Roued

Another place I like to go and get inspiration is arts and craft fairs. There has just been one on in Winchester:Contemporary Art, Craft & Design Fair 2008.
This fair presented arts and crafts from around 90 members of Guilds of Craftsmen from across the south. The selection of crafts was truly magnificent.
Glass
I will begin with glass so my own mother doesn’t have to look to far. She has been taking classes in at Katbølgaard in Denmark in glass-art and has produced some amazing broaches.
tinklertastic is local to Winchester and had fused glass jewelery on display and I was very impressed with the way Sue Tinkler had chosen to present the jewelery through pictures of friends and family wearing it.
Katrina Margaret Beattie from Wingfield, Wiltshire had some really impressive blown glass.
Fantasia glass from Shedfield, Hampshire does both stained and fused glass and will be around fro the Winchester Christmas market. I was especially fascinated by some of their stained glass panels.

Jewelery
I am not sure that you will call what Claire Muir from Andover,Hampshire does Jewelery but it is certainly beautiful and very impressive. If you ever need to look like the perfect princess hers is the place to go. She explained to me how she machine embroiders onto soluble fabric and washes it to produce lace which is then used in flowers and tiaras.
Facets of Avalon from Glastonbury, Somerset is a mother and daughter team who specializes in silk prints and wire jewelery. I was extremely impressed with their wire jewelery which is made up of knitted wire.
Alexandra Simpson’s rings where just lovely. She has a couple of themes that she uses in her designs and one of them is this small flower. I fell in love with the yellow gold ring with the white gold flower on it.

Textiles
Being into textiles myself I wasn’t very impressed with the textile designs at the fair.
However, this might be the time to talk about some very nice textiles that I saw at this very same place (Winchester Cathedral Close) but at a colder time (Christmas Market 2007).
Loominellie is a company by Ellie Goose who has her own studio in Winchester. She spins and weaves some really gorgeous designs some of which are inspired by old Scandinavian patterns.

Ceramics

The ceramics was probably the thing I was most impressed with. There were some truly beautiful things exhibited. Tam Frishberg from Oxford had a set of three matching jars (one bigger than the other) in a nice green with wooden lids.

Charlotte Storr from Culham, Abingdon made some really nice stoneware. I fell in love with her neutral colours and the way she incorporated wine branches as handles.

Furniture/woodwork
Now I don’t know anything about making furniture but I sure was impressed at the range of stuff.
Andrew Hauge from Seaford, Sussex has some really nice shapes in his furniture which has Scandinavian modern influences.
Paul Spriggs from Cirencester seems to have a trademark ‘fold-under’ table which can double in size.
Whats next
I think that I will go an dhave a look at this Aldresford Collection on the 25th-26th of July. Especially Alison Ellen’s handknits and hand-dyed yarns seem interesting.
Then there is also the Stockbridge Contemporary Craft Fair from the 5th – 7th September. This sounds really nice and I wish I could go.

So I am beginning my doctorate studies (a PhD) at University of Oxford in the Classics Department in October. As a PhD I will be a part of the eSAD (e-Science and Ancient Documents) project. As a part of the Doctorate studies I have setup this new blog (one of many) called e-Doc. The naming caused me quite a bit of headache but then I though since the project is full of “e-” (e.g. e-Science, e-Research, e-Humanities and e-Publishing to mention a few) it must be an e-Doctorate (e-Doc for short).
At the moment I am doing an internship at the CSAD (Center for the Study of Ancient Documents) at the Classics Center in Oxford and I have been working since January on getting the last of the Vindolanda Tablets online. I will write more about this on the e-Doc blog so if anyone is interested go have a look.

A colleague sent me the link for this site which made me sit and laugh out loud for half an hour. While I should have been working mind you.
There is a lot of great and funny posts there – among others a review of the fantastic “show your nipples” tube top.
If you want a laugh – go have a look. I’m still giggling away!

I just felt the urge to share my ideas about where to get inspiration for a number of different craft projects.

Etsy
This site is really for buying all hand made items but as I don’t want to buy them but instead want to make all these cool things myself I use it to gather inspiration for what to make for my self. Of course most people don’t readily provide their patterns if they are selling the finished product also. But if you are a bit creative you can make uo your own patterns based on what you see.
For example I want to make a crochet toy zebra. I looked it up on etzy to see if any one had done any that I liked and which could give me an idea of how to do it. They hadn’t really. But then I looked for bags i liked and found a couple. All in all sometimes you get lucky and some times you don’t. And the great thing is that if you find that fantastic something and you don’t think you can make it yourself then you can always buy it.
At a point I was considering selling some of my stuff on etsy too. But I was defeated by the fact that it seems like you need a paypal account to be a seller. This is a huge drawback for me as i don’t trust paypal or other money transferring companies. Therefore, I decided that it would be much more rewarding to just stick to making things for family and friends.
BTW etsy is not only great for craft ideas it is also wonderful for other funny ideas like what to do with old floppy disks you might have lying around. Make a pencil holder of course. Or how about a pair of funky resistor earrings. I specially like this one, the home key necklace.