Season's Greetings

A quick hello and season's greetings! Thanks to everyone who's bought some of my wares and said nice things throughout the year, it's much appreciated :) May Santa be kind to you and have fun.

XO Susan

Bunting, rain and shopping

Here are some pictures from the market on the weekend. It was fun. Busy. And I did shopping as there were lots of beautiful things, yay. There was also bunting. Lovely stallholders. Nice food. Lots of rain followed by lots of sunshine. And I had some new things there. All up it was a great day. And now it's four days to Christmas and I'm sick and have way too much Christmas shopping and baking still to do, but all I want to do is sleep!

Lovely bunting!

Some of my neighbours

Me and my super sweet neighbour Emily Green

My new fabric, Raindrops in blue

My new Christmas cards that I finally have a photo of!

Booties

Window Shopping

Started setting up my stall at Harvest Workroom today. The window looks so pretty! And inside is such an amazing blank canvas...will have to remember my camera tomorrow :)

Harvest Love

Super excited about the Harvest Christmas Market this Saturday. I'll have a few new things I've not had time to photograph yet and hopefully I'll also be able to pick up some cute gifts too (so far I've had no time for any kind of shopping but have my eye on these or these for my niece, who's turning six months old today!) And you can read a wee profile of me/my work on the Harvest site.

One thing I have made time for is the annual Christmas bake-a-thon with my friend, Alicia. It takes hours but we always end up with an entire kitchen table covered in sweet treats, fun. This time we took over her kitchen (which is so cute, along with the rest of her house and dogs) and used approximately SIX slabs of butter!

Getting in the spirit

Even though I have about a million things to do in any bit of spare time (don't you love this time of year?) I managed to get to two market-type events today. And it was such a lovely & sunny day, which made me feel slightly less guilty.

First up was the Scandinavian Christmas Bazaar at the Swedish Church in Toorak, which I've been waiting all year for. It was super nice to again hear the lilting tones of Swedish speakers (and those of other Scandis) - such lovely sounding languages, even if I can't understand! And there was gravlax, of course, along with kanelbullar and other treats.

I dragged Jed along and he seemed kind of OK about that, although he did spend most of the time sitting around looking kind of bored while I looked at every single thing I could, including lovely Christmas decorations (above are a wood-cut snowflake, heart, leaf and moose from nordliving) and lollies and clogs.

On the way home, Jed deposited me at the Melbourne Design Market (he'd given up at that stage and could think of nothing better than lying on the couch). I spent way too much time at the Note Maker stand (the stationary obsession that started in childhood lives on), which is where I got the super cute Merry Christmas sign from (in the top photos). And how good are the ceramic bells below (argh, but forgot to take note who made them - sorry!) **UPDATE** Thanks to Lizzie who let met know that the bells are by Ingrid Tufts. Thanks, Lizzie!

Eating

As a completely random aside, here are some snaps of me and my niece Lily, who has just started eating "real" food (if you call moosh food!) Such chubby cheeks, so cute! 

She loves reading (or at least books with bright colours) and even helps turn the pages of books (pretty amazing, I think, for someone who's only a few months old) so I've just bought her some books for Christmas, yay!

Harvest Textiles Xmas Market

Super excited to say I'll be at the Harvest Textiles Xmas market this month (eek, it's December now!) Yep, the Harvest peeps are now at their own space in Brunswick East, where they'll have screen printing classes and all sorts of goodies. Below and here are the details of the market, where there will be lots of lovely handcrafts and even ginger beer and homemade ice-cream for sale, gotta love that.

To launch the new Harvest Workroom we are throwing a xmas market. It's going to be a great chance to buy your loved ones unique presents and to support local makers. There will be craft, clothing, homewares, textiles and music stalls, as well as fun activities like "print your own wrapping paper" and craft activities for kids. Check out some of the makers and creators who will be there below.

Where: 512 Lygon Street, East Brunswick.

When : Sat 18th December 10-5pm.

Raindrops

It's been raining all the time in Melbourne. Goodbye drought! Summer? Bah! I've been thinking about raindrops forever, as they're so pretty, and here's my new fabric design featuring them. They're small (well, about 2cm high) which is something different for me (everything I usually do is so big, or so it seems to me). Now if only I could get the blue colour right...and maybe a grey? Watch this space!

It's oh so quiet

It feels like forever since I've posted anything here and that's because it has been forever! I'm working on lots of things but never seem to have the time or energy to say anything about them - I guess it's the end of the year and I'm tired or something. But hopefully I'll have some photos of some of those things soon.

What's making me smile today are the flowers in my lounge room - so bright and cheery. And thanks to my favourite fruit shop for gifting them the other day.

It's a freebie!

Just a quick note to say that there's FREE SHIPPING in my Etsy shop until the end of November (midnight AEST) woo! And I often have more things in stock than are listed, so send me a message/convo me in Etsy if you're after something that doesn't seem to be there.

Happy November!

Last week

The last week has zipped by way too quickly. Feel like there's not much time for fun stuff, but at least I got to walk in the park and drink nice coffee (and admire amazing lighting made from Fowlers jars.) Oh, and it's November already. Really? How did that happen?

Six months ago today...

..I were in Budapest and it was early spring (as it is here in Melbourne now.) But six months ago I did a lot of stuff, as opposed to today when I didn't do very much (hello bookkeeping.)

The day six months ago involved an early start, thermal baths, long walks, looking at lots of amazing old buildings, real and pretend flowers and then quite a few beers and what I thought was the best burger ever. I thought it was so good I had to take a photo of it. Looking at that photo now, I'm pretty sure it wasn't that great!

Happy weekend :)

My Creative Space...

It was so fun last week, I'm back this week to share My Creative Space (thanks to Kootoyoo : )

Photos are what it's about today. For me, product photos can be a lot about GRRR! and not much about AHHH! And unfortunately, I really don't have any tips beyond *use natural light (but not too much of it)* and *take a crap load of photos and maybe one will be good*. Yep, all that time in the darkroom at uni has been forgotten, it would seem. But maybe one day I'll rig up some cool photo-taking box thingo and take perfect photos every time. Maybe.

Anyway, here's my newest design, and one of the few photos of it that I'm happy with. Taken near a window on a non-overcast day. In case you can't guess, those are moustaches. And it is called The Mo' Towel, as might be obvious from my previous post, and is now officially launched. Happy Thursday.

Coming soon!

Keeping me company this week...

..is Sailor. He doesn't say much but he is the best company. He was a gift from the lovely Sandra when I met up with her in Sweden (& is designed made by her equally lovely husband Johan) and is much treasured.

**UPDATE** Looks like Johan's just put some sailors in his shop, yay! And here's Sandra's post about Johan and Sailors from today!

It was great being surrounded by amazing people when I was working from my old studio, and I surely miss them all a lot, but it's also kind of nice working from home. Especially when you're trying to fit a bunch of different work-type things together, as I tend to prefer, and have random amounts of time to work on whatever project before running out the door to go somewhere else. Lucky for me Sailor is the strong, silent type who listens to my woes and is a general good guy, otherwise I'd be in trouble.

OK, we're going to go and have a beer now. It's the weekend :)

My Creative Space...

..is messy, no matter what angle you look at it from.

As mentioned in another post from today (three posts in a day from me...some sort of record), I'm not getting too far in anything I'm doing today or this week. But I'm hoping to go to the post office before the day is done, and then at least I'll have achieved something. Oh, and I'm cooking this for dinner and seeing one of my favourite bands after that, so that's three things for the day, woot :)

Australian screen printed textiles/designers

Wow, look at Amy's post on Australian screen printed textiles/designers - that's an impressive list (over 20 different groups) and I'm humbled to be included. I had no idea there was so many amazing designs and designers out there! Great idea, now it's time to go shopping :) Oh, and how great is Amy's blog and photos?

Umbrella Prints are in the list and make the most lovely fabrics, so good!

This week & last

Lately it feels like I've been doing lots of running around, but not getting much actually done. Some weeks are just like that I guess. Here are some photos from moments I got to stop for a bit.

Oh, and the last is of a friend's wallpapered wall, which I LOVE. That's one for the inspiration file, for sure. It's available to buy here. Lucky I don't have a wall to put it on :)

Naomi Murrell Print Heaven

As I mentioned a little while back, Jed and I recently celebrated our 10th anniversary (Really, 10 years? Where did that time go? Seriously still can't believe as it zipped by so fast!) Aanyway, as well as having a little getaway and eating delicious food, I thought it would be nice to get a little something to mark the occasion. And when I saw this from Naomi Murrell, I knew I'd found that little something. It's a gorgeous screen print, and it now sits in our living room. Thanks, Naomi, for making such beautiful things :)

A new week

Whew! It's taken me a few days to get over the amazing thing that was the Finders Keepers Melbourne market. And to clean up the mess I created while getting ready for it - that took forever :) 

The brief summary: amazing! As a stallholder, it's not often that I love standing on my feet all day, but I was actually sad when this market was over. And it went for two days - that's a lot of standing around.

And there were sooo many lovely visitors and friendly faces! Firstly, my stallmates Emma and Penny. They are the best and were always there when I needed someone to buy me fries from Beatbox Kitchen or to mind my stall while I get coffees or go and buy a bunch of things. Here we are, smiling like crazy people.

L-R Emma, Susan and Penny smiling a bit too much. I took this photo...can you tell?!

And there were so many other stallholders that I knew from all sorts of places, or got to meet. Hi! And the visitors...I won't try and list them all as I'll forget someone, but it was lovely to put a face to the name in the case of Tiel (of Tsk Tsk) & Dawn (of Handmadelove) and see Angela (of Three Buttons) and Frank and meet the gorgeous sleeping Luka, who looked so tiny and soo cute! And Captain KK's newbie was sleeping, which means she got some shopping in I hope. Yep, there were a lot of cool babies doing some shopping too. Here is a snap of the massive shed during down time, and of my stall below that.

So FK was fun to sell stuff at, but also buy stuff at, oh yes. Here's my booty, which I rushed around and picked up/swapped at the very end. Could have got a whole lot more but there really was just too much to see and too little time. Next time, next time...

Purchases: Cards and a book and bunting and a softie cupcake and more, fun! Thanks Pocket Carnival, Benconservato and Lark!