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.

In which I say something nice about a tent. For the first time ever.

OK, this is the tiniest, pointlessest (I started that word and was damn well going to find a way to finish it), blog post ever but I had to share this and a Facebook link just wasn't enough.

I hate camping. I hate the smell of the tent. I hate the soggy grass. I hate the fact that no matter how much horrible canvasy plasticy sheeting crap you have on the floor there will STILL be a puddle of rainwater in the morning exactly where you put your clothes from the night before (even if it hasn't rained). I hate stupid not-really-working camping stoves. I hate the enforced jollity and the fact that someone will always bring a guitar. I hate being cold (and it is always cold when camping, even if you wear your fleeciest Where The Wild Things Are pyjamas and zip the sleeping bag over your head). I hate having to trek across a dark field full of possibly-shagging-weirdos to the communal toilet (if there is one), and unzipping all the arctic gear just to have a pee.

Camping, basically, makes me want to cry.

So I will never buy a tent. BUT. If if ever had to - like I was suddenly rendered homeless in the event of a Mad Max style apocalypse and everyone was being killed off by a toxin that was stopped only by the barrier of canvas and I had already eaten my cats to survive and there was absolutely no choice – I would buy this one. Because even though it is a tent, it is awesome.

That is all.

Off piste.

I promise both myself and my house look less moody than this in real life...

One of the - admittedly extremely few - drawbacks to my newfound and still quite baffling mild success at making stuff and selling it is the fact that I can't keep any of it myself. I'd love a skull handbag, or a Viewmaster Cushion, but if I just hoard everything I will a) never get any money for it and be back at square one and b) have a house even more full of mismatched cushions and handbags I don't really need. Not that there's anything wrong with having loads of handbags. Really. In fact, everyone should have at least a dozen handbags. And they should buy them all from me. Ahem.

Sometimes though, I come across something that's just so god-damned amazeballs that to see it go to someone else would just make me weep. Such as the truly epic Robert Kaufman horror movie material I bought last week. Normally I tend to buy fat quarters and half metres of fabric, but this time I new it would be so cool I had to buy a full metre (I know, easy tiger). And then when it arrived, I couldn't bear the idea of chopping it up and selling it on.

So. A metre of fabric, covered in awesome Hammer horror monsters. Frankly, I was happy just to wrap it around myself like a blanket and sleep under it, but I knew that it needed to be seen by the wide world. So I decided to make a dress.

I've only ever made one dress before, and that was a fiendishly complicated 1950's job, which turned out OK (against all odds), but was entirely pattern based. This time I decided to fly solo.

How hard can it be?

Well, not very, it appears. Even I managed it. I folded it in half, sewed it together up the side, and put a length of elastic at the top to hold it up. So far, so good. Then for a waist, another length of elastic, this time sewn straight onto the back of the fabric with a zigzag stitch. I have no idea if this is how you are meant to do it, but it seemed to work. A hem at the bottom (courtesy of my eternally patient Significant Otter who pinned it up while I stood on a chair and made picky comments), and ta da! A tube dress is born!

I love these so much they have their own shelf. One day I may get them a spotlight.

It needed a belt to hide the fact that it is, basically, a sack, but I'm still pretty chuffed. I added a couple of straps to make a tie-up halterneck just in case the elastic were to give way under the enormous weight of my heaving bosoms (yeah, whatever). 

And the best thing? For the first time ever, I have an entirely co-ordinated skirt and shoe ensemble. I know! I'm a proper grown up!