First day of the fair

I couldn't have asked for better weather for the garden and craft fair, and I would have been hard pressed to find a more beautiful setting. Just look at this, isn't it just gorgeous? You'll understand why I kept looking out of the window at the lake longingly, just wanting to dangle my feet in the water, soak up the rays and basically just laze about -


There were some very colourful garden stalls outside. I especially liked the one with these beautiful irises -


The craft fair was inside the visitors centre, and provided a surprisingly good mix. These stalls were amongst my favourites -

Bags, bags, bags in the most beautiful vintage fabrics, roses galore, sigh, and lots of sweet little bits and pieces with a vintage flavour. Suzanne makes all the bags herself, and they are perfectly sewn, I am so envious of her skills. I'll have to quiz her tomorrow whether she has a website where I can get myself a treat a bit later in the year


This stunning Venetian mask stopped me in my tracks. I am not normally a fan of red, but I would wear that mask, most definitely. Gimme a masked ball to go so that I have an excuse to buy it! Sigh, those feathers......


I spent quite some time looking at the lovely fabric collages etc on this stall as well. Beautiful workmanship -


And then there was Helen's stall, the Leaf Tradingpost. It was most definitely one of the more unusual stalls I have come across, but absolutely fabulous. Helen had some super soft, I-wanna-lie-on-it-and-never-get-up fleeces on her stall. They made me long for long evenings in front of a roaring fire, languishing on the fleece with a glass of wine. She also had some natural dyes on her stall, and some very fine, very unusual jewellery, horn and semi precious stones. I was a very happy bunny when she suggested a swap, she ended up with some of my soaps and I ended up with a very pretty horn and carnelian necklace, dainty and very much my colour


My stall was right opposite her and we had a grand time chatting away in between customers. Space was quite tight, so I couldn't spread out as much as I would have liked to, but my darling son Nick had the bright idea to put the little water tub and try-out soapies right in front, and customers had a ball messing around with it, especially with the floating soap!


It was a pretty good day all round really, lets hope tomorrow is a good day, too. I am pooped, I am just going to read a few blogs and then toddle off to bed. Enjoy your Sunday! xx

JJ - just another day in Lalaland.......

.....of which, I'll have you know, I am a founder member.

Well, this gives me great pleasure - my other half has a box of antique lace which he inherited from his Grandma. As far as we know, it was all made in India at the beginning of last century - one picture has a label with the date of manufacture etc in good detail.

So, here goes with the pics - this should work as a payback for LLL for posting all those goodies lately. Ahhh, revenge is sweet :-)











P.S This is only a small selection of the lace he has.

And now for something completely different

Instead of boot fair finds, sewing room treasures or crocheted stuff, I'll show you what we have been busy with over the last few days, designing labels for the new soaps I have made for the two day craft fair starting tomorrow. We have just finished wrapping 5 batches of the newly designed soaps and 3 batches of restocks. Phew, I am glad thats done now.


I am going to miss out on all the boot fairs this weekend, isn't that just terrible? Hopefully, the fair will be successful and kind of make up for it. Fingers crossed.

And because this is a totally non crochety, non boot fairy, non treasury kind of post, I'll continue with that and put up some pics of my doggies -


Oh, and for a wee bit of colour, here are a couple of flower pics -

The inside of the foxglove flower is soo pretty


the mock orange is flowering now, unfortunely only the blossom at the very top is open, the blossom lower down is still just in bud, but already the scent of the mock orange flowers is wafting through the garden, delicious -

What did I get up to yesterday?

Well, it was a horribly grey, wet, stormy day yesterday, so I didn't put a foot outside all day long. Instead, I finally caught up with some long overdue paperwork, and started on the labels for the new soaps etc. Oh boy, you have no idea of the amount of work involved in just writing the ingredients label! INCI names for each and every ingredients, however tiny the amount, each bar of soap has to be weighed, date of manufacture or best before date, my details, and, worst of all, allergen info! Yikes, I have never been hot on maths, and trying to work out the percentages of these tiny amounts of components of essential oils which contain allergens is VERY time consuming.

So, every now and then, just to let the brain have a little rest, I had to do a bit of crocheting. I am rippling a cushion cover at the moment, as I had yarns left over from the granny square blanket and the Lucy bag, which I had made recently. Not much to show yet, but hey, its a (slow) work in progress -


So much more fun than massive amounts of paperwork! At the moment I have 8, yes EIGHT, files of paperwork, sigh, just for the few iddy biddy things I make, and I suppose I could keep a lot of it on the computer, but......... what if the HD destroys itself (again)? What if the computer gets nicked? I know I am old fashioned, but I do like to have all the important paperwork in hard copy so that I can touch it, lol-


Looking at the pic now makes me realise that I really really need to pretty up those files. Ah well, one day, when I have a bit more time on my hands.

Son No.3, my wonderful helper, and I also finally managed to make the new labels for the facial polish in the new, tall containers. I love love love Art Nouveau, so this label was, of course, also based on an Art Nouveau design -


I was also tidying up the sewing drawers a bit more, I had pulled out so many things the other day when I was showing you pics of some of my little treasures, and hadn't put everything away again yet. Look what I found in one of the little boxes from France -


Now isn't that the cutest little bunch of pansies? I have been thinking about what I can use this lovely corsage on, maybe a little bag filled with pot pourri, and decorated with antique lace, pearls etc., or perhaps I could crochet a little clutch bag and attach this bunch to it? Sigh, if you can come up with any ideas, please, please let me know.

Ah well, while I am at it, I might as well show you pics of some of the other fun things I unearthed in the sewing drawers -

I love the shapes of these old cotton/silk reels


and the dinky little designs on them, just look at that dove and the pagoda, for example


How about this sweet little needle packet?


Oooh, and buttons, I have one or two vintage French buttons, lolol. I adore the little cards they come on, especially the older ones, which have such lovely flowery corner designs -


Now, with the next lot, I could really do with some help to identify what these huge drops were actually used for. You can see how large they are, compared to the 2p piece, they are very heavy, glass, I think, not jet, so I really would have thought they'd be way too heavy to have been used on a dress. Perhaps they were used for fringeing on a lampshade? Some of the pieces still had thread attached to them, so they were definitely decorating something or other. HELP!!!


My grandmother taught me how to darn socks when I was a little girl, but please don't ask me how to do that today. I have to hang my head in shame and confess that I probably haven't darned a sock since I was a little girl. But I do love these wooden darning mushrooms, they are so very tactile, and they remind me of being a little girl in my grandmother's kitchen. Perhaps thats why I also love these dinky little card with darning wools -


Sigh, its 9am and I must get on with the tedious labelling stuff. I may just sneak a quick look at a few new posts on the blogs I am following, while I finish my cup of tea. You'd be surprised how long I can make a cup of tea last, lolol! xx