Tomato Wonderland

The tomato plants are flourishing. I was so excited that I forgot to post about the first few grape tomatoes I harvested the other day. There are more on the way!

Then there are the new little flowers that have appeared on the Black Krim in the last couple of days:

And plenty of lush green growth on the others - no flowers yet though.

The sticks mark a few rainbow silverbeet seeds that I have just planted. I received them in my welcome pack from the Diggers Club. I let my old membership lapse two years ago, but joined up again in my flush of gardening enthusiasm a few weeks ago. I am stoked to get these seeds as I was planning to buy the exact same ones. Fingers crossed I will have better luck with them this time. It looks like the main thing is to not let them dry out, and apart from today and yesterday being very hot (high 30s) we seem to be having cooler weather than usual so far this summer.

Free range plants

A very thoughtful gift from my friend Tess!

Emerging from the jungle

How lovely to have a fresh start in the garden, thanks to my wonderful brother and sister-in-law. Unfortunately I didn't take a "before" picture but trust me, it was a mess. Here's Nic just after he pulled the grass jungle out of the raised bed:

If you look closely you can see the weeds still in the bed next to the fence; Nic pulled them out as well. I have since planted another bougainvillea which I hope will become as big and beautiful as the one further down.

I was so thrilled to have my raised bed back that I made myself a promise to maintain it carefully to prevent it from sliding back into buffalo overgrowth, and promptly whacked some tomato seedlings into it.

In two weeks, they have flourished, from this

to this

And today I rummaged around in my fridge and found some rocket seeds and tomato seeds I vaguely remember saving from a couple of years ago. I bunged them in with crossed fingers. No idea if they are still viable, but I'll give them a couple of weeks and if nothing comes up I'll try something else.

In the pics you can see my new compost tumbler - that's the black spherical objet d'art in the right hand corner just under the bougie flowers. It's making me nervous already, but it can't work out any worse than the worm cockroach farm or the "sniff-it-and-puke" bokashi bucket.

Oh yeah - I started a couple of jars of sprouts (mung and alfalfa). So I'll have some fresh crunchy goodness to add to my salads in a little over a week! Yay! Just in time for the hot weather.

Perth's forecast for the next week:

Forecast for Friday   
Sunny. Moderate S/SW winds, freshening during the afternoon.

Precis:      Sunny.                             
City:        Min 18     Max 30 
Mandurah:    Min 19     Max 28 

UV Alert:    8:00 am to 4:30 pm, UV Index predicted to reach 13 [Extreme]  
Fire Danger: Coastal Plain: LOW-MODERATE
             Hills:         LOW-MODERATE

Saturday     Sunny.                                 Min 18     Max 32
Sunday       Sunny.                                 Min 17     Max 31
Monday       Sunny.                                 Min 16     Max 32
Tuesday      Sunny.                                 Min 18     Max 33
Wednesday    Sunny.                                 Min 19     Max 34
Thursday     Sunny.                                 Min 21     Max 34

Blogging Hiatus

My blog will be going off the air for a while as I attempt to cut back on my online activity. I've been really busy journalling, drawing and doodling though, so check out my flickr for latest pics - try as I might, I can't give that up!

Poetry in Stitching

I'm so overwhelmed I can hardly contain myself.

Look what Jackson sent me!!!!!!

Isn't it amazing!!!! I wish I were a better photographer. I am looking forward to seeing her photos of this fabulous piece. Everything about it just blows me away, from the way she has perfectly captured the atmosphere of the scene, to the incredible detail of the hair on both The Dude and Maude, to the subtle shading in the metallic dress and on the horns, to the beaded highlights. I am absolutely in awe of you, Jackson! I can't believe you could bring yourself to give this away, either! :-)

Among the other gifts she sent was another brilliant embroidery plus fabric and rick-rack to make a pillow, which I couldn't resist whipping up straight away:

Fight Club is near the top of my list of favourite movies.

This swap made me very happy indeed! Jackson, I can't thank you enough! You are a legend :-)

Teaser for Jackson! :-)

Hee hee! I've been working on a private embroidery swap with the awesome Mafiosagrrl, and since she tried to torture me with a teaser pic of her embroidery, I think it's only fair that I return the favour :-)

It looks pretty obvious to me :-)

A short update

I haven't been posting lately - trying to give my eyes a rest from the computer screen while the quacks try and figure out why I've had a headache for over a month. It's not enough to stop me from crafting though :-) - I'll be back with photos as soon as I can, I promise!

A fun little skull

I whipped up this little thing this evening. I'm not sure what it is - I guess it could have a magnet or a brooch back attached to it, or a little hook to hang it up or something. It's done in white DMC glow-in-the-dark thread (I love that thread!).

Embroidered book finished!

I finally finished my embroidered book! It seems like embroidery is all I've been doing this long weekend. I took photos, but they didn't come out that well. Here are some scans, which still look a bit different from the real thing.

This is the cover, opened out. I used metallic thread (couched), which is really sparkly in real life, for the front and plain perle cotton for the list on the back page (again more shiny in real life). I was going to embroider another fish on the back but then I thought it would be fun to make the list, since all the creatures I did include have such cool names.

The second and third pages are the humpback angler fish and the umbrella mouth gulper, which both have bioluminescent extremities (done in glow in the dark thread, which unfortunately looks quite unspectacular in daylight).

The middle page is the vampire squid from hell, which again is done with the bioluminescent spots in white DMC glow in the dark floss (much nicer to work with than the other GITD thread). Also, the back tentacles are done in pale pink backstitch and french knots, which you can't quite tell in the scan.

Pages 6 and 7 are the dumbo octopus and chimaera. This is the first time I've used split stitch as a filling stitch and it was surprisingly quick and easy. I felt like they needed something to unify them on the page, so I did some waves in blue variegeted floss. The colours look slightly washed out in the scan.

I put the book together, mini-zine style, after first completing the embroidery on the sheet of linen. I had to trim the edges of the middle pages a bit to get the page widths even. Then I went along each edge with a small machine zig zag stitch. The finished book is about the size of a postcard.

And that's it. I have to admit I'm not 100 percent happy with it - it seems quite insubstantial for something I spent so long to make. I didn't enjoy working with the black linen so much - I had to give it a good going-over with sticky tape to get rid of all the cat hair! I prefer a finer grained fabric, and brighter colours, but I did choose this subject partly because the colours would be more muted (my swap partner prefers a much less vivid palette than I do). But I did enjoy doing the embroidery and it was a fun experiment. I already have something in mind for my next one.......

My Creative Space

This week I've been doing a bit of stamp carving. I feel like I'm slowly improving - the key word here is slow, which is how you have to do it - v e r y    s  l  o   w   l   y. I'm not quite happy with the carving block I'm using so I ordered some Staedtler Mastercarve (from Dick Blick in the USA because you can't get it here. Grrr.)

So here's a little Ninja guy, and a skull based on images in the Mexican codices.

For more Creative Spaces, go here.

Next page in the embroidered book

This creature is also real. The Dumbo Octopus is another cephalopod, related to the nautilus and squid, which lives deep in the oceans. I'm not sure if this little guy is finished - his suckers look like they are floating, but it's late so I'll have a look at him again tomorrow.

For the embroidered book.....

It's a Vampire Squid from Hell! Honestly, it's a real deep sea creature, and it has bioluminescent spots that it flashes on and off to confuse predators when they attack. I used glow-in-the-dark white thread for the spots and eye, and I wish I could get a pic of it in the dark to show how good it looks when the lights are out!

Sad panda

Still haven't quite got the hang of stamp carving yet.....I do really enjoy it, but unlike most other crafts in which mistakes are easily repairable or can be covered up, with stamp carving, one slip of the cutter and it's ruined!

Fabric book

I made a little fabric book yesterday, for an Art*o*mat swap I'm in. It is made of scraps from recent projects, ironed onto interfacing and then machine stippled. I cut the finished sheet down to 8"x6", then added some random bits of selvedges plus a button and loop. I used the mini-zine method to make it into a little eight-page booklet which fits snugly into its little box. Finished size is about 3"x2".

Embroidered buttons

Last month I participated in the Feeling Stitchy embroidered button swap. My partner has now received her package, so I can finally show a photo of what I sent. My partner lives in the USA, so for something a little different, I went with an Aussie animal theme and also included some Cadbury chocolate, silk and cotton floss piled into a little pouch.

Chamomeleon

I finally finished the embroidery project I've been working on for the past several days! To look at it you would not believe how many hours it took me!

Day 2/4

I finished making a patchwork bag (using Pink Penguin's great tute) and need to find some cord for the drawstring. Here's a pic of the front and back, and another pic of the pincushion. It's annoying how it is usually too dark to take a decent photo by the time I've finished making my thing of the day. Hmm, guess I should start earlier :-)

Day 1/4

I spent quite a while tidying up my craft room today and consequently didn't have time to complete the patchwork bag I'm making, although I did cut all the pieces out ready for piecing tomorrow. In the meantime, I used some of the off-cuts to make another little pincushion.

Easter craft blitz

I'm going to do the thing-a-day blitz over Easter, which has started early for me, since the chocolate consumption commenced this morning. Got a big long list of swaps and stuff to make, starting with this chamomeleon which I hope to finish off tonight ......

 And I finally made a little bracelet - this is maybe my fifth attempt? I don't think jewellery is really my forte.

A little sewing

Finished off a couple of small scrappy things today: a pouch and a pincushion. I'm on a pink and green kick at the moment, so I really enjoyed the matchbox swap.

Here's the matchbox I made: