Thursday, August 27, 2009

We're Back!

Yay for Sydney!

Stitches Sydney - our stand
Here's Lara in her new t-shirt from Surface Art - oh and our stall of course!

It was so great to see all our ol' travellin' Craft Carny mates (tell you what, we are definitely feeling the travel this week) and to meet a whole bunch of new ones! There seemed to be at least double the amount of Indies as there were at Brissy - win. We loved it.

The best bit was, for the first time, we managed to actually go shopping amongst our wonderful neighbours stalls! I have in my hot little hands some of K Diddy's fabric to make a funky lil shirt, plus an awesome hat pattern from Nikki (hat = scary!!) - btw, have a look at her post, lots of pics - two cute baby t's from Juicy Roo (ginger's unite!), t-shirts from Surface Art, hand-printed tights from Body Parts, and the list goes on and on...

Anyhoo I'm not going to write a big long post this time, Lara's writing all about the show over at Kirin so I'm just going to link to her last two posts: here & here. Go, read, be merry

Ok, there is a backlog of emails to respond to and fabric that is desperate need of printing.

Adios!

Monday, August 17, 2009

We're OUT!

See y'all in Sydney at S&C!

We CAN'T WAIT to see all our fav indie, Incubatorians tomorrow!

Not to mention the super-supportive Stitches & Craft peeps - big ups to Angela & Ross for including us this year! We have had (and are still having) the best time at the Shows and I personally can't wait to hang out in Sydney for a bit... I'm ashamed to admit I've never spent any time there as a (semi) grown up - outside the airport, that is! And I'm even from NSW originally!! Poor form, I know.

Aaaaaaanyhoo, Larz & I are flying up tomorrow morning first thing (thanks to Yong, our bestest neighbour ever who's taking us to the airport - what a guy!) and are being reunited with the lovely Miss Bianca van M. on Wednesday night - Yay!

We've got a big ol' apartment booked and are staying with Sandra (Winterwood), Bek (One Small Room) & Kate (Little Bird), too! It's gonna be great!

The best thing is, that I put my hand up to be chef, so everyone's lucky enough to be a delicious vegan for a week! I'm hoping for 5 new converts by the end of it all ;)

K, time to go! See you there!!

xx Teegs

P.S. Wow! 4 posts in 3 days - think that's a record for us!!

Just had to show you!

Will you have a look at what the über talented Amber from Fresh Fabrics has made with Bee's ever-awesome Sumor!

Margaret Bag

The bag is called the Margaret Sling Bag and there's a free tutorial which can be found on the blog Oh, Fransson!

Nice work to Elizabeth for the design & tute and to Amber for her exceptional sewing skills!


P.S. Don't forget to come visit us at the Sydney Stitches & Craft Show this week - we fly out tomorrow!!

xx Teegs

Sunday, August 16, 2009

A gift for us?! You shouldn't have...

So, as you can imagine, this last week or so has been pretty full on with all our preps for the ever exciting Sydney Stitches & Craft Show!

But amidst all the busy-last-minutey-type-stuff, we received an exciting surprise in the mail from one of our fabric suppliers, as a thank you for recommending them!

ink & spindle lipbalms
Made especially for us! This gives you an idea of what they look like the whole way around.

We thought a) how utterly lovely b) how did they know we (Lara) were lip balm addicts and c) that's a bit random!

Needless to say, it made our day! Who doesn't love a little pressie now and then?

ink & spindle lipbalms
Check out the Birch background & the little inverse Blue Wrens on the lid! Someone obviously went to a lot of trouble to make us these!

They came in Sweet Orange, Strawberry & Lemongrass flavours - and are made of all sorts of yummy ingredients. They were so close to being vegan too, (which would have been just too much excitement) but unfortunately for me they have beeswax in them, so Bee & Larz get to share the three between them :)

I'm still rather impressed by the whole thing though! Yay for custom made lip balms!

xx T

Saturday, August 15, 2009

two become three and fly to sydney



Find Ink & Spindle at the Stitches & Craft Show in the incubator area!
19-23 August
Rosehill Racecourse
Level 4
Stand 174-175

She's back, yay!!! All is right with the world as Teegs returns from her whirlwind South East Asia trip and our two becomes three again! I'm sure Teegs will tell you all about it once she's allowed near the blog again (currently she's chained to the email) but for now we're happy to be back to functioning at full capacity like a well oiled machine. It does kinda feel like that which is very cool.

Needless to say we've been run off our feet preparing for the Stitches & Craft Sydney show! This time we weren't allowed to leave everything to the last minute because we got our stock paletted & freighted up this time! Wow we're totally seasoned craft carnies now. And probably looked like total dorks as we took these photos!

palletizing the Ink & Spindle wares
Ink & Spindle gets palletized- see our tree is coming with us!

palletizing the Ink & Spindle wares
Ink & Spindle gets shrinkwrapped, lara displays poor posture as usual

And because those photos were so damn ugly, here's some pretty pics of fabric to soothe your eyes:

latest fabric stack

the fruits of our labour
Lara's stack o' fabrics

Ahhhhh...

Hope to see you at the show!!

xx Lara.

Thursday, August 6, 2009

Handmade in Melbourne

handmade in melbourne 2009

We're totally chuffed to be included in this year's Handmade in Melbourne book! Just like the Melbourne Design Guide it was not that long ago that we were simply admiring the book and it's artisans from afar and didn't think we could actually be included in it.

But this year Ink & Spindle is there between the pages! I do think that the 2008 edition was better - professional photography and writing really makes a book like this and being asked to submit our own was somewhat disappointing. Plus there was a typo when our text was edited to say that it was me who became a secondary school teacher rather than Teegs. But still, I can't complain.

handmade in melbourne 2009
Ink & Spindle's page

handmade in melbourne 2009

And of course there was the launch. Where Penny, Caitlin, Bee and I enjoyed the free wine and finger food (a little too much?) and listened to speeches by Stephen Kent and John Brumby who went on and on about ideas and innovation whilst we giggled and chattered and were told to shush.

handmade in melbourne 2009 launch
Me, Caitlin, Penny and her lovely man Chris

handmade in melbourne 2009 launch
Stephen Kent talks, lady in foreground tells us to shut up numerous times

Fun fun! Now to actually sit down and read everyone else's pages!

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Excitement...

Here at Ink & Spindle (- Teegs, because she's still enjoying the hot weather in Asia) we're all pretty excited! We're featured in the latest issue of Living Creatively's online mag.

Living Creatively

How good does she look, our Lara, inking up totally suits her. Click here to read the full article and look at some more pictures of us :)

Living Creatively has done an awesome job putting this interview together and guess what... all of our favourite crafters are featured on their website. You can read about Dear Fii, Auntie Cookie, One Red Robin and many many more.

Thanks!
Bianca