Buy Lovely Things

I'm not good at making things. Once - I'm pretty sure it was only the once - I had a Good Idea, and I think I wrote about it on this blog, ages ago.

I realised that a wine cork could be made into quite a cute little doll if you made it some hair from wool (in many different styles) and then gave it arms, and feet, and a face, and made it some clothes out of felt and other materials. Some had headscarves. Some had little hats. I called my little dolls Corkies.

I had quite a little cottage industry going and sold them to other children for something like 6d each - that's two and a half pence in new British money but you could get a lot for an old sixpence in those days. I gave the money to the RSPCA and the NSPCC. Yes, that's one of the reasons why I'm not the next Richard Branson: I was a naive child and it just never occurred to me to keep it.

That, however, was the peak of my craft abilities. Since those days, lots of people got better and better and I stayed the same and the same.

I don't like carelessly-made craft items of the kind that you find mass-produced in tourist shops.
Mass-produced corn dollies, that kind of thing: though I love things that are made individually, with talent.

This brings me to my friend Katrin Freitag who has just started selling beautifully-made items at her Etsy Shop online here.


She makes beautiful corsages - round brooches, I'd call them, because I don't know about such things - out of tulle and organza and other delicate materials. Each one is slightly different and they're all delightful. I saw whole trays of them at her studio - - like a field of rather ethereal flowers.

She makes other things too: all individual, all beautifully made. Have a look at the shop.

And you can buy them, and she will post them to you, or to someone else as a present: and I know from experience that they arrive looking individual and beautifully wrapped.

Go on! Cheer up someone's February!