Wednesday 30 December 2015

The Wool Problem

The Wool Problem

There comes a point in every crafters life, if you're a serious crafter, when you just have to admit you have a "problem". I always thought once I quit the 9 to 5 and decided to make my money from things I make that the need to "craft as a past time" would be over. I thought that I would suddenly have spare time, that my need to create would be my work time and so suddenly making as a past time would be over. I was so wrong, on so many levels.

Firstly, anyone who is self employed would tell you that its very difficult to separate spare time from work time. You work twice as hard as when you worked for anyone else. Your life, work and all time mingles together until your "job" is just "who you are". However, when you become a self employed crafter that precious mythical "spare time" is suddenly needed for "your own projects". Hence, the wool problem. 

These few days in between Christmas Day and New Year, where you feel festively fat and strangely full of cheese. That special time when you're not 100% sure what the day is. When you're desperately trying to eat all the food in the fridge before starting the "New Year New You - diet to end all diets" and therefore best eat all the food rather then waste it. This time, this is special and precious crafting time, when I can make my own projects guilt free, whilst simultaneously eating cake......eating ALL THE CAKE. This is when the wool problem happens.

I skip to the yarn shop with some extra special Christmas money, intent on buying wool to make something for myself. I have wool in the Craftorium, I have industrial quantities of wool in the Craftorium, after all, its for work. Nevertheless, this is new wool, wool for me! So after drooling at the selection I settle on an extra thick cable wool acrylic mix in a beautiful shade of tangerine. I don't need this wool, for the snood I intend to make myself I have plenty of beautiful wool in the Craftorium, but I buy it anyway.

I bring my purchase home, settle in front of the telly, with all the Christmas lights on, this is my time! I have a coffee in my favourite Christmas mug, I'm making for me! yay! I then realise my largest crochet hook is 7.5mm. Not big enough for this cable wool. It's too late to go back to the shop, no worries, I'll knit. Not my first choice, but its ok, I can knit the snood. I need to make for me. I soon realise my largest needles to hand are 7.5mm too. They aren't big enough for this wool, but it ok, I'll start anyway. After all this is my project time.

So here I am, knitting for myself, with wool that's too thick for the needles, the "wool problem" truly kicking in. I have less chunky wool, but I cant use that, I need the new stuff for me. I am sat on the sofa kitting with wool under such tension on the needles that its squeaking. A tells me my knitting sounds like Nicolas Cage in leather trousers, it's squeaking with every stitch, but this isn't my fault. After all as any true sufferer of "The Wool Problem" will tell you, no real crafter ever says they have too much wool, its just not words we utter.

Back to the squeaking knitting and cake x

Tuesday 29 December 2015

Nana

Nana

Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without the annual visit from my Nan. She stays at my parents house and usually stays for a few days. Our family home is in the village my grandmother was raised in, coming home for Christmas can stir nostalgic memories in her, which she often recounts.
Stories from her childhood, or the war, often dropping into conversation some form of terrifying ordeal, frightening scenarios that 60 years ago would have been considered common place. Today it was a little running list of her friends that had died giving birth, sobering to say the least.
Often her familiar voice washes over me, I then remember myself and look into her face. Each wrinkle and laughter line stands out like a thread in a tapestry creating an image of this lovely lady in front of me. Each sign of age is a pledge that frankly, this lady knows her stuff!

As she sits by the fire her descriptive narrative really evokes the scene. She's a great story teller, always has been, and there are far to many to recount in one go. But on Christmas day she told me of the a time during the war when listening to the radio her family....my family... had inadvertently  caught the Nazi Propaganda by Lord Haw Haw. "This is Germany Calling...." In this particular broadcast by the traitorous Haw Haw our little village of Abercarn was mentioned, as was the Nazi plans to flatten said village due to its renowned tin works. It stunned me, as she said "obviously we were frightened but what could you do? You just had to carry on"

In a time when we are all subject to regular terrorist threats, and increased terror awareness, (especially after the November Paris Bombing) this really stuck with me. My lovely nana, this little old lady, who smells of talc and mint humbugs, had in her mid teens heard a threat to her home village from an evident and present danger. A promise to flatten her home by some of the most evil people to walk the earth. And what had they done when threatened with this promise of destruction? Carried on as normal. You see terrorism only works when you allow yourself to be terrorised. There is a reason my Nana is tough, there's a reason her generation won the war, when the chips were down, they knew how to be brave.
And if you're living life properly, there are times when you'll need to be brave too, and when that time comes just remember the traitorous Haw Haw and my Nan.
Remember to be brave.





Monday 28 December 2015

That Post Christmas Day, Pre New Year Lull. 

Time to think about what we do...


Being self employed, these few days in between Christmas day and New Year leave me with a bit of a quandary. I'm not working, and that cant be right can it? Anyone in any form of retail will tell you that the run up to Christmas is incredibly stressful, that is added to ten fold when the business is your own, and then even more so when you hand make the majority of the stock, so this sudden "thumb twiddle time" is a bit of a shock. I tend to use it to plan roughly what I intend to achieve within the year. So, let me tell you about the three main ways I fill the hours of the day, well, the working hours of the day with anyway.


Firstly the Antiques and Vintage goodies. For seven years I've dealt in Antiques, Collectables and Vintage goods in Hay-on-Wye the Book town, famous for its Annual literature Festival. www.hayfestival.com  Found nestling in the Welsh borders, frankly, it's known for being a bit eclectic. We have a unit in Hay Antiques Market and I'll be honest, I LOVE IT!



I source and stock a collection of vintage and antique furniture, renovate pieces and source an array of English china, along with other items, most of all, I love the sublime characters I meet in the trade and in Hay-on-Wye itself. If Dickens was still alive and kicking, he'd find a gold seam of Characters to use in Hay. I promise to tell you about them sometime.


I also run a little design firm called Elam & Eager Fauxidermy. I make life size textile taxidermy, using vintage upholstery materials, such as Sanderson linen and welsh wools. After all what else do you do with a BSc Hons in Zoology? We've made Badgers, Black Bears, Hares, Foxes, Stags, essentially what ever takes our fancy, we'll try and have a go.




We currently only sell them at events but I think its time to move online, don't you? Each of our lovely beasties gets signed, named and dated when finished. We've sent them around the world, and I'm incredibly proud of every characterful beastie we've made in the craftorium. Each one is unique in its own right. The best bit, is when I get a photo of them proudly hung on the wall and "re-homed". It's all born out of our love of the Natural World.


Then there is Sara And Heart. With its roots in my Bespoke Handmade Jewellery Company (Sarah Elam Jewellery) that I started in 2003. We make hand made individual jewellery designs,



and under the same Design House source items for Vintage Decorative Living. We also make soft furnishings from vintage welsh wools and vintage linens. For years we've mainly attended fairs and markets in the Cardiff area with our goodies. We've just finished the well known Cardiff Christmas market, 43 days trading in the centre of the city. Hard work to say the least.

In between all of this I travel around visiting Antique Fairs, sourcing goods, gardening, cooking, renovating the house, walking the dog and doting on my niece.

Not a bad way to fill the hours of the day :-)


Sunday 27 December 2015


Thirty Five

How has that happened? I'm not complaining, just shocked. I realise that age, in any form is a gift. I know of plenty that haven't reached 35, but I'm still not 100% sure how it occurred. I was 13 and teary, 16 and opinionated, 21 and anxious, 24 and engaged and now I'm 35..... I feel a little "ambushed".

So here I am, writing my first blog post to anyone that will read it, this morning I found a second white hair, staring back at me in the mirror, showing up like a glinting star against my dark hair, or like a bit of grit on a freshly vacuumed floor, a sign that I'm definitely in my mid thirties. I thought by now I would have it all sorted, I'd have the children and career, maybe an office (not sure what for) and I'd feel super organised. I'm not organised and certainly not sorted.

Although I may feel ambushed and unorganised its not a bad life. I live in a former railway cottage in Wales,
which I renovated with A, the husband of 8 years, we share it with one grumbly dog
and two far more grumbly cats. I'm self employed and therefore responsible for my own "feast and famine" bank account. Playing about with antiques and handmade goodies that get spat out of the "Craftorium" whenever the creativity feeling kicks in with me.

So, if you're curious, join me, I'll recount to you the lure of this life. The lure of this lovely life, filled with the home spun and antique, handmade and vintage. The cooking and renovating, wildlife and pets, sewing and jewellery making. I can't promise not to be occasionally boring, but also
 hopefully, possibly, amusing. At times I may tell you about the sad or the painfully truthful, but most of all I promise to be me. No spin. Cant say fairer than that for 35 and ambushed now can I? ;-)