Yet more financial faux pas and many other disasterous decisions

Piquant_2

I feel your pain moo, I really do. Even though you'll get the JSA I think you really ought to look into setting up an etsy shop and taking up the crafting seriously. You have a talent for it, you'll be happier doing it and with very little effort you can make more than £36 a week. As a bonus you won't have to go through the ritual humiliation that the Job Centre provides as part of the service.

How quickly can you knit a pair of socks? As an experiment put them up on eb@y with a really fun description, marketing the fact they are handmade. Then see if there's any interest.

moo2moo

Piquant wrote: »

I feel your pain moo, I really do. Even though you'll get the JSA I think you really ought to look into setting up an etsy shop and taking up the crafting seriously. You have a talent for it, you'll be happier doing it and with very little effort you can make more than £36 a week. As a bonus you won't have to go through the ritual humiliation that the Job Centre provides as part of the service.

How quickly can you knit a pair of socks? As an experiment put them up on eb@y with a really fun description, marketing the fact they are handmade. Then see if there's any interest.

Hellooooo Piq

£36? Perhaps thats achievable but the letter I got says £72 per week. I'd have to do a heck of a lot of knitting to make that. The average straight forward mindless pair of socks takes about 30 hours. Theres definately a market for them but not at any more than about £15 per pair which considering the wool to make a pair costs £5 that equates to 35p an hour. Ebay is full of handknitted socks and the auctions rarely cover the cost of the wool. Add to that the risk of RSI from excessive knitting and the risk that the one thing I really enjoy will become a chore and I'm more tempted to head in the direction of the sewing machine.

The award for Project of the Week goes to DD1 who whipped up a diameter dog bed for the four legged fiend who has finally stopped growing at precisely 50kg.

Meanwhile I'm busy mangling the upholstery of a scale model armchair DD2 built for the cats.

Piquant_2

My mistake, I thought it was every other week. Funny how you can wipe the awful experience straight out of your memory!

Okay so look into the route of the sewing machine and list a couple of items. You are more than capable of doing a very good selling job on the descriptive front. I think you might do well if you inject some of your quirky humour into the sales pitch too.

You have an amazing creative talent, see if you can use it!

moo2moo

Piquant wrote: »

My mistake, I thought it was every other week. Funny how you can wipe the awful experience straight out of your memory!

Okay so look into the route of the sewing machine and list a couple of items. You are more than capable of doing a very good selling job on the descriptive front. I think you might do well if you inject some of your quirky humour into the sales pitch too.

You have an amazing creative talent, see if you can use it!

Thank you .

So having put my brain into autopilot I rather randomly thought ooooh non-traditional Christmas stockings. That's a bit different. I'm thinking teenagers who are way too cool for stockings with Santa but not so cool that they don't want a stocking. Bet you can't guess which not-quite-a-child-anymore the inspiration came from. She did get a bit carried away but as a prototype we're going to give teenage goth inspired stockings a go. At the very worst that's Christmas gifts for her friends sorted. Yes it's a limited market but it's a start and it will save me getting bored because I can make a few here and there and knock out the flaws ready for Christmas 2014.

Have cleared a small savings account in order to cover the car insurance. Will need to sit down with the OH and figure out what needs shuffling about to cover everything. Fortunately our joint finances are quite healthy in that we should be able to cover the day to day stuff without concern, it's the unpredictable stuff that's going to cause a headache.

Applied for a couple of jobs yesterday so I'm already on my way to filling my quota for the week. Finding it a bit of a nightmare trying to locate stuff that co-incides with available childcare. I'd rather not put either of the DDs into childcare if I can avoid it, but that's not the most practical way of going about job-hunting. It does mean that I can't consider anything with a start time before 8:30am because schools breakfast club doesn't start until 8am. You'd be amazed just how much stuff that rules out.The further I have to travel the later the start time gets which isn't very helpful when you live in the back of beyond and pretty much everything is 20 minutes away.

Finally finished the shawl (minus the sewing in of two ends) that I started in February, although it's not me in the slightest.



I'm slowly working my way through the in house yarn store. Although even at my current rate of knitting it's going to be a year or so before it all fits in the cupboard. Still at least now i's all in boxes. Theres a lot to be said for having lots of free time.

I've even started clearing out the shed which involved sorting, picking and skirting six sheep fleeces. The waste filled two recycling bins and the remainder is in the process of being washed and dried although theres still a heck of a lot of it. I've arranged to borrow a mechanical carder for a couple of weeks in October to save spending a gazzillion hours hand carding it all.

Admitedly I did splurge at the Flint & Denbigh Show and bought some prepped blended alpaca which was transformed from this:

to this in a little over a week:


Only 15kg or so of fleece to go then.

Piquant_2

Morning!!

You know what I'm going to say don't you?:rotfl:If the shawl's no you, see if you can sell it. Really go to town on the hand knitted description. It is free listing on the bay of e today, need I say more?
:rotfl:

The alpaca yarn is lovely and the mono chrome colours are very 'in' and would sell well too.....

Well, that's enough nagging for today, I shall slink off and pretend I didn't......

Have a lovely day moo:)

moo2moo

Piquant wrote: »

Morning!!

You know what I'm going to say don't you?:rotfl:If the shawl's no you, see if you can sell it. Really go to town on the hand knitted description. It is free listing on the bay of e today, need I say more?
:rotfl:

The alpaca yarn is lovely and the mono chrome colours are very 'in' and would sell well too.....

Well, that's enough nagging for today, I shall slink off and pretend I didn't......

Have a lovely day moo:)

I would but theres the whole earn anything over a fiver and lose the equivalent JSA thing going on. It's not worth the gamble.

moo2moo

Possibly not the greatest idea in the world ever but way more fun than gift wrapping stuff.

moo2moo

Ye gads. Is nothing simple? I transferred the money from my savings account to my current account to cover my car insurance. It's now sitting in banking limbo. Having clicked the transfer it now button Barclays Direct (ING) claim it's "pending" and have deducted it from my balance but theres no sign of it in my current account. Melt down is imminent.

Plans for today involve emptying DD1s bedroom into DD2s bedroom srcubbing every inch of it. Filling the cracks in the wall and purchasing paint, subject to bank catastrophes sorting themselves out. Alternatively I could do something creative with the leftover paint dregs from the shed but I've a feeling they're all shades of an eyewateringly bright African theme which won't work overly well in an already dark room. Still lob 'em in a can of white and I'll end up with a hint of something or other.

Twisted_Cherry

moo2moo wrote: »

Possibly not the greatest idea in the world ever but way more fun than gift wrapping stuff.

Very creative!

moo2moo

The money I transferred from my avings account finally made it to my current account and so did a partial JSA payment. My not-really-my-salary cheque departed as did my car insurance payment.

My account is in credit and will cover the next few direct debits. I had enough left over to cover a can of pink paint so DD1 is ecstatic that her room is undergoing a transformation. More importantly having somthing mundane to focus on is allowing my mind to wander which has resulted in a vastly improved CV and most importantly I'll feel like I've actually achieved something this week rather than just treading water in a futile quest to save myself from drowning in a sea of debt. Thats not a place I want to return to anytime soon.