A Book For You...

Yarn Bombing: The Art of Crochet and Knit Graffit by Mandy Moore and Leanne Prain is looking for a new home. If you live in Australia and would like the book, please leave a comment and email address and I'll be in touch. First comment and the book is yours. Enjoy!

Send in the Clowns

Well all that talk about inspiration worked. Dug out one of my Japanese Craft books and made this funny little guy. Had a lot of fun picking clashing fabrics. I tucked a bell in him too so he makes a pleasing chime when you shake him.

Finding inspiration

Sometimes I get the itch to start a new project but lack a bit of direction. What to make? Something big and time
consuming or something little and satisfying? For me, it all starts in my head. I start tossing up ideas, thinking about fabrics, books, colours. But if I can't actually settle on a project, I do the the following:

1.
Make a cup of tea.


2.
Crack open my inspiration books. These are five notebooks full of images taken from magazines, newspapers and the web of anything creative that catches my eye from a particular shade of pink on a cupcake to the way a curtain falls. I started the first book about six years ago and I'm still going.
It's a great way to have everything that appeals to me in one place. Whenever I happen to be in an op-shop, I always look for
magazines - old copies of Inside Out, Real Living and Vogue Living are always worth snapping up.


3.
Check out my favourite websites: Meet Me At Mikes, Loobylu, Posie Gets Cozie, Craftapooloza, Du Buh Du Design, High Up In The Trees, Jane Brocket, Make+Meaning are just some of the creative blogs that never fail to strike a spark.

4.
Trawl through my Japanese Craft books. These are a lot easier to get these days, especially via ebay.
Great photos, wonderful step-by-step instructions, these aren't cheap but I find them endlessly inspiring.




5.
Sketch. Here's the thing. I can't draw to save myself but picking up a pencil and making lines on a page helps me to loosen up. Often the project I end up making has nothing to do with sketching but somehow it's all connected.

6.
Take photos. I carry a Canon IXUS everywhere I go.

7. Read the latest and back issues of Mixtape. This is a little craft magazine published in Australia and every issue is packed with diverse stories about crafting, books, recipes and music. It's a corker and worth every cent.

8. Listen to Craftsanity - a weekly crafty pod-cast by Jennifer Ackerman-Haywood.

What about you?

What do you do to get needle, hook, paint brush, pencil going?

Beach Day Feeling

Sunday's Kitchen

Last Sunday Em and I went to the launch of Sunday's Kitchen by Lesley Harding and Kendrah Morgan. In Sunday Reed's garden at Heide (at the Museum of Modern Art), in the blazing sun, this gorgeous book got its start in the world.

Part cookbook, part social history, Sunday's Kitchen is all about the domestic and artistic lives of a group of artists (Sidney Nolan, Albert Tucker, Arthur Boyd, Joy Hester, John Perceval, Charles Blackman and countless others) who met regularly at Heide to share in the lives of Sunday and John Reed.

Sunday and John were living sustainably long before it became popular. They grew their own vegies, milked their own cows, made butter, bread, preserves and used their way of life to cultivate and support an artistic circle of visual artists, poets and writers right up until their deaths in 1981. John died of cancer in December and Sunday died just ten days later. Every day at 4pm, Sunday would have 'Arvo Tea' which, ''signalled not only the end of a day's work, but also a forum for intelligent conversation and debate''.

Today the original house, now a gallery, still stands. My favourite room is the library/lounge. This is where the Reeds would sit after dinner, smoking, drinking and talking. It's not a big room but the walls are lined with books and somehow it feels like the heart of the house.

Here are some photos from Sunday's Kitchen.

Quilt+2dogs=potential disaster

So. I'd never made a quilt before. A few pre-cutting nerves and soon I had a neat(ish) stack of squares. Sew, sew, zip, zip. I get half the top done and decide I need more squares. I hang my half made-quilt over the back of my chair and start thinking about colours and prints. More flowers? Some stripes? The dogs had been in the craft room all morning. Outside it was pouring down in heavy sheets. I'm still pondering when I see a flash of colour out the corner of my eye.

That's when the screaming began.

Toby (Jack Russell) has one end of my quilt.
Mouse (Fox Terreir) has the other.
They are pulling in opposite directions.

Some sort of Crafting Miracle took place because I managed to gently extract it from their bitey jaws in one piece.

Now I know why quilting is so difficult.

Anyway. The whole thing took me all day but I was happy with it in the end. There's no lovely top-stitching or binding. And I don't think it'll be handed down from one generation to the next - but it's official. I've made my first quilt and not even dogs could stop me.

POSTSCRIPT: SNAP! For more dog vs quilt go to Posie Gets Cozy

Finished WIP

All done.

Camilla Engman: The Suitcase Series

I've been an admirer of Camilla Engman's work for some time, especially her drawings and painting that often feature strange looking people in even stranger looking forests. I read her blog and enjoy posts about her dog Morran and her daily life in Gothenburg, Sweden.

I stumbled across The Suitcase Series on her blog. It looks like the first of a collection of books published by Uppercase that focus on different artists from around the world. You can buy it here. It's one of the most creatively inspiring books I've read in ages. It arrived with lots of extra goodies, too; postcards and a print and a small booklet all about Morran.

The book kicks off with a chapter on Camilla's childhood but goes on to delves into her art, why she creates, her inspirations and attitude towards 'making'. I've been carrying around for ages and each time I get the chance, I dip into it and feel a little creative charge that makes me think...it's time I got some making done myself.


Oh, can you spot one of Loobylu's creations up there on the shelf?

It's true - it's good to have at least one family member who has a house/shack/van near the beach. We only had a night and a day but we packed it in. My sister (a great cook) made hot, buttery pancakes. There was swimming and sailing and walking the dogs on the beach. Hours by the sea can equal days...

Typical!

Three weeks off and I wait until the last day to get all crafty! This little doll (still painfully inside out) is far from original. I was inspired by Posie Gets Cozy and her lovely doll on the cover of Stitched in Time. Will let you know how she turns out. Ha ha.

PS Ah yes! Also influenced by the talented Apolline a Paris. Thanks Papillion Bleu UK!

Strawberry Fields Forever

Sunny Ridge, isn't that a perfect name for a Strawberry Farm? Early yesterday morning we headed for the sea-side hills of Flinders to get the jump on what was a very hot day. We got to the farm by 10am, paid $8 and was each handed a large (empty) punnet and headed for the biggest strawberry patch in the world. Can you see how red they are? In the field, each ripe strawberry was like a tiny, red glowing globe - even in the bright sun - you could see hundreds of them hiding in the dark leaves. And the taste? Some were gently warmed by the sun, others were cooler and smelled sweet like summer.

Pretty Paintings from Paris

A quick trip to Canberra to see Masterpieces from Paris at the National Gallery. We got there early and had our tickets but there was still a long (but very quiet) line weaving into the gallery. I guess we shuffled for just over an hour until we got even a glance at the pictures.

I'd never seen a real Degas before so seeing Dancers climbing the stairs was amazing. One of the dancers has a blue bow looked as if it has sparkles in the paint, as if it was illuminated somehow.

Claude Monet's London, Parliament: sun through the fog was mind-boggling. Nothing in the painting is clear, just shades of light and dark and smudges but you can see the sun setting behind the bank of fog.

There was a big crowd around Vincent van Gogh's Starry night. How did he do it? The depth of the yellow stars? The inky sky. You can almost hear the water lapping. Insane.

One of my favourites was Rest by Vilhelm Hammershoi. A woman sitting in a wooden chair, you never see her face, just the back of her head; her hair in a up-sweep, a table and part of a white, scalloped plate. So still and muted.



On the way out of the gallery grounds we went though The Fog Garden - great timing. We left in a haze.

It was my second trip to Canberra but it always feels the same, like a photograph taken on a hot day.

My holiday days are running out. Picking strawberries in Flinders tomorrow or not!

Brand New Decade - 2010

Not a big fan of resolutions - usually. Maybe it's the new decade thing but I've been doing quite a bit of reflecting. I think turning 40 had some part to play. It didn't hit me on the way up but rather blind-sided me on the way past. 2009 was a mixed bag. Work sucked energy big time. I crafted less, I played less, I got more annoyed about the little things.

I work to daily deadlines and in the past I've managed to meet them and leave them behind at a days end, but 2009 was different, a new (exciting job) had those invisible lines chasing me home and controlling all the fun stuff, too. Trains suddenly had to be caught, stuff had to be 'perfect' and often wasn't. I said Yes when I should of said No. By mid July the craft room was getting dusty.

I didn't put the lids back on, stuff got wasted.

I want this year to be different. I want to get some balance back and have more fun. I want to get fitter, sleep better, listen more, read more, judge less, fret less, laugh more, try and fail and not care, make things, draw things, see the little things, fight the big things and put the lids back on.

Meanwhile, a lovely illustration by Nicoletta Ceccoli. Hope you have a good 2010. x

Larking About...

We drove up to Daylesford yesterday to visit Lark! It's just as lovely as I imagined, full of cute & clever crafty goods and some eye-catching unexpected things like pink and green tipped matches and red and white paper straws. As if I wasn't excited enough, Allison also has a range of Paumes books and Paris Kitchens came home with me. Now I want to do two things: renovate the kitchen AND fly to Paris, via Tokyo. See what a harmless trip to the country can do? Here's a few pics of the day.

Books I'm moving in with over Summer

Three weeks, too many books. Not sure which titles I'll actually get through but I'm not going to give up without a fight. I'm gonna push a big old arm-chair right into the middle of the garden and starting reading...in no particular order...


1. The Dome by Stephen King.
''The first thing readers might find scary about Stephen King's Under The Dome is its length. The second is the elaborate town map and list of characters at the front of the book (including "Dogs of Note"), which sometimes portends, you know, heavy lifting. Don't you believe it. Breathless pacing and effortless characterization are the hallmarks of King's best books, and here the writing is immersive, the suspense unrelenting. The pages turn so fast that your hand--or Kindle-clicking thumb--will barely be able to keep up.''

2. The Children Who Lived in a Barn by Eleanor Graham
''This 1938 novel became a children's literature classic when it was reissued as a Puffin paperback in 1955; but Persephone Books has published it for both adults and children to read. It shows five children successfully looking after themselves when their parents go away and fail to return; and 'it is partly because of modern curtailment of childhood independence that Persephone Books (which has a cult following for its elegant resurrection of novels by women writers) has reissued the novel,' wrote Rachel Johnson on the Daily Telegraph.''

3. Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
''England, the 1520s. Henry VIII is on the throne, but has no heir. Cardinal Wolsey is his chief advisor, charged with securing the divorce the pope refuses to grant. Into this atmosphere of distrust and need comes Thomas Cromwell, first as Wolsey′s clerk, and later his successor.''

4. Mother Land by Dmetri Kakmi
''Mother land is a memoir by Melbourne writer Dmetri Kakmi, about his childhood in the late 1960s on the island of Bozcaada (also known as Bozca Island) in the Aegean Sea, at the entrance to the Dardanelle Straits, at a time when political tensions between Greece and Turkey were at their peak, and the islands Greek population was subject to intimidation by its Turkish government.''

5. Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe by Randy Taraborrelli
''Beautiful, damaged, the ultimate sex symbol, publicly celebrated, privately unhappy – Marilyn Monroe's tumultuous life and untimely death continue to fascinate us.''

What are you reading?

Tis the season...

FROM THIS




TO THIS



INSPIRED by Posie Gets Cozy and her charming mantel.