About

Hi, my name’s Jo and I live in Limpopo, South Africa, though I am originally from the North West of England. I am a bit of a multi-crafter, although I do more knitting than anything else at the moment. I was taught by my Grandma at the age of 5 and produced a somewhat haphazard hot water bottle cover with my efforts – I had hoped to do a scarf but had been distracted before I had done anywhere near enough rows for it to be long enough. Luckily, Granny could see its potential and I still have that hot water bottle cover to this day. Grandma also taught me lots of other useful things a young girl with a criminally short attention span should know; sewing, cake baking, how to play a multitude of card games, make rice pudding, do word searches and play bingo, to name but a few. The name ‘Shinybees’ comes from Grandma Mac, who was Scottish and not at all unlike Supergran from the childrens’ books of that era. Shinybees was one of the many pet names she used for her Grandkids, including me. I don’t know what a Shinybees is, and I never heard anyone else use the expression, so it seemed a good choice of name, considering that it was her that got me interested in all things crafty in the first place.

I love all things handmade and enjoy making things for friends and family, as well as things for myself. Everyone is entitled to a little bit of selfish crafting now and again! I am hoping to open an Etsy or Folksy shop in the near future to share the shiny love, and because I don’t think I’ll ever have a big enough house to keep all of the lovely things in. I decided to write the blog to help keep me on the creative straight and narrow, as I have to finish projects so that I can write about them, rather than being serially distracted by new and exciting things to make.

As this is my first foray into the world of blogging, I have a lot to learn, so all feedback and tips are most welcome. I hope you enjoy the blog and feel free to subscribe or recommend it to friends who may be interested in my creative ramblings.

Please be aware that all content is subject to Creative Commons licensing, so if you intend on using any of it (I know, stranger things have happened!) then do contact me first.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

---