Can't take the heat

I gave up knitting because it of the heat wave! I'm not sure if it actually was hotter than just sitting on the bus not knitting, or if psychologically I just associate knitting with stuff that keeps you warm.

Instead, I've started a hopefully quick bit of embroidery. The Manchester branch of the Embroiders' Guild is putting together a display piece of postcard size embroidered rock pools that can be arranged to link up with each other. I'm sort of slacking on the embroidery work lately, so I have a feeling of obligation rather than enthusiasm about this. Still, once I got into it, I am liking how it's looking.

And yes, I am doing it totally backwards by putting down the sequins and beads before the stitching. There isn't much of a plan for this project, and all I knew was that I wanted it to sparkle. So I started with the sparkles and I'll just put up with the thread catching on them while I fill in the rest. I have a definite deadline for this: 7 September, to hand over a the next guild meeting. Hopefully, the weather will be cool enough to pick up the knitting after that.

less sketching, more knitting

It's the end of June, my deadline for sketching on the bus. I looked over the half filled sketch book last night, and it's not a sucess. I have proven to myself that having a sketch book doesn't make my sketching improve.

I'm now rearranging my bag to fit in my next bus craft project:

This is a spool of thin cotton velour yarn that was going cheap at the embroiders' guild meeting a few years ago. I have been knitting it up for quite a while now, usually just when I'm doing my minimum 30 minutes of Wii Fit. (Exercise is easier to do if I can do something else at the same time.) It's 4 meters long at the moment.

What is it going to be? It's going to be the edging on a quilt. Have you seen the stellarquilts? I love their textural qualities. Originally, I was thinking of trying to make one myself, but the amount of stitching was too intimidating. I started thinking about how to make a simpler quilt, but focusing on texture. My current idea is to put together a selection of different textured fabrics, including some swatches of knitting, in fairly large pieces without following a pattern. If the totally patternless sewing is too difficult, Plan B involves sewing patternless strips, then sewing the strips together.

For the backing, I have an old king size duvet cover in my fabric stash, so it will be a large quilt when it all gets put together. I know the knitting will shrink, but I'm not sure by how much. If it shrinks to just the right size to edge the entire quilt, I will be very surprised. Since the whole quilt is planned to be patternless, I'm not bothered if I need to splice in a different material for the edging. The important thing is to have something that feels good, and I'm certain that this bit of knitting will be wonderful to touch.

The need to assess my use of time and what goals I have is still building. My natural inclination is to stop doing something if it gets hard, but if I want to ever get something done, I'm going to have to find a way of managing the frustration and working through it. Or, change my mind about what I want to do.

Time to time box

I am admitting to failure here. Instead of building up to drawing more, I'm still struggling to draw at all. And that's really bothering me. I feel like I ought to try to figure out what's going wrong, how to get motivated, blah, blah, blah. But really, I don't want to think about it. Besides, in my experience, thinking about not drawing never solved the problem of not drawing. (Though I have to admit, thinking has solved other problems.)

So, I've decided just to time box the problem. Rather than just giving up now, I'm going to try to sketch more, but only until the end of June. Come July, I'll start some sort of fabric craft. I don't know what it will be, but I'm looking forward to it already.

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.