Trip to Northwest and Central Australia

It's the first time I tried to do this, but click here and see if it gives you a slide show of my recent holiday. It takes you to my Google+ page and then you will see a thing with the post title - click on that. I think.

Edited to add - click on the picture with lots of blue sky in it, on the left hand side of the page. NOT the blog post bit.

Baby Bear wanted a warm beanie to take to Europe with her for January and February.  I had a big bag of yummy skeins of handspun in a variety of colours donated by Yarnivorous when she left Melbourne a few years ago.  She expressed a desire for the beanie to be made from a selection of appropriate thick warm yarns, and this is the result.

It's just a very plain beanie with a double fold-up brim for extra warmth and a pom-pom.  I used The Knitter's Handy Book of Patterns by Ann Budd which gives sensible basic patterns for things like beanies, gloves, jumpers, etc based on the weight of the yarn.  Yes, I had to do a tension square!  And then another one because the first time I cast on I obviously had too many stitches!

Baby Bear says it is nice and warm, she loves the colours, and the 11 year old boy she is staying with (obviously, a whole family, not just a boy!) likes to steal it!

I don't finish things very often these days, but this was a quick knit for a specific purpose and therefore I actually managed to get it done.

What I Bought at the Alice Springs Banie Festival 2013

I didn't just enter beanies, I bought beanies.  Too many perhaps!

Bobby and MoMo admire a delightful felted helmet piece.  Some less polite observers have referred to this one as the felted rubber glove.  It is a MOST STYLISH dragon helmet.  I wore it all night at the opening of the Beanie Festival and got all sorts of compliments. I even got to meet the maker, which was exciting for both of us!

Bobby and MoMo think this is a quieter, more unobtrustive item, for the less conspicuous moments in life.  Again it is felted, this time nuno felted with some lovely little bits of silk around the brim.  I like to think I look like a woodland pixie in it. (Of course I actually look like a giant with a pimple on top of my head!)

This quiet and stylish number was chosen for, and bought for, George.  It is handspun alpaca in gentlemanly colours with the lovely, stylish little side detail and a handmade porcelain button in a matching shade.  Warm, handsome, perfect, just like George really!

I went back the next day with Baby Bear, who chose three or four colourful and cheerful delights but, rather disappointingly, passed up on the elephant.  I could not resist this gorgeous felted Sorting Hat of a hat and have decided that it automatically qualifies me to teach at Hogwarts.

In the end I had to buy one vaguely sensible item.  This cute and colourful spring meadow complete with bees is delightful and I wore it out tonight.

God I've had fun!!!!!

Alice Springs Beanie Festival 2013

George promised that if I entered at least one beanie in this year's festival, we would go and visit.  So I did the maximum two permitted. The theme this year was 'Friendship'. I must say I had trouble working out wht most of the entries I saw tonight had to do with friendship! But they were all amazing.  I didn't win any prizes, which I hadn't really expected to do, but sold one of them tonight, which was the opening night.  Without further ado, here are the two entries and their stories:

I admit to being obsessed with Dr Who. They are Dr Who entries.

The red one is based on a fez, though it's much taller - imagine the really ridiculous hats worn in the medieval series of Blackadder, and that's what it looks like on.  I took the words from C.S. Lewis's the Four Loves to signify various forms of love/friendship.  An overriding theme, to me, of Dr Who is the way he always has to leave his friends behind, no matter how much he loves them, and outlives them by centuries.

It is knitted in two strands of red DK pure wool and felted in the washing machine, about five times, and dried over a flower pot on top of a large tin of dog food.  And the words embroidered with black knitting cotton.

THE FOUR LOVES

This one was inspired by the Van Gogh story in a previous series of Dr Who where the Doctor and Amy Pond jollied Vincent along and he painted Starry Starry Night with the Tardis in the sky.

It is a standard cloche shape knitted in DK dark blue pure wool and felted in the machine, then dried over a Pyrex mixing bowl.  A variety of dyed Wensleydale locks were needlefelted in swirls around it, using my trusty (but not much used) cheapo needlefelting machine, then holographic star sequins were sewn on in clusters.

STARRY STARRY NIGHT

 This is the one that sold!!!

The opening night was huge fun.  I will blog more another time.  I bought three beanies, one sober manly one for the sober and manly George, and two madly frivolous ones for me.

We are having AN ADVENTURE.

Blogtoberfest 7

This leaf is also knitted with my handspun, but dyed with Landscape dyes.  Again it is yarn I made a long time ago, and the leaf was knitted quite a while ago, but the whole thing only went together very recently.

Blogtoberfest 6

The last of this run of hats.  I got really sick of knitting them after five1  But I am happy with the way they knitted up.  This leaf is knitted from handspun dyed with Landscape dyes.  I had a little collection of leaves that were variously used up in a whole host of things and these hats finished off the last of them.  As leaves are so useful for adding to all sorts of things I think I will have to knit some more now and get a new collection going!

Blogtoberfest 5

This leaf was knitted from gorgeous variegated yarn bought in Bairnsdale at the Jolly Jumbuck, a place which sells lots of sheepy products.  They used to have an amazing selection of yarn dyed for them by Marta of Marta's Yarns, who sadly died a few years ago (no pun intended); now their yarns tend to be different though still qutie nice.  I bought this, and a lovely green one, in the great days of yore.

Blogtoberfest 3

This yarn is too pastelly for me but would look great on someone else.  The leaf is another handspun, ecodyed one, needlefelted onto polar fleece, with a few wisps of Angelina fibre needlefelted on top to give it an unexpected sparkle.

That was the one and only time I ever did any 'ecodying', which is such a buzzword now.  I must try it again some time!

Blogtoberfest 2

I've mentioned doing hats.  This is the first of the finished ones.  The embellished leaf is from various playings around in the past, while the hat is new.  The leaf was knitted from wool I spun and dyed with eucalyptus leaves a long time ago, needlefelted onto polar fleece and with some coloured flecks needlefelted on top of it.

My Creative Space

I am enjoying a day off today! OK, so I took Wombat to the doctor this morning, but he was enjoyable company and we had morning tea so it was fun. Then we came home and I have been managing to relax creatively ever since!

The latest non-haiku. I;m not sure why the photo is so bad, other than my dubious photography skills. Oh, and the fact that the camera is dying and is going to be replace sometime soon. (Not that that will improve my photography skills, but maybe the pictures will bebetter by default anyway!)

The latest completed hat.

The latest hat-in-progress. I am actually get sick of hats but I want to finish off the yarn I bought to knit hats, which means one more after this one, and then embellish them and get them up for sale at Mazey Pretty Things.

And I have spent some time on my luvverly new sewing machine. I am making a Mazey patchwork cloth to cut up and embellish and turn into brooches, etc. I think of it as my version of a 'complex cloth' and each layer adds extra to it.

This week at work hasn't been too bad - I have been able to concentrate on my actual job, which I quite like, rather than running around doing other people's work as well as my own. And then having today off helps! Performance review tomorrow - a little nervous.

For more creative spaces, see here!

My Creative Space

At the Surrealist Exhibition in Brisbane I bought some of those magnetic poetry word things.  I decided to set myself a project of doing a new poem on the fridge a couple of times a week.  I was going to do haikus but got confused about the syllables - hence the 7,5,7 effect.  And I decided that I like it so that is what I am going to stick to.  I will photograph each one and post them on my blog.  I am doing a mixture of random and planned - obviously because I want the syllables to work out, there has to be some choosing, but I also want the poems to be fairly Surreal in themselves.

Another hat.  It will be adorned with either a fabric brooch or a scrumble in due course. I might try to sell these when I have the collection done - still about three hats to go.  I haven't had much time or energy lately to do anything.  In fact I am currently off work for two day with galloping stress and exhaustion so hopefully will find some time to do some gentle crafting.

The next hat in production.  The baby picture has nothing to do with anything - I was reading New Idea or something while eating my lunch (idiotic, but sort of stress relief) and the knitting just fell like this.  Note new phone!  Have replaced Stupid Phone (TM) with Smart Phone, still working out how to drive the blasted thing.

I am sure that other people will have more exciting Creative Spaces than me!

My Creative Space

Another week fraught with tedious personal and work stuff.  But at least I got to play with the new sewing machine at the weekend, and a love affair is definitely in progress!  I tried out lots and lots of stitches and stuff :)

Then I did some more playing in black thread (rather than the white which I had been using for the samplers), realising that, on the random fabric I had pulled out of the stash to practice on, it would look good for something specific I was vaguely thinking about.  (Can you think vaguely about something specific?  What I mean is that I was thinking I could use some of these stitches on fabric and then cut them up and make brooch/hat adornments from them, and then realising that the black and red would work well with the yarn I was using to make hats).

And the hat with the attached glasses and antlers?  From the other day?  Well, I canvassed opinions from people on here and on various Facebook groups and decided that it might be better to make it a little more mainstream.





So it now has a gum nut type scrumble on it.

And these are all going to be adornments for other hats in a similar style.



This was meant to be a brooch in the red/orange MazeyPrettyThings collection, but somehow got left out when I was sewing backing fabric on them.  So it is going to be sewn down to a slightly larger piece of the red and black, machine embroidered fabric.


This a dreadful photo, don't know what happened there!  But there is a glittering green button in the middle of this.



And another green button on this one.

These three will probably have brooch backs sewn onto them and pinned to hats and sold together, so that they can be worn together or separately.

Please go and enjoy some other people's spaces :)

My Creative Space

I spent this week finishing off a prototype hat design.  While I still think it was an amusing idea, various feedback from people has made me think that, though I might make a vague attempt to sell something like this, it might not work.

We start off with a simple, comfortable cloche-cum-beanie.  This one is knitted out of a nice, smooth acrylic/microfibre mixture that feels really nice to the touch (though obviously it is less warm than wool).

We gather together some embellishing supplies.  Pipecleaners, a bag of - well, what do YOU think they might be? - and a bag of assorted yarns.

Silliness ensues.  A pair of retro, vintage specs are sewn in place just where you would put them if you were to push your retro, vintage specs up on top of your head.

And then a pipecleaner is wrapped in novelty yarn, bent into shape (sort of) and wrapped around the nose-piece of the glasses, thus making removable antennae/antlers.

Well, I thought it was funny.  A couple of people have told me that it would not raise an eyebrowin their local neighbourhood.  I might wear it myself.  But would you?  Would you BUY something like this?  Is there any point in me putting in my new born MadeIt shop which so far has not even sold anything at all?

OK, at least I was creative.  And to see how other people have been creative this week, here is the linkety link :)

My Creative Space

What with the (currently stalled) Knit Along, and this lot 'ere, I am behind in the Bead Journal Project.  But I feel an urge to bead returning and will catach up sometime soon!

I finally had some time, and some courage, to pop into Open Drawer (see last post) and hopefully they might be able to sell some of my things.  And I was asked to make some more things, which I took in at the start of the week.  These are they - my creative space for the last couple of weeks:





Patchwork scarf - a variety of yarns of completely different textures and weights, with some of (now specially named) Mazey Patchwork on the bottom.  Because I was running out of time (this was the last one I finished) most of the embroidery on that was done on the tram, the train and in the Melbourne Central food court at lunchtime.  It got a few weird looks, but who cares!





The first of two feral hats.  This one has some of the ends pulled out through the top and tied with big beads.  It is a floppy tam-o-shanter type of hat.





The other feral hat.  Again floppy.  This time the ends are like a fringe down the back seam.






This blue hat is what you do when you find half a scrumbled hat and don't have the time to finish making it properly.  You knit a tube, using a hat block and pins to judge how long it needs to be, then you carefully sew down the scrumbling to the tube.  Add an extra row of stitching underneath the scrumbling (repetition, and tying the design together) and hey presto!





Simple scarf knitted lengthways in a variegated yarn, and some crocheted bits sewn down in a viney pattern (plus I needlefelted the long ends of theyarn in a similar pattern).  Finished off with Suffolk Puffs and cute buttons.






The final, blue, scarf, knitted lengthways and the ends turned into a feral fringe.  They were lightly needlefelted crossways for the first third or so of their length, so hold them together but still keep them defined as separate yarns, and then I sewed buttons and beads all over the ends of the actual knitting and the start of the fringe.

These were fun to make, and all my own designs.  Currently working on a prototype new design which I might try to sell through my new Made It Shop.

For more yummy, inspirational Creative Spaces, pop over here.