Saturday night at 9 Caledonian Road

Kristie and Coralie's Christmas Cooler opened on Thursday 3rd December 2009 and yesterday was the "opening party". Roxy and I went along with her partner Jules and daughters Eisha and Bee and friends. It was a horrid wet and miserable night and the Piccadilly line was jampacked mainly with young Europeans and their enormous suitcases coming from Heathrow! so we felt rather mangled by the time we arrived at the shop. Every seat in the main room was filled with people drinking cocktails and mulled wine and two tables of "makers" cutting and sticking things. The shop looked great (see photos)... and although K and C assured me that they have had very little sleep recently they both looked fresh as daisies to me.. (ahh! youth....) and seemed to be enjoying themselves whilst working hard. We met our bookclub friend Jane Cairns and her friends including the lovely Katya whose style is 1940s in a glamorous way, as opposed to tea-stained legs and a headscarf!.... she looked amazing and kindly posed for a photo, LOVE that hairstyle, and the dress and the shoes...... after a few rounds of mulled wine we left the young people to get on with it - the place was filling up. We were all hungry and took a chance on an Italian old-style Trattoria restaurant opp. Kings X station and it was very good, Roxy said it was like the Italian restaurants of her youth, murals of couples on terraces, vines, and chianti bottles... but the food was great, and the staff actually Italian!!..... on the way home we decided on a new sewing project.... will be attempting it this week and posting a photo.... - On a completely different note I stumbled across a wonderful blog today "spitalfields life" by the gentle author - he/she is attempting to post every day until 2037 and so far they are lovely, full of interesting people in the area and great stories and photos... do please google it and take a look, I will be following it now.

FOLKSY! Meet up at The Fellow Pub, Kings Cross

Well! what a very nice evening I had last night - at the FOLKSY christmas meetup. My mate Mandy (Feltbug) told me about it and took me to The Fellow public house in York Way, Kings Cross. We met James, Rob, Charlie and Frankie of Folksy who are very lovely and chummy, had a few glasses of wine, listened to the man from Sue Ryder (sorry! forgotten his name) who is very enthusiastic about the upcycle competition and bringing his charity together with Folksy to promote using charity shops to source items to re-use and re-create. A few people gave impromptu chats about what they did - including Robyn, of RoseLullabyDolls who gave a demo of how she turns sticks and masking tape into small, beautiful and enchanting people - see her on Folksy - you will be amazed at her ingenuity. (See the photos here) Mandy gave a quick show and tell of her wonderful hand-felting and making fabric coiled bags from strips of cloth and yarn - see photos! JamesB of Folksy a little chat about what they do and hope to do and various other crafters joined in and views were aired. Vanessa and a lovely blonde girl from NZ (sorry! forgot name again) showed us how to fingerknit - by cutting up some old clothes brought by Sue Ryder man into strips - how quick! how easy! how addictive! I met Sarah of Silky Prudence (shop on folksy) who makes soft and tactile knits in gorgeous colours - I want most of it. Dee who hoards mens shirts and turns them into origami-style flowers and roses in the blink of an eye (she also turns boxer shorts into girls tops - ! we were all amazed at that idea, I never thought there would be a way of re-using men's pants but she has found one!) The lovely thing about the evening was that everyone was very friendly and interesting and interested in everyone else - no egos on show! that I saw anyway, and it felt like a very nice little club by the end of the evening. I am so inspired and fired-up today and am looking at Folksy with fresh eyes - now I have met the real humans behind the web-pages and realised how enthusiastic they are about the site as more than a way to make some cash!! - In fact, I've had me lunch (see photos!) and am now off to the sewing room to create.........

CHRISTMAS SHOP OPENING

Here are details of the shop 2 mins from Kings Cross Station, London which is displaying our work .... we will be there some of the time in person... very exciting and hopefully lots of fun!

Christmas Shop in Kings Cross!