treats and things

Treats that came in the post in the last few days – a set of beautiful cards by Caroline Inckle; and a copy of Alyson B. Stanfield’s I’d Rather be in the Studio – The Artist’s No-Excuse Guide to Self-Promotion. I’ve read good things about this book, and although I’m not (yet) making things to sell, I think that some of the ideas will be relevant to promoting any small creative business, including web design. Marketing is not my strong point – self-effacement, that’s easy; self-promotion doesn’t come naturally at all. It’s something I very much need to change so I’m looking forward to reading and learning from Alyson’s book.

Another treat recently was going round to Tiree airport (all of half a mile from where we live) – three times – once to meet the plane and twice to see it off. For some reason I find planes very exciting and airports very interesting! I blogged about it on my other blog. This is a different view of the airport that caught my eye.

I made something yesterday too – a needlefelted thingy to go on a birthday card – but I won’t post a pic till after the day. Just a little scrap of frivolity, but I’ve been feeling blocked since I packed up to move, so it was good to have a deadline to play to. My aim for this week is to make Alan some felt slippers; I’d been thinking about it anyway and I feel inspired by this tutorial posted a few weeks ago by Monika of red2white. I’ve got as far as drawing round Alan’s (size 11) feet! And shortlisted some fibres – I’ll mostly use some Hebridean roving I got at the Woolfest, which is a springy dark brown/black with some white fibres, and card it with undyed alpaca and dyed merino for softness and to enrich the colour.