Notes from the duvet....

At the weekend it was Zebra-girl's school fair, where I had been making things with some others to go on the craft stall. The other women are a group of friends with older children at the school who've been running the craft stall at the for the last 6 or 7 years...and somehow experience really does teach you what will sell, because it came as a complete surprise to me that you could expect to sell every single thing on your stall in the space of three hours...but this is what they achieved! When I saw how quickly the peg angels were going I bought one for Zebra-girl that had her name written on the little parchment paper tag (each was labelled with an old-fashioned name), which I gave to her once she arrived. She loves it.

And this is where I was so surprised; left to my own devices I think I would have focused on cushions, bags, make-up bags, pencil roll holders and other larger things (maybe because these are the things I find the most satisfying to make)...but actually the little things sold far quicker than the bigger things. Within the first hour I think we must have sold about 50 peg doll angels and about 20 stuffed gingerbread men. They were displayed on this tree that one of the girls had bought at a Country Living fair.

My mother-in-law (and I dislike that title for her...it has so many negative connotations...none of which suit mine at all, as she is lovely!) made 30 of these cards for us to sell (below), each with a different design, and they too were snaffled up.

However, the fair was far from fun for me...for I felt wretched...but was too worried that if I said how I was ill it would look like I was trying to duck out of 'fair duty'...so for three hours I sat fighting with, what we referred to in our student days as, 'the vom fairy' (such a horrible, horrible term...but I can't think of anything better...). I seem to have that awful bug that is going around and the minute the fair was over I raced home and took to my bed for the rest of the weekend and for a large part of today too.

I also must say a thank you for all the lovely and interesting comments and e-mails I've had over the last week or so. I love reading them and appreciate them all and want to apologise for how neglectful I've been in answering them. A combination of making Christmas presents, the craft fair, planning our new kitchen (which is being done in the second week of January...which sort of means I have to finalise everything now, as two weeks are effectively wiped out over things closing for Christmas) and then feeling very ill, has meant that I have had less time on in front of my computer than I would like.

More on the popular chalk pen in my next post...