Monday 14 February 2011

Adventures & Escapades

Hello, it is I, le chat, here to bring you jolly tales of our weekly adventures here at Innerspiral Studios.
This week has been, quite frankly, a bit bonkers. Busy o'clock! We spent most of it getting ready for our market at Christmas Steps on Saturday - it's always great to have a market deadline to keep you on your toes (or paws, or trotters)... We made lots of new stock as well as updating our display, including making a better, more relevant shop sign, created out of felted letters and a handspun yarn spiral.

our new shop sign, complete with involved pixie bag businesscard holder!

We had a proper Bristol outing on Wednesday evening. Stage One - headed to Moon and Magic's brand new workshop at the Kebele in Easton. We' d never been there before and very much wanted to check it out, as well as the workshop sounded pretty tantalising - sustainable crafts, upcycling old things into new pretty ones for a mere 2 quid. Right up our street! We got there to find a group already pretty involved in customising a bunch of old t-shirts. It has to be confessed - that put us right out of our safety zone! Both of us can basically sew but neither of us are sewers per se, rather knitters, crocheters, felters, spinners.... this was the realm of real sewing...

marvellous suitcase of scraps

Well Pig got a red tshirt with Bob Marley on it and I got a random white affair with some blurb screenprinted over the top. There was a suitcase in the centre of the room overflowing with material scraps, great stuff, loads of pattern and colour, different textures, materials... Everyone was sitting around, very chilled, snipping and pinning and sewing away happily. One boy had gone quite extreme and decidede to shear a giant hole out of the centre of his black tshirt, whilst a girl opposite had actually done something rather amazing in turning a long tshirt into a dress by sewing long thin triangular strips into the bottom tutu style, all different polka dots. Wicked!

our t-shirts mid customisation...

I cut out various bits of pattern and rematched them up asymetrically on my tshirt whilst pig got stuck in to making a pirate hat for his bob marley. Whenever we hit a block, luna who was running the workshop, was right there with advice, pins, new needles, ideas, it was great. She also taught me blanket stitch which i've always wanted to do properly, I never quite managed to figure it out before - i know its going to make a big difference to my work. Also Luna's sister was able to offer advice and possible help on my forthcoming customisation of my wedding dress - I'm making it into a corset back so it will fit properly... Just going to a single workshop gave all this and more! Brilliant value for money and so much fun, we'll defo be up for another one - besides, we need to finish our t-shirts now, they're gonna be sickkk!

Luna mid flow

Stage Two involved us dashing over to Tenderfoot afterwards as they were having a Valentines exhibition. We'd never been there before either and wanted to get a feel of the vibe, as well as support the shop, see if it was our sort of thing... er, yeh, of course! How could it not be with madame mackendrick's mad creations on display, not to mention sock pigs, crocheted strawberry bunting, heart shaped plates of heart shaped cakes and sweeties, hand stitched cupcakes, cool art (we liked the picture of Norman) sorry we didn't get any photo's of the art cos it felt a bit rude but here are the sweeties!

yum

Soooo, hopefully with a bit of luck the first BCM meeting will be at this lovely little place, and who knows *whisper* there might even be a felting workshop there too, watch this space....

the lovely Tenderfoot....

So last but not least by any means we were in attendance for the Valentines Market at Christmas Steps in Bristol on Saturday.

It was gert loads of fun, it always is there - the setting is beautiful,. the organisers are lovely, and a good number of friends and acquaintainces either had a stall nearby or were passing through which made it even better. This is the best market we do - it has a real community vibe going on.

pigs bit


Although its not exactly heaving, its quality over quantity, you get a good turn out of dedicated shoppers, really seriously interested punters who love to support your work and take home a bit of true craftsmanship. Also got to chat to so many people who were very much on the same wavelength, very encouraging and supportive. We chatted to fair number of traders about the possibility of another dedicated craft market and the interest was pretty high all round, oooh there's another space to watch.... I'll keep you posted, Spiralites!

We were very pleased with how all our hard work paid off to make our stall look pretty neat. Our best looking ever so far in our farmyard opinion...

hats n ting

We did really well on the day too, which was really encouraging, we've been working so hard its great to have such a reaction from shoppers. All we really want is for our small business to succeed well enough so we can keep doing it - both of us are fibre obsessed and the things that keep coming from our hands get more and more involved... so I guess we're on the right path! Next stop - get workshopping around - we don't want to keep these skills to ourselves, we want to share them!

cats bit... and our pixiehoopsound hulas on the side


 I am also (hopefully!) taking feltmaking to the next level this coming weekend - with a hat felting workshop at the Spinning Weal in Clevedon on Saturday. I'm seriously super excited! I'll be sure to blog it and see what comes of it! Who knows, I could have a funky old hat to show for it! Here's hoping :)

Well Spiralites, its very silly o'clock in the morning so this cat is going to sign off with a paw and a miaow and a prrrrrrrr...
peace!

1 comment:

  1. Wow what an amazing week! I really wanted to get time off work to explore the market, but hopefully I'll have my saturdays back and can camp up alongside you. Your stall looks wonderful, and I'm sad I missed the valentines exhibition.

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