sandboys for sale!

Man, it is hard to sound cheerful when it's just taken you 40 minutes to upload your photos to Blogger! Is anyone else suddenly having their photos randomly rotated? Grrr. Anyway, I've just listed these new Sandboys gocco printed notecard sets in my shop. Yes, they are new notecard sets even if you and I both know I printed them months ago ;)

I'm going to add more Sandboys goodies (and hopefully some other stuff) soon, but this is your lot for now. It's a set of four single-fold notecards with envelopes, blank inside and ready for you to write whatever takes your fancy. On the back of the label there is a wee explanation of who the Sandboys are.

The other planned Sandboys products include prints, single notecards and hopefully notebooks, which I am off to attempt now (or maybe once I have put some finishing touches to the craft room). If you feel you may be in urgent need of one of these products and simply can't wait for me to get my fat behind in gear and list them (who knows when that may be, after all) then just get in touch and I can let you know more details/prices and do a custom listing for you.

In general shop-related news, it is with kind of a heavy heart (but not really) that I have decided to close my shopify shop. My year's free trial is over and it hasn't really worked out for me sales-wise. I feel I could have made more of an effort with it, but I think one shop is enough for me and (given I can go for months without a sale) I'd rather keep it simple and pay a small amount for each listing rather than a larger amount for the shop each month. Don't let my failure put you off though. Shopify does have some great features and I was really happy with how my shop looked/functioned, but I really didn't like using their blogging software (it seemed pretty faffy and time-consuming compared to how I blog here, or how I used to blog here before they started randomly rotating images!) and I think you would really need to be a constantly-updating presence on Shopify to keep people visiting. I also think you would need to be a bit more pro-active in your social networking, something I am not in the least, what with not having either a Twitter or a Facebook account. I'm keeping the shop open until just a few days before Christmas, so if you want one last wander around its jam-packed virtual aisles, you have a month left to do so. My etsy shop will remain open for business as usual, of course. Damn my box full of business cards with my shopify on them! Back to the drawing board...

p.s. I think I forgot to mention that I am now offering free shipping within the UK in my etsy shop. It hasn't made anyone buy anything yet, but it still has the added bonus of me not having to work out shipping costs and convert it to dollars and... I think I might be too lazy to be a shopkeeper!

p.p.s. Would it be wrong of me to have cake for lunch and then go out for dinner later? It's just that I think I'm going to :)

I can't make an omelette

I actually am not very good at making omelettes, but of course you knew I was referring to that old adage, "You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs." I've been on late shifts this week and have been trying to be productive in the mornings. One of my tasks was to rejig the craft room. The plan was that by today (my one and only measly day off, harumph) the craft room would be ready for me to go into uber-making overload...

Well, you can see how that has turned out. Yup, I'm in more of a mess than ever. Still, it is progress, believe it or not. The shelves in the top right of this picture are a new addition (to this room - they're pretty old and weather-beaten really) and I think they may actually change my life! So much storage! My craft book collection has overgrown the shelves in our bedroom so, much to Graham's relief, I am moving the whole thing down here. They'll be much more browsable and they'll be right beside my computer/scanner/printer station (see? more sensible progress!) so I'll be able to share them with you at the drop of a hat. Unfortunately, Graham is post-work napping right now, so I can't get to the craft books to move them downstairs and I don't know how much space they'll take up on the shelves, so I don't want to go filling them up with lots of other stuff. Yes, progress is S-L-O-W. I'm finding lots of good stuff as I move things about though. Turns out I have books about weight lifting and water skiing (two more sports I've never tried) to go with those karate books...

karate... chop!

A little while ago Emily shared her accidental clothes collections on her blog. I have an accidental collection of karate books. I don't do karate. Welcome to my world, tra-la-la! "Collections" like these are the reason my brain and house are such a muddle.

Still, when I look inside the karate books, I remember why I bought them all (and, to be fair, Graham is co-owner of the one shown above). Doesn't karate man look like he's doing a dance? "Arms back, leg up, arms back, leg up...." I want to bump into him at the local discotheque.

Grumpy karate men from book two. The pages of this book are not really this yellow, I just had to take the photo directly under a lamp due to severe lack of light in my flat.

Oh no! Kick to the groin!

This was my first karate book. It uses photos rather than diagrams. Check out this sequence!

Ya!

baby favourites

Our friends, Kristy and Alex, are expecting a baby today. Today!

That's not to say he/she will arrive today, but it's still a good excuse to share this hilariously cute (cutely hilarious) book of baby patterns I found in a charity shop last week.

Kristy's lucky I had my baby knitting done before I found this!

I don't think I could have resisted frilling to the max.

That red outfit is my absolute favourite. It looks like something I might have been put in when I was little. If I ever decide to have a baby, I will definitely knit this for them. I don't know if I'd risk making it for someone else, it's probably an acquired taste...

Check out the wallpaper. That's a very cute baby too.

Here's some more fancy wallpaper for you, if you can see it past all the frills and tassles, that is!

Even without real babies in, the pictures are super cute.

Look at the enormous bottom on this one. Aw!

american tan

I am typing this from work so, as you can see, my wish did not come true and I got the call on my supposed day off. I'm stuck here all day and all night. Boo. Not only am I missing the X Factor (nooooo!) and tent drawing/pom-pom making/some other great Saturday night "entertainment" (nooooo!) I am also missing American Tan - see above. If you're in Glasgow and fancy a boogie tonight, you should definitely go along. I live with one of the djs and have been boogie-ing around the house all month as he made up his playlists. He has some good tunes with him, I promise! Go on, live for me! I may be stuck in this harshly lit office pretending I know Gaelic and cursing Noel bleedin' Edmonds (my constant companion) but you can be free and you can dance! Dance, young (and old) ones, dance like the wind!

ps Don't ruin your night out feeling bad for me either - I am off tomorrow and they can't get me then. Hooray!

pps I also just found out I'm getting the day off on Christmas Day! Hoorah!

I wish I could draw gooder

C-1950-00019
Originally uploaded by gseiwiarchives
I've been trying to draw a tent since August and apparently I can't. Not a good tent anyway. However, every cloud has a silver lining and while trawling flickr for inspiration again tonight I came across this picture, which gave me a little smile. How cute?

I used to be a girl guide and go camping. I even wore a special camp dress - a sort of blue knee-length shirt/slip with a belt at the waist. Guide camp seems like such good fun when I look back on it. We would gather wood and start a fire and cook on it all weekend. I suppose that's quite a talent really, making macaroni cheese over an open flame! We had to make pot rests with sticks to stop the grass getting burnt, tying the straightest sticks we could find into triangles using square knots. I know quite a few proper knots thanks to my time in the guides, not least because of all the time we spent making macrame owls. At the end of the weekend, we would scrub the Daz off the bottom of the pans in a nearby river (I think the thick washing powder layer protected the pans from the flames?) pack up and then form a line to scour every inch of the field for litter. It was such a good feeling to get home, get clean and sleep in your own warm bed after a weekend in a cold, wet field.

Talking of clean beds, I'd better go and make mine. I woke up this morning to find Poppy had been sick on top of me in the middle of the night. Not a fun discovery at 6.30 am. Euch! Plus my morning schedule is so tight (eking out every possible minute in bed) that stripping the sheets meant I didn't have time to have breakfast. Noooooooo! Goodness me, I'm tired this week. I'm crossing my fingers that I don't get called in to work tomorrow. I would love to have the day off. Maybe I could even get that tent drawn at long last!

Dear Santa...

..Please bring me four of these house cushions for Christmas. I am not the type to spend £66 on a cushion for myself, but perhaps you are the type to spend £264 on four cushions for me? I know I have not been that good this year, so will settle for two house cushions if that is what you decide. They would look ever so lovely in my living room. Thank you very much.

Fabulous house-shaped cushion by fabulous Donna Wilson.