A funny little wardrobe

At the start of the Fair last week I was really nervous. I had brought along some crochet to do to stop my hands from shaking, but when I got there I realised I had brought along a whole bag of wool and left my crochet hook at home. So I decided to design myself a new wardrobe to keep my hands busy. And it worked, when I had my sketchbook I was much less nervous. Wonder if I could find a pattern to make that cape...

Auckland Art & Craft Fair

I had a stall at the Auckland Art & Craft Fair on Saturday selling my gocco prints on paper and fabric. It was a great, busy day; I met lots of lovely people, put some faces to names and swapped some goodies. Here's my stall at the start of the day:



And some pictures taken after the crazy busy time:

Thanks Jess & Kylie for organising it, you did a great job!

On my walk today

There were storm clouds.

There were giant animals trapped in a cage.
There were signs of spring.

There was a tree with its own floral carpet.

And there was a little heart-shaped leaf on the footpath.

And another one

You know those posters that are in staffrooms everywhere, the ones that say something like "teamwork" and have a picture of a circle of people skydiving together? Well I want to make one that says "patience" that has a picture of a person knitting a garment from another garment that they are simultaneously unravelling. Inspiring? Hmm. I think it takes a lot of patience to undo something that isn't working out and remake it, and I just didn't have that kind of patience when crocheting this scarf. I got a bit distracted when I was making the initial chain, so it got incredibly long, then I didn't notice for ages and ran out of wool, then I had to change the pattern, then I ran out of wool again and had to sneak in some of a different colour...

So here's my impatient monster scarf that will touch your knees if you drape it round your neck!

Another scarf...

'Scuse the bad photos; this is a scarf I crocheted for a friend's birthday. I followed my favourite crochet pattern, which goes: make a chain, double crochet into each hole, sew in the ends, voila!
I was going to spare you the photos of me modelling it but here you go:

His & Hers

I've been making some huias for the Auckland Art & Craft Fair. They started out like this:
I went to the museum to look at some they had there, and they looked a bit bedraggled and mangy (well they have been extinct since 1907) so I had to flesh these ones out a bit.

Now they look like this:
The male huia is the one with the shorter beak, the female has the longer one. They're gocco printed onto calico, reinforced with interfacing and have zigzagged edges. And I have a whole lot of them!

Righto, back to the sewing machine for me. I've got a big pile of zigzigging to finish!

Winter trees

...seem to feature in most of my photos lately. I like their silhouettes and the way that when the leaves fall off the trees you can see all the birds' nests. You can kind of see some in this last photo if you squint really hard.

Inner city pretty

I had a bit of time to kill in town on Monday so I took some photos of some of the beautiful buildings that are squeezed in among the monstrosities there.



Back in the day I used to deliver pizza in the city and I remember that one of these last two had cats that rode in the lift.

A silver lining and some printmaking

I ordered some gocco inks the other day from Australia, and when they arrived I had been sent silver ink for paper instead of white ink for fabric. I was going to send it back but then I thought it would be good for printing the seedpods I had been drawing.
I did some red ones too:
Then I was mucking round finishing up the leftover ink and I printed them on top of each other:

I quite like them all jumbled up like that. I wouldn't mind a 1960s housedress with that pattern on it.

And here they are all waiting to dry:
They'll be available soon in my Felt shop, and at the Auckland Art & Craft Fair next Saturday.

Glass half full

I had a bit of a gocco disaster the other day. As I was exposing an image onto a screen, a gust of wind blew the paper out of place and only about half of the image got exposed onto the screen. I kind of managed to salvage it by printing part of the image and using it to make patches. So now these kowhai seedpod patches will be coming with me to the Auckland Art & Craft fair. They're printed on denim and reinforced with interfacing on the backs.

Looking up

I really like these pictures on the windows of the Auckland Museum. I had a bit of an impromptu tourist afternoon there yesterday when I was searching for a huia to draw. But that's another story.

Simplicity 2497

I finally finished this dress. And when I say finished, I mean I left out the ruffle, left out one of the pockets because I couldn't figure out how it could exist alongside the invisible zip (which is by no means invisible) and did a pretty slapdash job of the hem. And I think it's going straight to the op shop. Half of it is way too big and it looks a bit too Robin Hood for my liking. Never mind, it's a step up from the last green dress I tried to make.

Green woollies

I got home early today and it was sunny, so I thought I'd do a little photoshoot with some of the things I have been knitting and crocheting. Looking at them all together it seems there's something of a theme...

Girls' annuals

My camera needs a rest today (that's me being optimistic, I think it really needs to be replaced) so I thought I'd show you some pictures from some girls' annuals I couldn't resist in the op shop the other day. One of them's from 1963, the other one looks like it's from round about the same time. They cover everything from growing cacti to knitting a "chunky cardigan" to Elvis's horoscope. Priceless.

More seedpods

I just finished this drawing of some more seedpods, next I'm going to turn it into a new gocco print. I've got lots of old pastel-coloured inks to use up, maybe they could be pale pink seedpods?