Garden (and Garden show)

This is the first flower of my violet alstroemeria, I'm very excited, because I thought I lost it last summer during the heat wave, and it's now happily living in a pot, waiting to move to it's new home.

And these are the yellow flowers that have just bloomed for the first time as well. Luckily the way you pick the flowers encourages more growth of the lily, because I couldn't help myself with these ones! I'm hoping to have a bed of them in lots of different colours for cut flowers. I like having flowers in the house, but most of the ones I grow, especially the bulbs, I don't have enough of, or enjoy them too much out in the garden to dare pick them.

On another note, I am now officially part of an art exhibition about gardening (thanks DC!) that is happening next November. I'm really happy about that and really looking forward to working in a studio that has enough room to store all my materials and equipment. Since the whole moving decision I kind of have paused on my eternal quest to find a better way to store everything in a small space (can't give up anything, so please don't suggest it!), and have just been waiting to figure it all out again in a new space.

Does anyone have any suggestions or favourite websites for cool sewing storage stuff?

I'm thinking a giant pegboard for my tools, and possible thread display.........

Xi's new room!

After Xi's first birthday, he moved into his own room, (finally - hooray!)

We were a bit concerned that he might freak out (like the books warn) so we'd take him in there all the time and show him his room (full of our junk) and talk about his new dinosaur light shade (which he loved/s) and when we finally got our stuff out of there and his in, it was not a problem at all. In fact, he started to sleep better already (no more daddy snoring, and mummy tossing and turning I guess!)

A beautiful glass mobile by Nick Mount, which is only in the baby room because we were afraid all the other ceilings would collapse.

He likes to pull out all his clothes out of the drawers. That stool next to him has a machine knitted cover - my first big piece!

Sorry for the poor quality of the photos, it's a room that gets basically no natural light, so it's quite hard to photograph in, but here's his special name crossstitch by his Great Aunty Kathy (to prove it's up and appreciated!)

Happy New Year!

I think I'll do this a bit backwards, but got to start the new year with new year things (then I'll get back to christmas).

I'm at my parents house at the moment, having a holiday, which is great, but away from all my projects (well, I brought a couple up, but they were more work ones and thus not as exciting as play ones (because I have to do some drawings and they are not my favourite things to do...)).

But I do have a new diary and it's getting full of lists!

I love them.

I also love New Years Resolutions. I find them so exciting, but have always had a bit of trouble with them, probably because they don't contain the usual, eat less, exercise more, but rather I just keep adding to them, until it would take ten years, full time to finish them. So this year I am proposing to put them up here, and see how I go, also not get too carried away with all the things I ever want to do in my life!

As this is a finishing/making blog, and not an emo one, I'll leave off on the personal resolutions and stick with things I want to make/start/finish this year.

MAKING

* Five Fabulous Frocks - does not necessarily have to be a dress (just like the alliteration) but has to be something that has taken time, experimentation and is more than just whipping something up because I have nothing to wear. I have not made anything that falls into this category for myself for the last couple of years, and it makes me sad.

* Origami - I really love unit origami and the kind of obsessiveness it takes to make a structure containing 60 parts, each made up of three separate bits of paper. Aim big and conquer!!! (but I also have trouble following and understanding the instructions at times, so I'll start small)

*Zines - finish the one that I've almost finished, I've just got to do the faffing around for the printing and assemblage, but since it's been so long, I probably need to go back and do a re-write. AND continue (and finish) the one I've just started, about the bit of a life change I've had called Xi.

DOING

*Tidy - finish going through the last couple of boxes in my studio and figure out what to do with all my stuff. Hopefully I'll use a bit of fabric in my fff challenge.

* Photos - go through our entire digital library and print out a selection.

* Frames - finish my framing that I started last year and put them up on the wall!

MISCELLANEOUS

* Start (again) The Divine Comedy and actually finish it.

* Paint my toenails, because it's fun.

et voila!

You always need something easy, fast and cheap to do to help you start your list crossing off!

But they can't all be like that, they need to be challenges above and beyond the normal things you do, and special (or so I think) and to quote LKH,

If it was easy I wouldn’t need to be resolved to accomplish it.

Frames

Another thing on the big list of things to finish was take down all the blue-tacked up photos etc and replace it with art that I finally framed up.

I'm getting there.

I've decided the easiest way to do things is to wait until I have a lot framed, and then figure out where they'll live, otherwise they'll go up willy nilly and just look probably as bad as the bluetacked hodgepodge. Is framing a sign of growing up? Or just being sick of photos falling off the walls in summer?

So I'm pretty happy about these two, since I swapped them for my prints in 2000. Finally I'll get to enjoy them everyday! Above is an etching called 'Knitted Planet' by a classmate (who is still printing strong, unlike distractable me!) and below is a wood engraving by a fabulous old Irishman, who while wasn't an official lecturer, was a great mentor.

This is a drawing that my dad started for me.....a long time ago, not as long ago as my embroidery started, but near there, we reckon around 1998. And he never finished it. Got a block, and we decided it was done. The paving stones and the left side are sketched out, and I think it's a nice contrast to the detailed work of the rest of it. It's a picture of my favourite comic character in her various guises, and I bet he rues the day that he ever asked me what I wanted a drawing of! My dad decides every couple of years to tackle a new medium and throws himself into the deep end - currently it's oil painting and a picture for mum.

I can't think of anything worse than taking up oil painting, but then I got a credit and a 'good effort' comment for my requisite painting subject at art college.

So I reckon I'm nearly there with the art, but I've got a few photos to frame, so............soon I might lay them all out to have a look at and figure out which nails go where!

Back!!

Yay! I finished something postbaby!

Well, I actually almost had this skirt done before Xi arrived, just had the hem and buttons to do, and then.......time twisted and flew. Luckily it is now finished and fitted and delivered to a fabulous artist who'll frock up for her exhibition opening soon.

Remember this fabric on the line way back when? Well, it became this:

It's a very bold skirt and I love it - I can't believe it's the first time I've done a scalloped hem - I've always loved them, but have just been too slack to do it for myself, but having now made one for someone else...I want to definitely have my own hem!

This skirt is a first for a number of things - it was requested that it was a multi size skirt, and I'd never made that kind of thing before either, so I developed this unit within the yoke section. I'm really happy with the result, because I've turned something that is usually hidden against the body (and is hard to get to and often awkward to use (I've had some 'travel' pants like that)) into a design feature on the band.

And it's also got a zippered pocket that follows the print. Again, pretty happy with that, especially since I can't see the pocket on the full photo of the skirt.

Darkcloud came around the other night and helped put my studio to rights after it'd been used (and abused) as a dumping room for crap while parents were visiting type of room. Which I'm extremely greatful for, since I had been trying for a fortnight to sneak in and tidy it up so I could have a few moments breathing in lovely (if neglected) studio air and looking at my stuff.

Xi's going to be in our room for the foreseeable future, so I'm going to use his room to go through my remaining boxes. And I will go through them!

I'm also looking forward to making something new to wear since most of my clothing now doesn't not fit due to a certain method of feeding babies..... I'm really sick of the four things that I've been rotating.....

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!

what I did during the renovating part 2

I know, very remiss of me, but time is really rushing past and I'm amazed how the days just slip away. It seems hard to do one thing, let alone several things, let alone finish random projects, but I'm getting back on that horse again, so hopefully the next couple of days will be full of posts!

While they were doing this:

Which Tom reckons it looks like they're miners down a pit...

I was doing these:

Onion dispenser bags! (except I only had one onion left, so oranges got to model, though you could have it as an orange dispenser)

Onions need to have air around them, and be in kinda the dark, but since our potato cupboard is frequently used to grow experimental new lifeforms (for the purpose of art of course) they can't really co-habit.

I was going through a 'how cool is flyscreen as a material' stage, and made up these. It's just a rectangle of flyscreen (plastic) some bias binding, some elastic and a bit of re-enforcing for the strap, I used scraps of leather I had lying around. The only trick is not to make them too long, because the onions get pretty heavy on the strap (my first one was over a metre, held more than 3k of onions, and didn't have re-enforcing on the strap...was a bit of an overkill...)

I made a normal sized one, and a slightly narrower one, for shallots possibly or picklers....take your pick, it's fun to dispense as well. These were for Helen, for her fantastic rendering work and DIY know-how. I've got a bit spare, so will be using up my excess with more bags soon!

We then sat down to Gremolata Osso Buco Pie with cheesy Polenta topping.
The grey render has now been professionally plastered over by a glassy friend as we figured it'd be much easier to get it done by someone who knows what they're doing then us cursing and making a mess of it. Now we just have to wait one more week and then painting - finally!

What I did during the renovating part 1

So we've had another go at the baby's room, this time was sealing the ceiling, as it's got a plank ceiling, with gapes between every piece of board that let in a lot of dust. The caulking made a huge difference, and I think it looks great already, but am looking forward to painting it (or watching it being done, since I get yelled at everytime I go into the room, because of the fumes, and to tell the truth, 10 tubes of caulk does get pretty stinky, we initially bought 3 tubes, thinking that was plenty, but oh no.....)

This is what I did in my sewing studio while that was happening - a new workboard! I must admit, I could have worked, but it was Friday night, and I wanted to do something fun (and productive, and procrastinating and kinda organise-ish). I just covered a poster board I'd been using for pattern display with some white flannelette (cause it was handy).

and then filled it with my knitted samples, so I can look at them and figure out some plans!
The ribbon project will be posted soon as well!

Our Sunday

Here is a patch of before and after (or in this case, after and before).  We got into the grass area this morning and discovered all kinds of things coming up amongst the weeds, which combined with the plants we transplanted, should hopefully form a lovely thick flowery patch.

There's a random selection of bulbs, plus daffodils that I've rescued from other parts of the garden, iris's and agapanthas.  I'm hoping that the iris' and aga's especially will just form dense clumps.  I'm also pleased that my yellow alstromera that I though perished over summer is back! I'm going to split my pink one and hopefully it'll take over another section and be full of flowers!

In the afternoon we had a working bee for the baby's room, and as you can see, it needs a bit of work.  My aunty and cousin and husband pulled off damp rendering and seemed to have a great time smashing things.  We're going to re-render next weekend.  Because it's a rental house, I was just concerned about making it safe, not all damp and yucky, but now I actually think it could be a nice room as well.......  We'll see how next week goes.  So the living room is once again full of stuff, since all the crap we'd hidden in that room is now out and about!
I'm off to darkcloud's for soup and a game, it was a lucky invite, because dinner wasn't planned, and you can't just eat fruitsalad all day!

I can see the hallway!

It's true!!  Nothing like finally getting around to it (with the kick in the pants of having a total stranger for dinner).  I've had one side of the hallway stacked up with boxes - boxes of fabric, stuff for the opshops, stuff for other people to look through, stuff that I just haven't got around to sorting.  In short, it hasn't been clear in quite a while...

The other side of the hallway is a shelf with custom made cardboard boxes.  Originally we'd planned to put the fabric in them, but they proved just too heavy and I had too much fabric (for 25 boxes 38 x 38 x 30cm) so that involved another change around (and the reason I'm citing that it took so long to finish) and I put in my sewing pattern collection. Previously I had them in big plastic containers under my pattern table, (where the fabric, or half of it now lives) but now they're much more easily accessible.

I also got a chance to use up all the lovely bits of paper I'd collected over the years (which were just sitting there and I never could figure out what to do with them!)  

Darkcloud suggested it looked like a patchwork (recent topic of conversation for us)  I'm pretty happy with them, and very happy it's finished!