In my mind, this is what the ice sculpture will look like.

So today I remembered I have a blog, and that it's been a metric eon since I updated it.

Well, lots of things have been happening in the world since we last spoke. Ice ages have come and gone. Huge gangs of disaffected yoof attempted to set fire to London in pursuit of new trainers. I finally finished watching every single episode of The X Files (can I get a 'hell yeah'), and Lemur Lady's Awesome Emporium has been going from strength to strength.

Turns out people seem to like my goodies, so I have been spending more and more time sitting, tongue-out-for-balance, at my sewing machine, batting away the cats and creating new items of awesomeness for all my lovely customers.

Oh yeah, and I'm getting married next month. That'll be where all my time's gone, then.

The wonderful thing about a wedding, to a crafty sort of a badger like me, is that the DIY possibilities are endless. The bad thing is that, well, the DIY possibilities are endless.

So far the handmade bunting has gone out of the window, figuratively speaking. 150feet of the stuff has been duly purchased from an ebay crafter with much more time on her hands than me. Paper chains, ditto. Handmade 'Woo Yay' flags (a la Offbeat Bride), origami bouquets, handsewn garter - all consigned to 'good idea at the time' pile.

On the other hand, I've been keepin' it crafty. My flowers and hair thingy (this is the official term), are from Etsy, my cake toppers and place cards were specially made by Folksy sellers, and my dress is being run up as we speak by my wonderfully talented mum (from whom I learnt all I know. Including the bad habits).

But I do still have my own to-do list. It's more modest than it originally was, but with just over 6 weeks to go it's still bringing me out in cold sweats. Once I've got the four bridesmaid's boleros cut and sewn (seriously, have you seen how much these things cost in the shops? How hard can it be?), I've just got 100 muslin teabag favours and boxes to create and label, a TARDIS shaped card box to make and a three tier cake to bake and ice the night before. All while keeping the Lemur Lady stuff ticking over. Simples.

Excuse me. I just have to go and run around in a panic for a minute.

*returns*

Ah, that's better.

Since some of the details are still secret-squirrel, I will be posting pictures, links, and thanks to all the wonderful and creative crafters who have contributed to the Wedding Of The Century once the day is over and I have sobered up and picked the confetti out of my hair.

(Incidentally, the best thing about the whole wedding stuff so far has been having cause to say "Of course, the dinosaur ice sculpture will need to arrive through the side doors during the table changearound". Brilliant.)

Sigh.

I'm going to start with a disclaimer. Normally I think about my blog posts in advance (believe it or not) and have a vague idea of what I'm going to write. This is a bit of a spur of the moment job, so bear with while words fall out of my head and through my clumsy fingers and onto the screen.

I've been having one of those evaluating things moments when you stop and take stock of what you're up to and where you're going and how you're getting there and all that. This was precipitated (is that the right word? Isn't that to do with rain? See what happens when you write all spur of the moment, like), by the fact that I was doing my Lemur Lady accounts this evening and it would appear that, without really noticing, I seem to have started a Proper Little Business. I've gone into healthy triple figures in the 3 months I've been selling stuff, and whilst the actual profit is not enough to feed a church mouse with a cheese allergy, my hobby is at least not costing me anything and is making a little bit of pocket money. Looking across the room, I can see that the tiny carrier bag of sewing stuff that I had only a few short months ago has grown into three huge storage boxes, one of which is so full I just broke the handle on it and had to spend a good five minutes swearingly picking everything up off the floor.

This is All Good. Very good in fact. Problem is, it's too good. I'm now at the point where I have more stuff waiting to be made than I have time for, around my Real Work. Sitting in the broken-handled box are, variously, Superman, Batman, Alice in Wonderland, 1950's housewives, owls, skulls, dinosaurs and more. All in fabric form, I might add. Otherwise it would be no wonder at all that the box broke. Plus I reckon Batman and the dinosaurs would have had an awesome fight. Superman wouldn't have got involved though because he'd be all 'ooh, no, don't touch the stegosaurus, it's endangered', and Alice would be sharing pineapple upside-down cake recipes with the housewives and the owls would be standing in the corner with the skulls talking about how Superman is such a girl scout.

Where was I?

Oh yes, rambling, that's right. Aaaanyway, my point is, now I'm all discontented-like. And devising Life Plans. My life plans mostly involve the SO win the lottery so that I can stay at home all day making Stuff out of Things. Even though I actually quite like my job - I work for an ace company and all, but here's the thing:

There is so much Stuff in the world and so many Things I want to make out of it. Not just sewing - rediscovering my crafty side has made me want to take up drawing and painting again for the first time since school, and learn how to bind books, and finally find out what scrapbooking is all about. But I have no time to do all these lovely things in because I have to earn stupid old money to buy stupid food and pay stupid rent. *kicks imaginary stones with trainers in stroppy manner*

Sigh. Ah well, one step at a time. Maybe one day I will be big and brave and clever enough to be able to make a few more pennies from my makings and Lemur Lady will be known around the world as a purveyor of awesomeness and I will only be able to go out in dark glasses and that will not just be because I am always hungover like it is now but also because I am so very very rich and famous and followed everywhere by paperazzi from the Crafting Times and suchlike.

But since that hasn't happened yet, I guess I'd best go to bed. Work in the morning, see.

Meh.

But seriously: in praise of handmade

Even cooler in real life.

I have just got back from work to find an exciting looking padded envelope on the doormat with my name on. Seriously, is there any more glorious feeling in the world than that of the padded envelope discovery? Unless you work at a postal depot, I suppose, and it smells faintly of anthrax. But I don't, and it didn't. What my envelope of joy contained was a lovely new necklace that I had bought myself from Flame Haired Jewellery Designs on Folksy. Isn't it awesome?

This got me to thinking. When I started selling my wares on Folksy, I got varied reactions. One of these was a skepticism that my particular brand of gothy/kitschy/irreverent oddness would have any sort of market on there. The name 'Folksy', to the uninitiated, often seems to conjure up images of beardy folk art, hippies selling crocheted lentil-warmers, or at best piles of chintz and gingham. 

Not that there's anything wrong with chintz and gingham - it's just not my thing. And not the 'thing' of a lot of people I know. If you want flowers, patchwork, quilts and teacosies Folksy has them in abundance and hurrah for that, but here's the thing - that's really not the be-all and end-all of handmade. 

Handmade can (and often is) cool, funky and trendsetting (ugh, what a horrible word). The only old-fashioned thing that is pretty much guaranteed to come with a purchase from a crafter is the nice glow of knowing that you've given your hard-earned cash to someone who deserves it, in return for a one-off item that is more often than not better than anything you could get in the shops. Take my necklace - I messaged the seller (Hazel, by the way - how often do you know the first name of the person you buy your jewellery from?) on Thursday asking whether she could perhaps shorten the necklace for me. She did this on Saturday, posted it on Monday, and I got in on Tuesday. All that for less than fifteen quid including postage. Try and get that sort of service and quality on the high street.

I'll climb down from my soapbox now and leave you with just some of the other items I've bought from Folksy in the last few months. Proof that handmade isn't all for yoghurt knitters and tree huggers:

 Godzilla greetings card from Little Black Heart

 Straightjacketed zombie embroidered notebook from FionaT (sister of Little Black Heart - too much talent in one family if you ask me).

Oatmeal, honey and milk soap from Scrub Up Lovely. I've become a bit addicted to handmade soap recently. There is a Soap Mountain building in my bathroom. But that's another story.

 Plantable birthday card from Arbee Cards. It has seeds embedded in the paper. I know, right?!

 Marmite and Toast Necklace from Little Red Star. Bought for a Marmite loving friend of mine. Vera, you know who you are...

And you can even buy presents for your furry friends! This splendid tigerprint breakaway cat collar came from Mogs Togs.