Wool Sorting

We have made a small amount of progress on the “Project Garage” preparations this weekend.

Notably moving wool from under the stairs in it’s bags into nice see-through plastic boxes.

So now there’s just bags of toys, other crap that needs a home finding for it & the dreaded mould that needs scrubbing and treating and painting over

I stupidly thought three boxes might be enough for ALL my wool, but there was still all this left over after filling all three…

So I bought three more boxes on Sunday! lol

& have now moved the cabinet outside in preparation for it’s removal to the garage to store other stuff

The wool will be moved into the garage at some point too, but the next step of “project garage” -i.e. the reorganisation of the garage!- needs to happen first, and I think that may be a few weeks away yet!

Hope you all had a good weekend?

It;s been lovely and sunny here :-)

Quite foggy this morning…

Hoping that will lift soon to reveal another lovely day!

Rose X

Spring Sale

Hi All,

A quick post to say “Happy Weekend”

It’s supposed to be mild & sunny again! YAY!

Also that I am having a sale on my Facebook Page to clear some older bits & pieces before starting on “Project Garage”

Lots of bargains to be had, so if you get a chance please pop over!

Thank :-)

Rose X

FUND101: The Reason Why

You’ll probably remember my recent post about Enterprise Nation & how I wanted people to vote for me to get some funding for my business.

Well I can happily announce that I did get sufficient votes, and as a consequence I will shortly be the recipient of £250 from them.

So I thought I would share with you the story of why I applied for this money (after all, recipients of “free money” should in fact be deserving should they not?).

As those of you who follow my blog will be aware, we bought our first home in July last year. The house we have bought is a lot smaller than the one we were renting, so it was bye bye to my lovely craft room/office and hello to stuff EVERYWHERE.

It has been quite hard to simply find a home for everything, and a lot of furniture and craft items were sold prior to the move and afterwards. Ebay has been a godsend!

We decided when we moved that the garage was to become a functional space. However, as things have turned out we need to invest in a new fence (the old one is falling down) which has swallowed essentially ALL of our “spare” money (i.e. all our savings, everything). We also have a condensation problem due to lack of ventilation, so at some point we are going to need to put in air vents & replace the windows for ones with vents too. All this on top of having a baby in October & taking on an allotment (which is/was a meadow) last summer. The amount of work that needs doing and the amount of money that needs spending is somewhat over whelming at the moment.

Hence where Fund101 comes in (financially anyway).

I applied for £250, as much as I could easily spend more on this project I was worried I wouldn’t get enough votes, and really, to me, some money is a lot more helpful than none!

If I had however researched the cost of uPVC doors, perhaps I would have reconsidered and gone for a bit more! As things stand I am currently keeping my eyes out on Ebay for a reasonably priced & good condition second hand door that will work for us.

What I hope to do is put the door in the side of our garage:

So that it is easy to walk from the back to and into the garage in seconds!

The reason this is important is that the way our driveway works is that the car needs to be parked right against the garage door to a) ensure Chris’s car fits behind and b) so our neighbours, whose driveways is right next to ours, can get in and out – the entrance to the driveways is narrower than 2 car widths you see.

This parking close means no entry to the garage without shifting at least one, if not two vehicles. Which can be a right pain, particularly if I make a sale  & want to nip out whilst the baby is asleep (very few and far between are minutes of sleeping baby in the daytime now!).

As you can see, a LOT of work needs to be done inside the garage… I didn’t in fact realise quite how much ‘til I took this photo :-( Feeling a bit daunted by the amount of work at the moment!

There is some of my stuff in there I promise! Hidden underneath all the other rubbish… It doesn’t help that we took our shed down last weekend to take to the allotment & it hasn’t been rebuilt there yet, so everything from the shed is currently in here too…

My hope is, that once the door is in place, and the garage has been organised, that I can store not only my stock (which is in there somewhere at the moment already…) but my wool as well. I am always getting moaned at about how it’s taking over the house, and now there are 2 kids it would be nice to have some more space indoors. At the moment it is taking up space under the stairs in big storage bags:

It has a whole cabinet of its own too, which is massively overflowing…

The storage of so much “stuff” in a house with condensation issues comes with it’s own probs…

Mainly Black Mould which is taking over my life…

I feel like one day I am going to wake up inside a mushroom :-(

But hopefully if the wool can go into nice see-through plastic boxes in the garage it will be safe from the evil mould & it will be easy to find what I want (this is the theory anyway…).

Getting rid of the wool & cabinet indoors will also make more space for Evie’s toys under the stairs, and for the pushchair too…

There are other things I could do if there’s any money left over, but to be honest even doing all this seems a million miles away at the moment! There’s very little “free” time with 2 kids, Chris & my dad are tied up on projects in the garden & at the allotment for at least the next month and I am spending every “spare” minute trying to make things really.

I think I just need to keep telling myself for now, that once it is all done it will be amazing!

Thanks again for your support with my application & I hope to be able to tell you soon the we are in progress with “project garage”!

Rose X

Spring Crochet

I have very much been allowing the warm weather of late to dictate what I have been making…

Usually I love working in thick & chunky woollens – even those have taken a decidedly spring/floral theme! - but it turned a wee bit warmer, making me long to get out the bright cottons & get cracking on some lovely colourful spring things!

Last week I was mostly making some more toilet roll covers – some of you might think this is rather “old fashioned” but you would be amazed at the amount of people who have asked for these – and tea cozies – at events!

Also on my list of things to make are some more flower coasters like those I made last year…

… and some more lovely bunting!

If only there were more hours in the day!

I have also started selling packs of crochet flowers in my Folksy Shop as I had an enquiry for some through Facebook, so if you are interested in them for embellishing any of your own projects please do go have a look, I can make them into any colours you want :-)

I may also be advertising a few more “Lucky Dip” packs this coming week to use up some odds & ends – this will be on my Facebook Page.

Over the weekend we said goodbye to the warm & sunny weather and it turned rather wet and windy…

Not so wet today but still windy! Looks like a blustery school run today!

I was hoping to get out & take some photos to do a post about why I would like the Fund101 Grant from Enterprise Nation I posted about last time, but it may not happen today now…

I WILL get it done though :-)

I want to document the whole process so I might have to brave the winds!

I still need 85 votes to secure the grant, so if you have a couple of minutes to spare I would be everso grateful if you could pop along & vote for me!

http://www.enterprisenation.com/funding-applications/victoria-rose-crafts/#comment-53416

Back soon!

Rose X

PS – you can purchase any of the items shown by visiting my Folksy Shop www.folksy.com/shops/victoriarosecrafts or emailing rose@victoriarosecrafts.co.uk 

You can also find the tutorial & pattern for my flowers (used for coasters & bunting) on my website www.victoriarosecrafts.co.uk – the download for this pattern is free & you can use it to create items of your own to sell at local markets & fairs, although I would ask that you please do not sell them on Folksy, or sell complete imitations of my items anywhere online! If you do wish to use my pattern as inspiration, a link back to me is only courteous & if you sell lots of items made from the pattern a donation would be lovely ((thank you!)).

Help Needed!

Dear Blogger Friends,

I very much hope you can help me!

I have been lucky enough to be approved for a small business grant from Enterprise Nation to help grow my business.

I am going to use the money to organise my storage space in the garage and to help with this I also need to put a door into the side of the garage so I can access my materials and stock without have to move the car and open the main garage door each time I sell something or want to make something!

To obtain my grant though I need to gain a vote for each £ I have asked for (£250).

To vote you will need to sign up to the enterprise nation website

(fortunately this process is not too painful!)

Whilst there you could also have a look around; they have lots of help for new/small businesses and you could even apply for a Fund101 grant yourself!

Thank you, and have a fab weekend :-)

I will be back next week with a few of my spring crochet makes – check me out this week, third blog post of the week & one drafted for Monday already ;-)

Rose X

PS – the link for voting is here:

http://www.enterprisenation.com/funding-applications/victoria-rose-crafts/

Gifts–Birthday & Christmas

OK, so I am massively late with this one!

Bearing in mind Christmas was months ago now and my birthday was end of Jan!

But i have meaning to write a post about various bits & pieces for ages, so here goes :-)

I was really lucky this year, I have got loads of the crafty/crochet books I was after, please let me know what you think of these if any of you have them! I haven’t had much of a chance to browse them so far…

1) Cath Kidston Patch – this will go on my crafty bookshelf alongside the other CK books I have yet to find the time to make anything from…. I WILL one day!

2) Nicky Trench – Cute & Easy Crochet: been eyeing this one up for a while, there are several good projects inside I want to have a go at!

3) Kirstie Allsop – Craft: slightly disappointed with this (allbeit all I have done is flick through) but it seems essentially to be all the projects from her program, so if you have seen that you will recognize everything in this book, and I’m pretty sure you could find all this info on the Channel 4 Website :-( Disappointed Kirstie! Where are the new ideas and the CROCHET! lol

4) Carol Meldrum – Love Crochet: Not really looked at this yet, but hoping it will be good! (I so often find crochet books disappointing in that they very often have the same old projects in all of them!)

5) 200 crochet flowers, embellishments & trims – had a browse through this one, the 200 count is a bit of a push in that much of it is the same things worked slightly differently, but seems quite good for anyone who already is fairly proficient at crochet patterns and wants to have a go at creating their own finishings and embellishments for various things.

I also bought myself this massive crochet hook, with the view of making a rag rug from some old bed linen – we have tons!

Not had the chance to start yet, but have seen them on various blogs & sites, take a look at the Tangled Happy blog for a good idea of where to start – if you haven’t come across this blog, there is a link under favourite blogs in my sidebar, it’s a fab blog where there are daily (I think!) posts linking to various free crochet patterns & other crafty tutorials on the web and it’s a real fantastic source of inspiration and ideas for anyone!

I also got some Hobbycraft vouchers, which I have used to buy some yarn & also some great hand spun/dyed merino yarn from Australia from the Aussie in laws which I am very much looking forward to using!

I will come back & show you my rag rug (or even that I have started it!) when I eventually get around to doing it… my first job will be to cut the sheets into a long strip and roll into a huge yarn ball!

Rose X

Flowers!

Flowers are big in my world at the moment :-)

I have so much been enjoying the bright sunshine and renewed warmth of the last few days that I splashed out on some spring colour in Tescos at the weekend!

(the jug was my bargain Laura Ashley purchase in the sale last year, I had been spying on it for AGES and then found it better than half price! YAY!)

The garden is starting to pick up some colour too…

When we moved in everything was very bare – mostly down to the previous owners rabbit having eaten everything in sight!

But we were very pleased when the first bulbs started coming up weeks ago.

The snowdrops & daffodils were already here, but we I planted some crocuses back in October before Evie was born, and recently added some cheap primroses we picked up at the local garden centre on sale

It has been so lovely over the weekend in fact that much demolition progress has been made on our building site area of the garden…

This is to be made a home for the trampoline & wendy house (yet to be purchased) and a general play area for the kiddies once finally complete!

We are getting a new fence put in (largely because the current one is falling down!) and during our fence investigations we even discovered a disused path that runs along the back of the house! We are now investigating getting a gate fitted at the back, although it will take a while to clear these brambles… lol

I even had a chance to plant some seeds in the mini greenhouse I have borrowed back from my nan & grandad – hoping to have lupins, delphiniums, pansies, marigolds, salvias & cauliflowers (for the allotment!). I have more to plant but they are supposed to wait until April… so I am trying to be patient!

All in all it’s been a lovely sunny weekend :-)

Even pickles thinks so!

Shame the weather seems to be dull & grey again today…

Still, I have plenty of floral exploits to be getting on with on the crochet front, hopefully I can find the time to come back & talk about them with you soon, if you can’t wait, I have added a few “spring-ish” things to Folksy already, if you click on the “find me on Folksy” link on my side bar it will take you there!

Rose X