Quoits!

Hello! I hope Christmas was restful, tasty and fun for everyone.

It's time to get on with the parade of Christmas gifts. As ever, not everyone got something hand made, but I came up with as many simple quick(ish) things as I could.

My grandparents had a wonderful old quoits set that we used when we stayed with them. I remember the rope quoits being quite heavy and rough, and I think the stand/base might have been wrought iron - it seemed to weigh a ton. It's such a simple game, suitable for all ages, so it seemed like a good 'whole family' present.

Wrought iron would have been great, but I made do with a wooden toilet roll holder, bought new and very inexpensively from at Hall Markets. I originally thought that a stand like this might need a wider base attached underneath to make it more stable, but with testing, it seemed to be fine as is. A good thing, as I don't have any woodwork skills to speak of.

My painting skills aren't much better. I had already bought little sample pots of enamel and done the first coats (yellow) when K suggested that spray paint might be easier (and noted that we had access to plenty of it). I persisted with the paint brush, did a shocking job of the blue layer - largely because I propped it upside down to paint the bottom and let it dry - but I had already painted the top as well, so the paint moved around and dried in uneven lumps. I don't have photos, but trust me, it was a mess. So then I lost time in the precious last week, scraping it all off to start again fresh with the spray paint. The result was not perfect, but much better.

For the quoits I followed these instructions for grommets though I didn't understand the splicing part and went my own way with that. I found that I could avoid having a thicker part by weaving the ends in just before finishing the third round of twists. They seem to hold together - but if they end up failing the kid test I will have another go at doing it the proper way. For the coloured stripes, I wound acrylic yarn around one third of the total length of rope. They definitely have an uneven, home made look but on the whole I'm pretty happy with them. It was fun spending some evenings working with rope instead of wool.

crafting fever + lavender

I am in the midst of an intense couple of weeks of crafting fever. I have to be careful when I try to describe this to people. It's hard to explain that I am stressed and tired but not unhappy and in fact it's my favourite time of the year. I always end up overcommitted and overstretched before Christmas but I wouldn't really have it any other way. Of course you might think that I should be more organised, plan better, and maybe start earlier. However, I'm pretty sure that the earlier I start, the more ideas I would have for gifts I might make, and the whole thing could take up half my year. Anyway I tend to work best under pressure.

This is one thing I can show now as it has already been given. It's the Streaming Leaves Lavender Eye Pillow by Cat Bordhi. An elegant and fairly quick pattern to make, being knit in the round. Oh sure, it can appear slightly creepy if you see the leaves as eyes.... I think it's just a little kooky.

I closed it with a ribbon instead of kitchener stitching it closed - I thought my friend might want to be able to remove and wash the cover one day. Of course, due to the shape, it's not likely she'll be able to get the lining bag out without cutting the lining open and tipping some of the filling out.

The pattern calls for flax seeds and lavender inside the pillow. I couldn't think what flax seeds looked like and had to ask in the health food shop, then I felt really silly when I was handed a packet of linseed - I had forgotten they were the same thing. Linseed/flax seed is often used in neck pillows, as it can be heated or cooled and will hold its temperature for a while.

Coloured pencils

I don't really draw or sketch, beyond the occasional inept diagram in my notebook to help me remember an idea. Yet I still crave a nice set of coloured pencils when I see them in the shops. I gave in last weekend at an op shop. I walked in five minutes before closing and found a massive plastic ziplock bag of coloured pencils. It was arguably overpriced at $10, but I don't mind thinking of this as a donation to charity. And I had a very pleasant time sorting, testing and sharpening them. Probably well over half of them passed the test and made it into these jars. The rest were either thrown in the bin, re-donated, or (the annoyingly short ones) put aside for possible future craft use.

Cave Garden, Mt Gambier

The event I attended was in a theatre near the town hall. I had time for a 5 minute wander before lunch break was over. There is a very tidy rose garden...

Oh, here's a path, I wonder where that goes?

It goes towards a massive hole in the ground.



I had no idea about this sinkhole in the middle of town, so I found it quite surreal - ordinary street, nicely planned gardens, then stairs descending into the bowels of the earth... well actually only to a couple of lookout points.

It looked pretty dry but apparently there is a waterfall in winter.

Mt Gambier - Crater Lakes

Last week I had a work trip to Mt Gambier, and managed to carve out a little bit of time to be a tourist.

Very close to the town is the stunning Blue Lake. The lake sits in an extinct volcano crater and changes colour at different times of year. I don't think I saw it at its most turquoise colour, but you can see hints of it in the shallower parts around the edges.

I had been dropped off by taxi to make the most of a spare hour before I was due at the airport. It was a hot day and extremely windy up there in the lookout area. It seemed a slightly crazy thing to do with my (smallish) luggage, but I changed into more sensible shoes and slogged up what seemed like 100 or so steps, to see what the view was like from the higher lookout.

When I got up there, I was disappointed to find a lot of trees and foliage obscuring the view - I'd been hoping to see the shape of the lake/crater better - but I did enjoy those glimpses of the farmland beyond the lake.

The photo below is the lookout over the Leg of Mutton Lake, in another crater right next to Blue Lake. I think its water level is very low, I couldn't see the lake but loved that curving line of pine trees.

I thought it was gone forever

Then I found Armytage again.

The 'Side Saddle' colourway reminded me enough of the old 'Sticky Date' that I just had to order several balls of it and make more brown pears. Indeed, these are brown/white/grey pears, but I'm just as happy. I certainly could manipulate the striping to just get browns, but I quite enjoyed just knitting the pears and letting the colours fall where they would. The four below (pre-felting) are from a single ball.



I did order a few other colours as well. And now that I have confirmed it really is the same old Armytage, I won't be able to resist stocking up again soon.

Do these glasses make me look smarter?

This is my new favourite brooch, made by Carly Altree-Williams. There are available here.

I think it is delightfully surreal. And I always kind of wanted to wear glasses. In fact I'm the only member of my immediate family who doesn't.

Beautiful Bundanon

I had a wonderful day trip on Sunday, a drive in beautiful weather through stunning country (particularly going through the Moss Vale area which is always so green) to visit my sister at Bundanon. There was a long stretch of potholed gravel road to get there - and of course to get out again - but it was worth it. Even though it's actually pretty close to Nowra, a decent-sized town, the place has a remote feeling, ideal for getting away from it all for a few weeks to make new work without too much distraction.

The property belonged to Arthur and Yvonne Boyd from the late 1970s and it was gifted to the nation to be used for artist residencies and art education.

We took a tour of the original house (from the late 1860s) which is still occupied at times by family members. The parts of the house accessible to the public display many Arthur Boyd paintings and sculptures as well as work by many members of the Boyd family.

We also saw Arthur's studio, where some of his paintings are displayed, and his old jumper, crusty paint tubes and water jars have all been apparently left as-is since his death in 1999 - yet interestingly we were also told that his son still uses the studio to paint.

The tall thin window/door in the photo below was not an original design feature, apparently it came about out of necessity when a large commissioned painting turned out to be too big to remove from the studio.

Find your own way to it

I was a bit surprised when my recent description of a conversation with an experienced basket maker sparked a few comments about how unacceptable it is to discourage someone from experimenting. It honestly hadn't occurred to me to be discouraged! I may have made too much out of what was actually such a brief exchange. I didn't present any concrete idea, just mentioned the vaguest of concepts. It might have been nice if she had taken an interest and drawn me out a little, but I'm not sure I would have had anything to add if she had.

What I took from the exchange was food for thought about the particular challenges you might meet when combining disciplines and/or media, as well as the value of taking time to learn skills (like knowing the rules before you break them).

I have lots of loopy ideas, and often try things that don't work too well, or that I will need to get back to once I figure out a better way. This doesn't bother me too much. (The main problem is what to do with the failed or half-made projects that languish around the house.) I also have ideas or plans - like combining felting and basketry - that I expect to take months or years to go anywhere. I could probably do with a bit less patience at times.

I'm thrilled that so many of you are fans of innovation, experimentation, and breaking boundaries. I'm keen to keep revealing and sharing the results of my ideas (good, bad or indifferent), and I hope you do too.

Worth trying

A couple of months ago I attended a one-day beginner workshop run by the Fibre Basket Makers of the ACT. We made a little mat - which would also have been the base of a basket, if we had time to learn how to turn the corner. I'm quite happy with my mat, flaws and all. It's like a large coaster, and fits perfectly under my small 2-cup tea pot.

The day was fantastic, I'd been wanting to try basket weaving for ages, and now I want to do more. One day. For now I am letting it percolate a bit - I'm not ready to dive headlong into another craft - and for this one, although a lot of the materials are free or cheap, they take some time and expertise to collect and prepare, and a lot of space to store.

I was speaking with one of the original group members about my fledgling interest in basketry, and how I had a few thoughts about finding ways to combine it with my felting work. Her response was cautionary. She said that people often have these ideas for combining different crafts, but tend to find that it is more difficult than it seems.

I've been thinking about this a bit. To come to a course run by expert artisans with years of experience, thinking you could learn a few basic techniques and then be able to throw them in a melting pot with some other craft, and expect to come up with something brilliant and new.... it certainly could be seen as a bit arrogant, or at least naive.

In my defence, even before the course I had no illusions about how quick and easy learning basketry would be. But the broader point is interesting - combining different crafts/arts, or different media, poses special challenges, and you generally need to have some expertise (if not a lot of it) in each area.

All of this is a slightly over-thought introduction to this.

An attempt at felted beaded knitting. I have quite a lot of beads, and had never really tried knitting with beads. So I thought I would try it in a felting project. At first I worried that the heavy washing and agitation would damage the surface of the cheap wooden beads. And then I realised that I liked the idea of them becoming weathered through the felting process.

And they really did change a lot, and I like the effect.

What I really don't like is the way the loops of wool holding the beads didn't shrink into the fabric the way I wanted them to. The weight of the beads has kept them dangling off the side in a really goofy way. It doesn't help that the design isn't great - I just whipped these up to try the idea, but I don't think a single round of big beads looks much good on these pods. I might try again with smaller beads, but I suspect I'll end up concluding it's not worth knitting the beads in; better to just sew them on afterwards. After all, I really love sewing pieces of felt together or sewing beads on - the thread disappears in a very satisfactory way.

Two small shawls

Earlier, I mentioned my plan to knit a To Eyre shawl during my recent trip to the UK. First, I had to find the wool for it, and I wanted something from the UK, not imported. Of course I didn't really need much excuse to visit as many of London's wool/yarn/knitting shops as I could. And it was worth it because they were all quite different to each other.

I Knit in Waterloo was a pleasant space with a moderate range of yarn and a good range of books. It was a seriously rainy day, and there were only one or two customers in and out while I was there. I looked at their wool for a long time, including the 5ply Blacker yarn that I thought might work for the shawl, but then I just bought a couple of sets of Knit Pro harmony needle tips for my collection, cheaper than at home. Lots of things (but not wool, particularly) were a bit cheaper, mainly because the Australian dollar is strong at the moment.

I loved visiting the tiny, cute and utterly charming All the fun of the fair in Soho. This shop has some wonderful things, with really only a small amount of yarn but lots of great knitting and sewing accessories and cute miscellaneous things. It's in Kingly Court, a lovely centre/arcade full of boutiques and crafty/arty businesses just off the disappointingly sterile Carnaby Street.

Loop, in the upmarket market-y Camden Passage, Islington, is two really full floors, with an extensive range of yarns. I believe it was set up to be much like an American-style yarn store.

I also checked out the range in Liberty - all Rowan - and the John Lewis department stores with their interesting range of knitting tools and other haberdashery. I was tempted by an icord maker, and thought I might come back for it but didn't. Never mind, I actually like knitting icord anyway.

The most interesting shop was Prick Your Finger in Bethnal Green, which only stocks UK-milled yarn. It's also a textile/knitting gallery with a bit of a punk/DIY aesthetic. It was great to talk to Louise, who really knows her wool and the sheep that produce it. After much deliberation I finally settled on some beautiful Jamieson Shetland Spindrift for my shawl. I knew it was a bit lightweight (the pattern is written for a 5 ply) but I thought I could make it work, thinking that I wouldn't mind a smaller shawl anyway.


Ha! You see why I cropped my face out of the other pictures, but this one is so hilariously sad I had to show you. I promise I am not actually THIS sad about my shawl. However, it doesn't really stay on without me holding it like that. Also it's not sitting well around my shoulders, is it?

I knit the whole shawl while I was away. It's a great pattern and ideal for travel knitting. (If anyone has looked at the actual pattern, I did version 2, which only comes in one size. There are now four different versions included with the pattern, partly in a quest to replicate what seem to be several different shawls Jane wears in different parts of the film). Before I was halfway through I became concerned about the size, but it still seemed like it should work as a little scarfy shawl. And I suppose it does, if I scrunch it up around my neck a bit, as in the photos below.

The Shetland is a bit scratchy worn this way, and the frill around the edge seems to have disappeared.

As soon as I got home from the UK, and recovered enough from the jet lag to concentrate for an hour or two, I cast on for the Chadwick shawl by Stephen West. This is from West Knits Book 1, which I picked up at Loop. Although it was the man-shawl styling in the book that really drew me in, I didn't have a man who wanted a shawl. I wanted another shawl!

I used some beautiful Knittery handpainted merino cashmere sock wool which I've had for years, combined with greige patonyle. On 3.5 mm needles it made a wonderful drapey, soft fabric.

It's almost unfortunate just how much I love this one, and how easy it is to wear - it seemed to go with all my outfits this week - because it's made it much less likely I will wear the Eyre shawl in its current form. I definitely want to make that one again, but I'm not sure yet if I will unravel it and upsize the pattern for a bigger one in the same wool (I used less than half of what I bought to make it), or whether I will start afresh with another wool - maybe a 5 ply, or even an 8 ply for a bigger, blanket-y, TV watching shawl. I really don't mind the shetland wool not being super soft, it is so light and warm, and I love the way it looks in the garter stitch. I just don't think I'm very likely to wear it all bundled up around my neck.

I thought it was interesting to compare the two, because they are quite similar in size. It's the unusual shaping of the Chadwick that makes it drape around the neck so easily. That's not just the camera angle, it actually is asymmetrical. And it might annoy some people, but I just love the way the ends curl up when I wear it. I also think the design is clever and funky, the contrasting striped and plain sections work really well to show off a nice handpainted yarn. I will enjoy this much more than I ever would have enjoyed socks made from the wool.

This is not my beautiful house

The work of Bruegel(s), Bosch and Magritte - he has a whole gallery - wasn't the only art we appreciated in Belgium. There was a lot of interesting architecture - in particular, Art Nouveau buildings are something to look out for in Brussels. We had a coffee in the rooftop cafe at the amazing Musical Instruments Museum. Now I wish I had made the time to check out the exhibits as well, but, you can't do everything!

This is the beautiful Maison Cauchie, which we just stumbled across after leaving the Military Museum.


Above, the Brussels-Central Railway Station - designed by Victor Horta.

In Ghent we visited the excellent Design Museum.

The Egmont statue took a bit of finding - we knew he was no longer in the Grand Place, but it turned out he wasn't quite in Egmont Park either, but in another park just across the way.


I also pointed the camera at a lot of street art.