Stash Avalanche

Colour

I think the combination of small boy + spring has infected me. I am so looking forward to Easter, it's ridiculous. Mr G will be having a rare long weekend so I hope the weather will be kind to us and we can Go Places and Do Things.

In the meantime, I seem to be having a bit of a colour frenzy. Stashlet was doing some 'sticking' the other afternoon (ie. I cut out interesting shapes in coloured paper and he makes collages) and on a sudden whim I made a whole load of paper lanterns.

Mr G and I have an on-going argument about net curtains. I hate them, he can't live without them. So as a compromise, I thought that filling the window with paper lanterns would do instead. They'll please me because they're not nets, and they'll please Mr G because no one can peer through the window at him (silly boy, as if!).

So far I only have one string up but they look surprisingly effective, so as soon as we're lanterned-up, I'll let you know.

And back on the Easter theme, I am itching to make some of these chicks. Ever since I saw the photos of them moonwalking, I knew they were the birds for me.

I found a lovely new seller, Paper and String, and look what the postman delivered yesterday...

12" squares of 40% wool felt. Lovely stuff. If you're a need-to-know kind of person, the colours are (from top to bottom) raspberry, thistle, lemon, orange, cornflower, pistachio, apple and chartreuse. 

The greens and orange are for another easter-ish project: carrots for Stashlet's rabbit, but don't be surprised if some birds appear in carroty colours as well.

You can get the tutorial over at Myrtle & Eunice, which is a newly discovered blog of mine. Now I just need to source some wire for the legs and stock up on stuffing. They'll be too big to sit in last year's Easter tree, so we'll be having two this year.

See? Told you I'd been infected.

Happy Tuesday!

Sewing for other people

You may now turn over your paper.

Here's the thing:  call me fussy, posessive or whatever, but I generally only make things for people who I know are going to appreciate what I made. If I know that my gift is going to get stomped on and left out in the mud, I don't give it. I put love into the things I make and I suppose I expect people to respect that. 

This includes food by the way, but we're talking crafting here today.

Conversely, giving hand made things to people I hardly know can be an eye opener in terms of whether they are my kind of person or not. Give them something I made with love and see what they do - a distracted "that's nice" and forget about it, or actually appreciate my time and effort, and be grateful for my thoughtfulness.

Outside the cozy bubble that is handmade blog and crafting land, making things by hand still seems, to some people at least, to be the cheap way out, with a nice box with Gap or whatever on the front being the preferred option. Strange that spending time and making an effort takes a lower place than buying something made by a machine or a poorly paid worker half way round the world.

I'm not sure if I'm taking things too personally (after all, once I give it it's theirs to do as they wish with it) or whether I have the right to expect respect. I think mostly think the latter.

Discuss.

Xmas decorations

I'm big into snow flakes this year so we have plenty  - some of which still need stringing up! The big fancy ones are from a  post that Kate at M is for Make did last year. In fact, I cut them out last year and they sat in a cupboard for 12 months before I managed to make them up (sigh). I wanted to make tiny little ones out of tracing paper but joining them up was so fiddly that I gave up - next year perhaps...

I'm always a big fairy lights fan so we have plenty of those too, and because I rather short-sightedly threw out the branch which has been our xms tree for the last few years last month, we have very few tree-ish places to hang decorations. So some baubles on the fig trees, and my lovely Dutch porcelain ornaments over the fire place.

Have a lovely Christmas everyone xx

Xmas tree

Did I ever show you this?

There's an elm tree at the end of our road and a big branch blew off it in a gale, the first winter after we moved in, so I sawed a bit off and turned it into our xmas tree for that year. Then when I lost my job and had time on my hands I made it some giant cherry blossoms using a scaled down version of Martha Stewart's Tissue Paper Pom Poms and leaves made with two layers of crepe paper stuck together with doubl sided sticky tape (coz I couldn't find any decent thickness crepe paper in the shops).

The blossoms stayed up last Xmas because we went to Germany and didn't do any decorating, but this year we're staying in Ireland so I thought the blossoms could do with a rest (and the leaves had bleached in the sun and were falling to bits anyway). So I did a minor bit of festive decorating (I'm not really one for artfully placed glass baubles in bowls) and came up with this:

You know how fairy lights come with two strings twined together? Well I untwined them this time so they will probably be a complete bugger to get off. But until then, pretty.

And in the spring, I will probably bring back the cherry blossom/pompoms with some more technologically advanced (!) leaves.

And on two unrelated notes, I finally wrote my Xmas cards today although given the current weather (we've had about 8" of snow in the last 24 hours, there is very little road salting/gritting, and practically no-one clears the pavement in front of their house so post collection and delivery is pretty hit and miss) it will be probably be Easter before anyone gets one, and I've added a couple of new links to the Baby page aka Bump related stuff. I had been hoping to add things more frequently but trying to finish my course has meant that baby stuff has been somewhat neglected of late. Things should improve in the new year, even if I haven't written my final essay - it'll be a race to see which arrives first, baby or baby stuff - so there should be plenty to add.

 

 

Dublin Knitting and Stitch Show 2010

This is the third year running I've been to the Dublin Knitting and Stitch Show at the RDS, and I must say that it's the best yet.

Since I moved to Ireland I've found that craft shops, yarn shops and fabric shops are much rarer than in the UK (where you're spoilt for choice and practically tripping over them) so I look at the DKSS a bit like a parched man in the desert looks at an oasis!

In previous years the focus has very much been on quilting and paper crafts, and there were still plenty of these, but this year there were many more yarn sellers, and people selling more contemporary fabrics suitable for clothing (Amy Butler and the like). 

I'm not a stall photographer, and frankly even at 20 past 10 this morning it was really too heaving to be able to take decent stall photos, so you only get a photo of these gorgeous buttons; everything else I bought (apart from a tin of quilting safety pins) has gone in the wash already.

Aren't they beautiful? They're about 4cm in diameter and are made out of coconut shell. Loooovley...

And in my wanderings around the show, I discovered something, and it's this: the secret crafting centre of Ireland is Galway. I'm living in the wrong town! I was really surprised to find several really good stalls are based there, but it  is comforting to know that there are contemporary craft sellers alive and well on this island!

So I just wanted to do a tiny bit of name dropping of my favourite stalls of the morning, in case you're anywhere near Dublin between now and Sunday...

PippaBlue (from Galway) has lots of Amy Butler patterns and fabrics (including the laminated cottons), also Japanese fabric imports and some Heather Ross Far Far Away II fat quarters. I wanted a copy of Amy's new Sandalwood jacket pattern (and would have had a Rainy Days hooded raincoat pattern too) but they hadn't arrived in time for the show, although I was assured they'll be in the shop by next week.

Rags for Linda (also Galway based) had a really good selection of patchwork fabrics.

There were several other Galway-based stalls but I'm ashamed to say that  it was such a blur that I've forgotton who they were.

Village Fabrics  (from the UK) had a more traditional line of quilting fabrics but they also had several types of cotton batting, and were very helpful at recommending which was best for what.  Unfortunately they don't sell on the web but are very happy to post stuff out, and suggest co-ordinating fabrics etc if you send them swatches.

Doughty's (also UK based) are here again this year and have a quadruple sized stall of quilting cottons. I seem to remember i had quite a wodge of stuff from them last year, but this year I managed to stick to my shopping list (well, nearly) and didn't buy. But by the time I left, you had to practically elbow your way past them as there was such a frenzy of buying activity going on.  They do sell on-line, and have a good selection of Rowan fabrics.

It was also nice to see some of the local Dublin area shops had stalls this year, notably A. Rubanesque (who do more types of ribbon and trim than you could possibly imagine (and my lovely coconut buttons)) and Murphy Sheehy who had some fabulous (I mean FABULOUS!!!) bolts of wool for coats and some Liberty fabrics - can't see those hanging around for long. I was really tempted by the wools but didn't know how much I'd need for a coat so decided I might just have to had a trip to their Dublin shop next week instead.

I was disappointed that there were fewer stalls selling buttons this year (I had quite a few on my shopping list), and pleased to see fewer Ideal-Home-exhibition-type stalls (you know, the ones that sell plastic vegetable graters and non-stick egg timers). And it was also nice to see a drop-in learn-to-knit area (Knit 1 Pass it on) next to the cafe, as well as the usual workshops.

More on my fat quarters (of fabric, thank you very much!) at the weekend.

Paper cut-outs

I'm having a one-thing-lead-to-another moment.

The delightful Flossie Teacakes has just been blogging about Japanese pattern books  (I want! I want! I want!) and in her post, she mentions a few good places to have a look at on-line. One of these is M is for Make, which is a UK-based website selling these books (YesAisa  is great, but I always find it a bit of a trial to work my way through to be honest). And, anyway one thing lead to another and I discovered that M is for Make (aka Kate) has a  blog, and one thing lead to another... 


 
Well, anyway, this is a quick introduction to me saying "Go, look at this!". Rob Ryan (who I have to admit, I'd never heard of before today, but then Googled and realised that I knew his stuff, if not the man himself) does intricate screen printed and cut out images, and he's filmed a time lapse of the creation of a work at Somerset House's Pick Me Up exhibition in London. I find it amazing that everyone involved was so careful and accurate (cutting fiddly shapes out of paper with a scalpel is easy to bugger up - I've tried it!). Really, go have a look! 

Rob seems to have all angles covered so you can check out his blog , real shop, Etsy shop and web site if you get hooked.

Ever since I discovered Tord Boontje and the beautiful and intricate cut-outs that he creates  (like the Garland Light at Habitat and the Until Dawn curtain - see here, here or here for instance), I've had a thing for paper cutouts. I've even done a bit of research into getting hold of Tyvek (looks like paper, cuts like paper but is a completely indestructible synthetic), and a bit of paper chopping myself, as the keen-eyed amongst you will have spotted.

I really recommend investigating Tord Boontje  if you haven't come across him before. Have a look at the Projects section of his website. Unfortunately it's one of those which doesn't have individual page addresses, so I'd just be giving you the same link over and over again if I hot linked everything (isn't that annoying? why do web designers do that?).

And one more paper cut-out artist to mention while I'm on the subject is Jaq Belcher who influenced me quite a lot when I was having a trial go myself. I find her pieces absolutely mesmerising, especially the leaf cut-outs like this one.

And I couldn't give you a post without a picture, so I've just snapped this for you - a couple of the cut-outs I tried...