Well, 2013 has certainly been a very interesting year!
My formal diagnosis with fibromyalgia came right at the tail end of 2012, but it’s coloured the whole of 2013. My health this year has been dreadful – not being able to sleep, not being able to walk, not being able to manage the pain – but I’ve just had to keep going regardless. What else is there to do? Of course I’ve done my fair share of complaining about it, but at the end of the day all I can do is carry on and do my best.
Things at work have also been interesting… my role changed quite dramatically in March, when I stopped working every weekend and increased my hours to work a job-share rota as Visitor Services Assistant. This year will be even more interesting, as a lot of physical changes are happening to the museum itself (thanks to Heritage Lottery funding), but I have no idea yet how this will impact my role.
Our home life has seen perhaps the most interesting change of all, in that we now live in a new house! This was not something that we had been planning, but once the decision was made to look for somewhere new, we’d put in an offer on a bungalow in a matter of days! We then had to wait several months for the sale to go through, and getting to know the new place has not been without its trials (nicotine stains, dog hair, malfunctioning drains, a door that keeps falling off its hinges…), but we’re gradually making it into our own place.
The overall feeling of 2013 has been one of resting, nesting and hibernation. So much of the year was spent waiting for the house move to happen that I feel as though I’ve done hardly anything creative with my time. Looking through my photos reveals that’s not actually true, so here are a few highlights of what I’ve been up to.
The beginning of the year was mostly taken up with building Mr & Mrs Magpie’s Inexplicable Emporium! Our first event in May was at a Steampunk festival in Frome, which was really a test to see how our offerings would be received. We learned a lot from watching people’s reactions to the stall, and it was successful enough that I decided to carry it on as an Etsy store when we came home. This year has been all about the market research, and I’ve learned a lot about how I both do and don’t want to run a business in future!
The key to the Emporium has been two things: Diversity and Branding. They might seem mutually exclusive, but (finally) putting my typography degree to good use to create a coherent brand has meant that we can include all sorts of seemingly unrelated things into the Emporium, and they all look as though they belong together. We also discovered that the faux-Victorian theme can work outside the Steampunk community, being well-received at a local charity stall just before Christmas.
Some individual products have worked better than others in terms of popularity and sales, and some have worked better than others for me in terms of what’s required to make them. I’ve learned that I enjoy working in small batches, but don’t like making custom orders. I’ve really enjoyed writing the little blurbs to go on the labels for each piece, but really hated making the Harris Tweed Cufflinks. (They’re beautiful, but I cut my fingers to ribbons as I made them!)
Having taken the time to do this preparation and research, I’m pleased to say that I’ll be formally setting up as a Sole Trader again in April, and running the Emporium as a proper business from then on!
I’ve done a little bit of more ambitious felting this year, making a hat, a pair of slippers, and a number of small experimental pieces to try and get the hang of felting in three dimensions. There’s something really satisfying about the nothing-into-something aspect of felt making, even more so than with sewing. You’re starting a process completely from scratch, with nothing but a bit of fluff from a sheep’s back, and ending up with a (hopefully) beautiful piece of fabric or a three-dimensional object. I have a huge bag of wool sitting in a cupboard, waiting for me to find a good space in the new house for making a mess with fluff and water and soap. I’ve also ordered a set of hat blocks from Guy Morse-Brown, so watch out for hand-felted cloche hats coming this way!
My natural dyeing experiments have been a bit hit and miss, to be honest. Reluctant to experiment with chemical mordants, I restricted myself to working only with substantive dyes to begin with… which basically means tea! Not having a great deal of use for miles of beige fabric (although I am currently making a smocked dress from the silk shown above), my future dyeing plans are now more long-term. I want to do lots of research into dye plants that will grow in my new garden, and then begin the process of planting and harvesting and dyeing. Realistically it could be two years before I have my first crop of dye plants ready to use, so this will be a continual background project for a while.
This little ball of goodness is my very first handspun yarn, made on a borrowed drop spindle. I’ve since bought my own spindle, and borrowed the spinning wheel from work, although I haven’t made a great deal of progress with either yet. Spinning brings with it the same sense of satisfaction that I get from felting – of being involved with every step of the process. I had fluff, now I have yarn, soon I can weave or knit or braid and make a whole new thing!
Going back to basics, unburdened by the demands of making things for other people, or without even considering the finished product at all, has been really important for me this year. Being able to immerse myself in a process, learn different techniques, and see where they take me, has been really liberating.
Mostly, I seem to have started a lot of things that I want to carry on with and learn to a much deeper level over the coming months. I’m planning to divide my time away from work between developing the Emporium to keep the sales coming in, and carrying on learning and testing and making things with wool and felt and fabric. I hate to use the word “whimsical”, it having been mocked so soundly by Regretsy, but that’s the direction I want to follow. Felting, spinning, dyeing, embroidery, beading, knitting, sewing… the theme for this year is to take my crafty skills, and turn myself into a Textile Artist.
Quite how this is going to happen I have absolutely no idea at the moment, but I’m guessing that sitting on the sofa, wrapped in a fluffy blanket and scoffing the last of the Christmas chocolates as I poke the computer isn’t going to make me a great deal of Art. Time to get up, and get on with it!