Flower Power

OK, so I got a little excited last night about the crochet stall tomorrow... I took some photos of my flowers and headbands. I figured that I'd take photos to have a record. I'll take photos of Staci's colourful creations tomorrow morning.

Here are some of them...

Crochet crazy - my first fair

About two months ago I had my arm twisted into taking a stall at the Vaaloewer River and Country Market. It's an annual market/fair in the town of Vaaloewer, which is a little town on the Vaal River, a little upstream of Parys. Not wanting to go it alone, I roped in my friend Staci to partner me on this project. She's also a crochet whiz.

As it is Spring and we love flowers, we decided to go with making headbands and flowers; the flowers can attach to the headbands or be worn independently as brooches. We've gone with 100% cotton yarn (feels great and nice and cool) and have a load of colours.

We've been methodically working through balls and balls - turning yarn into things.

The fair is this Saturday! It's one thing to make stuff for friends and family and babies... and another to make products for sale. A little daunting.

Our brand is Loops & Stitches.

We're especially proud of our wooden buttons. I did the designs (inspired by buttons I saw online) and Staci's colleague laser-cut them for us.

It's hard to price crafts because if you set a fee at an hourly rate that one commands for other work the products are too pricey for people to buy. There are loads of suggestions online like cost of materials multiplied by a factor, like by three. We've taken these into consideration but mostly we're winging it because it's our first time and by interacting with people at the fair we can gauge their response to our products and will be better informed for next year. The challenge too has been how much stuff to make. Big learning experience on Saturday for us.

Here are some early photos I took for the market's FB page about a month ago. I'll take more on Saturday to show you our creations. Since we took these photos we've created headbands in a variety of stitch patterns and piles of flowers. Staci and I have each made a string of crocheted bunting and Staci has also made really sweet and colourful characters -  a bird and an owl.

FEAT - three weeks today

Time is moving swiftly and this time in three weeks it will be the 6th edition of FEAT. Goodness!

I hope you've got your tickets... ;)

What is your lobola bride price?

My dad phones this afternoon. He's heard something on the radio about an app that calculates bride price based on criteria like age, education and other criteria. He says it is creating a storm.

I explain to my dad that with my volume of skills I doubt their software would be able to calculate my lobola rate - so totally off the charts it would be. hahahaha

While I'm chatting to him I find it online (Bride Price). It's a Nigerian site and it is pretty funny.

You can do the questionnaire for yourself or for a friend/enemy. You click through options that deal with important issues like the shape of your legs, teeth (white or brown and with or without a gap - highest value for white with gap), facial scars and how well you can cook. Each option has a monetary value. There are some quite funny options to chose from.

I couldn't decide for employment whether I was Computer Computer work or Talk Talk work - I'm on my computer a lot doing media work... both are assigned N20,000. I went with Talk Talk. Some options I didn't have a clue what they were (local lingo) so I took a guess ;)

At the end the elders confer and you get assigned a monetary value, a classification and a certificate. At today's currency conversion, that's R25,600 for me. Mmm... I'd expect far more! Perhaps buying power is better in Nigeria? hahaha

Silly fun.