Peacock bag - finished at last

I finally finished the bag I've been embroidering for the past couple of weeks. I wanted to use metallic threads to give a shimmery effect to the peacocks, but when I started I had no idea how difficult they would be to work with.










I had a false start when the knots at the back started to unravel after I had cut them off too short to re-tie (five hours' work down the drain and I had to start over). I sought the advice of my swap-bot girls and one of their tips was to use a bit of Fray Stoppa. It worked a lot better for keeping the knots intact, but made them super stiff. This, along with the general unco-operativeness of the thread ends, which refused to stay put when I tried to weave them into the backs of my stitches, forced me to spend quite a while neatening the back of the embroidery with plain thread:

What are they?

Today I got out my fabric paints, a few left over bits of fabric, felt and embroidery floss ends and messed around with the button kit I bought a few weeks ago. I didn't want to make buttons so I pulled out the shanks and will shortly be supergluing magnets to the backs. I figured they can be either fridge magnets or worn as a brooch with another magnet on the other side of the clothing.

I kinda like the painted ones which were just improvised on the spot with the bits of metallic embroidery floss that I've been using these past few days.

Garden growth

Here's a view of the garden as it looks now from the same spot as this post. I've just realised what a bad position I chose for my comparison photos (I take the same shot every Sunday evening) because the tomatoes get lost in the greenery of the tree in the background. However, during the week I did discover a nifty website called Nearmap.com ("View high resolution PhotoMaps from multiple angles and observe changes to the environment over time. We have captured these PhotoMaps to feed your curiosity and encourage you to add to the site") on which I will be able to chart the progress of my garden without having to take my own photos.

Amazingly, these tomoatoes were all planted on the same day. It just goes to show how random gardening is for me. The larger ones will soon need to be staked to wire which I'll run between the two pickets. Perhaps a job for next weekend. The two little plants towards the centre of the bed are basil, and they have just grown their second pair of leaves.

A couple of the beans have really taken off. They are almost at the top of their trellis - where will they go now?

The strawberries are slowly growing under their net. I caught a white moth in there the other day, but I can't find any sign of grubs so fingers crossed it was just flying through.

Two of the eight to ten cos lettuce seeds I originally planted have come up and only one is looking any good. I put a few more seeds in last week but nothing has come up just yet.

In the meantime the rocket is doing well and a few have gone to seed which is good. Rocket seems to be the only thing that is foolproof for me, and even then I have to plant lots as it tends to bolt very quickly. Same with coriander and spinach - for me it's just not worth putting them in, although I love them dearly.

Stamp carving

I've been messing around with stamp carving on and off for a while now, but I've never made a stamp I'm really pleased with. Recently I joined an interesting postal letterboxing swap for which I need to carve two stamps and make a couple of little booklets to imprint other people's stamps. The four that I came up with this morning left a lot to be desired: the eye was probably the only useable one, and I think this will become my "signature stamp". The one in the top right hand corner is a megaphone but looks very much like an axe head.


I really liked the idea of the "snail mail" stamp, but the first one I made looked more like a squirrel peeking out after I accidentally cut off some material next to the snail's shell. So I decided to have another go at making a snail on a mailbox, and this one came out a little better.


This evening I made one of the booklets. The cover is made of paint chips - I was going to make the whole booklet out of paint chips, but when I tried stamping onto one of them, it was not only very easy to smudge, but the ink took way too long to dry. I guess they are not absorbent enough. So I just have ordinary paper inside the booklet. Ho-hum, I would have liked something a bit different, but it was not to be.

That's pretty much all I've done today, apart from get a haircut and do some washing. I did sleep in this morning though - my next door neighbours were having a noisy party and I think the last (very drunk) guests left about 3am!

Groovy gifts

One of my sewing friends often gives me bags of offcut fabric (yay), and occasionally she includes little surprises, such as this wonderful relic of the past:

It's a booklet included with the November 22, 1972 issue of the Australian Women's Weekly. Inside are patterns for many groovy handmade items, such as crocheted slippers, a tea cosy, bookmarks, and my favourite, novel coat-hangers.


Interestingly, this publication uses American spellings rather than British. I wonder when it changed?

Teeny Weeny Ziney

I intended to update my blog during the week but ended up spending most evenings selecting, drawing and embroidering little things for my latest project. It's for the Stocking Filler Matchbox swap on Swap-bot. If you are one of my three partners in this swap, don't read on, otherwise it will spoil the surprise!

It has been a good week.
-- I got four new shirts (the first time in years that I have bought brand-new clothes instead of op shop clothes. In preferred colour order, they are turquoise, cerise, black/white striped and purple/white striped respectively.)
-- I had some really nice feedback on some swaps that I recently sent out.
-- we had lots of rain.
-- the garden is growing. :-)
-- and today I received a flickr mail tag inviting me to participate in an artists' exchange which should be so exciting! The lady I am to send to is someone I have swapped with before and she is a very talented artist, so the pressure is on to come up with something lovely for her.

Anyhow, back to the project at hand. Since the zine I'm making is so tiny (to fit inside a decorated matchbox), and I wanted to include different sized embroidered images, I am going to make it concertina style. It will be very simple but I hope effective and different. There are a few words to go along with the pictures:





I haven't chosen which pictures will go along with the words yet, and I still need to embroider one or two more.

Lovely day

Today is a perfect day, not too warm, with a nice light breeze and fluffy white clouds. I gave all the plants some Seasol to celebrate. The only things really going crazy in the garden are the strawberries (little fruits already) and the gazanias (probably my favourite flower).


There are also a couple of baby blood oranges which I hope I will eventually be eating. The tree itself is still tiny.


I managed to get a nice shot of the kangaroo paws at work yesterday.


I spent most of yesterday evening upgrading my computer to Windows 7 in between bits of embroidery and reading. It went without a hitch and only took a few hours. So far so good: all my files are still there and everything works. I need to complete my entry in a journal round robin and do some more work on a swap this weekend so might be a bit busy to get on the computer very much to check it out.