Worker Bees

Well, today is the day that we Bees have been waiting for. Seven months of planning come to fruition starting tonight, and continue along on Saturday. We're thrilled, nervous and a little overwhelmed. Mostly thrilled. Very, very thrilled.

We've done our best the past couple of weeks to showcase some of the amazing talent that make up the fair. Never in our wildest dreams did we expect to be working alongside such creative and accomplished artists. Initially, we had our fingers crossed that we would get enough applications that The Old Friendship Shop wouldn't look empty. And suddenly, there we were, with more applications than we had room to accommodate. This fair is just bursting with extraordinary talent.

We wanted to contribute something material as well. Although the actual logistics alone of this whole event took up most of our time, we felt we had to create some kind of souvenir of our achievement. So we added a couple of more projects to our plate.

Jenna and Thea spent the beginning of this week screen printing tote bags. It's been mentioned on the blog before, but we all really love our wreath logo. Jenna did such a beautiful job designing it. Really, it'd be a shame NOT to print the design onto totes. Jenna and Thea printed up a limited number for the fair - more once we all realized that all 11 of us would like one ourselves - in a beautiful mustard colour onto sturdy canvas bags. In my head, I've already designated mine for transporting my Knit Night supplies on Wednesday nights.

During our last social meeting, most of the Bees got together and had a good old fashioned button making party. We spent a couple of hours in Roisin's new studio cutting out designs in different colours and sizes, pressing them into buttons and eating scones. I'm so thankful that most of our meetings revolve around good food, as well as learning new skills and good conversation. And gosh, our buttons turned out so cute.



Without getting too sappy here, we wouldn't have been able to pull this off without all the support of so many other worker bees. We have countless friends and family members and partners who have donated their time, their houses, their skills and their love to make all of our projects possible. Big, huge, bottom of our heart thanks to Kieran, Jeff, Peter, Dane, Kevin, Mike, Erick, Jesse, Doug, Sean, Ted, Gary, Copydog Tom, Tim, Heather, Rachael, Amanda, Ella, Dave, The Brain, Mulberry Street Coffeehouse, all of our families, all of our vendors, everyone who applied and especially to you. Thanks for being interested in what we do.

We really hope that you'll join us this weekend. We've worked so hard. For you.

Ta Da!

Why, hello there! We are finally here! "We" are the Beehive Craft Collective, and boy, are we ever glad to be able to share our endeavour with everyone. We've been bursting at the seams trying to keep somewhat quiet about this for the past couple of weeks. Get it? Seams? Textile joke...

We formed at the beginning of 2011, and hit the ground running immediately. An exciting and fulfilling and fresh project for a new year. Not just one of us, but multiple ladies have expressed their desire to be a part of something like this for their entire lives. And now we are. So we wasted no time and began to hold meetings and start organizing and planning all the logistics of our very first summer craft fair, to be held in conjuncture with the James Street North Art Crawl this coming August. Lots to do, lots to do.


Note-taking and books on needlepoint and coffee filter poufs and floorplans, oh my!

The process for holding a craft fair at times holds tedious tasks like finding a location, and figuring out how many vendors will fit, and inquiring about insurance and accessibility and determining costs. But we're an enthusiastic and capable bunch of ladies pursuing our combined dream, so it's not really work. It's like we're all floating along on cloud 9 the entire time.

We're totally more excited for creating the decor, and coming up with ideas for gift bags and planning the party that will coincide with the Friday night portion of the show though, to be perfectly honest.


We also get pretty excited about delicious treats and beautiful backdrops. Our next order of business was to move our weekly meetings from an ordinary boardroom to the stunning Mulberry Street Coffeehouse, now a fixture in beautiful Hamilton, Ontario, where we are all currently based out of. An inspiring location for an inspiring project. And we hope to somehow work with Mulberry Street for the fair.

We've still got months of planning ahead of us, to take us from winter to spring to wonderful summer, and we could not be more excited. We'd be so thrilled if you joined us for the ride. We're just so very pleased to make your acquaintance.