All alone

Oh, how I miss my little worker bee; Anne.  To be totally honest I don’t think I appreciated her enough while she was working with me.  She often had problems with her sewing machine that used up valuable time and some days I felt frustrated by having to explain how to do things.  Now that she is gone I regret thinking that at the time.  It’s so much more difficult to motivate myself now that I’m all alone once again.  When alone it’s so easy to take a break or have one more coffee or write one more email or skype my husband…  There are a 101 and ways to get distracted.  But when someone is there with you, you concentrate as you want to make a serious impression, so you put your hear down and get to work.  I would often even work before and after she got here so that I would have work ready for her to do. As a result in the few weeks she was here we produced so much more than I could ever have done alone.  Now that Christmas is coming and that I have yet another order, for handkerchiefs this time, I could certainly do with someone being around. 

So if you live here in Frankfurt and would like to come to come work with me, then send me an email. ;-)  The only thing, and it’s a rather big ‘thing’ is that I can’t pay you.  I know that it sounds hard to believe, especially for someone that doesn’t know the German educational system.  Here you need proof that you have some work experience in the subject you want to study in simply to get accepted to university, college or school. It seems rather backwards but at the same time I think it’s really clever.  You don’t want to spend years learning a trade and then starting to work, only to find out you don’t like it.  So in reality my offer is a rather fair trade, work for a few weeks in exchange for experience and a letter or certificate that confirms this.  Of course work experience isn’t always good or educational, it all depends on the place where you do the training, some places might take advantage. Anne said that in one place she worked she had to do all the cleaning…  Hmmmm, I’m not sure if that’s really relevant to textiles; what she planned on studying.  But she said that she was happy with her time here with me, I hope she meant it. I hope that she is enjoying her courses and that she is learning. But oh, how I wish her school was near here and not far away in the ex-eastern Germany.

New small purses

On Friday I made some new small purses and make up bags to change/refresh what I had in my box at designe, kleine! It seems like that’s all I sell there.  The bigger bags seem to stay there such a long time   I guess that it’s a little hard as it has to be the right person for the right bag, as not many fit in the box they don’t have much choice.  Oh well.

I love the purple make up bag at the top left. Which is your favourite?

Book covers

I just sent off the 25 book covers I was talking about a few days ago (on the 18th to be exact).  I had sent one to see if it fit, as I didn’t actually have the book here to test it out on.  Then on Monday I got the dreaded mail saying that it didn’t fit…  If you read the entry I was saying how I had done all of the first step, for all 25 of them, so I was hoping that it fit.  By the first step I meant that they were all cut, top and bottom ironed flat to the correct height then the ends sewn.  I thought that the only problem might be with the width because you always need to give a little slack so that the book can actually close.

After having a little break down I insisted she send me the cover back back so that I could fix it as well as the book so that I could actually make it fit and finish the others.  To my relief when it arrived the height fit fine. I actually don’t understand why she said it didn’t fit, yes, it’s snug but it should be.  But the width was completely off. I must have misread the measurments because I was WAY off, like 6 cm off, which is a lot considering it’s only 20.5 cm wide Oh well…

So, I’ve spent the last couple of days finishing them off.  I did need to add a little to the height to some of them.  I hope they will like my work.  They are rather more subtle in comparison to the ones I had made at the beginning of the year for them.  But I think that these suit THIS book.  It was a good idea to make them in brown, beige and green tones.  Here are a couple of pictures of my favouirte ones.

The moral of the story: always have the book if you want to make book covers! 

New Day & Evening Bags

As mentioned yesterday, my top point on today’s ’To Do’ list was were Day & Evening bags.  These have more or less the same shape, it’s just the style and material that make them either appropriate for the day or the evening. So the day ones are usually more ‘cute’ and ‘playful’, to be worn with jeans or a casual skirt and top.  Whilst my evening bags usually are a little more elegant to be worn for example with your favourite LBD.  

  

I love all of these new bags.  They are all so different from one an other.  I can’t even say which is my favourite. Can you?

New Wristlets!

I’ve finally finished those Wristlets I’ve been promising since last week.  I even loaded them onto my website this morning. Why not take a few minutes to go check them out.

Here are a couple of pictures too, to get you excited.

                 
                 

Now I’ll start work on more Day and Evening Bags, I’ll get you know when they are done. Let me know if there are colours or styles that you would like to see.

Book covers

The first thing on my ‘to do’ list yesterday was to make Wristlets and add them to  my website. But in the end I completely got side tracked and started working on another order, one for 25 book covers from the same company who had ordered some at the end of last year and again at the beginning of this year (see old entry).

This is for a different book though, that they want to give to customers (I think). It’s all about coffee and coffee plantations so they’ve asked that I make them brown or green, more natural colours.  I hope they will like my choices.  The problem is that I don’t have one to measure or test on.  So from the measurements provided to me I’ve done only the first step for the 25.  Thenfinished one off completely and sent it to them so that they could see if it fit.  Now that I think of it, I should have even waited before even doing the first step on all 25 of them!  Now if the height doesn’t work, all the work I will have done, a whole day, will have been a waste!!!  Not brilliant planning… Keep your fingers crossed for me.

                      

Today the wristlets are back on my ‘to do’ list!  So I hoe to be able to upload some for you before having to go to work at 17:00.  If not I will add them soon, promise!

New Make Up Bags

Just uploaded loads of cute new make up bags on to my website. As usual they are all one of a kind, fun and quirky. 

I hope you see something you like.

End of Ze World

This is a totally random entry but oh, so funny!!!  It has absolutely nothing, and I mean ‘nothing’ to do with handbags, or crafts, or design, or fashion, or me or anything really it is just the crudest yet funniest thing I’ve seen and heard in a long, long time.   If rude language bothers you then don’t watch this! If anything that is not PC bothers you then DON’T watch this!  But if you have a sense of humor, enjoy!

My weekend off

What an amazing weekend away, though I must be honest in saying that I am actually more tired now than before we went and that really isn’t good. On Saturday morning we left the house at 4:30 AM!!!!  To get to Frankfurt Hahn airport to catch a Ryan air flight.  How they are even legally allowed to call it Frankfurt Hahn I have no idea, as it’s over an hour away from Frankfurt, it’s even in another province.  It was a dark, cold, raining and totally uninspiring morning.  Even an hour and a half later when we did eventually land in London it was still grey but at least it was only foggy and not raining. 

What an amazing day, it turned out to be.  The sun came out and we walked EVERYWHERE!   We shopped and did some sight-seeing and just generally enjoyed being together and being in a new place.  We ate loads of good food, drank some good ales, well I did, my husband only ever drinks Guinness if it’s available.  I like to try new things. Come late afternoon we were really pooped so we checked in to the hotel, relaxed for a bit and then met up with friends for dinner and a catch up.  It was a perfect day! 

        

A couple of tipsy pictures after the ales…  See I wasn’t lying, a perfectly blue sky!

On Sunday we did some more shopping, it was so great that the shops were open. After being here in Germany where everything is closed on Sunday it was great to be in a lively city.  We stopped in a pub for a great Sunday roast. Mmmmm! The Yorkshire pudding covered half the plate it was so big.  Then we walked some more, and some more and popped by that Fashion Fair I had mentioned I wanted to visit. I’m glad that we didn’t go there especially because I would have been very disappointed.  I hope that those who participated sold well and that they were happy with it, but it was so small we were only in there about 20 minutes. Finally at about 5PM we got onto the train back to Stansted.  We finally got home and straight into bed at about 1AM this morning.  So now you understand why we are even more tired.  But you know what, it was all worth it! It was a great break from work and really totally distracted us.  i think that we’ll try to do little trips like that a little more often from now on.

Special Orders (continued)

Well the bag orders are officially all done! Now I can actually get on with adding bags to the site so you have more to chose from.  It’s good timing too as at the weekend we are off to London for a few days for a bit of bag-free time.  It will be nice to relax, spend some time just the two of us and try to switch off bags and orders and websites as I’ve been working about 12 hours a day, 6 to 7 days a week, since our return from Canada.  So I am REALLY looking forward to it.  I wish it was tomorrow not in two days. Though saying all that I would like to visit the FaCshion Fair.  If it’s any good I might try and participate next year. Obviously this would be a huge investment for me coming from Germany so I have to be sure it’s the right type of fair.  I’ll tell you all about it next week.

Until then here are a few pictures of the the last orders:

  

The brown one, is a normal sized shoulder bag but the other way around to be worn on the left shoulder instead of the right.