It’s that time of year when I give the website a good spring clean. Truth be told, I actually started in November last year when I changed the domain name from marialalic.co.uk to marialalic.cymru. Well, I say I changed it but I’m sure we all know that it wasn’t me because I am IT skills deficient. What I did was send an email to Stuart at Tekeez (my website hosts) and said “Can I do this?” and “How much will it cost me?” to which he replied “Yes, you can” and “£20”. Bargain. Especially if I start keeping the website up to date and paying attention to things like page views and bounce rates. This is unlikely, however. Over the years I’ve been told by lots of people who have been very sure that they know what’s best for me and my business model that the only reason to have a website is to attract paying customers to things or skills I have to sell.
Actually the only reason I have a website is so that I can keep track of what I’ve done and what I want to do. This sort of filing system is important because half of my brain likes to think of itself as a serious, meaningful artist and the other half only wants to make the sort of homespun craft that Caroline Ingalls would have kept in her Little House on the Prairie. Quite often the two halves end up jostling for supremacy and the winner takes all of my time, effort and money for a few weeks or months. Until recently the website was a bit like the miscellaneous drawer that everyone has at home: a place where things are lost when they are needed and found when they are not. But not anymore. Behind the scenes, there is a digital tidy up in progress. I have updated the Gallery and the Timeline and I have rewritten the page on Doll-Making.
Perhaps next month I will explain a bit more about this year’s serious, meaningful art project but for the moment, Caroline Ingalls is in the ascendant so let me introduce you to Scarecrow Cottage. When I first became self-employed, selling at craft markets made up a lot of my earnings. I didn’t have a car so everything would be rammed into a suitcase on wheels and I’d trundle from house to bus stop then bus stop to wherever the event was. On a good day I’d bring home fewer goods and more money than I started out with but there were occasions when I was just happy to earn enough to be able to pay for the table. I stopped doing craft markets for a few years while I was concentrating on my MA, the Unlost Places project and a growing mentoring practice but lately, I’ve been thinking I want to get back out there. And let’s face it – could there be a better time to get people to interact with teddy bears than during a cost of living crisis, a period of social unrest and at the beginning of an economic recession? All of which brings us to the three different facets of Scarecrow Cottage (none of them require you to visit an online shop).
Scarecrow Cottage Hospital
What first started as repairing a very distressed Raggedy Andy for a friend has now become a bit of a phenomenon on my social media platform. Take Smudge, for example. Smudge (the little pink rabbit, front left) was part of a large group of soft toys that were to be gifted to a local charity so that they could distribute them as Christmas presents.
Sadly Smudge had a stain that wasn’t removed in spite of repeated laundering. Smudge developed a cult following thanks to posts on social media. He starred in his own online Advent calendar; people offered to knit him jumpers; strangers wanted to adopt him; at the New Year’s Eve parkrun in Porthcawl a bloke sidled up to me and said “How’s Smudge?” as if he really cared about the answer. The point of this ramble is that most people would prefer to see soft toys repaired and re-homed than sent to make yet another layer of landfill.
So my plan is to take Scarecrow Cottage Hospital on tour to libraries, museums, vintage fairs, craft markets or anywhere else where people can watch as a distressed or injured teddy bear, cloth doll or little pink rabbit is given a second chance of life. Programmes like The Repair Shop and Money For Nothing have shown that there is an appetite for mending instead of throwing away and it’s not just because it makes more economic sense.
Scarecrow Cottage Crafts
In my dreams I’m going to have a log cabin in the bottom of my garden and I’m going to fill it with vintage lace, embroidered tablecloths, patchwork quilts, teddy bears, cloth dolls and cat-related ephemera. And a doll’s house. And the bits and bobs to go in a doll’s house. Until that day comes I’m going to amuse the craft side of my brain by sourcing and making these things. And if I turn up at a craft market and put all of my treasures on the table, it won’t bother me at all if people want to look and admire rather than spend money (though if that’s what they want to do I won’t stop them). The lesson that I’ve learnt from my early days of selling stuff is that I shouldn’t try to get inside the heads of potential customers. I need to make the things that will look at home in my log cabin. If I meet kindred spirits (aesthetically speaking), that would be lovely but equally, if I end up bringing everything home, my log cabin is better furnished. Definitely a win-win situation.
Scarecrow Cottage Memories
For as long as I’ve been self-employed I’ve refused to do commission work. This has mostly been because I’ve never felt confident about being able to translate a customer’s imagination into a piece of artwork. It had never occurred to me to take craft commissions but last autumn I gave in to a request and made some memory bears from my own pattern. Then I made a memory doll – again from my own pattern. So while the textile artist me is still going to refuse to take commissions, I think Scarecrow Cottage Memories – the teddy bears and dolls made from fabrics that have personal history to a someone I perhaps don’t know yet – is a great way to use heritage craft skills and keep stories alive.
There’s been some discussion recently about whether people are losing the ability to absorb more than a few lines of writing. If you’re down here and you’ve read the blog as well as looked at the pictures, you’re bucking the trend of humanity so congratulations on being someone special – the world needs you!