Creative Women

Creativity Squared

Last November I wrote about Dining for Women ("Dining for Change," November 5, 2009), and how much we appreciated being able to help their mission by supplying products for one of their fundraising dinners. We participated again this year, again with excellent results.

One of the items we sent was a bag of cocoon flowers, made from silkworm cocoons after the silk has been removed. Carolyn Mayers, who has been our DFW contact person for the past three years, used the ones we sent to finish her own creative effort, this brightly colored scarf:

 

In our own product line, we use undyed flowers to edge our Cocoon Shawl:

Isn't it wonderful to see how many ways there are to use the same objects? Love to see that creativity in action!

 ~ Amy

P.S. Before the holiday shopping stress gets you down, take some time to check out the Fair Trade Federation's new  downloadable Shop Fair, Give Fair Holiday Guide. Beautiful, hand-made gifts that give back to the people who made them; that's the holiday spirit.

 

 

It was hot ...

I just spent a week in Senegal; my emails home were short ... "it's hot, very interesting, too tired to write, more later".  I never got to write the "more later", so here's a short version of it.

• I saw the sun set over the Atlantic; here in the US the sun rises over the Atlantic, so having a beer on the deck of a bar, in Saly, Senegal while the sun setting, was a "must".  So was swimming in the Atlantic, no waves, warm water ... I knew I wasn't floating at Fire Island or in Maine.

• The desert ... the trip from the ocean to the desert, was just a two hour trip.  We traveled to Ndem, about a 3 hour trip from Dakar, but light years away.  The rainy season had just ended so, although everywhere we walked, we walked on sand, there were still signs of green vegetation and flowers.  

  
 Ndem ... an area of small villages that have been hit by draught, desertification, people leaving for the city.  Also the home of Ong Ndem, a non-governmental community of Senegalese and Westerners who are bringing water, farming, schools, health centers back to the Ndem area. And, they are bringing jobs  ... through their artisan projects (one of their job creation projects).  And that's why I was there, to see their lovely textile products.

Thanks to Aid to Artisans, a US based non-profit that works with artisans around the world, Ong NDem has created new products that they are eager to export to the US.  I was there to see if any of these products will work with the Creative Women lines and appeal to our customers.  It was a long and hot journey, but looking back, wow, I did find some products. I also have some amazing photos, and I met fascinating people who are spanning cultures, creating jobs, and resisting some of the pressures of a changing ecological climate.  

Take a look at a few of the images I keep in my mind:

NGO Staff and ATA Designer

Product Development

 

 

Creative Women Loves Stripes (or at least I do) ...

Couldn't resist ... I now own the book, The Devil's Cloth; The History of Stripes.  It's short; that's good.  The beginning section is a bit more serious than I need it to be, but the sections dealing with more recent history really make the connections between stripes and feeling good. Once stripes stopped being associated with monks, prisoners, prostitutes, jugglers, and the French navy, Picasso, Coco Chanel, and others, began dressing in striped shirts, it was just a short jump to associating the stripes with the sea, then the beach, then the sun and feeling goood.  Why wouldn't Creative Women use stripes in our products?

I've been going through some of my photos looking for stripes, here, in the my travels, on kids,adding pizazz to decor, and just making people feel good. Take a look ...

Colorful Stripes in Ethiopia

 


Hand-knit striped hats, on the side of the road, Dorze, Ethiopia.

Fat babies like stripes.

 
Les Nubians (carrying a Creative Women bag) like stripes.

Tying the warp and making the stripes, in Ethiopia.

 

Some people can't get enough stripes ...

Well, maybe these aren't strictly stripes, but couldn't resist showing you these plastic manikins seen in shops all around Addis.

Ellen

Shelves of Folded Bliss

It's not as if folding laundry has ever been a favorite hobby of mine; and although I have done enough waitressing to know how satisfying it is to have a couple of boxes of napkins ready to go for the dinner rush, I certainly never took particular pleasure (or care) in folding them at home.

Then I came to work at Creative Women. Every shipment we receive, of course, has to be counted, then shelved in a way that makes each product easy to identify and pull out for filling orders. At first, I thought Ellen's insistence that all the tablecloths should be folded the one way, all the scarves another was just possibly a little compulsive.

Within a month or so, however, I realized she was absolutely right. Give it another six months, and I started experimenting with different folds to use shelf space more efficiently while keeping the fabrics in good shape. I've been here two years now, and I've gotten a little territorial about the folding. Come on--I just want to be sure it's done right. Not that I'm compulsive about it, or anything.

But if you do it carefully, you can smooth out most of the shipping wrinkles as you go, and everything will fit better on the shelves, and those full shelves just look so much better... and, yes, I've become a little compulsive. Sue me.

This is what's making me happy today (excuse the picture quality; it's from my cell phone):

Okay, some of the stacks are starting to get wobbly, but still, there's something about shelves full of nicely-folded tablecloths (and napkins, and throws) that makes me smile.

And the scarves that I completely re-vamped when we got the new colors in. Again: full shelves, smiling Amy.

 

At least it's an inexpensive pleasure!

~Amy

Still thinking about the NYIGF ...

It's been a few weeks and I've still got the NYIGF on my mind.  Yes, we still don't have all the Blue Striped Napkins and tablecloths that have been ordered (if anyone has advice on how to keep inventory, please be in touch), but I've decided to think about the more pleasant parts of the show and this business.  So, for the next few blogs I want to tell you about some of the people I met at the show and things they have "turned me on to".  

To start, if I didn't own Creative Women, I probably would never learned about Edna Lewis, the Grande Dame of Southern Cooking.  But thanks to Angela Hederman, who ordered 13 Striped Napkins for her friend Scott Peacock (another grand name in southern cooking), I now have watched a fascinating video about Edna and her influence on cooks, especially Scott.

About.com described Edna this way, "A tall, commanding woman, Edna Lewis was also a giant in the culinary world as well as in life. The granddaughter of freed slaves, Edna would grow up to be a great chef, culinary ambassador, and caretaker of genuine Southern cooking. She would inspire a generation of young chefs and ensure that the traditional folkways of the South would not be forgotten. More than a skilled cook, Edna Lewis touched the lives of those around her with grace and the beauty of life. She will be deeply missed."

So many women have made a difference; Edna definitely is one of them. I seem to be meeting a lot of them along the way ... Creative Women all over the world.  And, I just thought that I'd learn more about business when I started Creative Women.

 

Scott Peacock and Edna Lewis

Creative women at the NYIGF, terrific experience

Just back from the NYIGF (well I took a few days off in NY to see family and move at my own pace, rather than the show's pace).  Definitely our best show ... great location, good customers who I really enjoy seeing, and a chance to see the friends we've developed among the other exhibitors over the years. 

I used to be so nervous before each show.  Now I'm a bit more confident that our booth will hold its own among all the others in the Hand-made section.  And the press seemed to agree ... HandEye,an exciting and elegant on-line and print magazine featured us during the show.  And otto included Creative Women on their site during the show, with a close up of our booth.  Good press is priceless!

In photos, our booth seems to look like a collection of unrelated textiles, rather than the story I try to create.  But people ooh and aaahed; I'm happy.  Take a look at our site, if this photo doesn't move you.

 

Nice to be back in Vermont,

Ellen

Great Day ...

This morning on my walk, I was thinking about how I now need to create a Hassle List on our white board.  I believe that if I don't stay on top of my hassles (become the "squeaky wheel") than those hassles will never be resolved ... or at least not in my favor. 

On the way to work, I checked my IPhone and found out that the bank in Mali, which had been sitting on my $1600.00 wire for 6 weeks and not depositing it in the account of Cooperative Djiguiyaso, my supplier in Mali, finally was convinced the money belonged to Dyigui, not the bank.  Hassle #1 ... settled.

Then, at work, I got an email from my broker at UPS, forwarding Customs and Border Protection's ruling that I had complied with their requests and they would not be charging my duty on my current shipment from Ethiopia.  Of course, under AGOA they were not supposed to charge me duty, but they had the right to ask me certain questions: they did, I replied.  After more than a bit of wrangling, they agreed with me.  Hassle #2 ... settled.

It's a beautiful day in Vermont, we're almost ready for the New York International Gift Fair (BOOTH 6308); things are looking good.

Come meet us in NY ... see the wonderful accessories our colleagues make for us.  It's one of those days when things go right.

Ellen 

Exposing Ourselves

One of the most important activities for any business is to put our products where people can see them. The New York International Gift Fair, which happens every January and August, is a major focus of our time and energy: deciding which items to highlight, arranging and rearranging a mock-up of our booth, figuring out how many of what we should order before the show so that we can fill orders promptly after.

Between shows, however, we have to rely on photographs and the internet to display what we have, so 'Photo Days' are a recurring adventure.

Our on-going challenge is to present a textile, something for which weight and texture are at least as important as color and visual impact, through a flat photograph or computer screen in a way that communicates the feel and the possibilities of the fabric. This generally leads to a lot of furniture-shifting, fabric-twitching, climbing on furniture, and bumping into one another.

And then there's the scene-setting. A piece of fabric is... well, flat. Just putting a tablecloth over a table doesn't really give the full sense of its presence in a photograph.

What we're trying to get across is how these textiles live, how they interact with and respond to the people who use them. A pillow may sit on a couch, but its design and fabric communicate something. On the one end, about its origin: the hands that dyed and wove its fabric, sewed it into its final form. On the other end, the about the person who chooses to display it: does the pillow invite you to sit, to plump it up behind you, or is it clearly just a color or design accent to complete a 'look' (and you'll be in deep trouble if you move it so much as half an inch)?

A scarf, too, takes much of its presence from the person who wears it. They way the scarf responds to that person's movements, the way they choose to drape it or tie it closely. We're constantly experimenting with the best way to display the lively possibilities in a static photograph:

Here are two versions we came up with this week: the first seemed good while we were playing with it, but just didn't work as a photograph. The other we kept.

We have some fun putting together different color combinations, and experimenting with a casual toss versus a careful fold, and we can make quite a mess pulling out all our scarves, shawls, throws, tablecloths and napkins.

Which is why it's all so much better when there's someone else to clean it up.

Amy

In the pictures are our Mimi silk shawl (Natural), a Ropes cotton scarf (Mulberry) and the Dukem cotton and rayon scarf (Teal).

 

The Waiting Game

Ellen was in Ethiopia last week, is now in Mali, and will be returning to Ethiopia for another week before coming back home. Which leaves me alone in the (way too quiet) office, waiting to hear her stories and see her pictures.

If you read my last post, you know that patience is not my strong suit.

Thanks to email and better-than-expected internet service we are in touch, and she's let me know that there are some new design possibilities, and new products that we may be able to with. Which is exciting, and I can't wait to see what she's been discussing with our weavers.

In the meantime, I'm back here shipping out orders, reorganizing shelves, working on the website... all useful, but much less dramatic.

*sigh*

There's that patience thing again!

Amy

Fair Trade, why so complicated?

Did you know that October is Fair Trade month?  Have you seen all the articles about Fair Trade out there? Yet it seems most of the people I know still are confused about Fair Trade.  May be there are too many organizations that have fair trade in their titles, or may be everything that is being sold is either labeled fair trade or green or sustainable.  Do they all mean the same thing?

Ok ... here's what Fair Trade means to me at Creative Women:

Dyer's daughter, after school at Sabahar, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

• working with businesses that support women, make it possible for them to get jobs, move ahead in their jobs, even bring their kids to work now and then;
• good working conditions; i.e, weavers should have enough light, no one should be exposed to toxic chemicals;
• decent benefits and working hours;
• decent pay;
• a commitment on the part of management and owners, and workers, to tackling the difficult issues in the workplace; everything won't be changed overnight.

That's how I define it ... maybe a bit pie-in-the-sky.  But it makes it easier when I am looking for new producers.  If they share these values with me, I want to work with them.  And, I suspect this makes Creative Women more attractive to our customers.