Mostly Knitting

31 Days of Flowers

Posted by on Thursday 15 May, 2008 07:39 AM

Over at Pink Paper Peppermints they're celebrating Spring with 31 tutorials for making flowers. I'm going to make some to cheer up my drab Autumn (about to be Winter).

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Patience is a Virtue

Posted by on Saturday 21 July, 2007 05:05 AM

But I never was a very virtuous person <VBG>

Only kidding.

Along with over 12,500 others, I'm waiting patiently for my invitation to join Ravelry

Here's my latest update from the Ravelry waiting list checker:

• You signed up on June 13, 2007


• You are #8862 on the list.


• 2706 people are ahead of you in line.


• 10005 people are behind you in line.

As for what the site is about, I'm with everyone who isn't on yet who thinks it looks like a hell of a lot of fun as well as being very useful.

And now I'm off back to bed. I only got up because I suddenly realised I forgot to pay the rent yesterday and I jumped out of bed to do it before I forgot completely. You have to love the internet when you can jump put of bed at 4am to pay your rent :-)

Yeah, I know it's 5. I read my email and checked my Ravelry invitation and peeked at my bloglines account and answered some flickr comments and...

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Wanna Know a Secret? & More Squares

Posted by on Wednesday 18 July, 2007 08:22 AM

One thing that most people don't know about me (until now) is that I love bridges. I adore them. I'm trying to save up for a new camera so that I can do a series of photographs and paintings of them. My current digital camera is great if you know the zillion ways to use photoshop to fix all the problems that a 6 year old 3.3 megapixel camera will cause, but if you want to be able to take a photo in anything but optimal conditions, forget it.

Anyway, back to the bridges. Because I love them so much, I was delighted to find the Bridges in Australia Flickr group, which I came across while I was looking for a group for the photos that I took at the breakwater yesterday. Particularly check out the sea bridge (also known as the ocean bridge) at Coledale. That bridge is amazing! If it weren't for the million dollar price tags on most of the houses Coledale would be a pretty amazing place to live if you like wild ocean scenery. We've been there in a particularly nasty rain storm, it was pretty hairy!

Since they aren't of bridges, I ended up putting my photos in the Wollongong Flickr group.

BTW, I don't live in Wollongong proper, I live 10 minutes down the road. We couldn't find anywhere in Wollongong that had a backyard for the cats so we went outside a little. There was a house in West Wollongong with a particularly lovely yard but the house was a dump. I can't wait to be able to buy a new house. We want to live near Shellharbour Village or somewhere similar. ~~Sigh~~

Look, more squares!

That makes 76 squares done. We didn't end up going to SMPTE yesterday because Jamie didn't want to travel so far the day before his shift started so I made squares instead. Fingers crossed I can get 8 done today to put me another day ahead. I'm onto the dark pink squares now, with only dark brown and the multicolour squares to go!

24 squares to go!

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Some Things That Make Me Happy

Posted by on Saturday 7 July, 2007 10:00 AM

In order to avoid posting endless posts that just say "I finished another 4 squares", I thought I'd blog about some things that make me happy. In no particular order.

• Japanese embroidery books. I love them and this particular ebay seller is fantastic. I feel secure giving away my "secret" source for Japanese craft books as I have all the ones I was after <VBG>. If there is a Japanese craft book or magazine that you have been looking for Megumi will go out of her way to find you a copy, new or second hand. And her prices are fantastic. I have purchased embroidery books from her for AUD$26 including postage that would have cost me AUD$35-45 if I could find them here in an Australian book shop.

  Why do I like Japanese embroidery designs so much? I think they have a sweet innocence about them that makes them so appealing to me. They don't have the cloying cuteness of so many American and Australian designs that are around these days. Plus they're a little bit retro and that's always good. :-)

  The image above is from Embroidery One-Point Stitch 500

• Sunshine's Creations.

  I like Wendy's blog or many reasons. First of all, she knows how to do some very cool things and is always happy to share her knowledge. Crocheted hexagon granny motifs and Mock Cathedral Windows Quilts are just two of the tutorials she has available for free. I'll be trying both :-). You can see a list of all her tutorials in the right hand menu on her blog.

  Wendy is also one of those (seemingly) very rare crafters these days who values her own work and I totally respect that. I have avoided looking at websites like Etsy.com recently because a majority of the crafters who sell their work there price it so incredibly low. It makes me sad to see people undervalue what they do to the point of being willing to just make back what they have spent on materials. Especially since there are some amazingly innovative and creative items that some people are selling.

• CozyKnitsLiterally is one etsy seller whose designs I adore and who doesn't under price her work (maybe a little occasionally but not often). Her little pointy top hats are so incredibly cute too. Actually, all of her designs have the indefinable "something" that makes them so "right". See I told you it couldn't be defined :-P
  
  CozyKnitsLiterally Etsy Shop
  CosyMakes Blog and
  Hat Photos on Flickr.com
• Finishing another four blocks for my suffolk puff yo-yo coverlet also makes me happy. :-)

  The first four light pink squares.

  

  26 done, 74 to go...

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Tsumami Kanzashi

Posted by on Saturday 21 April, 2007 11:10 AM

orange kanzashi, originally uploaded by thea superstarr.

I've been admiring these little fabric flowers on Craftster and people's blogs for a couple of months now, and was really happy to find this blog post about them.

craftster.org blog ｻ Kanzashi Yumminess

Now I need to find a book about how to make them! Jamie and I were dreaming about where we would like to go for a holiday overseas if we could ever afford one. I'm thinking I want to go to Japan so I can buy craft books and needlework gadgets <VBG>

Edited to add: I found a website with links to tutorials!

Edited again to add: A series of in depth tutorials. Click the download link for each one to save them.

Edited a third time: You can just assume that I'm going to keep editing this post with more cool stuff until I post the next entry. K? :-)

Jujulovespolkadots has posted this very cute tutorial in her typepad gallery thingy. You may have guessed that I'm obsessed with flowers at the moment. You'd be right...

The Kanzashi Website

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One Word

Posted by on Sunday 8 April, 2007 03:09 PM

Heavenly

:-)

Hmmm, it's my 37th birthday on the 15th. Maybe I should buy myself one!

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Pretty Things

Posted by on Wednesday 14 February, 2007 11:12 AM

Whilst reading my blog subscriptions this morning I came across http://www.zefrank.com where I've been having lots of fun playing with

the scribbler

the "make your own" kaleidescope maker and

the flower maker. Unfortunately I can't get the list of other people's flowers to load, so if you find out how to get that to work please let me know. I want to make a garden!

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It's Done!

Posted by on Monday 1 August, 2005 09:31 AM

Southern Cross Knitting Magazine: Spring 2005

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Issue 1 is Live!

Posted by on Monday 2 May, 2005 08:03 AM

Introducing the thing that's been keeping me away from my blog:

Issue 1 of Southern Cross Knitting Magazine

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Need. More. Coffee.

Posted by on Friday 1 April, 2005 11:16 AM

Or sleep. One of those.

The past week has gone by in a haze of coding html and knitting for the 1st issue of Southern Cross Knitting. I've got a good handle on getting the 1st issue out by the deadline (which I'm not going to release yet in case I don't make it, so there).

I've been at it 14-16 hours a day for the last week, which of course means that the house is a mess, the curtains I was going to hem still aren't done and I can't find my sewing machine under a pile of books (half of which just avalanched to the floor), but I'm very happy with what I've done so far.

I'm very pleased that quite a few known designers and businesses are interested in supplying patterns after the 1st issue comes out. I can't blame them for waiting until issue 2 because of the way they've been let down by the low quality of Creative Knitting mag, which means a lot (but not all) of the content of the 1st issue will be written and designed by me. I'm confident that I'm up to the challenge though. I know my stuff when it comes to knitting and with the patterns and articles that *are* being designed by others there's definitely going to be a nice range of different projects and articles to interest a good range of people.

Of course I'm nervous about how it's going to be received. I'm not a perfectionist, but I do insist on doing my absolute best whenever I attempt something that's important to me and I do set high goals for myself. With help from others I've done the research needed, I know the market, I know the craft extremely well, and I know what people want (and I have an editor to check my appalling typing and occasionally wonky grammar).

Now I just have to deliver...

I think I'l go code some html and do some knitting.

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