Oh, the irony

The other day, P did a google images search for his name and found loads of sites using his CC'd pictures, including this picture of me on a career guidance site:

image by BinaryApe (CC)

I have no idea what the site is like, but I found it literally laughable that a picture of me was used on anything offering career advice. I'm happy with my job and all, but it was just luck that I got it. I had a temping job, and some friends there saw the ad for the job while I was off and requested an application on my behalf. I was the only applicant, and the interviewers thought I was alright, or at least a better option than re-running the ad. So I'm still at the job 6 years later with no plans to further my career until they make me redundant.

I wish I could say my lack of focus on a traditional career meant I was more focused on the creative fun stuff that I do, but that would be a lie. I've been feeling especially un-focused lately, and I've not been doing much to speak of, much less blog about. But in one of those happy coincidences, I picked up a book at the library called Crafting Creativity: 52 brilliant ideas for awakening the artistic genius within, and, though at initial glance it didn't look promising, I couldn't see where on the shelf it had come from so I checked it out anyway. It's actually quite a good read (better than the other two books I checked out, which I will mention no more about), and I'm hoping that I'll be implementing some of the techniques soon. I'm especially interested in the idea of visualizing to improve crafting skills, like the way athletes visualize as part of their training. It seems a very do-able exercise, and I can sort of see already how it could be helpful. Some of the others sound a bit too professional to me, but others sound fun. I don't think I'll actually do that many, but it was interesting to just read about them.

Sketching progress

Wednesday was a good day, bus-wise. Getting on the bus home, I noticed a pile of straw near the front seats. Long stalks, straight and stiff, not like rabbit bedding. It made me wonder if a witch had had broom trouble and had to take the bus home.

It was also the first day I managed to sketch for an entire bus trip, just for the morning trip, but still worth noting. On my way home, in addition to wondering about witches, I was carrying shopping, which is a poor excuse for not sketching more. The rest of the week, I only managed to put pencil to paper for about half the time I was riding, so I feel like it’s still something I need to work on. What has helped is deciding beforehand what to draw: robots or towers, purely from imagination.

The robot idea came from my art-guru Caatje, who said on her blog that she didn’t want to be an art robot. It struck me that I do want to be an art robot, or at least, I want to be more consistently productive, and I want to make stuff that looks the way I want it to.  The robots I’ve been drawing don’t look how I want them to, but at least I am drawing.

The tower idea came from the art journaling, so that’s from Caatje, too. I got frustrated because I couldn’t get the images I had selected for a page to work together. Then I came across some scraps trimmed from other pictures and had the idea of stacking them together:

After seeing that, I thought it was a bit like a fantastical tower, and that led to the sketching theme. I’d like to do more towers in the art journal, but it’s been a bit neglected lately as I’ve just been busy with other things. As always, I hope to do more in the art journal, sketch book, etc., but I'm a bit sceptical about that actually happening.

Finished project: quilt from Guatemalan pillow cases

Well, I have a bandage on my thumb from some over enthusiastic pinning, but I finally finished the quilt:

The good: It isn't a perfect example of the quilting arts, but it feels good and is full of jolly colours! I'm happy with the mix of fabrics and I like how they work with the bright weaving patterns in the old pillow covers. Also, my P likes the colour mix, too, which is important to me; I don't want to put something on our sofa that he doesn't like.

Also, I need to confess to my previous mistake in saying that the pillow covers were South American. When I actually looked on the label, it read "Hand Made in Guatemala". Oops. The original work was done by the Aj Quen association of artisans, which still seems to be going. I can definitely recommend their work.

The back of the quilt is pieced with a strip down the centre because the cloth wasn't wide enough. In my quilting heritage, the backs are always plain white fabric, but after seeing other  quilt styles with colourful, simply pieced backs, it was almost liberating to put together strongly coloured fabrics for the underside of the quilt.

The bad: It is lumpy, very lumpy. Because  I was using up old synthetic yarn for the batting, and particularly because the yarn was different weights, the quilt is never going to be flat. It's an experiment, and I am interested in how it will wear. At the moment, if asked my opinion on using knitting as batting, I'd advise only do it if you have enough yarn of the same type to use for the whole quilt. Or don't worry about lumps.

The ugly: Though the start stitch ties worked fairly well on the front:

And some on the back look quite good:

Others are just a bit random:

The quilt needs to be washed before it goes on the sofa, but I'm a bit scared that it will fall apart or turn strange colours. Must be brave. If the worst happens, it can always go back into the scrap pile.

Review of Redesigning Fashion at the Hat Works

The flyer for this show had a lot to appeal to me, what with mentioning make do and mend, sustainable fashion and ethical principals; and I'm happy to report that I really liked the exhibit. The re-use of materials is what really stood out to me, and I'm especially taken with this hat by Sue Daniels:

It's called Stew, and yes, those are the plastic bags onions come in. I've often wondered if those bags could be used in some way (two are sitting on my desk at work, sadly empty of the chocolate coins that came in them for Christmas). I can't say I'll be making something as nice as this hat, but I am feeling inspired to look at those bags again.


I also really liked the 3 minute film on the Eyesiga Mukama Craft Group in Uganda (I didn't watch the other videos, as I was on my lunch break and another 15 mins watching them seemed too long, so I just chose the shortest). The project produces 'artisan plaits' which look delightful, though what I liked best in the video is the women's dresses, the two buttons on the collars just look so sweet!


Redesigning Fashion is just in the small exhibit area at the Hat Works, but it is full of stuff. Like a lot of their exhibits, there's plenty of stuff demonstrating ideas that could be applied to other textile crafts, so it's not just for hat enthusiasts.

Uninspired by Drawing from Life

I'm very superstitious, in some ways. For instance, though I know pigeons die all the time, if I actually see a dead pigeon, I'm convinced I'll have a bad day and the only reasonable course of action is to avoid doing anything rather than risk things going wrong. As I left the office for my lunch break/shopping trip, I saw a dead pigeon right in front of the building, just at the end of the little lay-by. "Ick!" I thought, and as I was picking up the shopping, I kept trying to think of how to rearrange my day to avoid the worst of the pigeon curse. I've been worn out the past two days, and was really looking forward to getting back on track today; but if my work was doomed to go wrong, should I not do anything at all? Or, is that the curse at work, directing me to make the wrong decision, so I should try to do something after all? Or, would that be hubris, a classic cause for all sorts of curses? As I struggled to figure out the best course of action, I finished shopping, headed back to the office, and noticed that the dead pigeon had strings coming off it. It was actually a lost scarf that had rolled up as it was blown against the curb. So, I really should do something now that I'm not cursed after all.

I've written before about how craft blogs tend to focus on the positive, so I'm stretching myself by putting out a rather negative statement: I found Drawing from Life: the Journal as Art Form by Jennifer New uninspiring. It looked appealing on the library shelf, so I checked it out. It is a very pretty book, but it all seems very professional rather than fun, and it made me feel like journalling is something important people do; and I'm not important, so why am I journalling? I know this isn't what the author intended, which makes me feel even worse.

On the plus side, it hasn't made me want to stop working in my art journal. Here's what I'm up to at the moment:

On the bus, I've been trying to draw in a sketchpad I've had for a few years. I've decided not to scan and post the sketches, because they aren't good, and I don't want to feel pressured about that. Plus, I've lowered my sights from aiming to sketch well, to just being able to sketch for more than 10 minutes at a time! If I can get to a point where I can sketch for the entire commute, that will count as a great success, no matter what the sketch actually looks like.

Stuff from the internet

I really don't link to enough stuff on the internet. For instance, I meant to link to a post by Miso in September, but it's only now that she's done a similar piece that I've got around to mentioning it:

Miso ; New York Moon (Bedford Ave) ; pinpricks on paper : 29 x 42 cm : 2013

I've tried to use pin-pricks to make images, but never managed anything like this. Really impressed.

Another neat thing I've come across recently is a post on Sri Threads about an unfinished Buddhist alter cloth:

I've heard a bit about these cloths, and what to my mind seems an odd combination (or even an oxymoron) of opulent scraps, and I think I may have seen one in a museum. What I hadn't realized until I saw this, was how similar the cloth is to what I would call a crazy quilt.

And finally, I really should link to the Knitting in 4 Dimensions blog, where a friend is documenting what I think is a genuinely interesting project: remodelling an old jumper. I'm a bit privileged in that I get to see it in real life, but if you knit and are interested in refashioning clothing, the blog is definitely worth taking a look at.

There! I feel like I'm all caught up now, especially as I haven't been doing much crafting recently. I still feel like I haven't properly gotten into the year yet.

finished pages, new pages

I'm not sure which I like more, the finished pages:

 

or the way they looked before adding the extra green dashes:

 

It's not like I ruined it with the dashes, but I don't think they add anything. But the pages seem finished now, so time to move onto these:

 

Though I've selected a few images and some text, I haven't felt like deciding how to arrange stuff. I'm not very good with decisions, and I use that as an excuse to not work on things.

I also need to decide what to do on the bus. I had been thinking of  trying to do a crazy quilt patch, following the  instructions from the course I took years ago but never actually did the work for. But since the course is running again starting in Feb, it seems like the wrong time for me to start working through it independently and posting my work on this blog. So I'll put that on the 'do  later' list. It's not like I don't have plenty of unfinished projects to work on, but I just haven't decided what to do.