Please follow my new blog instead!

Shiny new space! This was the butterfly garden in the Imaginarium, but my new site is similarly welcoming

Hallo, just a quick reminder that this website has now moved to a spiffy new space, so if you want to keep up to date with my latest shenanigans you’ll need to hop on over to the new pickymiss.com and sign up to follow me there.  Not only is the site all new and shiny, and much easier to navigate round, but there’s more to explore, plus more and more regular blogging.  I have a fair bit of fun up my sleeve this summer, so check out the Imaginarium of Wonderment, keep your eyes peeled for news of Festival at the Edge, and browse my recent stitchy endeavours.

It doesn’t look like many of my followers here have followed me to the new site, so come on – I miss you guys!

 

I’ve moved!

Dear readers and admirers of Picky Miss,

It is with great excitement that I announce to you that this website is no longer in use. All Picky Miss news and gubbins and stitchings and frippery is now to be found at www.pickymiss.com. Content has been shifted from this site to that, so you won’t be missing anything, but you might want to make sure you are following the new site now instead of this one.

It’s been lovely, dahlings.  See you soon!

xx

 

All change!

I’ve decided to shuffle things up a bit here at Picky Miss, and I’m excited to announce that the wonderful folks at Nobody On Fire are crafting me a spanking new website to match.  This year I want to put greater emphasis on what I can do for you. This summer will see me collaborating with masterful storytellers and anarchic gardeners, as well as (finally) completing a five-part commission of 3.5m high embroidered wall hangings. Add in an art fair, a children’s festival and a storytelling course, and you can see that already I have lots I want to tell you about!  And while this may sound like a lot, I really want to shout about it because I want people to book me to do more.

Do you want a fabric craft workshop at your festival this summer? An artistic collaborator? A hand-embroidered wedding gift? Stage backdrop, marching banner, geeky cross stitch? Crafty hen party?  Just drop me a message.

Keep your eyes peeled for a new site, with new pics, and exciting new… new stuff 🙂  And while you’re waiting, check out Festival at the Edge Storytelling Festival, where I shall be working with the inimitable Peter Chand, creating masks and flags for the children’s parade. Because if you’ve never been to FatE, you really should try it. It’s such a lovely, fun festival.

 

Spring clean, Spring sale!

I was recently invited to bring some artworks to join my amazing friends Grace Kaya and Sarah Smout at their gig.  I wasn’t sure what to bring, but I knew the venue was small, with no real space to display or hang stuff, so instead of gathering up my carefully framed pieces, I rummaged in my box of unframed ‘things I have created just because I wanted to create’.  This made me realise that I really need to have a clear-out of these bits and pieces, because hoarding them in a box serves no-one. Art is not meant to be hidden away in boxes, just as boxes of hidden art are not meant to clutter up my precious and limited workspace!  So anyway, for many reasons (it’s nearly my birthday, I’m totally skint, I need to clear some space), but mostly because I think these creations want to be shared, I am having a Spring Clean Sale!  Below are all the pieces for sale, with dimensions. If you like the look of one (or more), just use the contact form and make me an offer. Seriously, you decide what you think it’s worth, and what you’re willing to pay. It’s first come first served, and I’ll mark items as sold as they go.  Postage is just £2 flat rate, no matter if you buy one piece or all of ’em.

Grumpy Monster 28x26cm Chain stitch (mostly) on stiff cotton.

Hug Me monster SOLD

Carpe Diem, with sparkly carpe 🙂 21x9cm on pale blue Aida cotton

Same stitching, different view

Ey, Mario! Stitched area 15x6cm Cross stitch on even-weave linen.

Sympathy. Stitched area 25x11cm. Cross stitch on evenweave linen.

Purple scrap tree. 38x38cm Appliqued fabric and machine embroidery on cotton. £30 ono.

Blue/yellow scrap tree. 38x38cm. Appliqued fabric and machine embroidery on cotton.

Large monochrome tree 38x47cm. Pen on fabric.

Green tree. 18x27cm (at widest point). Pen on fabric.

Benjamin Bunny. Not my design, just something I stitched. Stitched area 12x15cm.

Slate tree. 12x20cm, pencil on slate. Local (Sheffield) pick-up only, I don’t want to post this.

Not quite so large monochrome tree SOLD

With muchas kudos and thanks to Warren Draper for the last two photos. Way more professional than mine.

 

Live Long and Prosper

One of my very first attempts at making my own cross-stitch pattern resulted in a rather lovely (I think) piece of traditional redwork. Traditional Vulcan, that is.  My first rendering was very poorly executed, on teeny tiny even-weave linen. This reworking is somewhat larger, and neater, and hey, it’s for sale! You can own this for your very own, and help me pay my bills at the same time! What a very logical exchange.

 

Work in progress – winter tree

So, I’ve been snipping and stitching, and I’ve nearly finished the Winter installment of my ‘exceedingly large wall hanging trees’. I’m keeping this one much more muted, trying to stick to black and white as much as possible.

I asked the client if there was anything in particular they’d like, and they sent me a picture of two metal bird sculptures they have in their yard.

They said it would be nice to try and get the birds on the hanging, as it would feel like they’d been able to ‘bring them in for the winter’ 🙂  Not quite done yet, as I ran out of embroidery thread, so am waiting on an Ebay delivery before I can finish off, but here’s one to be getting on with.

I am really enjoying making these, and am more than open to many more commissions – large or small.  So get in touch if you might be interested, and let’s have a chat about what can be done 🙂

 

Things to do, people to see! How I’m planning to kick 2015’s butt.

What are you going to do with yourself this year? We’re halfway through January, hands up who has a plan…

I have tried so hard, on so many occasions, to Get My Shit Together, and back in December I decided to stop trying to pull myself up by my own shoestrings (laces, bootstraps, whatever you call them) and get some help.  Not boring, corporate, pull-yourself-together ‘self help’ books, or well-meaning ‘this amazing woman manages four children, her elderly parents, her own law business, a petting zoo and a homeless charity – she’ll show you how you can too!’ websites (gods, do they make you sick? They make me sick) – no, I wanted something more… me. Check this out. I mean seriously, Check. This. Out.

Pretty hippy, yeah? Perfect. And let me tell you, it is uh-maze-ing. I love it!  Check out Leonie’s website for more about her, and about how this workbook works.  I spent the Christmas hols curled up with this book and a stack of coloured pens, and I worked out what had gone right, and wrong, in 2014.  What I wanted to carry forwards, and what I wanted to leave behind. I scribbled and drew and coloured in, and I now know what I need to do this year, what I want to do this year, and how I can make those things happen in Real Life. And I am planning my week in advance, which means it’s easier to stick to (I woke up in a fug this morning, but have still completed all my to-dos because I didn’t have to think about what they were, I just did as past-me told me to 🙂 )

This covers my business (woohoo!) and just life (again, woohoo!), and makes sure you stop to review how you’re doing at the end of every month. It’s like a gorgeous rainbow kick up the arse. Or something.  So far this year, having and *using* this book has meant I have regular space in my diary for fun stuff (what luxury!), I have signed up to learn Danish (having spent the last four+ years meaning to do so), I have submitted “art” to an exhibition (as opposed to leaving the browser tab open to remind me, until such time as I can close it again because I’ve missed the deadline), and hey look at me! I’m writing a blog post!

My “100 Things To Do In 2015” is great, because I’ve never set myself such a challenge before – I usually just think ‘oh that’d be nice, one day’ and never do it. I’m only up to 58 so far, but that’s OK, I’m sure I’ll think of more. It ranges from ‘Take my daughter to Copenhagen’ to ‘Drink a White Russian’ (because Dude) to ‘Clean the damn windows’, but I’m really looking forward to having fun with it 🙂  Go on, what would you put on such a list?

 

Pretty pictures

Happy 2015 everyone! I hope you all had a lovely Christmas/festive period. Winter isn’t over yet, not by a long way, so I thought to cheer you up in these cold months I would encourage you to come and follow me on Instagram, where I promise to post lots of nice pictures of Stuff for you to look at.  Brainpower not required, just eyes to look at pretty things with.

Sparkly messy bookshelf. I love Christmas 🙂

 

CHRISTMAS F*** YEAH!

Christmas is EXCITING, and your decorations should reflect that. New in my Etsy shop this week: scrap-fabric hearts, big and small 🙂

 

Not-so-happy Monday

Well I got a nasty surprise last week, when I checked my stock and found that the mildew we’ve been fighting round the house had got inside a sealed plastic box and taken up residence on my embroideries. And all my sock monsters smell damp, too 😦  So, that knocks any Christmas fairs on the head, unless I get a run of extra hours and manage to go on a mad making binge. But, things can be washed, and reframed, so it’s not a total disaster. Sigh.

On the up side, I have a batch of Christmas decorations all ready to go up on Etsy. I’ll keep you posted 🙂