Catching up...

I'm really sorry, I am getting behind on the old Coriandr Express again. When I signed up for it, I didn't realise how hard it would be to keep blogging about all the different shops and also blog inbetween so that my own blog wasn't lost in the deluge of funky shops I was showing you. In an attempt to catch up, I am going to do a quick post about the three shops that I have missed in the last week and a half and hope I can keep up from now on.

Last Monday was the turn of Snapdragon Beads. It is run by Alice who says that she is the Imelda Marcos of beads and after making and selling jewellery for 14 yrs, I'm guessing that must be right.

Alice makes pendants, earrings, brooches and hair clips and the attention to detail in her pieces really makes them something very special.



To read more about Alice and Snapdragon beads, go to her blog.

Next up on the VIP Express was Frutejuce. FruteJuce is an eclectic mix of all sorts of things, made by the talented Alison.

Living in a home where her parents never bought anything until they had tried to make it first seems to have rubbed off on her as her shop is full of all sorts, from T-shirts and babies onesies to magnets and bags. I love the felt fridge magnets.



Alison also has a blog, find her here...

Now onto this week and the featured seller yesterday was the lovely CeeGeeJewelllery . In honour of her ride on the Coriandr Express, Ceegee is offering 10% off her shop until the end of the week so go on over and see what she has for you....

What happens when Mummy goes away for the weekend.........

I've been to Woolfest and had an amazing weekend but am sooo tired. Infact, I had had a shower and was in Pjs before the kids tonight.

While tidying the debris from a weekend of Mr Nicsknots being in charge of home and children, I uncovered his shopping list from when he went to do the weekly shopping yesterday.......



His saving grace was the 'fruit, meat, milk' that was slipped in there but obviously no-one needs bread for packed lunch tomorrow. Jack and Lou will perhaps have some chocolate followed by something else containing chocolate. The reason why I normally do the food shopping!

The post in which I blame Kitschy Coo for everything!

Last Thursday I was innocently reading blogs while waiting for children to go to sleep so that I could get some sewing done when Amanda at KitschyCoo posted this blog.

Now, I have been looking for funky babycord for about two years since I saw some lovely patterns on Ottobre for pinny dresses for Looby so I was all set to get off to Scotland to raid Amanda's fabric stash until she sent me a link to the shop.

I am My bank manager is pleased to say that I didn't go mad. I only bought two pieces of material. I am that annoying person who always under-buys stuff. If there is a room of the best yarn or material in the world, I will umm and ahh for ages then carefully buy one thing because its information overload for my little head while everyone else is stock-piling stuff like it might disppear off the face of the earth, never to be seen, ever again. Ask anyone who went to Skipnorth with me, or Wonderwool, Woolfest, Rav day, where I never buy anything!

Anyway, that was Thursday night, today it arrived. From Holland. How amazingly quick is that? Now obviously I am in a panic induced state about the impending Woolfest so tonight I have carried on sewing and sorting in my usual sensible state hurriedly cut out and sewn (sewed?!) a couple of drawstring bags and am now eyeing up more of the material on the website.....just think if I ordered tomorrow morning, it would be here in time for me to take it to Woolfest and sew some more lovelies up on Thursday night in the B+B!!

My camera is having problems tonight. I think it was so suprised that it was this bright outside at 8pm that it couldn't cope and decided to change the colours of things. The lining is the dusky pink kind of colour that is in the fabric pattern.
I also have one needle roll cut out, ready to sew. Do you like the print? I keep meaning to say that these bags make ace make-up bags or bags for putting 'ladies things' in, in your handbag.....

This is what the weekend is about...

We started off on Friday afternoon with a bit of strawberry picking......


Saturday morning consisted of a bit of sitting around in pjs......



then after a bit of food shopping (because I hadn't done any for weeks and the cupboards were a little bare), Lou and J amazed me with what the knew about computers....


This morning Lou showed M how to use Tux Paint and I took pictures of him with his ancient dressing gown on in an attempt to shame him into getting a new one...


This afternoon, I was in a foul mood. I was so tired after going to bed too late last night then being woken up at 6 by two fog-horns who insisted on making train tracks on the landing, right outside my bedroom then I'd gone outside this morning to do a bit of gardening but had spent about an hour cleaning up cat sh*t from our neighbours cats.


Anyway, I decided to cut the grass, huffed and puffed as I moved the slide, climbing frame, rabbit run and other child and rabbit paraphernalia off the grass then imagined painful treatment of the person that insists on saving random bits of rubble in a broken wheelbarrow at the top of the garden, in front of my shed that the lawn mower lives in.


Eventually I managed to cut the grass then spent the rest of the afternoon gardening, planting some new flowers, weeding in the veggie patch, playing with the rabbit, all of the time, playing make-believe games with Looby. She is clearly not on this planet. She informed me that she wouldn't like to be a nurse because she wouldn't want to make people better and that babys climb into your belly and wait in there until they decide to come out. Nice one Lou!

I'm really proud of my veggie patch this year. We'll ignore the lack of courgettes due to lack of organisation and appreciate the cabbage.I've never grown them before...


My peas and beans are growing really well, just slowly! The raspberry canes have collapsed for some reason so I need to sort them out but so far, so good.

Living for this weekend!!

I've helped out at a number of different shows over the last 10 or so years. I've always had a great time while I've been there, the atmosphere is great, the people around you are generally really cool and you have lots of fun.

I remember talking to my friend who I was working for a few years back, saying how the shows must be a great highlight of the work she did and while she agreed; she got to meet her customers directly and colleagues in the business, see what others were making, etc, she also found them extremely stressful, organising everything to be ready in time and in the right place and the fact that her 5 main shows of the year were within 10weeks didn't help her sanity. I now 'get' this feeling!!

I don't 'do' the shows properly. I help Gem, I make stuff for various other great people and put a few bits on Gemmas stand although I only have to organise a small area and a small amount of stock but wah!! Last year we only did Woolfest. It was great, we orgainsed and planned for months. This year we will have done three (how does it feel like about 10??) by the end of this month and I am kind of looking forward to Woolfest weekend (but I promise that I won't celebrate in the style in which I celebrated Jens wedding at the weekend with quite so much alcohol ;) ) . I'm feeling a bit like I am on a treadmill of shows and I can't get off because otherwise I'll get behind.

Don't get me wrong, I love going to the shows; I am really looking forward to Woolfest but I am also looking forward to no more shows for a few months so that I can re-organise my shop and get other exciting things made that I have been wanting to do since about April and see my family!

This weekend, however, I am planning on having some family fun at home. All four of us will be at home and I'm planning on doing not a lot other than maybe strawberry picking and a wander on the beach. This obviously means that I will be sewing like a mad-woman come 9pm every night and that I need to get my ass off here and get some more sewing done though.

Pretty jewellry!!

I've never really been a jewels kind of girl. Until we got engaged, I'd never really worn rings but now I keep seeing really lovely necklaces and bracelets and wanting them all.

Debbs Elliman is the VIP on-board the Coriandr Express at the moment and she makes some lovely items that will be going on my wish list for Christmas ;)



Debbs also blogs here so if you want to find out about the woman behind the glass go and have a look.

Outfits

Before I write about my disastrous party dress buying, I want you to go over to the hilarious and lovely Kitschy Coos blog and read about her nightmare craft fayre on Saturday; while we had a monsoon in Coventry, they had a hurricane in Edinburgh.

So yeah, party outfit buying and how to turn it into a disaster. My friend is getting married on Saturday. I have known about this for months now, I've had time to plan and I did start planning; a few months ago I went through my wardrobe of 4 dresses, tried them all on, decided that two were too big (woohoo!) and the other two were about 10 years old so I decided I needed something new. Then the planning ended until half term.

For some mad idea, I decided to go dress shopping while in town with Jack and Lou. Jack is ace to go clothes shopping with because unlike his Dad, I could be wearing a bin-bag and Jack would tell me that I look beautiful so always a morale-booster. Lucy feels her purpose in the changing room is to waiting until Mummy is half naked then open the curtain, surreptitiously so that I don't realise straight away. After 10minutes, I abandoned dress buying, after all I had plenty of time.

Fast forward to last week, I had a wander into Monsoon with my Mum and Lou after she had reminded me that there wasn't long until the wedding and what was I wearing. I tried a dress on, I loved it. Well I would have done if it wasn't a maxi dress and it was a just below the knee jobby so I went for a cuppa to discuss how mad it would be to spend £70 on a dress to then chop it up and make it how I liked it.

I pondered this over the weekend and went back to town yesterday to buy something. I wasn't going to leave until I had bought something so I tried another 5 dresses on, decided that I didn't like any of them and went back to the maxi dress that I would customise, only they didn't have it in my size now so I went home, decided on ordering online.

Now, I know you are all thinking I'm insane; order a dress on Monday, get it delivered Wednesday then chop it and sew it and be ready for Friday. Well its all OK because the website only had a size 12 so I had to give that idea up and sulked for the rest of the night.

Today I realised that time is not on my side now so I gave myself an hour this morning to buy a dress. I bought it in 15mins. Result. Its basically what I wanted to make the maxi dress into so that's good. Only now I am looking for teal shoes and my town doesn't have any so I might have to settle for red.

Ravelry Day

Yesterday was the first UK Ravelry Day. We had a great time. I admit, the day didn't start off well. The trip to Coventry the night before was a nightmare, torrential rain and accident after accident, then I got lost finding the hotel then the smoke alarm kept going off in the hotel.

The next morning we woke up to rain, remained up-beat because at least it wasn't torrential and headed off to check-out. The men at the hotel had never heard of the Central Hall where the day was being held so we put our trust in Mr Sat-Nav in Gemma's car. We found the venue, we said hi to people, I realised that half of the stands hadn't been put up. It turned out that the council hadn't sent men to remove some bollards for the market stall men. After an hour, cups of tea and wanders around, we set up, unsure about what the day would hold. A couple of stall holders had gone home when they got there due to the weather but we decided to give it a go.

The market place was supposed to open at 10am but by about 9, while we were still setting up, people started coming to see what we had, a lovely lady came and asked if a plait of fibre was a scarf, we explained no but she still bought it, to wear as a scarf. First sale of the day. From then, the day got so busy. A constant stream of lovely knitting people, braved the elements and I think, had a great time. We definitely had a great time. Here is Gemma and the stand....

I forgot to take photos but the lovely Marianne took lots so if you wander over to her blog, here, you will find the day in all of its photographic glory.

I am going to offer free postage in all of my shops this week so if you couldn't get to Ravelry day, you can buy things for the same price as they were on the day and if you did go but didn't buy what you wanted, grab it this week while postage is free! Postage prices will be taken off at checkout from tomorrow, 8th June until Sunday night.

Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!

I'm back from outta space with a great, fun seller. The Coriandr Express train has been hijacked by pirates but these are friendly, woolly hat wearing ones so don't worry.

The Pirate Pixie Crew is fronted by Lynne who was the person who organised this promotional train to create more exposure for Coriandr and the great sellers on there. All of the goods, from knitted hats to pirate eye patches, on her shop are made by Lynne AKA Captain Skullduggery Dug.



Captain Skullduggery is also having an offer while she is the VIP on the train. If you read all about her in the interview here, you will find out how to claim 10% off anything in the shop.