A Welcome and an Appeal - how to recycle cards and our preferred card sizes

Welcome to our new Distributor/Stash Organiser

Some good news today: we have a new Distributor/Stash Organiser - a big heartfelt welcome to Karen Burton!!! Thanks, Karen, for offering to take up this post, and I hope you will enjoy it.

Meanwhile, any members who get kits or materials sent from our Distributor: if you are about to run out of work to do please send off quickly to Sarah, so that she can send you some more goodies before starting to pack up, as it might take a little while for Karen to get set up... After that, please watch out for Karen's address in the next newsletter for your future reference.

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Collecting and sending cards for recycling

We have also had some news from our Finisher and Recycler, Sandra, who would like to let you all know that she now has more than enough Christmas cards to work on this year. So if you have collected Christmas cards and not yet sent them to her, hold your horses and save the money -- and why not give it a go yourself instead? Making recycle cards is really good fun and you can be totally creative with it!

However, she has also mentioned the fact that she really could do with more cards/calendar pictures etc suitable for making recycle birthday/occasions cards. So if you have any birthday, wedding, anniversary, new baby etc cards hanging around that you do not wish to keep, please send them to Sandra. You could also ask around your friends, family, church, clubs etc and see if you can gather some there.

To save you money, cut off the back half of the card - we can only use the front with the picture on; you might also want to think about whether the design on the card lends itself to recycling. Generally, cards with jokes and those who need text that spreads over more than the card front don't work very well, and neither do very big designs.

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Our preferred card formats

And finally a little appeal from myself as the person getting things ready for sales: PLEASE, all of you who finish your own projects off into cards, could you please stick with standard sizes! We do very much appreciate all your great work, and I always have good fun looking at the fantastic designs when I'm packing and pricing. However, I have recently been getting a lot of cards with odd measurements and for those I cannot find suitable envelopes. All I can do is use the next larger size envelope and it just does not look right in the package - and as a result, it is my experience, they mostly do not sell and get left behind. I do understand that you are all trying to use up your offcuts (I do that, too, of course) but it would be much better for us if you could cut them down to the next smaller standard size and work to that format.

Standard sizes are:
A6 = 10 x 15 cm (or to fit envelope size 11.5 x 16.25cm)
A5 = 15 x 21 cm (or to fit envelope size 16.5 x 23 cm)
DL = 10 x 21 cm (or to fit envelope size 11 x 22 cm)
These are the envelopes that can be bought easily and cheaply from local shops.
We also have some craft envelopes which are
9.5 x 12 cm (small, like for the aperture cards that sometimes come with cross stitch mags) and
15 cm square. These we need to order - they are more expensive, plus the postage. Same goes for the polybags to present them in.

So please if you could, stick mainly with the standard sizes, and perhaps the craft envelope sizes, but try to refrain from making cards in totally odd measurements. If of course you complete your own cards ready to sell, i.e. with matching envelopes and each in a suitable bag, then just ignore all this waffle and do anything you like !!

THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR YOUR UNDERSTANDING!!!

Featured Project: Christmas Wreath

This lovely Knitted Christmas Wreath was made by Helen Dickman in Scotland for SfP Christmas sales, and I liked it so much because it is so different and beautiful, so I've asked Helen to share the instructions with us - see below.


Materials required:
- 25 gr ball dark green double knit yarn
- 5 metres of knitting lace (Helen has used white/gold here but says green looks even better!)
- 4.00 mm knitting needles
- toy stuffing
- beads to sew into the lace
- ribbon and any suitable decoration for the top

Measurement: approx. 18 cm (7")

Cast on 68 sts and knit 3 rows.
Next row: work in lace. **
Work these 4 rows until 5 rows of lace have been completed.
Knit 3 rows.
Cast off.

Sew up seam; filling the wreath with stuffing as you go, then join up into a circle.
Sew on trimmings.

**When knitting with slotted lace, work as follows:
on wrong-side row, place lace at back of work, insert needle through next stitch on left-hand needle and through next hole in centre of lace and complete the stitch. Continue working each stitch and eyelet of lace in this way to end of row, then cut off lace.

We hope that all you knitters in the group will have a go at this - for your own decorations, and maybe for SfP, too... Have fun!!!