This last month....

I have been mostly packing for Tom's next show. So I haven't really spent anytime in either of my studios or in the garden (but had a bit of a go at the weeds yesterday, and will again in about an hour). These are some of the boxes that are finished. I'm pretty happy, it's been going on for quite a while, at last count, 65 pieces of glass in 18 boxes, plus 5 ponds, lots of props (road, shrubs etc) and some drawings (still deciding how many to send). Crazy numbers!

We also did a 7am shoot (which was hard on Nigel and myself) to take some more footage to spice up the Autoganic movie (which we do need to upload to the website......) for the upcoming show. Live action - not CGI!

So as well as introducing the new pieces digitally and live action, a chook was brought into star with the robots......

It'll all make sense in the end, I'm sure.

Treat

This was a treat for me to have a henna, and a long awaited catch up with my friend Humna. We hadn't been able to hang out for ages, since one of us was always totally swamped in work when the other had some time spare. She does beautiful work at her Diya Studio.

The henna came out very dark on my palm, and I wish I'd taken a better photo than this one below, because I'd been out in the garden and the gardening gloves had started to rub certain sections of the design off - and I'd been so careful of it for days!

I like to get the tops of my feet painted in summer - so you don't have to wear shoes, but you're looking pretty spiffy!

Happy Birthday Mum, sorry it took so long.

This is a cross stitch that I started for my mother in 1996. Yes, that's right, 1996. She bought the pattern book, materials and notions because I promised her I'd do it for her. I've had it with me for the last couple of years, and have thought about dragging it out and finishing it for numerous birthdays and christmas' but to no avail.

This is me two weeks into the project, more than a month ago. Yes, you might wonder how long does it bloody take you to do a few leaves and flowers and the answer is -almost everynight for six weeks, or 13 years, depending on your maths.

I am a maker, but I am a one step removed maker. I am a printer rather than a painter, a drafter rather than a draper (in terms of patternmaking) and a machine sewer rather than a handsewer (same goes for knitting and embroidery). I love buttons, but don't like sewing them on. So that lack of patience, coupled with the fact that I had to figure out where I was up to when I stopped it all that time ago and figure out what mistakes I'd made, well, it was slow going.

But here is the finished piece: I started taking a bit of license at the end. I omitted the wheat stalks (since she picked it for the poppies and not the wheat) and added a bee character that I'd always drawn and printed on things for a bit of a personal touch. The actual finished piece is something like 15cm x 25cm.........like I said, not very impressive, but I finished it, and now am waiting to hear from mum to see if she even remembers it from all those years ago!

I also took the liberty of posting the pattern book of wildflowers to my Aunty Kathy, who I know has produced cross stitch before and also to save me from that crazy temptation in case I one day think, 'that wasn't too bad........ I could do another'

Yay! It's up!

Here is the roman blind/window blanket that I finished during the sewing day with darkcloud - only a little delay and it's up and usable! yay! Another project finished that got started oh so long ago!

It's funny, you'd think it'd be overwhelming and make your eyes hurt with the optical nature of the stripes mismatched into squares, but it kinda just blends in with the rest of the decor (which says something about our house)

Here it is half up, showing the lovely view of the lane between our house and our neighbours. We have been encouraging ivy to grow along the fence line, it's just not up to that point yet.

A backlit view, the internal work isn't as bad as I thought it'd be..............lucky!

Some set backs and knitting disasters......

Well, not much to show for the past two weeks. I've had things happen, and not happen, and then not finish, and then not work, so I feel like I haven't been that productive. But I have finished something that I'm pretty happy with, I just have to wait until my mother opens her birthday present before she sees it up here :)

I was so close to learning what I wanted to learn on the knitting machines, I'd pulled apart two machines they'd given me, and built one from the best parts. My teacher remembered to bring all the things she'd forgotten last time, and I was so excited, I thought that it was a case of third time lucky...............but I'm going to have to hope for fourth time lucky.

The machine jammed internally, so she spent the next two hours fiddling, and I spent it laughing helplessly and muttering about being cursed. She took the machines away to fiddle with again, and got back to me that she's not happy with them, and is finding me a new machine. This is when I mentioned that I'm more than happy to have someone service it, as I feel like most of what I've done so far is learn to oil parts. I still don't want to give it up, I like the zingy sound of the machine and I'm excited about the possibilities, I'm just not interested in servicing them myself - I want one that works! I just want to do more sample pieces before starting something big, and I want to learn multicolour patterning damnit!

So that fell through, I'll find out on Tuesday what the next step in the saga/drama is at the next guild meeting. One the plus side, I found a whole box full of cotton cones that I'd stashed in the cellar because they'd be handy one day, so I have a supply of yarn for a big project (when it eventually happens!)

I seem to like taking pictures of material on the line at the moment. These are bassinet and cot sheets. The baby so far has inherited a pile of mainly white clothes, and well, that's a bit....plain. And spotlight was having a sale, and the 100% quilting fabric (the nice thick stuff) that was normally $25/m was down to $2/m. So now the baby's going to be lying back on flowers, trains, spots and dots for a bit of variety!
This is another pic in the evolution of the room. Tom's been scraping back layers of paint for about 2 weeks now, I'm finding paint chips everywhere, as you can see the room has also been an orange and a pale green, not to mention about 5 other colours. As I'm typing this, he's doing the last coat of the walls *fingers crossed*

And this is the Almond tree flowering in the front yard, because I had to put up something that was pretty and happy with itself!