brushes, rollers, drop cloths, and scaffolding.

There's been non-stop painting happening at Needlework lately.

Needlework!

Liz and I have some super exciting news!!! A couple of Wednesdays ago (November 30th to be precise - yes, I haven't blogged in forever) we presented our business plan for Needlework to the loan review committee at the Canadian Youth Business Foundation. The presentation went well, with lots of good positive and constructive feedback. That afternoon (while I was sitting at the One of a Kind Show) my phone rang and I got the wonderful news that we were approved for the loan!! Amazing! All systems are a go!

We've started placing fabric orders, signed the lease on our new space, bought a couch for the shop, and have cutting tables waiting to be assembled. We just need to set up our website (a work in progress), order a lot more fabric, finalize and order notions, buy some sewing machines, tables, chairs, check out counter, paint the building, get a sign made...and do a gajillion other things!!! Neither Liz or I have any background in business, so this is going to be a fun and interesting learning process. But we're up for it!

Since we had the keys to 174 James Street North (!) in time, we decided to whip something up for the December Art Crawl. We set up a quick window display, and handed out candy canes and coupons for a free 1/2 hour of our sew by the hour studio time. We'll be doing this again at the January Art Crawl. Probably without the candy canes, but maybe with something else!

We're so excited, and hope that you will join us on this adventure! Soon we'll have a Needlework blog (and twitter and facebook accounts!) up and running, and you'll be able to follow our progress there.

FUN!! EXCITING! YAY! HOORAY!

Thanks to friends and family for all your input and help! This is just the beginning.

Needlework

So I've got some news. Big news. And it's not just my news, it's also fellow Beehive member Elizabeth Simpson's. For the past four months or so Elizabeth and I have been brainstorming and researching and scheming. And now we have a plan. The plan is to open a textile based store and workspace on James Street North in the very near future. The store will be called Needlework.

Our vision is to bring together the DIY and craft community in the Hamilton area by offering them a creative workspace and a local source for a thoughtfully curated selection of fabric, yarn, notions, patterns, and books. We hope to offer specialized sewing and knitting workshops in addition to a sew by the hour space.



We've been inspired by similar creative spaces such as The Workroom, Emmeline & Annabelle, Spool of Thread, and Purl Soho. But we are still very much in the beginning stages of our version of this project, and we would like to kindly ask for your input. We have created a survey to gather your thoughts and ideas, and would be extremely grateful if you could take a few minutes to complete it and pass it on to friends and family in the Hamilton area and beyond. By participating in our survey, you also have a chance to win a $25 gift certificate to either White Elephant, or Mixed Media. Yay!


Thank you so much! We hope you're as excited about this as we are! We're also mildly terrified, but with the amazing support of friends and family, we think we can pull this off.

If you have any more questions about Needlework, or if you'd like to be added to our mailing list, please feel free to email us at needleworkhamilton@gmail.com.

p.s. regarding yesterdays hint: naadlwerk is Dutch for needlework.