Thursday, December 22, 2011

solstice greetings!

It was actually the solstice here in Australia yesterday, so I'm a day late, but happy solstice to all anyhow!  P and I were discussing this the other day when we were thinking that "seasons greetings"  was a bit of a strange thing to say.  I thought that "solstice greetings" would be a nice general holiday time greeting for all, not only Christians, but P thought that "happy pagan day" would be better!  But this is my blog, not his, so... SOLSTICE GREETINGS y'll!

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

it's a first...gemma and hugo, you've got mail!

mannequin mania and some gleaned cloth

After years of thinking about it I finally got a dressmakers mannequin for the workroom...I so often get stuck or don't do things because I don't have one, so I'm hoping that this will transform my work.
I purchased a full body form from tinnafashion, a place which pen put me onto (ta ducks!)...it came last week, with an unfortunately broken base, but their service was fantastic and they personally delivered a new one that night.

































Here she is alongside Claudette who I introduced a while back...I was already calling the new girl manny, so I thought I would officially name her Manuella Santos, Manny for short after this degrassi character!

I started trying some things on Manny...I was developing a garment shape from the apron panels when I last utilised Claudette, and a few different forms emerged, one being a dress using four apron panels (two for the front, two for the back)...

































This is made from the poly backing cloth with the print strike-through that I showed when I was taking stock of some of my remnants...

































I've created a series of garments which experiment with variations on this technique - this is a top version using the same print of gemma hunting bees which pen made an apron from :o)  I've been trying to work out how to photograph my gathering of garments and where I might go next...

I'm always photographing views of the garden from the workroom, but today I felt like doing the opposite and snapped pics of this years parsley and glimpses of last years in garment form...I've been  getting in the habit of pulling focus more and more - this is evocative of something which I was playing with here...


Monday, December 19, 2011

birthday, baby cardi and beans

I'm amused that absolutely no-one has taken me up on my christmas giveaway offer of a plum jam recipe...maybe no-one else has any plums either!

I've been distracted by other bits n bobs anyhow...my lovely pal Belinda held a birthday party for her little boy who turned 3...she put on an amazing lunch and spread of party food...here's my origami'd birthday card, envelope made from a page from the weekender mag and the wrapped pressie using some of my gleaned paper remnants from my digi printing...


















The pressie was an origami book and paper set :o)
I also made a start on the next sock yarn baby cardi...another pal is having her bub number two in february so I'm getting in early!

















And I picked the first of the purple king beans which I have growing alongside and twining up the meyer lemon which is espaliered on the back wall of the house.  Not a bad weekend!

Friday, December 16, 2011

plum update and a christmas giveaway!

The lorikeets of a week or so ago have moved on and gemma has been finishing off anything that was left of the plums...












You might not have believed that I have a plum eating dog...but not only that, she's a plum picking dog!




































Be patient with me re the dog pics...I just find gemma so darn cute when she does this (as you can see hugo is none too interested!)...and it's the only plummy amusement I'm going to have this year.  I'm wistfully thinking back to previous plum abundance...this next piccy was the low down branch that gemma was picking off after she was finished yesterday...

































And that's about all I can see on the tree, so this years harvest is a total of three plums!

I'm not going to have any jam to give away this year...so for fun I'm offering a giveaway to blog readers...if you would like one of my plum jam recipes which I was folding up yesterday for christmas cards, send me your snail mail details to remnantgleaning@gmail.com and I'll post one out to you - anywhere in the world!  Hopefully you have more fruit in your neck of the woods than I do right now :o)

















p.s. this final pic is last years jam :o(

Thursday, December 15, 2011

christmas gleaning

I always like to make time for hand crafted christmas greetings, and I also like to include some dog pics like this gorgeous one of Hugo from last year...






















This year I have heaps of plum jam recipes left over from the giveaway in my guest book I had for summer gleaning - the recipe's are a photocopy of my own handwritten one from my cook's organiser...






















So I thought I could glean the remnant recipes for this years cards.  I used a technique from my favourite origami book - Home Decorating with Origami by Tomoko Fuse...






















I folded the A5 recipe sheets into what is described in the book as a letter holder.  I printed a cutie picture of Gemma and Hugo looking down the back garden in a strategic spot on the back of the recipe so that I could write the christmas message around it...




















For an envelope to put these in, I decided to make my own.  A while back pugly pixel blogged about a coolie envelope template from jetpens...which I promptly purchased online!  It makes tiny envelopes, so I blew it up on the photocopier to A3 size to also make four bigger sizes...I spray glued the photocopy onto a piece of cardboard and cut it out to make my own template - yay!
I've been collecting any interesting images from magazines, booklets and newspapers so went through the stash to come up with some sweet combo's...
























And to finish off these ones which weren't going through the post, I sealed the envelopes with some spiderman stickers which I had about the place - P is a spidey fan :o)






















"Amazing power and responsibility!"

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

garlic plait

Back in the middle of May among the conference/GRC/exhibition chaos I managed to find time to plant some garlic...I planted 8 bulbs/heads of a few sorts from the Diggers Club...

































 Four heads of early purple...


















Two of the early white...

































And two heads of the italian red...you break the head into cloves and plant each one which grows into a new bulb...






















The first that I pulled up a month ago I think must have been the italian red (I forgot exactly which ones I put where and was a bit too frazzled then to document it properly)...it was in a sunnier spot so it died down first, but the label also said it's the earliest variety at Heronswood.  I attempted a garlic plait, but there weren't many bulbs with stems, a lot had broken off, so I didn't try too hard!

I pulled up the main harvest last weekend...this would be the early while and purple, all mixed up...(notice that the packets said to plant march/april...I planted in may, so I'm harvesting about a month late too)  This time I had plenty to make a good plait...my first attempts were dismal, so I googled instructions and found a great tutorial here...silly me, I was trying to plait from the top of the leaves down...doh!!!

















My plait looks lovely on the back...I put the big garlic first at the bottom and gradually moved onto the smaller ones...






















It's now hanging in the kitchen...although it isn't as pretty as the lovely one in the tutorial...I didn't trim the roots and only brushed the loose dirt off...but I think it has rustic charm!

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

kris kringle

We had our RMIT staff Christmas party yesterday...it was lovely and jolly with lots of food and drink and so kindly provided for us by the fashion program...
We had a secret santa/kris kringle where we had to bring a secret pressie within a $10 price range.  Since I've been wanting to focus being a bit more spontaneous with making, I had an idea for a crafted kris kringle and went for it...






















I decided to use a technique I was playing with when I was developing ways to tessellate the leather remnants...this is a sample modeled by a 1/2 scale mannequin where I've punched holes in the leather and joined with jump rings...

















I have a stash of parts club bits from when I was in Tokyo a couple of years back so I got these out to see what I could utilise...

















 I had some beautiful quality kilt pins, so I grouped together some of my teensy leather remnants that I've been saving (I realise that I've developed a filtering process where I have a different technique for different sizes of leather remnant and this would be the last stage!) with one of the pins to create a brooch.






















This is in progress...I had to play around with slightly different sized rings to get the balance and the fall of the pieces right to my eye...

I stupidly didn't take a pic of the finished piece and I wrapped it all up nicely in a re-purposed box and some of the paper I spoke about here and gifted it onwards before I realised...but I liked how it ended up being evocative of a some kind of a map of a continent, maybe Africa, but open to interpretation...it went to a very lovely person...S.R. I must catch up in the new year to get some photos!

Monday, December 12, 2011

privileging making

I've been struggling for a long time to work out what sorts of things I should be making and doing within this PhD.  You might have noticed that there's been a lack of designed and made stuff on here for a bit...a symptom of my lack of confidence and confusion over what I can responsibly bring into the world given the ethical issues attached to a lot of stuff...it's quite disabling...
Anyhow, I do make a lot of things for myself and the house which I fill my everyday life with and I'm thinking that it might be of use to start paying attention to and seeing value in these things.  It's pure love of making and/or transformation of ideas into reality that drives the creation of my more personal projects, which I think I lose when I try to get serious and more considered!  So my aim going forward is to privilege making...

So...I thought I'd start documenting and sharing some of my current/past/ongoing projects...

One of the things I always have on the go is a baby cardigan from sock yarn...I'm of the age where all my friends and family are having babies and this particular style goes down the best as a gift...

















This is the second one which I made a few years ago (thanks to my pal for taking a pic for me...her second bub is wearing it now...I'm really bad at taking pics of these before I gift them!)  I must have made about a dozen of these now...They're made from 4ply printed sock yarn...

















I always keep at least a couple of balls on hand...one ball makes one cardi...I think the cardi above was a smaller size as I had enough to make a beanie too...I love how the colours and stripes develop as you knit, it feels like a nice surrender to serendipity :o)

















I usually make the 6 month old size...they're nice and versatile as the rib stretches out as bub grows...it's knitted sideways starting at one cuff and finishing at the other...

My latest making is something I've been thinking about doing for ages with the remnants from the cardigans which I've been collecting...it's been a bit of a guilty pleasure when I really have other things to do, but sometimes it's food for the soul and so satisfying to act swiftly on the desire to make something when you want to do it without any pressures...

















I've been making granny squares, just a plain ordinary 5 round square, but so beautiful in this yarn...the colour changes take on another dimension and unpredictability in crocheted form and I love grannys in a thinner ply than you normally see.  This is all of the remnants made up now, so I'll join these to make a scarf or mat and gradually add to it over the years to come.  Also nice that I can pick out which squares are made from the remnants from certain babies cardi's...lovely!

Thursday, December 8, 2011

unraveling time

This is brilliant...I love it!...I so want to make granny squares out of what unravels...






















Knitted calendar by Patrick Frey from here...:o)


Gregor Calendar from Patrick Frey on Vimeo.

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

lanvin beetles

At Assin on the weekend I was oooing and ahhhing over this Lanvin tee with a sprinkling of sequin beetles...It was seriously beautiful, the pic doesn't do it justice (found at ssense here)...






















 You can see the detail better here where the sequin embroidery has been applied to a pair of trainers (pic from styleflavours)...


















Such a beautiful example of a craft/fashion collision :o)