Snow problem

Events of the snowy variety appear to have overtaken us so there hasn't been much time to blog.

We traded on weekdays in the run up to Christmas at Spitalfields and Cambridge. As the pictures show Cambridge was certainly picturesque. A tad chilly though.

Make do and Mend and Mess up and Mend again

A trolley is an essential piece of kit in our line of work. We have a couple a large and smaller version. Ed found the smaller one in his Dad's garage, it's great but does need regular attention. Recently a wheel fell of so he welded it back on but unfortunately he welded the wheel solid, so we just had some stationary round shapes on the bottom of the trolley rather than wheels.

Here he is welding more replacements on. No doubt something else will break after 1/2 an hours light use.

Robin Cooper Time Waster

I heard this comedian on Last Saturdays Loose ends on radio 4. Very amusing and great cartoons.

His name was Robin Cooper and you can hear his Timewaster phone calls on the BBC website.

Busy, busy, busy

We've been working hard to sort out the mess created by doing various stalls and selling lots of stuff for Christmas which is all good. You wouldn't think, however, that it would involve quite so much folding and re-folding of t shirts and sweatshirts.

So apologies for the lack of action on the blog front and when we do something interesting we will be sure to post it.

Extra Diary Dates

The first weekend in December is drawing near and we are doing some extra events. We hope to trade at Spitalfields on friday and the

Clerkenwell Christmas Fair
Friday 4 December 4pm-8pm

This event is in aid of St John Ambulance in the historical Smithfield market, in Clerkenwell, London and looks set to be our first really Christmassy event.

Then on Saturday and Sunday we will be in Stoke Newington for

Oggle Everything's Christmas Art, Design & Craft Fair, Abney Hall, Stoke Newington.

Sat 5^th Dec, 10am – 5pm and Sun 6^th Dec, 11am – 5pm

Entry: FREE
Come and enjoy browsing and shopping at over 30 stalls featuring work by designer-makers.

Both events should have lots of other great stalls and we really enjoy the chance to do a bit of Christmas shopping ourselves.

In addition to this we will have all our regular stalls at Cambridge All Saints market on Saturday and Spitalfields and Upmarket in London on the Sunday.

Out takes

We're trying to get our current mens t shirt collection onto the website. If you take photos of the t shirts on coat hangers they just look big and saggy so Ed had to wear them.
Here are the pictures you won't be seeing on the website.

The Ros Wallet

Although we don't normally give our products names our latest wallet is definitely a 'Ros'. I made my own version a couple of years ago. After an unfortunate incident of wallet based incompetence I made a wallet I could chain to my bag which would hold lots of small change and business cards.

Initially we thought it was too large for people who don't regularly carry £50 in small change, but I eventually tried making a few to sell. The picture shows the my first batch. Also available in dark brown, tan and black hopefully we will get them onto the website this week.

Hunter Gatherers

Living in the countryside we have started foraging in the hedgerows for foodstuffs we can find growing wild. Our Shoe-making Landlady Chris has done spectacularly well on this front. Local fly tippers have deposited a load of pub snacks at the end of her road. Pictured is one weeks collection.

I'm partial to Sweet Roasted Almonds and Ed sings the praises of Gherkins in Anchovy Oil. I'm not sure what Chris' favourite is but as I keep finding half finished bar snacks cans she's clearly enjoying the fruits of her finds.

Making Screen Printing Frames

We've bought pre-made Screen printing frames before but find the ones we make ourselves last much longer. The pictures above show Ed adding the mesh to the frames. This is actually a two person job as you have to stretch out the mesh as tightly as possible, but I'm taking the photos here.

The worst thing about the job is putting all the staples in which leads to sore wrists, blood blisters and all sorts of other problems. So we're asking Santa for a Pneumatic Staple Gun.

Loglike

Our friends Jen and Steve who run Loglike used to have a stall at Spitalfields on Sundays but recently moved to North Wales. From the looks of their Blog they're having a great time.

Country living has already inspired new Loglike products. This set of badges is beautiful. Like all their products even just the packaging is gorgeous.

Print Day, Friday

Once again Friday was spent printing. Earlier in the week we cut the leather then we print invariably on Friday. Ed does the printing and I do the positioning both to print the items and to dry them while Ed prints the next item. When we've tried swapping roles it's always a disaster. I am always subject to Ed's very critical eye as I do his job but less skillfully, similarly I can't help interfering as I find him so slow with the positioning.

Anyway I position the pieces once printed to dry. As we have limited drying space you have to lay the pieces out as efficiently as possible so you tend to end up with a table covered in the same image. They always look so lovely at this stage it almost seems a shame to sew them up.

Hold the liquor

Our friend Huw has a shop in Brighton (they even sell some of our stuff) and a website; Junkfunk. Was nosing on his website this morning and spotted this nifty little item I hadn't seen before. It appealed to me.

Stabo goes Green for Winter, or is that Blue

It's that time of the year again, when it just gets a bit chilly. Less auspicious than the notorious 'first swallow of summer' is the 'first Thermals for winter'. That was quite a while back. We have now reached the stage of lots of layers and hats indoors.

As you can see the Stabo scarf is coming in very handy.

We love the weekend

Actually we don't love it that much but I thought a 'we hate the weekend' title might be too grumpy. In particular Friday nights are a bit of a drag as we always end up working late. This is what we were up to last night; screen printing. Ed tends to do the printing and I do the running around placing printed items on all spare spaces to dry out.

It wasn't too bad though we were made a glass of mulled wine and had a break watching fireworks. Of particular note were the sparklers, you don't realise quite how much smoke a sparkler gives off until to avoid the rain you light 5 of them in a small marquee.

There was a Jolly Hunter

This is not exactly Stabo related but has taken precedence over everything else.

We have a rat problem. They were getting into the house so our landlady boarded up the probable entrance and exit holes. Unfortunately she trapped at least one inside under the floorboards in our part of the house.

We tried to trap them last night but they managed to steal all the bait and safely go back down under the floorboards. Ed has decided that an air rifle is the solution to all our problems. I'm not quite sure how this is going to play out in the confines of our kitchen but it keeps us entertained.

Fantastic Mr Wallet

We are trying to sort out new products and photos for our website.

In particular the photography is rather labour intensive. Clothing is especially difficult to make look good which is why we are taking photos of t shirts on clothes hangers rather than people.


I spent a few hours faffing about with the light cube moving card holders by a couple of millimetres at a time in order to fit them perfectly in the frame. Inspired and greatly entertained by Fantastic Mr Fox perhaps we'll take our new skills in moving things by infinitesimal amounts and create a wallet based stop frame animation. Probably not.

We're at Coventry Transport Museum

We will be taking a stall at Coventry Transport Museum for their craft fair on November 14 & 15. We've never visited before but it sounds like a fun event and we have a bit of a penchant for transport related imagery.

We did visit an amazing transport museum on the North Island of New Zealand, just in case you happen to be passing. It's the Southward Car Museum fairly near Wellington.


We called in and fell in love with it. A vehicle we that particularly stuck in the mind was this gangster vehicle (below), imported from the states with reinforced bullet proof glass (ie glass about an inch thick) and authentic bullet holes.

Ways to avoid working no.1

Chris our landlady (the shoemaker) has just got a new puppy, she is black and tiny and incredibly sweet. The as yet unnamed puppy always seems more fun than say an afternoon of sticking badges together.


The pup seems to like leather so perhaps she can be trained to stick leather badges together. Or is that illegal?

Lets do the Math (s)

This week we did some Grading; creating different sizes of the same pattern. We were standardising the Wax Cag patterns. The cag is really Ed's product but after five minutes trying to Grade he was crouched in the foetus position, rocking back and forth (metaphorically at least) so I offered to help and promptly created an extensive spreadsheet.

Traditional grading is to my mind a very inexact science but after a lot of me promoting the mathematical case and Ed looking rather unhappy we eventually sorted it out. Or at least we did in theory we're actually going to create the new patterns on Monday. So that's something to look forward to.

Woodbridge Vintage and Contemporary Fair

One of the fun things we do is visit different fairs around the country. Although a bit more hassle it's always a bit more exciting doing an extra curricular event.


The most recent event was the Woodbridge Vintage and Contemporary Fair in Suffolk. The organisers Sarah Hill and Richard Ginger also sell and consequently had a really good idea of the type of event they wanted and managed to get together an eclectic mix of stalls.

We were contacted to trade at the first event in June and came back again in September. The mix of stalls spans clothing and accessories, to homewares and the odd food stall, you'll need the posh pork pies and fresh coffee to keep you going.

It's a really charming location and a darn sight better organised than some of the more regular events. We've posted some pictures of the swarming crowds. Or you can read more on the Woodbridge Vintage and Contemporary Fair blog. The only downside is that as a trader it's almost impossible to find the time to have a really good look around the fair yourself.

Pilgrim Shoes

Chris, who has let us camp out in her house and workshop is also a shoemaker. So like us she works with leather, however she shuns electric sewing machines for 19th century treadle power instead.

Here's a couple of pictures of her make do work shop (till we go) and some of her lasted shoes drying out in the morning sun. Find out more at www.pilgrimshoes.co.uk

Stabo Moves House - Again

After 10 days of high exertion we have finally managed to move our house and workshop to Bedfordshire.




Our old work shop prior to clearing out













Moving our leather cutting machine











Our new house, or at least we have rented some of it off our friend Chris.
















The new workshop












View from our new workshop









Thanks to those who helped us with the move. I'm sure you'll be happy to hear that we will probably have to do it all again in the new year.

Making pictures

This week we needed to update the website with some new Wax Cag pictures as we've just finished our first batch of 38" chest Cags. Taking photos of accessories is fairly straightforward, we just get out a white light cube, plonk them on the table, light them and more or less get shooting. Clothes are far more problematic, they really need to be modelled to be shown off to best effect. Not typically having a model or photographic studio on hand we always end up making do, normally using each other and a random space.

This time Ed was the model. We have a fairly low success rate for the photos and all of them need touching up. So I spent the afternoon doing that.
I was amazed by how much like Ed the image of his face in blue lines looked, I knew he wouldn 't appreciate being identifiable so had fun totally erasing his face.

lost property

Probably not the most interesting of entries.....

A fellow stall holder at Upmarket off Bricklane in East London handed us this bag which had been accidentally left on his stall. It contained a small camera print vest and a mini travel card holder. There was one other item in the bag. In the unlikely chance the customer is reading our blog, please contact us and reclaim your posessions.

New sample t shirts made and stabo HQ sold

It has been an incredibly frantic time here at stabo central. We have sold our house which has put us in a scramble to find another property - not an all together restful exercise.

And possibly more interesting we have been making some new sample t shirts which we're trying out on the stalls in small batches. This rather peculiar image is of us doing some screen exposing on our home made exposure unit.

You shouldn't really hold up the lid with the lights on but I thought it might make a good photo.

All in all a busy time now and what looks like the rest of the year


Here's a quick look at the samples. Hope to put them on the website soonish.

What Would Terry Do?

I imagine Sir Terry Leahy, Tescos' Boss, when considering new display methods for say washing powder or charcoal brickettes probably sits down with his colleagues and has a conversation about previous displays. Then using the stunningly analytical technique of vague recollection rather than documented sales figures considers their success. On the back of this he probably grabs hold of a random collection of materials from his workshop and the floor then sits down at a sewing machine and gets stitching.

Even if it turns out not to be Tescos' strategy it's what we did.

So awaiting a tsunami of increased badge sales we will be presenting our new badge display to a suitably underwhelmed public this weekend at a stall near you.

Cool places to shop

Liscious, 125 Walton Street, Oxford, OX2 6AH

I spent Wednesday wandering aimlessly around Oxford although this turned into wading as the afternoon progressed and the heavens opened.

One of the more interesting shops was Liscious, 5-10 minutes north of the main shopping centre. It sells a great combination of secondhand furniture both old style and updated (reupholstered, re-painted etc.) and vintage clothing. Lured in by the vast dolls house in the window (about the size of Blenheim palace in dolls house terms) and funky upholstery it really is a bit different.

The white floorboards of the shop floor go both upwards and downwards, backwards and forwards and you wind up the staircase stumbling into an area complete with mobile phone charging and erected ironing board that looks like someones living room perhaps it was an installation or perhaps it really was someones home.

Comfortably the most expensive thing you can buy at Spitalfields market...

Our house no. 21 High Street Benwick, March,
Cambridgeshire, PE15 0XA.

Mildly frustrated by sluggish housing markets we took we have decided to advertise our house on our three market stalls. As we designed and built the workshop and garage (and still have some of the injuries to prove it) we can even sell it at Cambridge Art and Craft market where 'we make what we sell'.

We are sure the £107,000 asking price makes it the most expensive item for sale in any of the markets we attend. Were anyone to come along with the readies we always bring a trolley with us which we could transport the dosh home in.

Anyway now we've started this mode of unconventional house promotion we might as well continue so without further ado;

This is truly the most sensational offer you will ever see and were it not for the fact that we would like to live a little nearer London and Cambridge and would like even more space for our workshop we would not be moving.

It is a two bedroom, two reception room, mid terrace Victorian house with bathroom and kitchen. Apart from the bathroom (laminate flooring) and kitchen (tiled) the flooring is 0riginal wooden floorboards throughout. There are original fireplaces upstairs. There is also a backyard with oil tank for the oil fired central heating an access road, 55ft+ garden, workshop and garage.

The workshop is ideal for those who want to work from a home in an office, workshop or combination of the two. There is mains electricity, wifi internet, double glazing, good security and a wood burning stove.

For more information please see our estate agent Ellis Winters' website or Right Move.