Poppalina

Introducing the Craftorialist

A Kapinny post

Not content with having a craft overload, and a co-authorial position with Popplina, I have started a new project that, with any luck, won't be finished for a very long time.

The Craftorialist is a new blog of inspirations, instructions, pictures and patterns, in which I share my technical expertise with anyone interested in textile-based craft. It's brand new, so there's only a few posts to see right now, but I will keep adding to it over time.

Feel free to drop by and have a look, ask a question, make a comment or—hell—add it your reader!

thecraftorialist.com

Rocket Wars

 

By Shula

Dear God, give me strength.....

Rocket, parsley and Love in a Mist, squashed all but out of existence by the weight of an exceedingly heavy object.

Hail?

A meteor, perhaps?

You can't tell from the photo...

but the flattened area is suspicously, perfectly, dog-shaped.

Now, the trouble with shepherds is that they imprint (in their minds, not just in rocket). Once they've done something once, they're almost certain to do it again, an attribute that renders them simultaneously excellent for training and utterly shitful at unlearning bad behaviour.

Clearly, my dog has decided that an elevated position and cool, spicy ambience gives the rocket bed a perfect aspect from which to survey his dominion.

It puts my rocket supply in Extreme Danger,

Or my dog on the resale market.

I'm still deciding.

Meanwhile, the dog figures that as long as he doesn't make eye contact, nothing can be proven.
 

Metaphor

By Shula

The hand-piecing continues, often long into the night. Not great on the old eyes, but still...

A balm for the soul,

And that's a fact.

A faired inkum scrap quilt is a massive exercise in nostalgia. You use all the weird little pieces of fabric that you've kept over the years because you love them and couldn't throw them out. Some have been around for decades - I've got scraps of fabric here that were worn by my grandmother, others that were saved by my mother, nightie fabrics from various siblings, exceptionally groovy 70s hotpants that Mym wore as a little girl until the seat fell out of them. I have selvedges and offcuts from my days with the Frock Fairies in the Nicholas Building, (where I was renowned for rubbish bin-raiding, pride not being my forte). I have superb silk remnants of Maxmillian's ill-fated swimwear collection of 2004. I even have the odd teatowel scrap that flew over Pene's shoulder at 100km an hour in one of her Production Frenzies, and I caught mid-air ....

And then there are the gifts. A whole box of pieces from Jude, carefully and lovingly sorted by colour. More still from Leah. Other people's treasures. Other people's memories. All of them important.

And then one day they all come out of the cupboard,

And you begin...

It's very important that you don't hurry. You're handsewing, and a hexagon might take up to half an hour from start to finish. That's a lot of time for a piece of fabric to be resonating on your ass. You can remember a LOT in 30 minutes.

So.

Lots of looking back. Lots of wandering in your mind. The odd chuckle. The odd tear. Mostly just reflecting and being still, and letting the fabrics do their thing.

From time to time I have pondered the question of why I'm suddenly so obsessed with patchwork.

I think it was Oona who brought my attention to this, I'd linked to the page on Wikipedia without even noticing it. The following is a diagram of triiodothyronine, or T3, a chemical that I have in such abundance at the moment, and which is causing me such enormous inconvenience.

Bears a rather uncanny resemblance to this, don't you think?

 

Coincidence?

Hmmmm.....maybe.

Except that I don't believe in coincidences.

I'd call it a classic example of creative healing.

  

Easy winder

A Kapinny post

I thought the unpicking was going to be epic, despite the new yarn winder.

But thanks to Bernadette at the Happy Hookers crochet club on Sunday, it SO wasn't. As I pulled, she wound. It was hard to keep up.

Which meant that at the end of a very short time, I had a pile of watermelon pink wool/silk yarn balls instead of a too-tight sweater.

We decided that my hook size was correct for the tension and the stitches, so I just need to go up a size in the pattern for the sweater to fit me right.

Many thanks, Bernadette!

Craft overload ...

A Kapinny post

Ever feel like you have started too many projects already, but you keep wanting to start more before you're even close to finishing the others?

I'm knitting a poncho/cape thingy, which should be gorgeous and warm when it's done. It's in a gorgeous 4-ply wool, and it's just over a metre long on both sides, so it's a longer term project.

I've finished the crochet pullover (pattern here), which would be great, except it's just too small, and I'm going to have to unpick it all and make it again, bigger.

There's another couple of babies I'd like to knit or crochet something for, and that should be soon, while they're still new.

And I know the dearest little two year old who needs a jumper.

I'm part way through I don't know how many sewing projects, but I really need a new pair of warm trousers.

One day a week in the studio just ain't enough, y'know?

Less is More

By Shula

Okay.

So falling grievously ill does have an upside.

 

Getting sick sets you fair and square on your ass. From said ass-position, you can see the way you live your life, clear as a bell. You're obliged to consider the violence that you've no doubt (and this is important) been doing to yourself. In cases of severe illness it reminds you, tediously but in no uncertain terms, that you are in fact mortal, and that you might want to be getting your shit together about living right because this whole Life Deal is finite, dontcha know, I've told you a thousand times, I don't know why I bother... etc etc...

And it is in recognition of this fact that I am crafting again. Seriously crafting. Making anything, starting a thousand projects, not worrying about what anything will become, if I can make it earn money, or even if it's any good.

Realising that it's what I do. 

Remembering who I am.

You'd be surprised how easily I forget.

 

 

I forget that if I don't create, or give myself room to think creatively, to see the world as a creative possibility, live my life in a creative space...

I get sick.

That if I don't do my yoga practice, listen to my body and give it what it needs...

I get sick.

I'm talking really, really, life-threateningly, kick-ass fucken sick.

It's embarrassing how not rocket science this is, but I'd like a dollar for every time I've had to re-learn it.

 

So.

No more schlepping. No more expending my energy on back-aching, heart-breaking, poorly paid, shit jobs. No more using my body like a machine, and pretending to myself and the world that I'm twenty and unbreakable. That I can work like a dog and keep up, it's just a case of mind over matter.

I'm much older than twenty and (it's official) my metabolism is shattered.

Enough.

 

We held a House Meeting, the kid, the dog and I. We agreed that the first and most important lesson here is to follow your heart and do what makes you happy (the dog was emphatic on this point). Secondly, that the Universe will provide (Mym's contribution, equally heartfelt). Together, we decided that we can turn living modestly into an Art Form. That we will lower our carbon footprints and see just how little we can consume, how little money we need to live. We will regard it as a CHALLENGE (my attempt at positive spin, let's see just how bloody challenged the kid feels when she needs those new Doc Martens).

Finally, before we adjourned to de-brief with teddy bear biscuits and an Audrey Hepburn movie (how hard can life be?), the House noted also that we trust in and treasure the ongoing support of our friends and family, which has been bewilderingly forthcoming and generous. You are AWESOME and we LOVE you.

 

High School Formal Frock

A Kapinny post

Last year I made my step daughter's Year 10 end of year formal frock. She had found the pattern in an op shop.

 

Though the skirt was far too long and full for someone of her small stature, the bodice and collar are designed for her, really. She has one of those old-fashioned hourglass figures.

The trip to the fabric store was fun and excruciating in equal measure. It took ages, but finally we settled on a cherry red silk satin ...

... which looks a lot brighter red here than it really is, and a gorgeous black lace overlay.

And the lovely French lady serving us found a fabulous black lace trim we decided to put on the hem. After it was finished, and she had tried it on, I described her in it to my husband.

Me: 'Gina Lollobrigida. That's all I'm saying.'

Him: 'I don't know what you mean.'

Me: 'You know what I mean.'

Him, putting his fingers in his ears and screwing up his face: 'I don't want to know what you mean!'

Foggy

By Shula

Living in a thyrotoxic fog has a number of inconvenient consequences.

Chief among them is stupidity. I do really stupid things.

This is because the hormone levels in my brain are out of whack

(not because I am stupid per se;

it's important to me that you understand the difference).

Anyway, stupidly, I managed to delete my entire links list.

God knows how,

But there it is.

Or was. 

Slowly putting it (and everything else in my life) back together again.

Feel free to contact me if you're not there and should be.