Procrastination Station #4

Nov 14, 2014

Hello all!

Charlotte here and it is my honour and pleasure to take the opportunity to distract for a little while on this Friday. So, here are just some of the things I've been distracting myself with over the past few weeks:

(Just one little thing! The video embed function has gone a little awry for some unknown reason, so click on the images to be taken to videos)

1. Rediscovering old hobbies and passions

When someone asked me recently what I like doing in my spare time, I really had to rack my brains.... It occurred to me that since entering the world of work circa 2008/9, although I've developed a new passion in the form of making clothes, my previously long standing hobbies have, however, trailed off into virtual nothingness. In particular, good old fashioned curling up with a book and getting totally lost in a story! Anyways, in an effort to kickstart and revive this, I've picked up an old favourite: 'Water liars', a short story by Barry Hannah from the collection 'Airships'. I have a notebook where I used to copy down favourite extracts I came across while reading and this beautiful and dense passage, which I hope will get you wanting to read the book, ended up there too:

2. DIY business know-how.

Talking of reading, it's fiction I've abandoned over the years. As well as constantly seeking opinions from a range of experienced advisors, I do, however, voraciously read lots of business publications and articles in an effort to train myself up for our BHL journey. A lot of publications I read deal with big problems that only affect gigantor businesses and, while it may still make for an interesting read, it won't per se shed much light on a relatable experience for a small startup like us. Which is why, I loved this one about the famous Katz's Deli in NYC (made very famous by this scene from 'When Harry met Sally'). It analyses a successful small business with the same questions as you would a big business and helps demonstrate how completely nonlinear success is.

3. Sewing shenanigans: Plotting my very first lingerie make!

Many moons ago, and via Twitter, Katherine Sheers and I discovered we lived in the same big building. With her former life as a lingerie designer for a big high street brand behind her, she was just starting the journey of writing a lingerie sewing pattern book, 'The Secrets of Sewing Lingerie', with partner-in-crime Laura Stanford. So, I was very excited to hold the fruits of her labour in my hands and we spent an awfully long time swooning over this book at BHL studios. Below are some pix I took of my favourite makes in it and you can get your own hands on it here and here (if you're in the US). OR, you can enter our Pattern Hackathon for a chance to win this and many other things as part of the prize hamper.