Tea & Make Christmas Fair

Yes, December is finally upon us and we can all now talk about Christmas without reprisal because we're officially into Advent, and if nothing else people have more chocolate to keep them merry...

Next Saturday - December 5th - Wife of Brian will have a stall at the Tea & Make Christmas Fair in Honor Oak, at the Honor Oak pub in fact, where you will be able to buy all of your festive facial hair desires.

The Santaclava above will be on sale, along with moustache tree decorations, loopy white beards, and all the usual Wife of Brian madness.

It's going to be a great event, so if you're free do come along for some mulled wine and festive fun.

http://www.teaandmake.co.uk/

http://teaandmake.blogspot.com/

Wife of Brian in the land of Podcast

I discovered today that a lovely lady had talked about me in her podcast. I find this thoroughly exciting. Her site is:

www.hoxtonhandmade.com/

The mention is in episode 24, about 24 minutes in - although I recommend listening to it all. Smart and entertaining and knitting-based - what more could you possibly want?!

The lovely lady in question (I'm afraid I don't know her name) found out about me from my friend Sheara (who is also a lovely lady). Sheara and I are doing a massive and mad charity production of 'Crazy for You' at the London Palladium this weekend (in case you didn't know, my proper job is as a Stage Manager). There are still tickets available and it's going to be amazing so do check it out:

www.showtimechallenge.co.uk

Apparently podcast lady is going to be there, so I look forward to meeting her.

Now, here are some more things I've been up to recently:

The crochet lorgnette has had mixed responses but I love it. The moustache cuff has three different styles (much like the eyebrow headband of old...), but I think there's more work to be done there. The black moustache is actually a brooch, for those of you who aren't necessarily brave enough to wear the knitted facial hair on your face. And yes, the earmuffs are just cream versions of the ones you've already seen - they were a custom request. Can you tell I was ill when I took that picture?

Over the last two weeks the world has gone mad and bought and requested uber amounts of beards. This very nicely coincided with me being ill and also going in to tech at work (this is a period of time, where I am working every hour of the day) so I was coming home at midnight and knitting in bed! It's all calmed down now though, do not fear.

So onwards an upwards. Embrace the madness!

Leia-tist Creation

Here is my latest creation. Leia Earmuffs.

A bit mad? Probably. I'm not entirely sure. But mad is good.

I think I may even wear these myself. There are really not that many earmuffs around these days, and definitely not ones with any style. (Not that I am implying that these are the height of fashion, of course!)

Nonetheless, I am quite fond of the idea. Let me know your thoughts.

In other news, I made it to the etsy front page again on the 17th September.

I could quite get used to being on there once a month! It's certainly a great feeling, and wonderful to see one's views zooming up.

Good times.

Etsy Front Page

I love etsy. It was because of this website that I had the confidence and the opportunity to open my shop. There are literally hundreds and hundreds of people on there selling beautiful and fascinating things. I have actually bought some myself.

As an etsy seller, one of the biggest aims is to make it to the front page. The bods in charge search through the thousands of items on there and choose their favourites to go on the front page for all to see when they first sign into the website. Quite a coup and a great chance for more people to see your work.

On the 16th August I made it to the front page. Woop! Big yay to me. When I went to bed my views were around 40, and when I woke up they were over 800. Astounding. I had so many emails from people congratulating me and telling me they loved my work. It was really very lovely and great to know that I must be doing something right!

So I recommend you go for a browse. Quite a few treats out there.

www.etsy.com

Other Fun Things

So here are some other fun things that I make that don't fit into the beard/moustache brackets.

I like to stick to the 'hair in the face vicinity' theme, into which I think eyebrows and wigs do just about fit. I will admit that the eye gloves don't belong anywhere near facial hair, but I just love them too much. I thought about putting eyelashes on them, but that seemed a bit too weird and also far too tenuous!

The eyebrow headband has three different styles of eyebrows that you can twist around depending on your mood. I think this will always be my favourite creation.

I also love the mohawk hat. A lot of my friends have told me they'd wear one because it looks cool, and not just for giggles and that.

Not sure about the eyebrow monocle yet. I made that as a birthday present for my friend Alec, and I've not seen it in action so I'm not sure if it works... Let me know what you think! (Before I go mad and put one on my shop...)

Beards for Bento

This week I have been mostly knitting beards. "Makes a change," the sarcastic amongst you may say, but I wouldn't normally make this many beards at a time.

They're for a new boutique in Pennsylvania called Bento, who have asked me to do a consignment trial run. Bento seems to be quite a cute arty place, with lots of interesting wares. So maybe a perfect place for my beards... The idea is to see how they go over the next couple of months and then go from there. I'm just quite excited about my stuff flinging to the fars of Pennsylvania.

Check out Bento's blog here: http://bentoshops.blogspot.com/

Today Pennsylvania, tomorrow... who knows?

Beard Spotted in Wales

I got a message today from my old friend James saying he'd been to the Green Man Festival in Wales and had bumped into a man with a knitted beard.

Initially I was very excited by this random coincidence and also the undoubted spreading of the beard love, but then I was worried that maybe some cheeky scoundrel had been copying my ideas. James reassured me that it was definitely one of mine. Hurrah!

I then wanted to find out which one of my customers it was so I could contact them and share this strange fluke of fortune, but realised I had no way of knowing. Boooo! Oh well. Just one of those things... But no. In the mail box, an email from said chappy, sharing his joy and beardy festival experiences. Truly awesome. Not to mention this great photo. It made my day to know I'd cheered someone's weekend.

In other news, my labels arrived today. Very exciting. It means I can start behaving like a proper professional beard-maker and that. Good advertising. And generally just looks cool. Yay!

Watch out world, the beards are coming!

Tashes

Moustaches are probably, in many ways, more fun than beards. There's a lot more scope and clever things to be done. And not just different styles and colours. My latest favourite is the moustache on a stick (top right) and I also love the moustache gloves (middle right). I think I'm going to go in to a whole range of things on sticks. Maybe eyebrows next... Tee hee.

Beards!

Here are some lovely examples of my beards. And yes, all those pictures are of me... There's noone else I'd be able to get to sit still for long enough to get it right! So apologies if you get bored of my face... I know the feeling well.

The most popular is definitely the basic brown, but there's always a call for something different. Like my new loopy creation (bottom left). I think I might go for some more wacky colours - purple a la Billy Connoly? Let me know your suggestions.

Ooh, and I probably ought to let you know where to look at these creatures. My website is: www.wifeofbrian.com

Thanks for looking. Do get in touch x

Welcome!

I like knitting. A lot. And at the moment I mostly like knitting beards.

"Why beards?", I hear you ask. It all started because my (now sadly ex-) boyfriend Andrew, who is a thoroughly ingenious and funny chap, once suggested how great it might be to have a knitted beard. I stored this thought away in the memory banks and come his next birthday you can guess what he got...

This is a picture of him (very excited) on his birthday with one of his other presents - I definitely do good presents!

Suffice to say, the beard went down a storm with everyone, not to mention going practically everywhere with Andrew.

It took me about another six months to come up with the idea of selling my beards, but it's all snowballed pretty quickly. It's been so much fun coming up with new ideas - a lot of which were initially inspired by Andrew - and I'll make sure I put up lots of pictures on here.

I've made steady sales, had interest from a boutique in Pennsylvania, and had suggestions of newspaper and tv interviews. All very exciting and uber mad.

So watch this space for more news and crazy creations.

Much love xx