This week began with a meeting at school about children, computers and their internet safety. I sat in a room, listening to the headteacher babble on about various things and very quickly realised that the meeting was aimed at those people who have never (shock horror!) used the Internet. I was slightly amazed about the amount of people who have never used it and left feeling like I was quite computer literate in the grand scheme of things.
Tuesday night involved drinking too much on a school night and going to bed far too late bearing in mind I was at work at 8 the next morning. Yawn!!
So why then, on Wednesday did I decide that what I really needed to do was install a shopping cart on my website?
In my naive world, I believed that A. it couldn't be that difficult; the instructions said 'you don't need to be a computer programmer to use this software, anyone with a medium level of computer literacy will be fine' and b. should I get stuck, I had my very own computer geek husband in the lounge who would be able to help me so I started, armed with a cup of tea and chocolate.
At about midnight I gave up. All had been going fine but then I changed something and the whole thing went all screwed up and I wanted to either smash my head through the computer screen or chuck the damn thing out of the window. Said husband had decided that I could do it all myself and anyway, he doesn't 'do' html and php and any other thing that I needed help with so he was no help.
Yesterday morning I got up in a foul mood (no sleep, couldn't sleep because I had websites and files and other computer related rubbish in my head) and deleted the whole lot, after berating the unhelpful husband. No-one can call me impulsive ;)
Did I leave it there? Oh no!! Three more hours wasted in the morning trying to start from scratch and make it all work again, no luck, deleted again, went to pick Mum and L up, went to town, picked Gran up, picked J up, went for fish and chips with Gran and Grandad, came home, put kids to bed, and suddenly uninterested husband was interested in my woes.
I'd like to say that we sorted the whole thing and here is my lovely new shopping cart but alas, we stayed up till stupid o'clock again and all I have to show is shopping cart that won't let me add categories or products and a wasted week to show for it. Arse.
So I am now thinking I will abandon plans of world domination via my own website and carry on with the wonders that are my Folksy and Etsy shops. Why would I want to change anything anyway?
I want to be one of those people who have never used the Internet, who don't feel tied to their computers and go quietly to tidy my house and sew lots. Well for a few hours at least....
Friday, November 28, 2008
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Christmas?? Shh!!
Wow, this year is going so fast and my diary is fast running out of pages...with school and pre-school and nursery and work and a so-called social life, my diary is a necessary part of my world if I am ever to know what I am doing, when, where and with who. This week every time I get it out of my bag when someone asks me if I can do something, help take pre-school to a Christingle service, go for Christmas lunch with school Mums, or fit in some extra work, I flick through the few pages that are left of this year and think hmm busy till about January then Nic ;)
Busy is good, I like busy, I work best under pressure. In my final year at Uni, I lived with Tom and Jen (both who have stopped reading my blog, I think?) anyway Jen was a good girl and got her work done way before midnight on the night before hand-in. Tom and I would be at the 24hr Spar stocking up on Red Bull at 2am because your best academic thoughts occur at about 3am, don't they ;)
Lou is going to be Mary in the Pre-school nativity. I'm not sure pre-school are ready for her though. I *think* the idea is that she sits nicely next to Joseph and looks lovingly at baby Jesus (her teacher had to tell her last week that he was called Jesus, she thought maybe baby Lucy would be a better name!) , well she keeps telling me of all of the thing she is planning on saying while she is on the stage. ....I think I'll have the video camera handy.
Jack came home tonight and is going to be a Shepherd in his school nativity and he does actually have to say something, he's not so keen on that as an idea though and thinks maybe he could just hold the bit of paper up that says what he needs to learn and let the audience read it themselves.
I love my individual little people :)
What I'm not loving at the moment is the lack of good light for photographing my bags and things. Everytime I take a pic, its rubbish. It doesn't matter what time of day it is, where I take it and with how many lights blazing down on it. I didn't realise just *how* much worse my photos were until I was looking at old pics tonight.
Here is one that I took in the summer in the garden;
here's one taken today, and its one of the best too :(
This bag is for sale on my etsy shop at the moment with a matching zippy box bag. I made it for a knitting bag but it would make an ace evening bag for a party or a wedding or something so I am going to make some more and get some more similar material and make some more like it with maybe a few alterations, internal pockets and the like.......
In other shop news, I have decided that I am going to call this....
....my 'Lucy bag'. I have been trying to come up with names for each different type of bag I make and I was telling my Auntie about this bag the other day and said 'you know, the Lucy bag' and it just stuck then. I designed it for Lou in the first place so it seems fitting that I name it after my little Loopy monster. I guess I need to get designing a boy bag now though don't I?
I have actually managed to do some knitting recently. I finished my first Knit-a-long (KAL) this week. I did the WoollyWormhead mystery beret KAL on Ravelry and made myself this...
Unfortunately for me but fortunately for the best (hat) dressed pre-schooler in the UK, it fitted L just fine, while it was too short for me. Here she is on the way to school as soon as I had finished it, the ends are tucked up inside the hat because I didn't have time to sew the ends in!
Don't worry, J isn't missing out on all of the new hat business. I've been instructed to make him a new hat out of the yarn that I had started knitting a pair of woolly trousers for Lou in about two years ago before she decided to potty train overnight. Here he is last night trying to convince me that he could just wear the body of the half knitted trousers like that for a hat!
Well I'd better go, I've spent too long in front of the computer tonight.
Busy is good, I like busy, I work best under pressure. In my final year at Uni, I lived with Tom and Jen (both who have stopped reading my blog, I think?) anyway Jen was a good girl and got her work done way before midnight on the night before hand-in. Tom and I would be at the 24hr Spar stocking up on Red Bull at 2am because your best academic thoughts occur at about 3am, don't they ;)
Lou is going to be Mary in the Pre-school nativity. I'm not sure pre-school are ready for her though. I *think* the idea is that she sits nicely next to Joseph and looks lovingly at baby Jesus (her teacher had to tell her last week that he was called Jesus, she thought maybe baby Lucy would be a better name!) , well she keeps telling me of all of the thing she is planning on saying while she is on the stage. ....I think I'll have the video camera handy.
Jack came home tonight and is going to be a Shepherd in his school nativity and he does actually have to say something, he's not so keen on that as an idea though and thinks maybe he could just hold the bit of paper up that says what he needs to learn and let the audience read it themselves.
I love my individual little people :)
What I'm not loving at the moment is the lack of good light for photographing my bags and things. Everytime I take a pic, its rubbish. It doesn't matter what time of day it is, where I take it and with how many lights blazing down on it. I didn't realise just *how* much worse my photos were until I was looking at old pics tonight.
Here is one that I took in the summer in the garden;
here's one taken today, and its one of the best too :(
This bag is for sale on my etsy shop at the moment with a matching zippy box bag. I made it for a knitting bag but it would make an ace evening bag for a party or a wedding or something so I am going to make some more and get some more similar material and make some more like it with maybe a few alterations, internal pockets and the like.......
In other shop news, I have decided that I am going to call this....
....my 'Lucy bag'. I have been trying to come up with names for each different type of bag I make and I was telling my Auntie about this bag the other day and said 'you know, the Lucy bag' and it just stuck then. I designed it for Lou in the first place so it seems fitting that I name it after my little Loopy monster. I guess I need to get designing a boy bag now though don't I?
I have actually managed to do some knitting recently. I finished my first Knit-a-long (KAL) this week. I did the WoollyWormhead mystery beret KAL on Ravelry and made myself this...
Unfortunately for me but fortunately for the best (hat) dressed pre-schooler in the UK, it fitted L just fine, while it was too short for me. Here she is on the way to school as soon as I had finished it, the ends are tucked up inside the hat because I didn't have time to sew the ends in!
Don't worry, J isn't missing out on all of the new hat business. I've been instructed to make him a new hat out of the yarn that I had started knitting a pair of woolly trousers for Lou in about two years ago before she decided to potty train overnight. Here he is last night trying to convince me that he could just wear the body of the half knitted trousers like that for a hat!
Well I'd better go, I've spent too long in front of the computer tonight.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Busy, busy, busy....
I know, my attempts at posting here every day aren't going very well, are they? I do try, and actually, when I can't get to sleep at about midnight, I write really good blog posts in my head and plan ace bags but (thankfully, I think), I still have a level of common sense (or maybe its the fact that it so damn cold at the moment that I don't want to leave my nice warm bed?) that stops me getting up and coming downstairs to blog and sew so while I thank myself in the morning for staying in bed, I kick myself at the same time because that ace post has been lost and how did I see that bag??
Well last week I was rather busy. I had a real sewing kick on. I had a couple of big orders and I am also in the process of trying to fill my shop with the current lines of bags so that I can start playing with other ideas so my days were filled with sewing and cutting out. I did take a couple of pictures.
This is a pile of bags shortly before they flew off to KraftyKoala land and these little lovelies.....
.......were for Vikki at Wildfirefibres. It is all her own material that she sent for me to sew for her. I love having little challenges like this. I have done a few orders now where people have emailed and asked if I would make a bag or something for them with a favourite material or with something that used to be something useful but they now don't use and I always enjoy doing it even if I do feel a bit scared when I make that first cut into someone's best loved fabric :)
Vikkis lovely Japanesey materials have finally pushed me over the edge too. I have been admiring all of the lovely retro Japanese fabrics from afar for too long now so I have started ordering some and am going to be selling a few bags made from them. I am going to have to charge a bit more for them because the material is sooo blooming pricey here in the UK (unless anyone knows of somewhere I don't, in which case, please let me know, I will be your best friend ;o) ) but I figure we all deserve something *extra* special rather than special every once in a while, don't we? Watch this space for frogs,
and dogs,
and cats
and I think I save the best for last....MIFFY!
While I'm busy sewing, feel free to check what I have at the moment on Etsy and don't forget, if you are in the UK, you really do *need* to go and have a look on Folksy. More people are joining there all of the time and the things that people are making is amazing.
Well last week I was rather busy. I had a real sewing kick on. I had a couple of big orders and I am also in the process of trying to fill my shop with the current lines of bags so that I can start playing with other ideas so my days were filled with sewing and cutting out. I did take a couple of pictures.
This is a pile of bags shortly before they flew off to KraftyKoala land and these little lovelies.....
.......were for Vikki at Wildfirefibres. It is all her own material that she sent for me to sew for her. I love having little challenges like this. I have done a few orders now where people have emailed and asked if I would make a bag or something for them with a favourite material or with something that used to be something useful but they now don't use and I always enjoy doing it even if I do feel a bit scared when I make that first cut into someone's best loved fabric :)
Vikkis lovely Japanesey materials have finally pushed me over the edge too. I have been admiring all of the lovely retro Japanese fabrics from afar for too long now so I have started ordering some and am going to be selling a few bags made from them. I am going to have to charge a bit more for them because the material is sooo blooming pricey here in the UK (unless anyone knows of somewhere I don't, in which case, please let me know, I will be your best friend ;o) ) but I figure we all deserve something *extra* special rather than special every once in a while, don't we? Watch this space for frogs,
and dogs,
and cats
and I think I save the best for last....MIFFY!
While I'm busy sewing, feel free to check what I have at the moment on Etsy and don't forget, if you are in the UK, you really do *need* to go and have a look on Folksy. More people are joining there all of the time and the things that people are making is amazing.
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