sock mending

My lovely sock that I knitted back here recently developed holes from my intensive wearing...

I recently procured a darning mushroom...

Which makes the mending - a combo of swiss darning and grafting - much easier...

I used some leftovers from other recent sock knitting for the mend...

All ready for more intensive wearing xo

cushion mend

We have a couple of gorgeous Maiike cushions made from up cycled materials, given to us as a wedding gift from this fellow and his lovely wife. We had a bit of a moth problem last year and I keep discovering holes in woolly objects. I don't mind though... I like practising my darning and grafting and giving the cushions ongoing care through making. 

cardi mend

It's a long time since I wore my once favourite cardigan ... the one that I mended with granny squares a few years back. When I pulled it out of the cupboard to wear last week I discovered a big moth hole on the front.

We were crafternooning at our place on the weekend so I did some mending with the latest sock yarn leftovers.

I wore it today and noticed another little hole on the sleeve ... back to the darning needle!

laptop jumper mend

My laptop cover has been in constant use since May 2011 when this happened ...
Funny that the jumper I never wore has become so 'well worn' now. This is the 4th round of mending that it has needed - applying a combo of swiss darning and grafting, using the yarn that I also use for this, and this ongoing project (cardis or socks always on the go now). The material flows across and through various making and objects, linking these things forever.

The mend prior to this was a rather desperate, post PhD, 'plug all the holes that I hadn't attended to in a long time' affair. This time there were only a couple of little holes developing, and this time attended to in good time.

wakened hands

I recently finished reading Christopher Frayling's "On Craftsmanship - towards a new Bauhaus"... a very nice tome which unpacks many of the tensions between craft, art and design.

Hence, this charming piece of prose is on my mind:

Things men have made with wakened hands, and put soft life into
are awake through years with transferred touch, and go on glowing
for long years.
And for this reason, some old things are lovely
warm still with the life of forgotten men who made them.
Things Men Have Made, by DH Lawrence (1929)

Have a nice weekend and try to enjoy braving the continued cold...BTW...I did finish the socks :o)

now I know where time went...

@ berg publishers

I'm reading "When Clothes become Fashion: Design and Innovation Systems" by Ingrid Loschek...while still working on some writing for the PopCAANZ conference next week...all writing/reading for me at the moment and only a little bit of sock knitting in the evening while watching prerequisite telly.
Anyhow, Ingrid has finally explained to me why I always feel so time poor: "sensory monotony explains why the impression arises of time passing faster and faster" (p. 142)
This is part of a discussion about why fashion is perceived to be so fast - and explains why fast fashion is so boring, but also explains why I feel like I never have enough time while I wear away these monotonous PhDing days...
The first sock is nearly done!

afters

When I haven't been around here for a bit you can most likely guess by now that there has been some demanding stuff going on PhD wise.  I was told by my lovely hairdresser today to update the blog (ta S xx), so here I am!   Our graduate research conference was weekend before last and I spent all of last week in recovery mode.   It took some serious wrangling in the last month or so to get ready to present my work, but the most interesting thing I got up to was making a sampler constructed out of this stuff...

Anyone for box chain?!

I will show what I made...just haven't got around to photographing it yet, but as a teaser, I will tell you that it is all about revisiting my making skills from my previous incarnation as a fetish wear designer!
Part of my post GRC recovery was spent on sock knitting...my feet have been so freezing during this very chilly wintery season that I decided to use some of my sock yarn stash to actually make socks rather than the usual baby cardi's.

This is the first time I've attempted sock knitting...so far so good, I'm nearly up to the heel shaping.

Other stuff...the lovely drawing salon semester finished last night...I'll get around to showing some more drawings soon...and the magnificent Ms Rehe is going on a drawing adventure to New York, so do stop by Patsyfox in the coming weeks to see what she is up to.

Not much happening garden wise...some winter planting and planning for hopefully a better warm season in a few months...I did pick some carrots yesterday...they were yum :o)

new things

I have some new beginnings lately...although I'm not really sure where I'm heading!
I finished the latest baby cardi...a friends new bub is just about here :o)

I got onto my elbow patch project, using an old well loved printed cardi, and some of the crocheted grannies I was working on here.  This cardigan was my favourite "go to" cardi around 7 or 8 years ago (my fav now is a big oversized machine washable grey woolly that came from the op shop).  There's a nice narrative of remnants and mending within it...

I swiss darned across a little ladder in the cuff, and used the granny squares to stitch over the elbow holes.  These particular grannies were made using the remnants from first of the sock yarn cardies which I made for my niece.

In this last pic you can see the previous mending - the darning which my mum did lots of years ago.

I'm taking my everyday craft practice into other projects...using leather remnants stitched together to make a thick leather yarn which I have then crocheted into a massive granny square using a 20mm hook...

I'm unsure how this will be applied to a garment form at the moment.

New things are popping up in the garden like these dwarf beans, the last for the season...I hope we have some continued warm weather for the last of the summer crops...

And the water tanks (1 in the front garden, and two in the back) now have a wire mesh covering to grow some lovely plants on them.  This one behind the workroom is filled by the water from it's roof, and connects to the watering system for the adjoining patch which you can see in the pic above.  I planted two old fashioned noisette roses next to it - Lamarque, and Mme Alfred Carriere in the winter, which now are able to be tied up away from the trampling doggles!  I'm hoping that next spring will see them flourish and bloom and eventually creep over the workroom roof to create some nice living insulation :o)

back to a different kind of work

I'm finally getting around to doing my post christmas/new year catch up post.  P went back to work this week, and I was supposed to get back to serious PhD work, but this little beggar has gotten in the way a bit this week!

I finally took the plunge iphone wise and I've dressed my whitey in a pink bumper...I think I must have been subliminally channeling this vintage cloth I have on the table at the moment when I made this choice!

I wasn't really going to take a holiday break from study, but with the other half home and so many renovations in the pipeline, I had to give poor P a hand.  So it was a working holiday.  At home we had a fence to fix after Hugo did a runner on christmas eve (lightening induced)...all was well, he got picked up by the police, drunk and disorderly with a golden retriever pal he had found along the way, and taken to the local emergency vet.  That was a very relieving phone call I recieved at 4am!

We stabilized the old fence posts with star pickets and concrete then reattached the palings side by side with screws.  It doesn't look terribly pretty (hence no photo's!) but it does the job and it is down the back behind the workroom.  I did however glean the surplus palings and came up with a thrifty use for them.  I've been having probs with the vegie patch - it is divided into 4 sections, but as I mulch and the plants grow, everything spills into the other sections.  So, I used some long chunky stakes, malleted into the ground, and screwed the palings on horizontally.  It has made such a difference in feeling organised and on top of everything...I think it's a bit of an analogy for the PhD, which definitely is in need of some set boundaries and clear direction!

Other renos have included re-laying paving in our patio, fixing an outside wall and painting windows.  We also had a little getaway down to Rye to P's families holiday house, but also did renos down there too, so it was only a holiday for the doggles who got to have lots of lovely long walks, not for us!

The vegie growing is going ok, but a little slow, I don't think there has been enough consistent warmth.  I've only had a few beans and zuchinnis so far.  One thing I am excited about is a watermelon plant in the front garden which is looking promising - I've never succeeded in getting one to grow before.

And on the making front...
I finished the green tones baby cardi...
I joined all of my cardi knitting remnant granny squares together.  It's about the size of a place mat and I find it very lovely, it reminds me of Sophie Digard.  At the moment it's over the arm of the sofa...I'll keep adding to it and maybe one day it will be big enough to cover the bed...

 And, I have started another baby cardi...moving along swiftly with this one :o)

 There's a few other bits n bobs going on, but definitely time to get back to another kind of work!

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!

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!

knit witted

I'm settling down post state of design.  I've kept my self busy with other things, but I'm not sure if it would have been better to stop altogether and give myself a needed rest, but that just seems too unnatural to cope with!
I did take some time out before taking down the exhibition last sunday to go to Nikki Gabriel's workshop at the cottage.  I grabbed the last chocolate in the box :o)

I've admired Nikki's work for a long time and it was a nice spur on to knit something for myself, other than the countless sock wool baby jackets I make for all my procreating pals.
Nikki is really more of a gleaner than myself, using production left overs from all sorts of exotic fibers for the creation of her lovely bespoke wooli yarn.  It is a pleasure to knit with, and I'm enjoying her construction method patterns.  I also met Juliette who is mapping urban food networks and is now a fellow PhD candidate at RMIT - some interesting food for thought!

hug a laptop

A while ago I posted about my laptop screen saga and I have since bought a nice new macbook air.  Of course I want to protect this one, so I used some of my surrounding bits n pieces to keep it safe.
I used a jumper that I had hanging about in the studio which I had never worn much.  I experimented with how the laptop might interact with parts of the jumper.  I was intending to cut the jumper into parts to make a layered cover, but ended up folding and wrapping to completely encase the laptop with layers of the jumper.  It is held in place by strategic and minimal stitching which could easily be removed to give the jumper back its life as a human garment.  The performativity of the jumper is played out as the sleeves wrap around and our human centered interpretation of the garment gives the perception of holding, hugging, nurturing.