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 :)