Weeknote #269

This week we released the New Shops to some initial beta testers and we’ve been busy iterating on that feedback and releasing improvements and bug fixes etc. It’s taken up most of our head space, or at least most of James’, Doug’ and Sian’s. The feedback so far has been overwhelmingly positive. This quote from one seller in particular, hit the mark:

Camilla has been working on the Renegade and Knitting and Stitching show events and also working with Rich to make this blog work how we want it to, more like how you see it now. I suspect she also spent sometime drawing more circus illustrations too. She likes that. One unintended consequence of Camilla being in the studio more is that we’re drinking lemon tea, Scandanavian style. No cows are now inconvenienced by the Folksy team, but we’re killing lots and lots of lovely lemons to feed our new habit.

I spent a chunk of time working the next steps for Revealing Craft with the obscenely talented India Hobson and the equally brilliant Alex and Ashleigh at Dust. Before it does move further I need to find someone who’s not brilliant so my sense of inferiority doesn’t jeopardise the project, a side effect of getting the best people on board, you end up feeling utterly inadequate a feeling exacerbated by a visit to Portland Works and Stuart Mitchell in particular. Our studio is in Harland Works in Sheffield, next to Portland Works. Portland Works is where Stainless Steel started and it’s been recently bought by a community of craftspeople (they have a new share round now) and artists doing great things. One of these is Stuart Mitchell a knife maker. Not just any knife maker, probably the best knife maker in the world. His parents were knife makers and everything about his small workshop says expert, someone committed to doing the best. These are some of the images I took of the visit and the rest are on flickr.