Onwards and Upwards....

Hi Everybody,

Just a quick post today to say thankyou to everyone who has been in touch about the Big Name Change......

Your support and encouragement means the world to me, thankyou.

I've come up with a new name, googled it a thousand times, and I've lived with it for a week, and decided it's The One.
Now I'm setting everything up in the background, so that when I switch over, it will run as seamlessly as possible.

Hopefully I'll be all sorted out in the next couple of days.

I can't even begin to express my gratitute that my regular readers, and some new, warmly welcomed ones have taken the time to let me know that I have your support, and that the coincedence of the similar names was nobody's fault, and just One of Those Things.

Thankyou Thankyou Thankyou.

I'll keep you all posted!

Cheers,

Leah xx

Retail Therapy....

Yep. That's right. I bought a new washing machine. (actually, I interest-freed it, which isn't really the same thing, but whatthehell...)

It's an LG washer/dryer combo, which to me sounds rather terrifying, but they insist it works, so I'll have to trust the whitegoods gods on that.

After endless trips to the laundromat, and/or trying to tempt the old washing machine to take on more than a pair of socks without throwing a tantrum, I finally reneged, and just went and got a new one.

And, as I am defiantly still clinging onto my Twenties, I refuse to get too excited over the prospect of Properly Clean Clothes, steam and refresh cycles, and fluffy towels. Surely it is the absolute right of the 28 year old woman to bite her thumb at whitegoods and buy a handbag or some shoes or an ipod instead.

Alas, I have been saying for a long time that I am an eighty-something year old woman trapped in a twenty-something's body.

The truth always comes out in the wash, or so they say.

In other news, my Best Friend In The Whole World gets married on Saturday, and I'm not going to be there, so Katie, my love, have a fabulous day.

It's been raining, so no quilt tutorial yet.....but soon...!
xxx

Flashback Friday.

This week, My Dad.

This is Dad, with his mates, loitering in the streets of Warrnambool, Victoria, some time in the 60's. (he's the one on the right)

From what i hear, Dad was exactly what he looks in this photo; a country boy, one of the lads, who got up to all measure of trouble whilst hooning around on the weekends. I know he was at least personally responsible for setting half the beach on fire, and tying his best friend, drunk and naked, to a lampost in the centre of town. (and check out those cars!)

My parents met (or got together) at the Palais, the local dance hall. A quick survey of the other kids at my high school told me that about 80% of people's parents met at the Palais. Kind of like a random parent lottery, eh?

Dad was raised by a horse racing family. Apart from tending horses, he has also been a butcher, a welder, and a dairy farmer.
Endlessly practical, he can build anything. We once took a tour of all my parents' old houses, and most of them were falling down, except for the chook houses, which Dad built. When he and my mother were planning to buy a camper trailer, he told the salesman all the reasons why the trailer wasn't built well enough, and they offered him a job.

He showed his love for us by working like a dog, alongside my Mum, on a farm that yielded not much other than shit and pain and strife, for close to 30 years. But since he's retired, he's gone all soft, especially since my sister had her kids. It's one of the most fantastic things to see a big, gruff, hard as nails farming man rolling around on the floor with his grandkids.

He and my Mum are still together. I am lucky to have them as my parents.

You can see other Flashbacks at Flashback Friday

New Nongs....

Here's a couple more little buggers that I've been working on for the last few days...

This one is one of the best of the lot....I've changed the pattern around a little, trying to make the limbs sit a little better, and changing the place where I leave it open for stuffing......

Oh, and in case you were wondering, Nongs never have arms. It's just the way it is. For some reason I don't think they need them...

This one is from the old pattern....so is a little more wonky than I would like....

It is satisfying to know that each one I make does get a little better, though... I'm still not convinced that anyone will actually want to buy them, but after I've made a few more, I think I'll list them in my shop, and see what happens.....

Right now, I'm tossing up between opening an Etsy shop, tried, true and tested, or going out on a limb with a similar site that is Australian-focused.... It's called MadeIt, and it's the same as Etsy, really, just an Australian company, using Aussie dollars, and open to overseas buyers anyway, with PayPal and all that jazz...... So I can't see that it would make a HUGE difference which one I should choose, I guess I just feel like I should give the local one a try......

Anyways, whatever I decide, you'll all be the first to know!

Well, it's Taiwanese Noodle Soup time for me, before a crazy Friday night working at the pub......see you all after the weekend!

* Oh, and for those of you who asked - I HAVE finished Harry Potter, and I've added an email address at the top right of the page, so if you want to email me about Harry, or anything else for that matter, go ahead! xxxx

Resolution...

I resolve to refrain from blogging until I have finished reading this....

I actually haven't started it yet, because I'm working today and tommorrow, but come Tuesday? The fire will be lit, a pot of tea made, and I'm not getting off the couch for hell or high water!

Happy reading everyone!
xxx

Fabric, and where to find it.....

I've had a couple of people ask me lately where I shop for fabric, so I thought I'd share a few of my favourites with you....

Sourcing and buying fabric you like can be a little difficult, but perseverence does pay off in the end!
Patchworking or quilting fabrics are really popular amongst crafters, the 100% cotton fibre feels wonderful and is great to work with, the prints are many and varied, and it's easy to buy small amounts, stash it away, and figure out what to make from it later.

The main problem I have with quilting fabric is that I am VERY picky when it comes to pattern. I prefer bolder, brighter styles, have an aversion (in most cases) to floral, and despise pink. Many many many quilting fabrics don't fall into this category. Luckily though, there are some designers that favour bold prints, and the new generation of crafters are inspiring a greater variety of fabrics, rather than your traditional pinks, muddy colours, tiny florals and such.
One of my favourite designers, Denyse Schmidt, makes a gorgeous range of bright cotton prints with vintage influences that I really love. The fabrics are a little lighter in weight than I am used to, but the prints are GORGEOUS.

So, advice number one, find some designers you really like, and follow their collections. That being said, ONLY buy fabrics you love, or think you can love. There's no point buying a whole stack of Amy Butler prints if you hate the colourways. Buying designer fabric just because it's designer is just as absurd to me as spending the equivalent of a small house on a handbag just because it's a Vuitton. You might have fashionista cred, but your handbag will still be fucking ugly!

Tip number two: Buy Online. In Australia, the average price for quilting cotton is around 20 - 25 dollars a metre. Online, the same fabric sells for anywhere between US$5 - $20 a yard. In most cases, even including postage, exchange rate, and yards versus metres, The fabric I buy online ends up costing me about half the price it would if I bought it retail in Australia. This is a real pity for me, I would much prefer to go to the fabulous local quilting shop and buy up a storm, but the reality is, I just can't afford to.
Instead, I frequent a few select online fabric stores that come highly recommended by other crafters, and have always provided me with consistently good product and service. A few of my favourites?

Superbuzzy specialises in japanese fabrics, notions, books and supplies, stocks a brilliant range of weird and wonderful bits and pieces, and every time you order something, they send you some Japanese lollies as well! The fabrics I used in my pincushion tutorial are both from Superbuzzy - Some of thier fabrics are a bit cutesy-poo for me, but they do stock some great bright, graphic prints as well.

Repro Depot sell a fantastic rance of vintage and retro themed fabric, buttons, patches, trim and notions. They always have something on sale, and unlike other stores, the sale bin usually has something good in it, rather than just the ugly fabric no-one wants to buy!

Another fabric store I love is Z and S Fabrics. They sell lots of my favourite designers, have a good turnaround on new fabrics, and a range that is so big, I can't even get my head around it.

I have purchased fabrics from all of these stores, and can personally recommend them. There are loads of others, feel free to look at them too, but I'm sticking to places I have actually bought fabric from for this post....

Tip Number Three - Don't forget the Op Shop. Thrifted fabric is brilliant. It's cheap, varied, compatible with re-use and re-cycle ethics, and usually of a nature that you will not find anywhere else. Keep an eye out in your favourite thrift shops, it's amazing how much fabric is out there if you look for it.
Depending on what it is that you make, don't forget to rummage through not only the fabric bin, but the sheets and linens, tea towels and blankets. Clothing can be cut up and made into other things, especially fabric heavy items like skirts, sarongs, shawls and dresses. Wool jumpers or sweaters can be felted in the washing machine with soap and hot water, and used to make other things. At the op shop, anything is possible. Learn to see the fabric, not the ugly outfit. Some of my favourite fabrics have been found in the op shop, and you'll usually get much larger amounts of fabric too!

Tip Number Four: Your bog-standard fabric shop. I still routinely drop into Lincraft and Spotlight, and never leave Ikea without at least a metre of fabric under my arm. These places are full of mass produced shit, but sometimes there's a gem in there that you'll die over.
On one of my last Spotlight visits I got 5 metres of lightweight linen for $2 a metre because it was old summer stock.
The fabric at Ikea is big and bright and bold, cheap as, and heavyweight cotton drill to boot. Perfect for furnishings and cushions, things you might get sick of in six months and want to change. There's no shame in a chain store, just remember to ONLY BUY FABRIC YOU ACTUALLY LIKE!!!!! Same rules apply as for designer - don't buy it just because it's cheap! Only buy it if you really like it or you know EXACTLY what you're going to use it for!

Well, that's it. The Mega Fabric Post!

My only last peice of advice is: don't be afraid to buy fabric, don't worry about what it was before, never mind if you don't know exactly what you're going to make out of it (as long as you love it, that is!), and when you get it home, don't be afraid to cut into it!

I hope that's been of some help to those of you who asked.....
xxx

Back......(well, sort of)

Having a week or so away from blogging has been weird. Even though I haven't been doing this for very long, the habit of taking photographs, and planning little posts in my head has definately taken hold......

My computer is still in the shop, they haven't managed to find the problem, and are going to charge me through the nose for the fact that there is nothing wrong with the bloody thing, so I haven't been in to pick it up yet. In the meantime, I have dragged the old laptop out of it's retirement, happily playing music in the bedroom, to a more rigorous life as bloggers' assistant, and it's taken me this long to get all the software and bookmarks and such updated.

Anyhoo..... you would think that a week off with a newly repaired sewing machine would result in lots of things to show and tell, but I stupidly decided to do this instead.....

Namely, pulling everything out of the spare bedroom, and deciding that it will be the spectacular new home to all my sewing gear, now that it is winter, and the tiny little room off the front verandah is just not cutting it as a studio for me.....

Now, lots of furniture moving later, it's looking a little like this:

There's a distinct lack of colour in there, but I'm working on the more decorative features now......
But by far the most exiting thing is this:
This is part of my fabric stash before the renovation.....

And after following a Brilliant Tutorial, my fabrics look like this:

So so so so so much better........ I always wondered how Other.
People managed to keep thier fabrics is such good order....but now the secret's out! Not only is this an incredibly anal and satisfying thing to do when you're procrastinating, it does have some other bonus points as well..... When your fabric is folded this way, I swear, it takes up about a third of the space it did before. Those shelves were full to the brim, bursting out all over the place with higgeldy piggeldy piles of fabric....... Not Good.

The other thing is how such a process reaquaints you with your stash. There are fabrics in there I had totally forgotten about. And a whole pile of others I decided I didn't like anymore, so I'll probably send them back to the op shop from whence they came.... and while you're mediatively folding your fabric, you also subconsciously decide what you're going to make out of it.

Anyway, so that's what I've been doing. No, I haven't made a single fucking thing yet. But I'm organised at least. That's something, right?

Before I go, I must send out a thankyou to my sister, who sent me this in the mail while I was offline....

Another little pile of vintage brilliance, with a tote bag pattern to go with it.

She's the only person in my real world who actually reads my blog, for some reason I'm really shy about it, and I get embarrased when I talk about it. Most people know I'm up to something, but I don't share the details. It's weird, I know, but there you have it. So thanks Leonie, for knowing me well enough to not laugh at my weirdness, and sharing my love of making the best of what you can find.......xxxxx

I'll be back in full force over the next week - once I've put everything back where it's supposed to be......

Self Portrait Saturday

Pretending to be asleep.....

Sometimes I think it's nice to see who you're "talking" to. Posting photos of yourself on the internet is something that is fraught with insecurities, for me, not so much about how I will look, but more about whether I am comfortable with having no control whatsoever over who may see it. But, having shared many other things about my life here, I think it should be fitting to share the face that goes with all the thoughts......so, hello! It's lovely to meet you!

Simple Things....

Today I had a day off. No sewing, no working, no Op Shopping, just this:

Lots of cups of tea.....

Reading in bed......(I've read two books in two days.....once I get my nose in one, I can't seem to get it out....)

And crumpets with lots of honey......

It's been so long since I had a lazy day like this that I feel a little guilty....but I'm blaming it on the weather, which has turned bitterly cold, and makes going outside too much of a trauma for my poor, skinny bones.....!

In other news, I have joined two more new Flickr groups, and so should you!

Breakfast Sunday

and Thrifty Colour Themes

Tomorrow I will be out and about again.....in the meantime though, I'm getting back in front of the fire to toast my toes......

Thrifted Tuesday + Blog Crush.....

Woot! I finally have my car back (mind you, $800 later....), so today I could go out for a spot of op shopping......funny how taking just a week off sends me into withdrawal symptoms.....

Today's haul was nothing too flash, but satisfying nonetheless....

A few more vintage fabrics to add to the stash...

Including one pillowcase that is so cute it almost makes me want to vomit....

I don't normally do cutesy-poo....but I really wanted the yellow print to put into my quilt, Lord knows what to do with the mini lovers......

I also managed a good shoe day today, three pairs of brilliant, ludicrously bright 80's numbers, all too small for me, so heading to the Ebay Shop....

I also managed to find a very cute coat for my neice....which I haven't photographed yet, because I might do some embellishments, and that will be a post all of its own....

I also scored a few vintage dresses, also destined for Ebay....

And for my partner, who is irrepressibly English, a book to add to his collection....

So there you have it....Thrifted Tuesday!

Now onto more important matters......

After my Internet Frustration post the other day, I got so many gorgeous emails of encouragement on the being real issue, plus the swearing when I want to! I found out that lots of us pretend we are on a TV show like Martha Stewart or Jamie Oliver, pottering around the house performing to entirely imaginary audiences, and that all of us have that Authorial Voice (kudos to Shula for the term), and that we take photos of the good bits, leave out the messy bits when we can, but in the end, we are all fucking human after all.

I can't begin to say how nice it is to recieve letters of encouragement after taking a leap of faith on a post like that. Suddenly I understand why I so often read on the blogs of people I admire posts full of admiration and gratitude to thier readers for being supportive. I extend such grateful thanks to my tiny little readership, and consider myself a pig in shit for having made such lovely aquaintances. (notice the swearing.....oh how naturally it flows.....)

Anyway, so in spirit of this gratitude, I am devising a new topic. It's called Blog Crush, and this here, it's the first one.

So you know how you'll discover a new blog, and you feel so enamoured or connected to the person who writes it that suddenly they are on your favourites list, you're checking every day to see if they've posted yet, you get excited about their projects, their new curtains, their children, their problems? So much so that you feel weird leaving them comments in case you sound like a stalker? This my dears, is a Blog Crush. And I have decided to bare my Blog Crushes to the world, semi-regularly, to let some fabulous people on the net know that I think what they do is wonderful. In a friendly non-stalkery kind of way........

And the honour of first Blog Crush has to go to Manda, of TreeFall Design. I don't know how I found Manda's blog, but it was one of the first craft blogs I started reading, and her links list has led me to a whole world of creative brilliance.

She has an impossibly cute daughter, a husband who doesn't mind how much fabric she buys, and sometimes even shops for it with her....

She makes beautiful collages and patchwork pillows and sometimes toys and things, which you can buy Here

But the best thing about Manda is that she is real, she writes about her life in a way that makes you feel included as a reader, and this, more than the fact that she makes fabulous cushions, is why I read her blog. One of the best bits of reading about the lives of other creative people is that you realise how similar we all are, whether it be a sudden hankering for all things yellow, or how we pull ourselves together after a fall, or the mini Martha Stewart in all our heads......

So thanks Manda, this one's for you.....

Cheers!

(I also should say that I totally stole the above pictures from Mandas blog.... so make sure you go visit and see them in context, and know that all copyright belongs to her......)

Internet Frustration.....

So I have been a subscriber to Bloglines for a little while now, and I have decided to abandon it. Not because it's not useful in being able to see when your favourite blogs have been updated ( and my favourites list is quite exhaustive), but I get annoyed at not being able to see the posts in the beauty the writers intended, including layout, colours, and how the post looks in relation to the layout of the blog itself, but also, COMMENTS!

Ok, maybe this is a newbie bloggy preoccupation, but I am holding bloglines personally responsible for the fact that people don't leave enough comments for each other. This may be due to the fact that, as a new blogger, whenever I get a comment I am left irrationally excited, quickly rushing over to the comment leavers' blog and wondering how on earth some fabulous knitter from Canada, or a crafty maven from San Fransisco possibly found me on the endless sea of the internet.

Is there some way of leaving comments from Bloglines that I don't know about? If not, I am still going to use it to check for updates, but I will insist on viewing the proper page to read said updates. So There. (end rant here)

On another note, I have been mulling over the need to find my true voice on this blog. For some reason, when I sit down to write a post, I slip into some other kind of weird alter ego where I am nice and polite and super excited about everything and I never swear or use any kind of witticism. Ever.

I also tend to use Americanisms like "thrifting" instead of "op shopping" (though I do like "thrifting" as a term in itself).
It may come as a slight surprise, dear readers, but I have actually spent most of my adult life writing and reading Art Theory, swearing like a fucking sailor, and chain smoking cigarettes. In my time, I have been a hardcore feminist, activist, punk, hippy, traveller, art student, painter, seamstress, cocktail waitress (don't ask.....or maybe do!!), bartender, writer of terrible typewritten poetry, and god knows what in between.

I think I just needed to get all of that out in the open, just so you don't think I'm some prissy little woman who sits at home embriodering her doilys. All power to you if you are a prissy woman, but it's just not me.

Hmmmm.... now this has turned into one of those posts you think twice about publishing, so I'm going to press that button before I chicken out.

Oh.... and the computer above shows Shim and Sons in all it's non-bloglines glory.
Cheers.

A Good Way to Start the Day...

An email from my sister, introducing me to the newest addition to our family.......

Followed by some tea in the increasingly rare sun....

And some hand quilting practice.....

I read somewhere that there was a woman who set some new sewers a task: take two peices of fabric that are easy to sew together, and working from one end, hand sew the fabrics together working towards the other end; as you work, you'll be able to see your stitches go from being uneven and ragged, to fine, straight and beautiful, or so the theory goes!
Having intended to hand quilt the Patchwork number I have been working on, given that it is already paper pieced and ready to hand sew together, I figure, why not go the whole way and do the whole thing by hand???? (i know, I know...madness!)
Anyhoo, I found this hand quilting tutorial, and set to work with three layers of fabric, a layer of thick wool for the batting, sandwiched between two layers of cotton.
Well. I tell you what, this quilting caper aint for the faint hearted. As you can probably see, my stitches are freaking everywhere. Messy, ragged, uneven, and I tell you what....they're not getting straighter any time soon.

I think it might be time to go out and buy that walking foot and just machine quilt the thing. This is all beside the point that I haven't even pieced the bloody thing together yet because I can't for the life of me figure out a design I'm happy with.

But in the meantime, I'm enjoying playing around with this:

It's called Fabric Matcher, and it's an online qilting store that has a tool where you can match fabrics to a hex colour, a picture, by pattern, by complimentary or harmonious colour scheme, and more, and when you find the fabrics you like, they'll sell them to you by the half yard. Lots of fun.

And just to finish up, here's a quick photo of my finished "one-skein-cowl-project-that-turned-into-two-skein-bizarre-scarf-thingy-project"

I just took that picture on the webcam, hence it's terrible quality. It's a little bulkier than I wanted, but its two layers of knitting keeps my neck super warm, and in the end, that's exactly what it's for.....!!

Hope you're all having fun, wherever you are!

Stuck.

Right now, I'm stuck at home with a car that won't start, a backseat full of washing I was going to take to the laundromat ( the bloody washing machine has broken) and a belly that is still complaining that it hasn't got it's favourite noodles for breakfast.

But in the spirit of making the best of the time until the roadside assistance people come, I have some pictures to show you......

These pictures are dedicated to the lovely Shula, whose gorgeous blog and knitting pursuits make me wish I were a more accomplished knitter, plus she got quite excited to hear that I live in a cemetery...... so here you go:

Work In Progress this week is a one skein cowl project that has somehow mutated into a two skein bizarre scarf thingy project.... perhaps a result of my refusal to follow any kind of pattern..... I tend to see something, say "I can make that" and just knit away, totally oblivious to the fact that I have NO IDEA what I'm doing! Patience? A Virtue?? What on earth are you talking about?????

I was planning to keep knitting at the laundromat, see, but instead I went out and took some promised photos of the cemetery.....

(see how those two photos are REALLY SMALL? That's becase if I put the medium sized ones in, blogger chops out the most important parts on the right hand side to fit them in my blog......GRRRRRR!!! If you want to see them at proper size, just click on them and you'll see a bigger one..... sorry!)

It's really old, the cemetery, dating back to the late 1800's, and sadly, it hasn't been cared for as it should have been, it's a bit drab, with hardly any plants or lawns, and the part next to the house is very bare and barren looking.....that's the house at the very end there in the picture below......

We only have one angel, she's for a woman named Florence.....

But it's the details that I like best......

And there is always some fake flowers.....at the moment there are quite a lot of flowers because of Mothers' Day....

It sounds a little depressing, I'm sure, but I actually love living here..... and it does have it's comical side, like when I need to light a fire and I venture out into the cemetery to collect some kindling, possibly in my bright red slippers and some random assortment of scarves and jumpers, and then people ride past on thier bikes and look at me like I'm the crazy cat lady or something...... I love the thought that the local kids might think I'm a witch, or that it's spooky, when, in fact, it's the most peaceful place I've ever lived, with the exception of the farm I grew up on.

Well, that's me for today, I'm off to make tea and look out for the magic car man.....xxx

Finally.....

After the last few months of organising, reassessing, dropping out of uni, resting, working, and farewelling of old friends, habits and worries, I have begun to make things again.

The studio is finally functional, and though, being in a heritage listed rental cottage, I don't have the permissions necessary to do a Heather, or indeed, a Manda,
at least I have a space where everything has a place, (well, nearly), and I can be comfortable, and work.

The Stash is coming along nicely, soon to be boosted with some purchases from
Cia's Palette (thanks Manda!)

And my new Work In Progress is a baby quilt, possibly for my sister, made from some gorgeous soft linen placemats I found the other day, patchworked and quilted.

And of course, one of my favourite things about living where I do: the view of the cemetery!

I live in what used to be the caretakers' cottage of a local cemetery.... the oldest graves come right up to the side of the house on one side, and date back as late as the 1800's. The cemetery runs alongside the major river of my city, and there is a bike path that leads to the city in one direction, and the sea in the other.

When the local council took over caring for the cemetery, they decided to rent out the cottage now that there was no longer any need for a caretaker, and that's where I come in. Though it's an unusual place to live, it's actually quite peaceful, and I love it dearly. Though sometimes I would trade it in, no question for a big house with lots of space, filled with natural light, in actual fact I would be very sad to leave.

One day, when I have some more time, I'll take some photographs out there to show you! But for now, I'm off to get some sewing done!