Poppalina

Has anyone seen my...um...zipps?

Oy vey, what a week. Hot enough to consider the serious possibility of Armageddon; discovering what actually happens when the power grid fails (or is deliberately switched off); people dying from the heat; the inevitable haemorrhaging of Melbourne's neglected public transport system as trains fail, tracks buckle and trams collide; the state burning, as usual, because it's so BLOODY DRY; people losing it, completely, and tossing their kids off the Westgate Bridge....

Gotta make you wonder about the human race.

I kept quiet for most of it, so quiet that I didn't speak, lest I lose even more Vital Bodily Fluids. I sat perfectly still and took a bit fat trip down memory lane, scanning and archiving the family photos online, memories of the last 90 years. My eyes are completely square, but my name sits high on The Rellies' Christmas card lists, today.

Amongst the photos, cards, recipes, sticky notes and assorted other random pieces of memorabilia in the boxes was my year 10 report card from Shithole Secondary College. Now, I defy anyone to say that they wasted their time more definitively, more comprehensively, than I did by attending East Doncaster High School. It goes down, without peer, as one of the most stupid and pointless experiences of my life. And people wonder why I'm ambivalent about Formal Education...

I scored 'A's, mostly, not because I was a particularly good student, or even gave a shit, but because the bar was set so breathtakingly low. The school, caring only for it's image and reputation - but not a fig for it's culture of violence and racial intolerance - didn't hesitate to fudge what were, in fact, woeful academic standards. In truth, most of my teachers - I do not exaggerate - could not string together a coherent sentence, much less control and teach a class.

However, every so often, just as arbitrarily, I'd turn up an 'E' or an 'F'. I never did manage to fathom the logic behind the assessment process. My money's on raucous, late-night committee meetings, heavily lubricated and employing the oracular judgement of dice.

Anyway, here is one of my more memorable results. One last read.....

 

Before I liberate it, and it's pompous embecility,

on the Bonfire of Oblivion.

No Way!

Way.

 

 

Daring!

Beauty!

Finally.

I thought their time would never come.

    

Is it just me, or does Paris bear a spooky resemblance to Martha Stewart in the illustration?

Via Nic.

Some Clouds Have Woollen Linings

The Bad News?

My studio is not fitting together like I'd hoped. I may have to jettison a table.

   

Malabrigo Kettle-dyed Superwash Merino

Cascade - The Heathers - Peruvian Highland

 

If I do, I will be left with an alarmingly small amount of horizontal workspace.

I'm not happy about this. In fact, the prospect is freaking me out.

 

Lang Silkdream - merino/silk

 

The Good News?

In the studio boxes, I found a Christmas present from my Fairy Godmother. Unopened.

 

Debbie Bliss Donegal Tweed - wool/angora

 

Turns out she'd visited Yarntopia for me, the one on Amsterdam Ave, in NYC.

The darling.

The sight of all that exquisite yarn saved me from a Meltdown of such Transcontinental Proportions,

 

Cascade - The Heathers - Peruvian Highland

 

That in all likelihood, the Godmother herself would've heard it.

A Little Preliminary Crafting

Years of experience with Creative Geniuses should have taught me by now 

that when one starts driving you murderously bonkers, 

it usually means that they're about to do something constructive.

 

After which, they're generally very good-tempered.

Meanwhile, I wanted to show you this, because never again will it EVER be so tidy...

 

Makes me feel all Zen, it does.

Wish I could say the same for the studio, which is still COMPLETELY in boxes.

Moving: The Big Questions

 

Q:     How many craft books does a girl Really Need?

 

A:     After detailed examination, and ruthless culling,

 

Um........ about 10 boxes full.

The Mother of Invention

Inspired by a girl in the city wearing Interesting Sandshoes,

and constrained by a profound lack of available cash,

the Creative Genius was obliged to DIH.

The result, in my humble opinion,

is even more attractive than the shoes that inspired them.

Good to see someone crafting, around here.

I have post-bear burnout.

 

Though if something doesn't happen soon,

I may be obliged to papier mache us a house to live in.

A Secret Garden

I promised Victoria I would post the finished version of this.

Of course, a person could well die of old age, waiting for me to keep a promise.

But if they can manage not to, sooner or later I'll deliver.

I am Decidedly Unhappy with the quality of these pictures. Silk is a bitch to photograph, and needs more light than I have in my whole house. But the Gift of Questionable Merit has been handed over now to the Happy Couple, so that's that.

Trust me, this is all much more interesting in Real Life.

It all started by taking a piece of my mother's floral chintz and playing with some machine embroidery over the print.

Many hours later (or days, maybe, who can say), I was looking out a window into a beautiful garden.

Or so I like to think.

Somehow a fistful of kids snuck in and planted themselves as well. Not sure how that happened. Sometimes a work gets a mind of it's own, and you just have to run with it.

Truth be told, the outcome of these free-form embroideries have bugger all to do with me. I might start with a sense of control and purpose, but am invariably swept into a frenzied, psychotic vortex of cutting and sewing. I don't eat, don't sleep, can't talk, and CANNOT STOP until it's done. Afterwards, I'm often surprised, sometimes shocked, and occaisonally horrified by the results. And it's rare for me to even remember the process, much less document it, so don't hold your breath waiting for a tutorial from me, not in the whole world, ever. Quite impossible, and it would probably only scare you anyway.

I swear to God, if it weren't for craft (and yoga), they'd have put me away years ago.

All my friends are getting married

Which has kicked my ass back into the studio, for the sole purpose of producing stunning and enviable wedding presents.

With confusing results, thus far.

However, I am soldiering on, despite being almost barbequed by the heat.

Because I regard the (rare and bum-clenching) raiding of the treasure that is my antique silk braid stash as a

Commitment to Finishing.

Acts of Gratuitous Beauty

Of the myriad communities on the internet, I can't think of one that could possibly be kinder, more friendly, sharing or caring than They Who Craft. Not unless there's a Myspace group called Heavenly Angels at the Right Hand of God.

Crafters get to the Heart of Things. They share, teach, swap, send gifts, and support one another. They have to. Their vocation is to make the world a more beautiful place. They need all the help they can get.

They find their materials in op shops, garage sales, on the beach, in the garden, occaisonally even falling from the sky and hitting them on the head. They encounter all things with an eye to how they might utilize, enhance and adapt. They're thrifty and hate waste, as did their mothers, and their mothers, and their mothers before them. It's always been this way.

dear meagan

But they also love to save, to rescue. A good crafter can spot a handmade doily, swatch of kimono fabric, or well-preserved handknit (and tell you what fibre it's made from) at a hundred paces, out of a pile 20 feet high, in a dimly lit back room, not 10 minutes before they have to pick the kids up from school. They will pay their last 2 bucks to rescue it, take it home, gaze lovingly at it, and then put it away.

Some considerable time later, they will take it out again, wash it, felt it, embroider it, cover it in wire and beads, put a zip in it, attach an adjustable handle, slip cast it, oxyweld a brooch-back onto it, and cover it in glitter.

It will be magnificent. One of a kind. Never to be repeated, at least not quite the same way, ever again. Hours of thought, pondering, working, fucking up, lamenting, undoing, and fixing have gone into it. A part of themselves, too, never to be replaced.

mimi kirchner

Then, when it's all done, they will either give it away to Some Deserving Person, or sell it for an outrageously small fraction of what it's worth, in order to scrape together the cash to make something else. If it's good, it will probably be ripped off, sent to a Third World country, copied, sent back as a knockoff, and sold in the same shop that stocked the original, for a third of the price. liana kabel

Most people think Crafters are nuts. Potty, whimsical and eccentric, at best. Cracked, spooky and best avoided, at worst. Maybe they're right. I know it takes a certain degree of obsessiveness to see an idea through to completion, and a demented level of fervour to start such an ambitious project in the first place. Crafting takes time, lots and lots of time. And so much patience. Neither are highly valued, anymore.

Crafters are patronised, excluded and ignored by the Art World. What we do is too home-oriented and kitsch for High Art, too grass roots in it's aspiration, too unsophisicated in it's intention. I have had my work removed from exhibitions under pressure from other artists, on the grounds it didn't the fit the media parameters of 'Fine Art', ie. it was embroidered rather than painted or drawn. In short, it was Only Craft, and was therefore diminishing the calibre of the collection. At the time, I found the arrogance and snobbery of this argument hilariously funny, but I am also bewildered by it to this day.

Laugh at craft, by all means.

  Monster Crochet

We will happily laugh with you.

But sneer, condescend, exploit or, most craven of all, steal our ideas and pass them off as your own, you thieving bastards, you know who you are, and we will curse you. A curse to haunt you for lifetimes to come. And then turn our backs on you forever, to concentrate on the Good People in This World.

6.5 stitches

Real crafters are dedicated, honest people, spinning dreams, and working their arses off.  Nay-sayers and parasites kill our high, make us miserable, stop us from working. And that's a Very Bad Thing. One of the reasons we lock ourselves away and make things is to avoid the company of People Like That. We don't do it for fame, fortune, or glory (though a little fortune, occasionally, wouldn't go astray). Hell, we don't even sign our own work most of the time, it's so not about ego.

Crafters craft because they must. They are driven by a blind desire to create Gorgeous Things. Things that take time and patience and love.

  Sandra Monat

Things designed to reach people,

Screaming Lulu

break your heart,

  mollychicken

draw you closer, until it rests against your cheek,

Suse

or laugh with pleasure,

Marianne Jørgensen

because it's just so beautiful.

spirit cloth

Crafters try to bring a little of the Divine into the real world with everything they make. As a gospel singer might describe it, they sing it down, during the hours and hours of meditative work involved in each piece.

To do this gives our lives meaning.

It makes life worth living.

I wax sentimental, and I haven't even been drinking. Forgive me. But I had a toy named after me today, and it's made me all mooshy. Thanks, Leah, beer-pulling craftbanger and Keeper of Country Cemetery, for letting me know.

And thank you, Dawn, whom, like so many supportive people in my life, I have never even met.

poppalina the jack rabbit