Bear with...

It's been a bit slow going today at Lemur Towers, on account of how earlier this week, this occured:

See how brave zombie lemur tried to call for help by waving his little arms...

This is right above my sewing desk, and luckily didn't happen while I was in there as I would have been buried to death under All The Boardgames in The World. Which would have been humiliating to put on my tombstone.

Luckily, Significant Otter was there to tidy up the immediate aftermath of Shelfgeddon, which involved picking up, among other things: 5,634,579 playing tokens from various games, all the Trivial Pursuit cards, several chess pieces and a 'Make Your Own Morph Out Of Plasticine' kit. Even more luckily, Banana the Bernina was unscathed as the shelf itself created a ski ramp for all the Cluedo counters to whizz over the top of the desk and straight into the cats' bowls on the other side of the room, with spectacular results.

On closer inspection this morning, though, it appeared that the the shelf contents had brought with them a Sahara's worth of accumulated dust, which took an AGE to wipe up, and something surprisingly heavy (possibly a Monopoly Iron, travelling at critical velocity?), has gouged a sizeable dent right in the middle of my cutting table. Which is highly annoying.

Still. I think I'm back in the game now (pun unintended - too soon), and ready to start stitching again. Might just take all the stuff off that shelf underneath first, to be on the safe side....

Where the magic happens

My little sister Ellie is embarrassingly, horribly talented. She's only sixteen and the artwork she creates is already enough to send grown artists slashing their canvases and cutting off their ears in despair. Her Facebook page, where she posts under the moniker 'Paint Dipped Pixie', showcases her emerging talent.

The only consolation I have is that she still has to go to school and do exams. With this is mind she posted the following plea a couple of days ago:

Now, I often see fellow crafters posting pictures of their studios online and they are generally airy, beautiful, co-ordinated spaces, with complex and attractive fabric storage systems, inspirational art on the walls and handmade angora throws on the ergonomic furniture. The sort of place, in short, where a creative soul might waft about, creatively, sipping herbal tea while gazing at the moors out of the window waiting for inspiration to strike.

So I originally wasn't going to make my space public AT ALL. But in the end I felt I owed it to all those crafters - I know you're out there - who divide their working time between Facebooking, searching for your pincushion for the seventeenth time that morning, shooing the cat off the ironing board, desperately trying to find a single clean cup that you haven't already used to put tea in then left somewhere and forgotten about, and occasional short bouts of feverish creativity. We don't normally show off our 'creative spaces'. Often because we can't find them under all the mess. But I'm going to let you peek in to mine, right now. (Not a euphemism).

All of my sewing room can be photographed from the doorway. Thusly:

Note inspirational view of brick wall.

At my feet, where you can't see them, are the cats' bowls. I have the luxury of a cutting table on the right, there, which only has one wobbly leg. Banana the Bernina sits faithfully on an old Ikea desk, while my laptop (for Facebooking and listening to audiobooks), is propped on boxes of fabric.

Come with me, if you will, all the way over to the Other Side of the Room. 

No. I don't know why the air compressor' is there either.
'

EVERYTHING lives on these shelves. Except for what is jammed into the drawers, which is mostly fabric:

My name is Lemur Lady and I have a hoarding problem.

The Fabric Drawers of Joy are my second favourite bit of the room. My favourite is the Accidental Shrine of Inspiration:

OK. Now I realise it looks a bit obsessive and murdery. 

The mantelpiece and the wall above it have sort of acquired lots of handmade bitses and pieceses I have bought or been given from other crafters. The picture at the top is my all-time favourite quote from Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome, done as a letterpress print. Under that is my FionaT original 'Dawn of the Thread', which makes me smile every time I look at it. Then we have a drawing done by the aforementioned Ellie a few years ago - me as Wonder Woman getting a piggyback from the Wolverine (the Significant Otter's alter-ego). You may also spot another couple of FionaT's (I promise this isn't a stalkers shrine. Honest.), and a Little Black Heart ACEO along with a Quernus Crafts teacup mouse and my wonderful Prince Charming Adam Ant-Mouse.

Also, *cough*, my lanyards from the preview week of the Doctor Who Experience which S.O. took me to for my 30th birthday. It was brilliant. There were daleks and EVERYTHING.

Not pictured:

• Enormous poster of David Tennant looking all brooding in Hamlet, 
• Very precarious shelf barely supporting carrier-bags of half-finished and forgotten projects
• Slightly OCD arrangement of hooks above desk holding scissors and other Important Things so I don't spend hours looking for them every day
• Three half-drunk mugs of tea
• Cat litter tray
• Cat

So. I hope that wasn't too disappointing, Ellie. One day I will have a grown up studio with big sweeping tables and those slanty desks that you can stand up at and draw things, and not-dead pot plants. But it'll still be full of tea cups and the cats will want somewhere to sit, so don't expect too much.

Oh Facebook, why do you hide my stuff?

Are you on Facebook? Have you, like me, been tearing your hair out, wringing your hands, and generally a-wailing and a-gnashing of your teeth at its recent shenanigans? No? Well, maybe you're not as melodramatic as I am. Still, you may well be miffed at how your Newsfeed seems to be picking and choosing what it wants to show you.

Facebook has tidied updates from Pages (as opposed to your friends), into a seperate feed. Which is all very neat, but is proving rather detrimental to a lot of hardworking independent businesses and crafters as they are posting away while their audience is blissfully unaware.

Here is how to view those posts, so that you can catch up on all your favourite pages. And if you haven't already, you might like to add www.facebook.com/lemurlady to that list. Ah, g'wan.

You're welcome, procrastinators everywhere!

Time flies like an arrow...

...fruit flies like a banana.

And apparently I haven't blogged since NOVEMBER! A combination of being very busy, not having anything interesting to say and writer's block, I guess.

I'm not sure I have anything interesting to say now, to be honest, but I'm working on the principle that if I at least get some words down on this blank page it might kickstart my blog-life for 2013.

So.....um....how are you? Good? Excellent. What happened with that matter with the dog and the neighbour's Fiesta? Was it all resolved? And your family? Great Auntie Maud still complaining about that woman with the gammy eye who sits next to her at bingo? Splendid. What have I been up to, you ask? Hmm...

Christmas came and went, as it is wont to do. I tried, as I have the last few years, to buy handmade presents as far as possible. I find that I end up spending less but on fewer, better quality and more meaningful items. It's a great way of both stopping the crazy Christmas spend and at the same time giving presents that you are really proud to be handing over. This years purchases included a gorgeous handmade crayon set from Colour Me Fun, a pretty glass candle holder from Diomo Glass and some smashing cufflinks from Quirkii.

Photos courtesy of Quirkii, Colour Me Fun, Diomo Glass

And now it's the new year! Quite a way in, in fact. Did you make any resolutions? I try not to. Resolutions always seem to be about 'stopping' this or 'giving up' that. Of course we're not going to keep to them, they are self-inflicted punishments and the minute the imaginary schoolteacher that is January disappears over the horizon we'll be back to our old ways. 

So instead of the 'New Year's Resolution', I'm more in favour of the 'Ongoing Non-Calendar-Specific Vague Quest For Betterment and Doing More Stuff'. It's a working title. I'd like to continue growing my business, get into a less stressful place with my day job, be more productive with the time I have, and generally Sort Things Out. I don't have a target date as I would definitely go past it and depress myself; rather I just have a sort of renewed determination to do things better this year. I think, if we are all honest with ourselves, once the diets and the dry Januarys are over, that's all it really comes down to.

What's my resolution for 2013? Carry on being me. Just get better at it.

I promise I'm not a murderer.

This is a sort of 'out-of-office' post, as I'm literally popping in to say that I'm sorry I haven't been popping in recently. It's an anti-post, if you will. A blogging oxymoron.

Some of my readers will already know that, in addition to sewing, I spend a large amount of what I laughingly call 'spare time' at my local amateur theatre company - the South London Theatre. I've spent the recent weeks directing a production of Martin McDonagh's 'A Skull in Connemara', which has taken up a lot of my time.

It's also taken up a lot of Significant Otter's time, as he has been lending his crafty skills to my prop and set design. I shan't give too much away till the show's over, but suffice to say that this conversation happened far too often at a wedding we attended last weekend:

Drunken SO (to literally anyone who would stand still): I've got to dig two graves tomorrow. For all the skulls. (points at me) It's ok, it's all her fault.

ME: (to terrified bystander, while SO wanders off towards the dance floor): It's for a PLAY. The graves are for a play! And the skulls aren't real! Wait...come back....let me explain.....

I shall come back and explain more, next week. In the meantime, stay warm and keep stitching - someone has to take up the slack!

Happy Halloween!

I've been a busy bee lately starting my Christmas orders, but let's not forget there's another celebration coming up that, arguably, is just as much fun but without all the present pressure!

Should you want a little something to mark the ghoulish occasion, be it gifts or decorations, you can rely on makers of handmade crafts to come up with the goods. To prove that the devil gets all the best goodies (as well as music), here's a small selection of my favourite handmade Halloween items. Some eye candy to go along with the sugar candy, if you will. Click on the links below the pics to go straight to the product.

Enjoy!

Handmade Monster Costume

 This monster costume from GuuGuuGa makes me *snork* with laughter. If I had a child it would be in fancy dress ALL THE TIME. Whether it liked it or not.

Skeleton Hands Halloween Headband

Janine Basil makes the most incredible hair accessories. This would be brilliant for a halloween party - or even a halloween wedding. In fact, please, someone wear this at their wedding. And send me pictorial evidence. Kthxbai.

Jack O'Lantern Cat Collar

Mustn't forget the furbabies at Halloween! I love the little pumpkin charm on this cat collar from Mogs Togs. They've got candy corn, spiderwebs and skull and crossbones versions too. If only Doug would stop losing his collars....

'Trick or Treat' Handmade Spiced Soap

Yup, you can even get spooky soap! This 'Trick or Treat' soap from Oakwood Soaperie looks as good as it smells, with layers of black mica swirled throughout for a spine-chillingly luxurious bathtime.

Hollow Pumpkin Earrings

How on earth Sulwen Arts manages to hand-carve these teeny polymer clay pumpkins so that they are hollow like real jack o'lanterns is utterly beyond me. Eagle-eyed Tim Burton fans will also spot earrings shaped like the Boogeyman's dice in her Folksy shop.














I'll leave you with a word from our sponsor, Angry Lemur. Don't have nightmares, now.

In which I sell Things in the Real World

I've been making stuff out of fabric with skulls on and selling them to people under the guise of Lemur Lady for nearly two years now, but so far I have been able to hide behind the cosy virtual padded walls of the Interwebs. Aside from the odd cash sale to long-suffering friends ("I see you have a new phone. You know what you need for that? A phone cover with frogs on. Go on, buy one and I'll go away"), everything I've made has been photographed, Paypalled and posted.

I like running an internet craft business. It's warm and dry and apart from visits to the post office I can mostly do it in my pyjamas. I also have a lovely support network of other crafters, especially on my Facebook page. Whilst I wouldn't know them from Adam should I bump into them in the street (unless they too were in the post office queue in their pyjamas, which would be a dead giveaway), Facebook regulars such as LizzieMade, FionaT and OddSox make the virtual world seem like one big crafty community as homeworkers everywhere wait with bated breath for the 5 o'clock Friday wine bell to be rung by Little Black Heart.

So it was more in the aid of facing a fear than anything else that made me sign up to do my first actual, Real Life (TM) craft fair stall last weekend.

I live in West Norwood, a suburb of South London that has in recent years become home to the West Norwood Feast - a 'people powered market' that takes over the area on the first Sunday of every month. There are food stalls, craft stalls, performance areas, and a general feeling of villageyness (yes, that is a word. now.), in this unassuming high street. Since I live literally walking distance from the Artisans Hub (posh words for 'craft stall bit'), I thought it was time to stop spectating and get involved.

The month or so running up to the Feast saw me in a flurry of activity, desperately trying to get enough items made to have a respectable-looking stall. Finally, after burning the candle at both ends for so long that I gave up and chucked it on the fire, I was ready.

The night before I set out all my wares on a practice table at home. Eschewing the idea of a boring white tablecloth, I found this smashing spotty affair in IKEA. An eleventh-hour panic about how to display jewellery was quelled by the ever-resourceful Significant Otter, who invented the mushroomy-looking thing on the right of the table. It's a lampshade, stuck on top of an old gin bottle. And it spins! Honestly, that man could give MacGyver a run for his money. I'd worry, if his freaky talents weren't so useful.

The actual table was much bigger. I will remember this next time....

I was ready. I had stock, I had stuff to put stock in and on, I knew where I was going and when I had to get there.

Unfortunately, I also had a birthday dinner to go to that evening. The phrase "I'll just have a couple of glasses of wine, I've got a busy day tomorrow" was heard to escape my lips early on, but was quickly forgotten.

I learned the hard way, so you don't have to, that craft fairs are probably best attempted without a hangover.

Still.

I'm pretty sure the TARDIS parking space brought me luck.

After I'd got set up and had a restorative cup of tea, the world seemed a better place. I felt much like a small child playing at post offices among all the grown ups, most of whom were seasoned veterans, but my first sale settled my fears and I was able to get into my stride and really enjoy the day.

Against my expectations, I really enjoyed myself. I was convinced that people would think my stuff overpriced, underwhelming, badly made - all those things that the sensible me knows aren't true but that still rear their heads. But it soon became clear that my stall - and my items - were making people smile and, importantly, part with their cash. 

Would I do it again? Definitely, although with a full-time job as well I would never be able to maintain stock levels high enough to do fairs every week, or even every month. But it was a great confidence-booster to show off my work in the real world.

Having said that, I'm glad to be getting back to my custom orders and my online shop. Perhaps when I am a rich lady of leisure I'll be able to do both, but for now, I'm off back to Facebook to find out what everyone's been up to without me.