Last Chance to Buy My Books
For now, anyway...
Hejsa!
I feel like I’m still playing catch up since a short trip to Denmark last weekend. Landing at Heathrow during storm Bert was *not* fun but it wasn’t as bad as I had thought it would be. Still, I’ve never gripped the arm rests this hard before. ;-)
I was in Denmark because it was my parents’ 50th anniversary. It was a lovely day, starting with singing in the freezing cold from their neighbours. It’s a thing Danes do, for the major wedding anniversaries.
It was a very short trip, less than 72 hours. But I managed to pack a lot in. My favourite thing was to have dinner with my dearest friend, chatting about life and such for hours. She is a very special person in my life. We mostly lost touch for 17 years, while she lived in Lebanon, but when we finally did see each other again, it was like we had not been apart. And now that she has been living in Denmark for the past few years, we always make an effort to see each other whenever I’m in Denmark.
Of course, we were so busy talking, we completely forgot to take a picture together! :-D
A fun new EU regulation, the General Product Safety Regulation (or GPSR) is coming into effect on December 13th. It’s great that they want to make it safer to order stuff but it’s just a lot of extra, potentially impossible, work (and cost) for a tiny business like mine. This is all a happy Brexit legacy for which we can thank David Cameron et al. Brexit is the gift that keeps giving.
I’m going to stop selling physical goods, atleast for the time being, to EU countries and Northern Ireland (the regulative applies there, too) from December 10th. Luckily, I only have a small number of physical products, namely my books, so everything else will continue as before. Or so I thought. Since I started writing this to you, I have read a few places that it may also apply to digital goods, such as my patterns. But information about that is not clear… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
So, if you have been thinking of buying a (signed) copy of one of my books, and you live in NI or an EU country, now is the time to get it.
I have a few copies each of these three books: Thread Doodling, Mandalas to Embroider, and Romantic Motifs. Obviously, the books are available elsewhere, but if you want a signed copy, I’m your gal. Especially for Romantic Motifs. Last year I bought the last six copies that the publisher had in stock, and it won’t be reprinted, so those are the last signable copies in the world. ;-)
Oh and there’s 10% off the books as well, because why not. :-)
The code BOOKSTEN is valid until December 10th. Works on physical books only.
If you live in a country outside the UK, the shipping cost may seem quite expensive. This is to make it easier for me because the shop backend doesn’t let me set up the EU as a shipping region. I’d have to manually set one up for each country. That is not a good use of my time! Instead I’ll refund the excess (minus 50p for the packaging) once I have shipped your order. If you have any questions about orders/want to know what the true cost of shipping will be, please email me.
Of course, it goes without saying that supporting small, indie businesses has a greater impact than giving Jeff Bezos more money for yachts and trips to space. Shop local, shop indie, make stuff yourself. :-)
This whole thing, whether the GPRS applies to digital goods as well, is potentially throwing a spanner in my plans. I was going to launch a version of my Wheel of The Year project as a course type thing for next year, but now I may have to postpone that. Or push it forward so it will be possible to join before GPRS comes into effect. Maybe?
A brief overview of what will be in the course: for each of the eight festivals in the Wheel, there will be a video tutorial for a page with one raw appliqué flower, templates for the flowers, a poem and the name of the festival to embroider; at the end there will be a video tutorial for how to turn the pages into a fabric book. There will also be some extras but I haven’t quite decided on those yet… Please leave a comment or email me if you would be interested in taking part in this course and I’ll get it available as soon as possible. x
We had another check up with the vet on Tuesday and he was happy with how Blake’s eye is healing after his operation a few weeks ago. Such a relief. He is off the second pain medication, he only has to have two eye drops per day and he doesn’t have to wear the cone 24/7. We have a final check up just before Christmas and, hopefully by the new year, Blake will be back to normal. :-)
A little brooch I worked on at the airport and on the plane on my way to Denmark. I didn’t want to just sit and stare at my phone. And although cross stitch isn’t my favourite type of embroidery, this was the perfect thing to work on.
Right, I’m getting a warning that the email may be too long, so I’ll stop here. :-D
Have a lovely weekend!
x Carina
Some Interesting Things on The Internet
The gorgeous work by Akira Kusaka.
The third image in this Instagram post from @transpontinebooks sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole. The image shows a quilt that was made for Queen Victoria by the Duchess of Teck, who I think was Queen Victoria’s cousin. I thought it would be interesting to see if I could find more information/images of the quilt but so far no luck.
I did come across this blog post about quilts made BY Queen Victoria. Although it turned out that the ‘quilts’ are actually knitted or crocheted and not made from fabric. Still, it’s interesting to see what she made. And how, in her correspondence, she complains about projects taking longer than she would have wanted because she is too busy to work on them. Same, Vicky, same. :-D
The rest of the blog is worth a read, too: Material Culture.
My search also led me to a BBC article about a former slave who gave a quilt to Queen Victoria. There is a book about this too: Martha Ann's Quilt for Queen Victoria, by Kyra E. Hicks.