Otter Country

Some of you may well have twigged by now that I'm rather partial to otters.

Yesterday I thought it would be really nice to combine them with another one of my favourite activities - shopping for beautiful things for Shark Alley.

So up I travelled to London to trawl the fabric shops around Oxford Street and Soho for lovely big prints on pale fabrics to make into fox & otter purses.  Unfortunately, I didn't find as many as I'd hoped, but I did stumble across this little gem in John Lewis.  Yum yum!

  Detail - Loulouthi Summer Totem in Grapefruit by Anna Maria Horner

After all this retail excitement and a hastily consumed rubbish supper of crisps and a flapjack, it was off to Waterstones in Gower Street to attend a talk on otters. This featured otter expert Dr Daniel Allen interviewing author Miriam Darlington about her book, Otter Country, which documents her quest to see UK otters in the wild after being obsessed with them since childhood.

Love the beautiful illustration on the front by Kelly Dyson

The three extracts she read were very evocative and sometimes moving, especially as she described carrying the heart of an otter in her hands whilst attending an otter autopsy.  Her descriptions of being alone in the countryside and encountering wild otters were incredibly vivid - so much so that all day today I have had the strong sensation that I have recently been in the countryside myself.

One of the other joys was meeting so many other otter afficionados.  Thanks to the wonders of Facebook and the internet, I have connected with otter-lovers all over the world, but it's always nice to meet face-to-face.  Daniel Allen is a friend-of-a-friend many times over, and I feel quite sure we could have chatted all evening.  I also had the privilege of meeting (albeit very briefly) Daphne Neville, who has cared for otters for over thirty years and is the author of a book about these experiences - 'Bee - a Particular Otter'.  Having had a brief online exchange with her daughter Sophie in the summer, it seemed quite a coincidence to meet her. She was incredibly lovely and let me have a signed copy of her book.

One of the more amusing aspects of the evening involved sniffing an otter spraint - or poo.  Before you recoil in horror, it's definitely NOT what you imagine and turned out to be quite fascinating as each person was asked to describe what it reminded them of.  The answers were unexpected and diverse - 'prawns', 'newly-mown grass', 'citrus', 'musty' and my favourite, 'a church crypt'.

Sniffing the spraint!

After a rather harried and stressy day dealing with London crowds and rude people, I came away feeling very uplifted and happy to have spent time in the company of such friendly and similarly-obsessed people.

Remember, remember . . . it all kicks off in November.

Shark Alley will be having a stall full of goodies at the following events in November (I'll post about December's growing list of events next month).

Come along to sample new versions of old favourites PLUS lots of lovely new products.

NOVEMBER

Sunday 4th - We Make London at Chelsea Town Hall, London (11.00am - 5.00pm)

Friday 16th - Sparkle Contemporary Craft & Gourmet Food Fair, Landmark Arts Centre, Teddington, Middlesex (6.00pm - 8.30pm)

Saturday 17th - Sparkle Contemporary Craft & Gourmet Food Fair, Landmark Arts Centre, Teddington, Middlesex (10.00am - 5.00pm)

Sunday 18th - Sparkle Contemporary Craft & Gourmet Food Fair, Landmark Arts Centre, Teddington, Middlesex (10.00am - 5.00pm)

Saturday 24th - The Fairy Tale Fair, Patcham Methodist Church, Ladies Mile Road, Patcham, Brighton (10.30am - 4.30pm)

Sunday 25th - Dulwich College Grand Festive Fair, London (11.00am - 4.00pm)

Things Are Going From Bag To Purse

Things have been somewhat busy of late, hence radio silence for a little while, but it's Sunday morning, I'm in my dressing gown with a nice cup of Lapsang Souchong and I think I have a bit of time to catch up with y'all!

Purses.  The sharp of eye will notice that they've been cropping up of late on Shark Alley.

The reason behind this is that in August I started working part-time at U-Handbag, an online boutique which sells gorgeous purse frames, bag handles and all sorts of other lovely things designed for you to make your own fabulous arm candy.

You should definitely pop along and check out their friendly and accessible website - there are lots of free patterns and tutorials to get you started if you fancy having a go yourself!  Click here.

Their HQ is a mere 10 minutes walk from where I live and head honcho Lisa Lam and office manager Mary Pryce are lovely ladies to work with. There is plenty of tea, biscuits and cake flying round, lots of laughter and Lisa's super-cute six-month old daughter Mabel in the mix as well!  All in all, a great job to have and I feel so lucky to have got it.

From left to right: your correspondent, Lisa, Mary and Lauren

Inspired by all these lovely accessories and being a gal who loves a bit of a crafty challenge, I set about seeing if I could make my own purses, massively inspired by the amazing Lauren Staley (who I was employed to replace, but quite probably never can).  After a couple of trial runs, I finally got to grips with interfacing, seam allowances, stinky fabric glue and my Mum's wonderful vintage Singer sewing machine from the 1960s to create little coin purses featuring a fox and Scampi Moo the otter.  I'm loving using interior fabrics sourced from my own fabric stash and lucky off-cut finds, so each purse is one of a kind.

It has opened up a whole exciting world of crafting and I feel quite sure that every lady I know will be receiving bags and purses as gifts for a while!  Here's one I made up as a birthday present for my friend Ali.

I've also been meaning to tell you about forthcoming Shark Alley events, but I've run out of time as I must make some more foxy purses (they are proving very popular) - so I'll have to do that another day!  Bye for now.

Great Pic!

I just have to post this great pic of Roderick Bear - a very dapper gentleman bear from London - sporting his set of Scampi Moo badges.  Nice one, Rodders.

Scampi Moo

After thinking about it for aaaaages, I've finally got on with designing a little 2D otter character - Scampi Moo.

This is a concerted effort to move forward into products that don't take so much time to make as her image can be printed onto other things (I am currently sporting a fetching Scampi Moo Tank t-shirt).

So far, I've been making purses (more about this in a future post!), tote bags and badges, mostly experimenting with iron-on photo paper, but hoping to expand into proper printing.

Anyway, cut the crap, let me introduce you to Scampi!  Here she is.

I see her as having a particular personality (very cute but a little bit naughty - like all the best things are) and being slightly eccentric.  She enjoys tanks for example.

She is based on Scampi, a particularly loved soft otter who has been bestowed with some strange personality traits  (I know I'm definitely old enough to know better, but I don't have kids or pets, so that's my excuse!).

'Moo' is a derivative of 'mou', a Greek term meaning 'mine' that is sometimes put after someone's name.  Not that I speak Greek or anything - I think I read it in a book set in Corfu.

Anyway, here are some of the things I've been Moo-ising so far.  I would love to know what you think about them!

Coin purse - front

Coin purse- back

Totes

Badges

If you want to keep up with all Scampi Moo related stuff, she has her very own Facebook page so why not pop across and get properly introduced - she'd love to meet you.

Cally Festival

After making the decision not to do any more fairs over the summer, I did my first one for three months at the weekend!  The Cally Festival is a street festival held in a section of the Caledonian Road in Islington, London and aims to bring together the whole community to enjoy street theatre, live music, food and lots and LOTS of stalls.

I had a stall with the very lovely We Make London collective and it was great to see Mary and Julie again, as I hadn't seen them since the Thames Festival in September last year.

I was woefully unprepared and spent most of the day before realising that I needed to do a LOT of sorting out - which took forever - and I forgot to do a lot of things that would have been good to do. Boo me.

The journey up was pretty annoying, as all the Brighton - London trains were very slow and infrequent, so I walked to Hove station instead with my massive pink suitcase of delights trundling along behind me.  As you can imagine, this is always fun to lug about on public transport, especially on trains with no luggage compartments and Underground stations with a lot of steps.

The weather was cold and cloudy with some very gusty wind, which scattered cards and flyers and occasionally blew down prints and framed pictures on neighbouring stalls - very alarming!

Holly from Holly Francesca had a few battles with the breeze!

However, the sun did manage to squeeze out and people turned out in droves to soak up the atmosphere - it felt very bustling and I had a lot of customers, which was great.

A piper leads a very Wicker Man-esque procession of people in handmade animal masks!

I launched a couple of new products too (I plan to do a separate post on these a bit later on) - a fox print and a cute printed otter range, which appeared on totes and handmade purses.  The fox print items sold out, so that's definitely worth pursuing!

Scampi Moo & foxy totes

Handmade foxy & Scampi Moo purses

I printed out a pic of the cute meeting between Otto and Nemo and popped it up next to the small otter range on display, where it caused much amusement.  I'm hoping it will also stop people mistaking the otters for: a. meerkats b. squirrels and c. beavers.

 

So all in all, it was a good day and I came home exhausted but quite happy.  I now have lots of work to do now preparing a proper launch for Scampi Moo and sorting out some foxy prints, plus stocking up for forthcoming fairs and (whisper it) Christmas.

Back soon! xxx

Nemo der Kleine Otter

Allow me to introduce you to little Otto Otter.  Here he is.

Woo hoo!  Here I am!

He went to live in Germany and we got sent some pictures and . . . ah, hang on . . . what is he doing?

Who is he playing with . . . ?

Could it possibly be . . . a REAL otter?

Otto vs Real Otter (with a nice chewy biro)

Yup, Otto went to live with Nemo the little otter at the Aquazoo in Düsseldorf.  Nemo is an Asian Short-Clawed Otter and is a minor celebrity in his home town.  He has hundreds of fans around the world, his own Facebook page (with over 2200 friends) and regularly appears in many newspaper articles and TV clips in Germany.

But Nemo is not an exhibit at the zoo. Nemo has been raised since birth by the director of the Aquazoo Dr Wolfgang Gettmann and his family, and as Asian Short Claws are so social and family-orientated, he now regards the Gettmanns and their dog Balou as his own family and loves their company.  These unusual circumstances arose when Nemo's mother gave birth to seven cubs at once. As otter mums usually have a litter of four cubs max, she found seven way too overwhelming to care for properly and sadly two cubs died.  The decision was made to take one of the other cubs away so that they would all have a greater chance of survival and so Dr Gettmann became the Daddy!

Baby Nemo being bottle fed.

Nemo in his favourite place - on Dr Gettmann's shoulder.

I thought it would be really sweet to have a picture of a Shark Alley otter with a real live otter so I made Otto and sent him over.  I chose to sew his eyes from felt rather than sequins so that he was completely safe for Nemo to play with, hence them not looking as super-shiny as those of the other sewn otters.

Dr Gettmann and his family went to a great deal of time and trouble to take the following shots, for which I am very grateful (I'm sure they had a lot better things to do!) and they're so fun and cute that I'd like to share them with you too.

"And who might you be?!"

Rolling with the homies

Got any spare?

Otto, Balou and Nemo.  Happy families!

(All Nemo pictures by Dr Wolfgang Gettmann)


UPDATE

In December 2012, I was lucky enough to spend some time with Nemo myself. Full story here!