An Extravaganza!

As per my prediction, Crafternoon Tea was an Extravaganza! Feeling in the Christmas Spirit, I left my long suffering Dearly Beloved guarding the stall for much of the time, while I wandered about and chatted to the other sellers. I have discovered that other folks are the best part of any craft fair, not just selling infinity-worth of stock. Although no one ever complains about making a sale.

And because no post is complete without pictures:



Sushi Diaries! (note to self, make fewer diaries for next year.) I love how they look all lined up like that, all those bright primary colours and that green.


To the left of this shot is my new range of Cheaper Things. All $5! I think I need to boil it down to a few items, and not have such a bewildering array. But I think the concept is sound.

Speaking of bewildering arrays...


And here's me. Note the white collared shirt. I was power dressing in an effort to increase sales, to project an aura of professionalism.

This is my professionalism pose. No, I wasn't ready for the photo.


I'm a little fuzzy on the logic behind this. Perhaps a potential buyer thinks I have just wandered out of a Retail Store? Either way, I think it may have worked.

Of course, that coffee helped a lot.

Crafternoon Tea Christmas Extravaganza!

Guys, this one's going to be extravagant. It will be an extravaganza of craft.


On another note -- a new post over at the Oblong Craft Collective Blog! Here at Books By Rachel we have fainted from the shock.

Sushi Kawaii!

Now, She For Whom I Have No Pseudonym asked on the comments the other day, what precisely are Sushi Kawaii? Apart from Awesome 2010 Diaries You Can Buy?



Well. One of the rewards of having attended art school (along with playing one kick-ass game of Pictionary), are having attended lectures in Japanese Aesthetics -- because Tutor-Whats-His-Face had to justify that trip to Japan. It is the only time in my academic life where looking at Cute Of the Day was considered working.

According to Tutor-Whats-His-Face, that collective AWWWWWW we all just let out is the essence of Kawaii.

Kawaii is SUPER-CUTE!!! and is an accepted thing in Japanese culture (much in the same way that beer is an accepted part of kiwi culture or cupcakes are part of this craft life culture. Actually, cupcakes are a kawaii thing too).

I refer you to this wikipedia article, entitled Cuteness in Japanese Culture. Turns out, kawaii can be linked to mechanical pencils and "Nobuyoshi Kurita, a sociology professor at Musashi University in Tokyo, has stated that "cute" is a "magic term" that encompasses everything that's acceptable and desirable in Japan." Huh. Mechanical pencils weren't covered in the lecture.

Here's some more examples of Kawaii:Or anyway, my brand of it. The horror! The horror!

There you go. I saved you hours of lectures, but I can probably still beat you at pictionary.

Extra Curricular and Link Love

Oh my goodness! My work has been featured on the Crafternoon Tea blog. Check me out!

Also: I contributed a piece to Extra Curricular magazine. It's chockablock of articles about this craft life and you can grab it from Toggle right now!

Crafternoon Tea

Was great fun! I took along my Dearly Beloved, and he took along a camera he was testing out, so I have heaps of photos. (Unlike Love Handmade, where I took along Mister Snappy, but left Mister Snappy's card tucked away inside Lappy so I was limited to four shots. Clever, clever.)

Here's me...

Here is my torso with some of my stock...
Here's some of my stock. In the background you can admire my torso and my new jacket.


Buyingwise, Crafternoon Tea was very productive. I swapped a ninja from Unexpected Hug for a binding kit, made another swap (with She Who Does Not Blog) for a pin, bought Christmas gifts for Authoritaters and The Unfortunate Panda and told an awful lot of people that yes, I do take commisions.

Here's me with the ninja, in a pic I stole from Jo's blog (Hi, Jo!). That's my Dearly Beloved on the right trying to pretend he's not in the shot.

Sellingwise, things were just quiet enough to make me want to revamp my entire stock -- and while I am clearly not going to go to that level, I am working on New Things.

New Things are the most exciting part of the whole Making Things process -- I am currently in love with the New Things and my relationship with the New Things has matured and progressed enough to make a decent photograph, I'll be sure to show the whole world.

Loved Handmade

Love Handmade was good times! It was a beautiful venue, so light and sunny. The other crafty folks were lovely. Sitting near me were Skipapple, Bam Bam Creative, and the Podgy Panda. Amazing crafts all round!

Here are some picks of my stall. This is the first craft fair ever where I've sprung for a full table and it was really nice to spread out my wares.


These coptic kits were easily the best sellers... I even sold my sample book!


Most folk who had a glance at the diaries looked a little scared and confused. Except the Japanese folk, who seemed to love them. One of the best things about selling in person is seeing people's reactions and eavesdropping on their conversations (if you can call it eavesdropping when you're staring right at them and smiling).

"Look, look," said one girl to her friend, "Sushi!"
"Oh?" said her friend, "Oh, sushi."
"Kawaii," said the first, a little surprised.
"Yeah," I said, butting in, "Sushi Kawaii!"
They both cracked up, and seemed delighted that I'd 'get' Kawaii -- even if my accent mangled the word. I repeated the exchange with three more groups. Sushi Kawaii!

Lots of people stopped to chat, including Lucia of Crafternoon Tea, where I'll be heading next weekend!


Lastly, here is a photo of me with all my wares, and looking rather smug about it too.

Love Handmade?

Of course you do, silly. And I do too. More specifically, I'm excited about the brand-spanking new craft market I'm heading to this Saturday. This actually wasn't on the agenda for my weekend until a couple of hours ago -- I missed the deadline for this one because I kept thinking I'll-Have-A-Closer-Look-At-That-Intriguing-Poster-When-I-Walk-Past-It-Again-Tomorrow until it was too late. In atonement and for your information:


I applied for next month's Love Handmade and got a reply more or less at once -- there was a cancellation for this Saturday, and was I interested? Since the only thing written on the calender from 9 til 12 on Saturday was 'clean oven' (albeit with exclamation points and circled in red), I said yes, certainly, wouldn't miss it for the world.

And I wouldn't.