Simone Quentin de Manson

I have moved into a new place in the last two weeks. It was an epic effort of moving alot of stuff. I used to live in a house I rented, furnished and stocked with kitchen stuff including a dedicated studio. To ONE room in a friends place, with the idea of doing the house thing again in a year or so. Lets just say, it involves storage and alot of effort and organising. I could not of done it without Kylie and help from friends with larger vehicles But i still sit behind the computer most of my days and occasionally see lovely links and tutorials that i think.. “must blog about that”.

Here are a few..

• Craft 2.0 coming to christchurch! Yay yay. Now I hope to give you guys a sneak preview of some friends work, so stay tuned.
• Clever Bastards, a New Zealand based online shop selling handmade nz artist’s goods! Don’t forget Felt for that too, sell your own things, has the etsy feel to it
• Studio Home, A blog I am loving for its NZ flavour and delightful posts
• Wardrobe Refashion: I have asked to post here and got accepted! I have yet to write a post as the acceptance came mid move. Will be thinking about it this weekend. But basically you choose time where you will buy nothing more new clothing wise and you adjust/work with what you have already got. YIKES! But I thought this would be a great motivation and learning curve to get comfy and happy in sewing again.. i used to do quite a bit without thinking about when i was growing up, but now i’m grown up, I’m all scared to experiment!

Right thats me! Enough blabbling! Sorry no piccies today…

I went in on some gorgeous carded merino with a friend and my mum (mum by the way has a blog in the works..) I was a bit woosey to start dying by myself so Jessicah offered for us to have a dye day at her house. The results is some blue yarn for me (I have yet to spin it..maybe tonight) some lovely mauvey yarn for Jess and a tutorial for you! Go Jess! She has already spun hers and seriously… its beautiful.

Also here are some photos I took of Jess’s rainbow yarn, she has been experimenting with colour in her “year of fibre”

Been madly busy this week, on purpose because the boy has left to work overseas. I get him back next Friday or Saturday for week! Already looking forward to it. FINALLY I have let myself look at crafty fun sites for some light relief. Here are some picks of the bunch.

First its a sandwich wrap! From the thesmallobject PERFECT for me. I have re-used plastic bags up until now. I can’t believe I haven’t thought of this. I think if the trial one works. I might make a dozen of them.

Second is this funky idea for distilling your own plants to create fragrances… from seanmichaelragan. I think this could be one my boy might like to get involved with… seems sufficiently mad scientist for him.

When one looks to start making a wee bit of extra money to start funding your craft/art it can get a little dis-heartning to actually do the maths, or try to care. REALLY the point is, you would do it anyway right? But its always nice to see an article like this one to help organise things and present yourself to the wide world. Thanks greenbaby art! Check out her illustrations and interviews. Fabulous! (I got the link from craftzine )

For those of you who have a website and ever wonder if you can get some STATS that really rock. (nb “STATS” mean: shows how many website visits you get, from where on what dates, from what part of the world and how long they stayed on the website etc….)  There is Google Analytics. I have only just added the code to my site and have started playing. Its free and there is so much to it that I have decided to do some further research. You might get a more detailed report once I have read some help material.