fanny craddock invites you to a cheese and wine party

It's super sunny today and even though I am stuck inside at work (I type this from my lunch break) the sunshine is still putting me in a great mood. I feel like everything is going my way. I just realised that's practically a line from "Oh What A Beautiful Morning" so I must really be feeling it!

Just as one little example of how great my day has been so far, check out the starter titles for this programme I had the pleasure of subtitling this morning. The music and graphics are simply brilliant! If you want to know the rest of Fanny's secrets for a great cheese and wine party, I think the rest of the programme is available on youtube too.

One last thing... Don't forget to enter the giveaway or make use of the special Girls' Day discount code to get 20% off absolutely everything in my etsy shop. See post below for details.

Edit: I meant to include the name of Fanny Cradock's West Highland Terrier. Wait for it... Mademoiselle Lolita Saltina Cradock! Amazing!

giveaway for the girls

March 3rd is Girls' Day in Japan. A few years ago I did evening classes in embroidery and there was a really sweet Japanese girl called Shoko in my class. On Girls' Day, she said it was traditional to give all your female friends a present and she gave us all some fabric from an antique kimono (which she hacked to pieces in front of our horrified eyes!) and some writing paper. I thought it was a really lovely idea and have always meant to adopt that tradition, but usually remember sometime towards the end of March. Well, this year I have remembered! In order to celebrate Girls' Day, I am having a little giveaway for girls only. (Boys, sorry about that. You will just have to organise your own giveaway for Boys' Day, which is in May sometime, I think.) I've made up three packages of goodies to give away and have stuck with Shoko's theme of fabric and writing paper mainly. Here's what three lucky girls could win.

Here we have a selection of eight of my favourite vintage fabrics. It is causing me some pain to part with these (hence why there are now three winners instead of the intended five!) but I am determined to be a little bit generous. Each square measures about 20cm on each side, except the brown flowery one to the left, which is a tiny bit smaller.

Here are nine smaller pieces of new fabrics. These squares measure about 12-15cm on each side. These are all fabrics that I bought quite recently and they are all so pretty that I keep coming up with new little projects just in order to use them. Hopefully the winners will be inspired by them too.

And here we have a selection of about 10 different writing papers, notecards etc. Yes, that is Elvis Presley you can see peeking out :) There's a bit of variety from parcel to parcel in the selection of writing papers, so you might find your package contains a different Elvis or a different cat etc.

Each winner will also get a bundle of postcards. I think there's about 15 there. Most of these are freebies I have picked up over the years. I have a big box of these (hence why I could spare 45 without batting an eyelid!) and find them very handy for jotting little notes and popping in the post, but you could also chop them up and recycle them into business cards or gift tags or whatever. I'm sure Lynsey is hatching a plan or two right about now if she is reading this!

I've also popped in one of my buttons cards (a different one in each parcel) as well as some pretty ribbons and a bit of green ric-rac. I might add a few more goodies throughout the week, possibly some stickers and whatnot/any fun things I find lying around in my craft room.

Phew! I think that is a very fun prize and useful too if you are a crafty type who likes snail mail. That description probably fits about 99% of the people who read this blog, so I am hoping for plenty of entries. Go on, you know you want to. All you have to do to enter is leave a comment on this blog post. I'll pick three winners at random on Girls' Day, which is this Thursday, March 3rd. I'm happy to ship internationally, so do feel free to enter even if you are not based in the UK. Friends and previous winners are very welcome to enter too. Remember to leave your email address or a link to your blog/whatever so I can contact you if you win.

Just one last thing before you go... You've got to ask yourself one question - do I feel lucky? Well, you should (punk). So that everyone can share in the fun of Girls' Day, I have set up a discount code for my etsy shop which will give you a massive 20% off absolutely any purchase. (My first ever sale - woo hoo!) This means...

*pinwheel brooch kits usually £4, now £3.20

*large EastEnders embroideries usually £20, now £16

*bunting in a box usually £9, now (hold on - this maths is a bit tricky) £7.20

*3 retro recipe cards usually £5, now £4

and so on. And remember I have free postage within the UK too, so those price includes UK delivery. Wowsers! To claim your discount, simply enter the code IAMAGIRL at the checkout. This code will be valid until 8.00pm (UK time) on Girls' Day, which is this Thursday. Everyone's a winner... except for boys.* Happy Girls' Day :)

*Boys, I joke - you feel free to use the discount code too.

the circus is in town

Right now I'm mainly trying to be quiet while Graham has a nap, but later on I am planning to have a look through my circus book for some craftathon 2011 inspiration. I'm thinking today could be a good day to tackle paper cutting/collage. This book is absolutely amazing and HUGE, as you can see from this photo. I first spotted it in a lovely bookshop when we were on holiday in Aberfeldy a couple of years ago and it cost a few hundred bucks. Years later, I was still thinking about it and wondering if I could ever justify spending that much on a single book no matter how lovely. Recently, though, I was searching for it online just to drool over and discovered that a second edition had been published and it was only 20-odd bucks. It's slightly smaller than the original (yes, the original was even bigger than this!) but that's maybe just as well because even this one won't fit on any bookshelf! It's absolutely jam-packed with amazing circus-related photographs and illustrations (I'll try to take some photos to share once we are in the daylight season again) so is bound to give me some inspiration today. Now I just need to find a space big enough to open the thing in...

cats in hats float my boat

I'm a bit fed up of having to go to work this week and am still convinced my destiny is as a lady of leisure, but my job does certainly have its upsides. Last night I was asked to work on The Brittas Empire (it helps that someone who reads my blog now and again has been promoted to the role of assigning work) so finally got to see an episode right to the end. Hurrah! I also noticed a while back, after a tortuous few hours of tidying up very messy subtitles for Hill Street Blues, that the kitten at the end wears a tiny police hat. Cute, huh?

Got to do a wee bit of DIY before work tonight so I'd better gets a-going, but I have the weekend off (yas!) and a fun wee giveaway to plot, so keep your peepers peeled for that next week.

ta-da!

The moment you have all been waiting for is here! (You have been waiting with baited breath, haven't you? What?! No?!) While I should have been decorating the bathroom, which is nearly finished now thanks to Graham, I have been busy playing with the paint sample cards I picked up instead. This is the idea that's been making me mega excited for the last few weeks - colour co-ordinated emergency sewing kits made from upcycled paint chips. Now that it comes to revealing my idea here, I realise I may have over egged it a bit. Ha! I must learn to keep my mouth shut properly if I am keeping it shut at all. I am still so excited about these though :) And I think the image above looks like a paint advert from a 1980s magazine, though I realise it doesn't look so much like a paint advert from a 1980s magazine that I don't have to point that fact out to you...

Look inside! I've gone colour co-ordination crazy!

Even the little safety pins match!

And if you ask me, no emergency sewing kit would be complete without a needle threader. I'm sure you agree.

I've just listed these in my etsy shop and you can see a list of available colours in the product description. I have to admit that some of them were selected for their name really. Yes, I'm talking about you, Bongo Jazz! That's a corally sort of orange/pink by the way and is very pretty, though how you would guess that from the name, I do not know...

Phew! I'm so glad the emergency sewing kits are officially here at last. Now I can start to wean myself off paint sample cards for a little while... and maybe even help to do the last few bits of decorating in the bathroom.

might as well face it, you're addicted to...

Yes, yes, I am officially addicted to animating things unnecessarily. I will try to keep it to a minimum (don't want to have to add a flashing images warning to my blog!) but please humour me for the moment. I'm hoping I might actually come up with something good eventually. I do have a few fun ideas brewing, but I'll try to wait until my first two creations are off bumped off the front page here before I assault your eyeballs with any more.

That said, this little windmill of pretty fabrics is giving me great delight. I think my creation of it was what prompted me to finally list refill pinwheel brooch squares in my etsy shop. They've been packaged up and ready to go for ages, but I wanted an excuse to add a spinning extravaganza of an advert here, so I stayed up late tonight and finally listed them. If you are as addicted to pinwheel brooch making as I am to lo-fi animation, you can now buy a pack of three ready-cut felt-backed fabric squares so that you can make more. Hooray!

I've got a couple more things to add to the shop this week including the new thing I've been so excited and harping on about. I haven't been keeping you in suspense on purpose. I had a few problems with supplies (thanks again, Royal Mail!) and then I took some in to Made In The Shade to see if they wanted a few, but they said they wanted them all, so I was sold out before I even had a chance to share them. I've been making more today though, so I will divulge all soon. Don't go getting your hopes up now... but I still am :)

Right, better go to bed. All these flashing images are giving me a headache and I think my new contact lenses have welded themselves to my eyeballs... Good night.

a frank announcement

frank's been framed!
Originally uploaded by dropstitch

Oooh! We're now down to the VERY LAST EVER Frank Butcher embroidery in my etsy shop. In an act of uncharacteristic generosity, I gave the second last Frank embroidery to my friend this weekend. He just went so well with the EastEnders knitting patterns I had got for her and he will keep her Dot and Pat embroideries company. I bet he and Pat will have stitchy sexual shenanigans when nobody is looking. Oh no! Poor Dot! Perhaps I will have to send Ethel to live with my friend too.

If you want to bag the last Frank Butcher embroidery you can find it here for 20 bucks including UK postage.