very bunny

This little softie is the completed version of one I posted earlier while still in progress. She is a funny little bunny, with button eyes and cotton thread stitching, with recycled bed linen straight from the 1960's.

your correspondance correspondant

These pics are of some writing paper I decorated for miss Alison, now that she has moved away from the Emerald City and may need to take to her writing desk and pen darling notes for people about gardens and the weather and who she saw at the local markets. Or whatever.

I started with some geometric, art deco inspired jewel coloured pages...




And then got progressively less stylish and more silly as I decided everyone needs writing paper decorated with unconventional images of classic pairs:
- cow and glass of milk
- foot and shoe
- great hairstyles of history
- sun and moon, and my fave
- beer and packet of chips

All done with pen and water colour.

Riotus fun with ribbon straw

A girl at work's grandmother was cleaning out her shelves, and my friend thought that I might like this one. It's a series of patterns for nifty clutch bags and purses to make out of 'ribbon straw' (which I also know as raffia). Aint they neat? If anyone feels inspired and thinks they can use this pattern to create accessory gold, just answer this question this simple style question in comments to be in the running.

Q. Ribbon straw handbags are:
a) super cool
b) naff and scratchy to boot
c) a great opportunity for reworking old styles using funky new materials and smokin' colour combos
d) way too small for all the crap I lug around daily on my shoulder
e) baffling
f) other (please specify)

Winner to be notified within the week, and I will send said lucky reader pattern in the post. Aaah - is this the first 'making groovy things' giveaway?

I wont take it personally if no-one enters and will assume that a non-answer pertains to an answer of 'b' or 'd'.

woof woof

This little felt puppet is not something I made, but thought I'd share anyway. Felted by hand in Nepal, but designed in Australia, aiming for fairish trade. One of a few enterprises doing that with Nepalese feltmakers I think. It was a present for Master Fitzk on his first birthday a couple of weeks back. Website in photo below.

Quiltelicious

Just for completeness I thought I'd post pictures of the quilt that mum made out of the fabric squares I painted some while back. Nicely paded and snuggly looking I thought, and the touch of colour she added to make the pics match the backing fabric and sheets also cool. Clever quilt making mum!

Zero zero zero zero zero zero one*

This creation isn't mine, it was made by my lovely Mum for my baby brother (who is modeling it). A very cool use of a cardboard box, some old air conditioning hosing. He loves it and happily put it on to show me when I was visiting at Christmas time, bless his little binary heart.




*(That was the robot song chorus from Flight of the Concords in case you missed it)

Big Softie

Now that I've finished and posted this little monster in the top right(literally posted - in the actual mail), I can post this picture of it 'in progress' on here. This one was for PJ in Adelaide.

These was the first soft toyish creatures I'd ever made. In fact it required dusting off my lovely aqua sewing machine and actually sewing - something I hadn't done unassisted for years. The fabric is soft, vintage bed linen. I did eyes and mouth in satin stitch in multicoloured silk thread (not pictured - at this stage I was still thinking buttons, but decided not to for safety). The arms are knitted from superfine Italian merino. And it's stuffed with that fluffy Dacron stuff. No bits that can fall off (hopefully) and thoroughly chew proof (ditto - hopefully!). I think she's kind of cute and looks a bit like a friendly bubble flower monster.

Pics for 'zac

Made these for friend's baby. They are ink and oil pastel on recycled rag water colour paper from India.

Goodbye dress - hello tunic top

So I had this lined, grey, shift dress, just above the knees, that I thought would look 'smart' for work, but found I was just never ever wearing and felt like a nob any time I put it on. Decided that I loved the neckline and liked the fabric but just didn't love the overall effect - too prissy for our fairly casual office. So, with Miss Snapdragon's help (and the help of her overlocker) I transformed it into a tunic top - kind of crotch length, so that it can be worn over pants or a skirt without any fear of butt crack or knicker showing. It's still fitted, but feels less conservative than it did before. I put two little slits at the sides just to make it look more finished, and Miss SD made a rosette out of the bit we cut off the bottom. Also I ended up cutting the lining out because it was a bit funny, and the fabric has a little stretch and the lining didn't, so it's nicer to wear now.
Attached the rosette to a pin so it's removable, so that it doesn't have to go through the wash and also so I can have it plain sometimes too. Making it was fun. Taking it out on the dressmaker's dummy and taking photos was even more fun!

Knitty gritty

Having family in the northern hemisphere is handy for getting knitting projects finished in time for Christmas!
Above is: a 2x2 rib scarf (still in progress, but 3x the length) for Yugo-chan (5 years), Blue stripey hat for Tomo-chan (2 and a bit), and a pom pom hat for baby-to-be (due Feb).

Coming soon - some recently completed beading projects!

Marsupials and monotremes

It's winter here! It's dark at 4.30. Its quite nice to sit in on a cold afternoon with a roast in the oven, with a glass of wine nearby, and use kiddie paints to do a present for my friend who's baby is due in December.

I nicked these drawings off the internet - thanks google image search. Kind of traced/ copied the outlines - then filled then in using acrylics. Didn't really know how to make it nice and even where the colours meet, so when the paint was dry I traced over the outlines with a black texta. Its meant to look a bit comic -booky. I'm quite pleased with the bubble effect on the platy!

Recipe cards for kids

I had two children's birthdays in my family a while back, both cousins, one of whom is also my Godson. Wanted to give them something that would encourage some kind of hands on activity, so bought dinosaur cookie cutters, found a good cookie recipe and painted and drew a little recipe card for him. Also bought a love heart shaped pancake ring (silicone with a funny handle for easy removal)and made a recipe card for pikelets on it for her.

Other people's craft - Public knitting

Who said knitting was for the private sphere or just for the cooler climates?? This knitting was wrapped around a (palm?) tree in Cairns at the 'Kickarts' art centre. It's also known as the Centre for Contemporary Art, but when I asked a woman on the street ('where you going love, are you lost?' ... I was peering at street numbers) she said 'the what?'.. .'oh, do you mean the one with the jelly beans?' at which point I vaguely remembered that it had some colourful sculpture out front and said 'yes, I think so' and she said 'oh, that's too fancy for us, we don't call it that, we just call it the jellybean place'. Which I thought was funny. So, sharing a picture of the sculpture too (ahem actually jelly babies not jellybeans, but that's probably too fancy to draw the distinction).

Hey, Mr Spaceman - won't you please take me along for a ride?

This was painted in acrylic on a 6x6 inch canvas by Mr Meririsa. Our son is into space and the moon and stars, so that determined the theme.

Cat made from knitted squares!

"Andypuss" the ginger cat was a birthday present for Phoebe, who is kindly letting her 6-week-old brother "play" with the cat in this picture.

The pattern for this kitty came from "Knit a square and make a toy". Was easy to knit, not too hard to stuff and sew up. I found embroidering the face the hardest bit, because I'd never done this before, let alone with 8 ply wool onto a wonky, plain stitch knitted substrate.

X-treme craft

Hi there Australians -I haven't done any craft worth mentioning here while in Amsterdam, but I thought this little dissertation of the intersection between craft / art and industrialisation might be interesting to the kraft community here. Knit on!

Umbilical Hat comin' atcher, Poppy!

Newborn Hat for Poppy (modelled by a ball because teddy wasn't available)...

This pattern came from a great book called "Stitch'n Bitch - the knitter's handbook" by Debbie Stoller, knitted on the round. I used sock wool and 3mm needles, so I had to alter things a bit from the pattern.

Basically cast on as many stitches as needed to achieve the 16 inch circumference (104 for my knitting, wool and needles, but I had to knit a few rows, then undo it and start again to work that out...). Knit plain until you have a 5 inch tube.

Then I knitted my stitches into 4 groups of 26 stitches (or 8x13 stitches) divided onto double pointed needles. Then start to decrease each group of 13 by knitting together the last 2 stitches of each group - ie first row - knit 11 then knit 2 together, repeat to end of row; 2nd row - knit 10, knit 2 together, repeat... etc.

When you have about 16 or 8 stitches left, it's easier to go to just 2 needles, then knit 2 stitches together until you have 4 stitches left. Knit "umbilical cord" for about 6 inches or until you think you can tie a good knot in it. It's a bit tricky to knit such a small number of stitches on the round on double pointed needles, but it all evens out eventually. Cut off wool at end, and thread through each loop and tie thread off in knot. Sew ends into inside of cord.

You can make one without umbilical cord by just reducing stitches to 4 and tying off.

Very nice to knit, while doing other things, and my friend says knitting in the round is very good for buses, as your needles don't stick out too far!!

Three little teddies

These cute little guys were actually knitted by my Grandma who used to be a very crafty lady. Not being able to see so well these days she now knits by feel and counting. After Grandma knitted the teddies my aunty sent them to me to sew up. I also put their little faces on. We have lost count of how many teddies Grandma has knitted, but armies of teddies have been knitted in the last few years. My sewing up duties have been taken over my someone geographically closer to save on teddy postage.

Ducking and weaving

This is something I made at a conference I was at recently. They had a parallel session of basket weaving/textile arts - one woman had recently graduated from Charleas Darwin Uni in fine art and makes very contemporary pieces of jewellry, baskets and human and animal forms out of woven recycled plastics, yarn, sticks, washed up fishing nets etc. The other two women were Indigenous and using traditioning weaving techniques and natural fibres. This little piece I made is made from pandanas (palm) leaf, which was collected, torn using a thumb nail into strips and dyed using natural ochre and boiled in a billy can over coals by other people at the conference the day before I sat down to use them to weave with. The tricky bit was getting started - you have to make a little round bit in the middle (a bit like with crochet I think?)and then you keep making the same kind of stitch but binding on to the row before. You use a wide eyed darning type needle and need to keep the srands of fibre kind of moistened - not actually wet but just not so dry in the crackling heat of the sun that they start to break and fall apart. Filcking them with water or dipping your finger tips into a little saucer of water every so often seems to do the trick. I decided to make mine into a pendant to wear - which is why it has the little loop, to put a cord through. That was mostly because I knew that it would have taken me a whole extra day to get it to a basket size, and I didn't want a placemat. I love it a lot, and it reminds me of sitting on a tarp, under shade, next to women who I would otherwise have never met, being encouraged, seeing deft hands make short work of something that I struggled with, listening to Aboriginal languages being spoken, hearing noise in the distance and kids larking about and the smell of a fire smouldering, and not being in a talky thinky session indoors, and that ever so slight excitement of having stepped outside the bounds of everyday, and that ever so slightly shocking intimacy of sitting next to other people on the ground all trying to learn something, and the quiet talk that happens when your hands are busy.

Cardy hardy

That title doesn't even make sense. Oh well. I couldn't think of any witty card puns you see. But... I have been inspired to make cards - you know, greeting cards, blank on teh inside, for farewelling and hello-ing. Pictures below are for a little run of about 5 I did. Used nice pigment ink, waterprrof, fade proof black rollerball nibbed ink pen, and then watercolour. Fine cartridge. Cut them out and glued onto textured heavier weight watercolour card.