Finally some sunshine

The craft fair is a little on a backburner this weekend as it's the annual Sherfield English Fun Day today. I'm going to enter my rhubarb in the horticultural tent. It's frankly the only thing in the garden that seems to have survived the recent downpours!

I'm hoping I might also find some new crafters who might be interested in the fair. Although this week I've also welcomed on board Joanna Ing who makes a wonderful selection of bags for all sorts of uses, including peg bags, carrier bag holding bags, etc., and also Lynn who is coming back for a second year with her quilting and hand-sewn stockings, cushions and toys. Fingers crossed, next week I should be able to give you details of a new bead jeweller who will also be joining us.

In the meantime I have spent the weekend adding the craft fair to what feels like every single website known to man! Google now has no excuse for not being able to find details of Sherfield English's one and only craft fair. We'll all be famous! Well, maybe not....

Hope to see some of you on the Sports Ground from midday for the Fun Day!

About a month ago I posted details of the craft fair on a great website called stallfinder.com. I've had about a dozen enquiries from people wanting to have stalls and have sent out a number of booking forms. Christmas fairs are in broad supply so traders have a lot to choose from and I think many who have asked for a form are biding their time. Still, it's early days and the feedback has been great so I'm expecting the booking forms to start rolling in any day.

Someone who is definitely booked for the 24th November is this lady - http://www.anjlbagsandbits.com/storepage514172.aspx who sells a fab range of bags as well as lots of gorgeous homemade toys, like this little fella:

Sadly, the other stallholders I have confirmed haven't got themselves online yet so I can't share them with you. But it does mean that fair customers who buy from them will be getting something that not everyone has access to. More details of other stallholders once they've paid their deposit and are set in stone!

Knitted Finger Puppets

The one advantage of the rain is that I can sit and knit without feeling guilty about the garden. The disadvantage is that the cats don't want to go out and are subsequently bored and not conducive to me doing anything other than entertain them! Cardboard boxes are a good answer to this.

What you can't see in this photo is his much smaller sister crammed into the box behind him. Those two defy the laws of physics quite genuinely!

The mogs thus satisfied, I can get knitting needles and wool out without fear of losing either or having them attacked. These little creatures are adaptations of a basic finger puppet pattern I found a while ago. The duck's eye needs redoing, but it's surprisingly difficult to embroider something that only fits one finger!

Again, apologies for the poor quality of the photos. They're on my phone. I need to sort my camera out!

Haberdashery Heaven

Few things in life make me happier than haberdashery, and everything in this photo makes me rub my hands together with glee.

However, I seldom really know what to do with the yards of ribbon and endless beads and buttons that I've amassed over the years. Today I decided to try and make earrings.

Now, there is one item on this table that I have learnt to be wary of, and that's superglue. I am more or less banned from using it at work following an unfortunate incident with a colleague's phone, and another unfortunate incident with the same poor colleague's desk. But since I once witnessed my father accidentally glue his finger to the ceiling, I figure it's in my genes.

Fearing the gluing, I turned to my next nemesis - sewing. I suck at sewing. But in this instance it was necessarily merely to attach pieces of ribbon together - not to create a neat masterpiece. The result is shown below. At which point my husband entered, raised an eyebrow and wisely decided not to comment. It looked a bit better when I added a button. A bit... not a lot.

I then found covered buttons which I'd bought in a fabulous shop on the old quay in Plymouth. (Allowing me to tip a whole litre jar full of buttons onto the counter was a brave move on the part of the shop owner. It's literally a miracle I'm not still there!). These had awkward plastic fixings to the reverse so out came the trusty Stanley knife. There are no photos of this step; I can't hold a button, a sharp knife and a camera. However, the fact that I'm typing this should reassure you that no fingers were lost. They nearly were when I tried to take the back of an old metal British Rail button, but that's another story!

So, an hour or so later we end up with these. Mixed results (and appalling presentation, for which I apologise) but I think the next ones will be better. Once I've got some decent card to display them on (and can photograph them properly in a room that isn't as dark as midwinter - come back sunshine!) then I think they'll look cracking.

Finding Something Different

One of the biggest challenges for the craft fair is trying to find different things to do every year. Oddly, I've found that things that sell like hot cakes one year don't necessarily sell as well the following year because the novelty has worn off.

These little Fimo creations were new for 2011 and saw Daddy Playle revisiting a hobby that was some 30 years old. Most of them were dual purpose - tree decorations or fridge magnets - and they were popular.

I cannot create anything from Fimo. Or make anything that requires any sort of artistic ability. I rely heavily on the assistance of others in that regard! I'm very good at coming up with improbable tasks and creations for them though! There are some weird and wonderful things still on the backburner from last year, which may or may not make it to the 2012 fair!

Whilst on holiday last week I saw, somewhere in the depths of Devon, earrings made out of buttons. Buttons are something I have amassed a lot of and earrings posts, I discovered, are in ready supply. In my head they already look wonderful. This weekend will tell whether the pudding is proved in the eating! The process does involve superglue.....

Whys and Wherefores

So, what's the purpose of this blog? And why am I thinking about Christmas in July? Well, aside from the fact that the weather is making it feel like October, the doyennes of Sherfield English have already started reminding me that the fair needs organising. (This is how it works - I ostensibly organise it, they panic because I do tend to do everything last minute, I manage to do everything last minute and then arrive on the day to find other things have been organised that I don't know about and have to suddenly fit them in!). Whilst I secretly find this method highly amusing (and it often picks up things 've totally missed!), I thought I'd try and thwart it this year by being unexpectedly organised. So far, it's working. But then they do have the August coffee morning to sort out, so perhaps they're just distracted!

I guess in that, I've also summed up the purpose of the blog. Having to update it will mean I keep having to do stuff and get organised. I also hope it might be amusing in places. To you as well as to me! Like any village, Sherfield has its characters and its dramas. It's full of wonderful people who do occasionally random things and make me laugh my head off.

There will be craft bits posted as I make them, which will be open to adulation or ridicule as you see fit, and maybe crafters who don't organise their own fairs might be interested to see how it works from the other side. And maybe this will be the year I go mad in the process. Who wouldn't want to see that?!

In the beginning....

Welcome to the new blog about the church and crafting in Sherfield English, Hampshire. Loosely so, anyway!

A brief bit of history to start us off. In 2004, when St Leonard's Church in Sherfield had its centenary, a craft exhibition was held in the church. This featured lots of wonderful things made by people within the village, including paintings, woodwork, knitting, quilting, tapestry, wedding dresses and all sorts. In 2009 we wanted new ways of bringing people into the church building so I resurrected the craft exhibition at Christmas and we had a couple of stalls selling odd items that we'd made. It went well but, to put it politely, it was flipping cold! So in 2010 we moved the fair to the Village Hall, all but cut out the exhibition side and ran more stalls for the church. All well and good, but it looked a bit empty so in 2011 we rented out more stalls, sold hot soup for lunch and organised a grand prize draw with tickets sold in advance. In 2009 we made around £450 (which was about £200 more than we expected!). Last Christmas we made around £1,150. This Christmas (2012) we'll be back in the Village Hall on Saturday 24th November and I would love it if we could make £1,500. So this blog is about that process. How the craft fair comes together, what we're making, who's involved and whether I've finally overstretched myself! Let's see how it all pans out.