in between textile artist, stitching by hand, thread, embroidery, stitch journal

Shop policy update

I’m still up to my ears in thread but in the meantime I’d like to share my newly-updated shop policies, in the interests of clarity and consistency. These apply exclusively to customers outside the UK, so if you live in the UK most of this post won’t apply to you, and you can happily skip forward to the picture at the end.

If you are overseas (that is, not resident in the UK), please take the time to read the following:

When completing the checkout, please ensure that you pick the correct country from the drop-down menu. Any orders where the address and country do not correspond (for example, a US address with UK as the country) will be cancelled and refunded and you will need to place your order again. Choosing UK, when you don’t live in the UK, will cause the automated checkout to apply UK shipping rates, and this is insufficient to cover posting overseas. You must pay the correct shipping rate for your country. In most cases, the ‘everywhere else’ shipping option covers USA, Canada, Australia and mainland Europe; shipping costs to these destinations are almost identical. It costs the same to post one small item (e.g. a thread skein) as it does to post several, so the more you buy, the more cost-effective the postage charges become. If you are in any doubt about the postage costs, please contact me before completing the checkout.

Your purchase may be subject to additional customs charges depending on your location. You can use online import tax calculators to estimate what the additional import charges will be before you buy. Please be aware that I have no control at all over how much you will be charged in import duties; it is your responsibility to find out before making a purchase.

Your customs office may occasionally open and inspect your parcel before delivering it to you. While I appreciate that this can be disappointing (because they usually don’t repackage your parcel as attractively as I did in the first place) please understand that I have no control over this.

When paying by card, please try and remember your purchase when your bank statement arrives. The amount will look different because of the currency conversion. If you initiate a dispute with your bank because you don’t recognise the amount, I then have to prove to your bank that you did make the purchase, and I am charged a non-refundable fee even when the purchase was genuine. Please contact me before initiating a dispute if you are in any doubt about your purchase.

And there we are. I hope that’s clear without being unnecessarily heavy-handed.

In the meantime, we have this (among many other delights) to look forward to:

It will be done when it’s done (actually it will be done when our bathroom’s done, as I still have to paint the ceiling again). It’s been a very busy few weeks.

Online homes

Progress on piecing this patchwork is slow, but that’s fine and exactly as it should be.

hand piecing

Sewing by hand creates plenty of thinking time. I’m currently thinking about where I live online. I have the blog here on WordPress, an online shop with Big Cartel, and a Teachable school for online courses, plus Instagram and Facebook. Big Cartel and Teachable are quite heavy on annual maintenance fees, and ideally I’d like as much as possible in one place to simplify things more. I’m basically a Luddite, so I will need to investigate the technical options for reducing or combining everything I have into fewer separate spaces.

At the same time I’m weighing up whether to create more online courses with Teachable, or whether to create some sort of exclusive subscriber-only content for sharing more process videos and techniques etc. That would probably mean setting up something like Patreon, which would result in even more online homes, unless there’s a way to do something like that here on WordPress.

I’m also considering whether to continue offering overseas shipping for physical goods like fabrics and threads. International shipping is very expensive, it can take several weeks to reach its destination, and there can be additional customs charges when it does arrive. I have no control at all over any of that, but fielding the questions and occasional complaint does take time and energy. Customs charges seem to be particularly prevalent in European countries since the UK, in its ill-informed judgement, decided to leave the EU.

The box of patchwork pieces is basically a box of separate thoughts, plans and ideas. I just need to join them together.

A room with a view

My room is more or less done and sorted. Would you like to see?

Here’s the wall opposite the window:

The map of the world is there to help me improve my geography, which is pretty poor; also I like to see where parcels of thread and fabric are going on their long journeys overseas. The music stand is supposed to encourage me to practise my flute, which hasn’t seen the light of day for about ten years. I’ve never played it particularly well but it used to be something I enjoyed, so I intend to make time for it.

Going anti-clockwise around the room:

The pictures on the wall are from a Ton Schulten calendar. I find his colour palette and compositions very uplifting.

There is room to grow on the Kallax unit:

I have plans for that top left space: at some point I will make a miniature (twelfth scale) model of my work room. Just for the fun of it. I don’t know where I’m going to find all this extra time yet, by the way.

Next to the drawers I have two Ikea Micke desks placed at right angles to make an L shaped workspace. The right-hand side is for admin:

You can never have too many bookmarks, right?

And the other side is for more creative work:

The holly tree outside is in our garden; the conifer next to it is in next door’s garden. The trees are full of squirrels and at the moment we are engaged in a futile battle of wills trying to keep them off the bird feeders. There is a squirrel baffle en route at this very moment so we’ll see if that outwits them.

Moving around the room again, one of the fitted wardrobes has been fitted with shelves and has become a separate space for the contents of the shop – threads, fabrics and packaging materials.

There is a lot of floor space in the middle of the room:

I probably need some sort of comfortable chair, something to curl up and read in. It can wait.

The finished room is almost exactly as I imagined it would look when we first saw the house in October, and every time I walk in here I find myself smiling.

I’ll spend this week sifting through some ideas and thoughts to see if I can roughly plan the rest of the year.

But for today, I think I will just enjoy my new space and start on today’s daily stitching:

Home Sweet Home

Still settling in…

… and gradually finding a home for all the treasures. Almost every object on this little shelf unit was a gift, chosen for me or made for me by friends or family, and all of it makes me happy. It sits above the admin side of my desk so that I can look up from the spreadsheets and smile.

Meanwhile I’m also getting on with this:

hand-dyed cotton embroidery threads for winding into skeins

A notice board

I’m still unpacking, but I got slightly distracted yesterday.

I’d found some tired cushion covers downstairs that had faded a little and were surplus to requirements. I was so excited about what was coming next that I forgot to photograph them – but basically I took the cushion cover backs off and joined the two fronts together to make a strip about 16″ x 24″ (I had to cut off some badly light-damaged pieces so not everything was salvageable).

I already had a piece of foamcore (two pieces of white card with 5mm foam in between) which I covered with cork sheet and brown paper, then laid the old cushion covers over it.

I’ve mitred and stitched the corners on the back:

and then roughly laced up the back as you would for preparing embroidery for framing:

Finally I’ve covered the back with a layer of felt, tucking in some ribbon to act as a hanging loop

And it’s made a very convenient little noticeboard that I can pin things to:

notice board (calendar and houses postcard by Claire Henley)

Meanwhile, the Ikea Kallax unit is filling up. I’ve broadly just thrown things at it in no particular order, just to get everything out of boxes and off the floor. I’ll sort through each little cubbyhole at some point.

I particularly like this little quiet corner of my desk:

It’s just a vintage port box laid on its side with a spice rack on top, perfect for holding small things.

I hope to have the room more or less finished next week, and then I’ll be ready to re-open the shop. Until then, I will keep going.

In the white room

Day 9 in our new home, and I’ve been working on getting my room into shape, as well as trying to unpack some of the boxes in the rest of the house.

My work room is the second bedroom, north-facing and about 11 feet square. The previous owners painted it peach and installed a dark red/pink/brown carpet.

The walls are the wrong colour, and the carpet had to go.

You’d think peach would be quite easy to cover, but it’s had four coats of good quality white paint (yes, that’s brilliant white – it looks grey because of the light) and it’s still a little bit patchy. I think I may well just call it done and put lots of pictures up. In any case most of the worst bits are where the furniture will go.

The floorboards seem pretty good, so I’m painting them too.

I’ve just painted enough of the floor to get some furniture into position, because the desk and drawers are currently forming an obstacle course in the main bedroom, and then I’ll be able to paint the rest of the floor.

I ache all over, but I’m liking it so far.

February

There were many ups and downs, but February brought us the new home for which we’ve been waiting.

Most of the month was spent fretting, phoning estate agents and solicitors, and preparing.

Moving day itself was something I never want to experience again. We ended up having to exchange contracts and complete on the same day, which didn’t exactly go according to plan but we did finally get our keys at just gone 4pm. And here we are at last – it could have been worse, and in a few days the stress and fatigue will be just a memory.

Want to see my new work room? Here it is:

We’ve been focusing on sorting the kitchen, bedroom and bathroom so that we can function while we attend to the rest of the unpacking, so neither of us has unpacked our work spaces yet. My room is about 11 feet square, slightly bigger than in our last house. It’s north facing so will be cooler in the summer with more consistent light, and the view is mostly the surrounding back gardens. Our garden is tiny, but relatively private.

My room also has fitted wardrobes on one wall:

Easily adaptable for thread and fabric storage. My first job will be to paint the walls, and possibly the floor – there is a very dark red/pink carpet, which I don’t like. Dark flooring tends to absorb a lot of light, which means you can’t always see colours as they really are. I’d like to paint the floor white, if the floorboards are good enough. If they’re not then I’ll think about a pale laminate floor instead.

You can see it will be a while before I can return to work, so the shop will remain closed for now. I’ve been looking forward to this since October and I want to enjoy organising it so I’ll take the time to get it right. It will take as long as it takes.

(Limited) progress

I was hoping to have the latest batch of hand-dyed threads in the shop next week but unfortunately that’s not going to be possible.

A few thread types are done but I still have many more skeins to wind, and then they will need sorting into sets, photographing, describing and listing, all of which takes more time than you might expect.

Further progress will be limited because it looks as if our long-awaited house move may finally be happening the week after next, and I will have to close the shop temporarily while I focus on packing.

The shop will close on Tuesday 20th February, and will re-open as soon as I’ve been able to unpack my supplies in our new home. I don’t know how long that will take, but I’m aiming for the first or second week in March. If you’re looking for daily stitching templates while the shop is closed, you can now get those through my Teachable school here.

A preview of some of the silk threads that will be coming next month:

And in the meantime, here’s what I’ll be doing next week:

See you on the other side 🤞🏻

Thread

A dyeing day yesterday.

And a washing day (first of two) today.

Greens and browns tomorrow.

It will be the middle of next week before everything is washed, rinsed and dried, then it will take me a week or two to sort, label, rewind where necessary, photograph and list. I’m hoping to have them in the shop around the end of January, house move depending (yes, we’re still on the edge of our seats here waiting for dates).

There won’t be much else happening here while this is in progress so if I’m particularly quiet, I’m probably just up to my elbows in thread. And what better place to be?

Beginnings (part 2) – thread

I did have my new year fairly well planned out from January, but the delayed house move has caused a little disruption (and this is not a complaint, just a fact). So now my revised plans centre around Before house move and After house move.

The shop is nearly out of thread, so there’s something I can be getting on with Before house move..

I wind every skein of thread by hand. Some threads come on cones, which are relatively easy to wind, and some come in large hanks, which have to be strung up on the skein winder. It takes a couple of weeks to wind a batch of assorted threads for dyeing, and then the dyeing/washing/rinsing/drying/sorting/labelling/photographing/listing takes another couple of weeks or so.

cotton and silk threads ready for winding

I’m a one-woman operation, so it does take a while. I really need to try and keep on top of it more this year.

silk and cotton threads wound into skeins

For After house move, I have lots of plans. I’d like to write a book proposal at some point, and I’d like to create another online course – I have a couple of ideas for that. I’d like to cultivate some sort of daily drawing/collage practice, just for my own development.

I also need to plan some free time into this year’s diary, which is something I overlooked last year. When thread and textiles are your hobby and your business, it can sometimes feel as if everything is work, because work expands to fill the available time. All work and no play is no good for anyone. So I’m cultivating a new spare time activity and am looking forward to spending a little time on something that is just for my own amusement. More on this later.

For now, back to winding.

Tag: in between

Shop policy update

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Online homes

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A room with a view

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Home Sweet Home

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A notice board

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In the white room

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February

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(Limited) progress

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Thread

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Beginnings (part 2) – thread

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