Freesie bag pt II

I’ve been doing more work on the Freesie bag. Originally I was making it as a present for a friend, but then I decided to make her something else instead (some beaded jewellery with seashell fragments – but I didn’t get a photo).

I finally finished knitting the bag, and learned how to make buttonholes in the process! Perpendicular buttonholes, that is. It was tricky, as the buttonhole is in a major decreasing area, and the pattern was a combination of YO, K2Tog and SSK.

Here it is:

Buttonhole detail:

Buttonhole detail…with button:

And here is what the hole-y pattern looks like on black fabric (which I will use for the lining):

So now I have to think about how to sew the lining inside, what technique and material(s) to use for the shoulderstrap, and how to crochet the petals around the buttonhole. Still lots to do!

Freesie bag

You can tell I’m back at uni, because my procrastinatory craft quota has gone right up.

Right now I’m furiously knitting what will (hopefully) become a bag for my friend. Her birthday is in a little over a week – eep!

I got this interesting yarn overseas – it’s wool and synthetic, aqua, black and white. There was only one 100g ball left in the shop. It’s called Freesie:

I started thinking of what to make with 100g of this yarn, and started doodling in my little date diary. What came out was a small handbag/purse, which does up with a big button, and where the buttonhole is a crocheted flower.

This is how much I’ve knitted. It’s slow-going, I’m using 3mm circular needles, but it’s not too bad. I decided to use a simple stocking stitch interspersed with YO k2tog rows.

Once I finish knitting the bag shape (basically two rectangles and a triangle, but joined together), I will sew black lining to the wrong side of the knit – this should give the bag more of a solid shape and should show off the YO k2tog holes. I will then use the same yarn to make the flower, and I’ll get a big black button to but through the buttonhole. The handle will be made of the same yarn, knitted in a thinnish tube shape, if I can manage it.

I’ve never made a bag before – hopefully the prototype will turn out nice enough to wear!

Lilies and Aquatic Predators

A couple of weeks ago I got some balsa wood. Balsa is a very light, soft wood, very easy to work with unless you want something with more weight, or if you want to work against the grain (which makes balsa wood splinter). I cut off some rectangles and squares and sealed some of them. Today I started painting them using acrylic paints and various concentrations of glaze medium for different effects. I mostly used shades of turquoise.

One of them I didn’t seal and carved the wood against the grain (the tree square, in the corner):

WiPs (photo taken on my cat’s favourite chair, as you can probably tell):

WiP shot of an aquatic piece – ocean and what might be a large fish, or perhaps a squid:

And here it is, finished:

Here is the other piece I finished, which reminds me of a lily pond:

I really like these two, and the aquatic one in particular. I might work on more of these using wood shavings!

To course or not to course

Yes – I’m thinking about doing another course, this time a photography one – street photography. It starts in March, and it goes for 5 weeks (one session a week, on Saturday).

I haven’t been doing much in the way of creative stuff lately. I’ve been practicing my crocheting (Miss Nyx taught me how to when I was in Perth late last year), and sealing balsa wood to use for projects. I’ve been reading a lot and trying to sort out my work schedule. I now have Fridays off, so hopefully art/craft stuff will pick up again!

I took some photos at St Albans a couple of weeks ago, some turned out quite well. Nowadays I’m mostly using the D80 plus a lovely lens I got for Christmas – a Sigma 50mm f2.8 macro/portrait lens.

Then a few days ago I went on another photo rampage, in Balmain this time (an inner west Sydney suburb) – photos coming soon!

Drawing – Week 4

We did some quick exercises – still life:

We also started to look at the dimensions and proportions of the human head:

And ended with a quick portrait:

AWOL

So, I’ve been slack.

My classes finished long ago but I never got around to posting pics. I didn’t end up going to the last two Painting classes, as I didn’t feel I was getting that much benefit out of this course by that point. I did persevere with Drawing, however.

Next time I think I might try sculpture, or a craft-y class or some sort, although I’m completely sure when that’ll be, with Christmas around the corner, a trip to Perth planned, and lots and lots of books to produce at work. I’m also half-planning to go back to uni next year and do a Masters. In what? I haven’t yet decided!

I have many, many things to make for Christmas…there will be much plotting and planning and craft involved!

Tea for Two

Finally, an update!

I’ve been very busy lately – classes, friends, and family illness have (happily and unhappily) conspired against my free time – but I’ve also finally finished one of my many projects.

Last year I started working on a tea-themed cross-stitch for a good friend and fellow crafty person and tea-drinker. My cunning plan was to have it ready for her birthday and give it to her together with some tea (I sense an emerging theme here). Her birthday came and went, and I was nowhere near finished with this project (although I did give her a very nice tin of tea).

Although I’d tried little pre-packaged cross-stitch projects before, this was my first serious project.

First, I chose the design. I found an entire tea-themed cross-stitch design book on eBay a while ago, and this design was perfect, both because of its relative simplicity, and also because of the depicted scene – two women sitting down, facing each other, sipping tea. Well, in the original design only one woman was having tea – the other one was embroidering. The title of the design was “Thimble Tea”, which I decided to change to “Tea for Two”. Later I discovered that creating new letters in cross-stitch (that don’t look disproportionate or too blocky) is not exactly easy (although it’s fun, mathematically speaking).

Here you can see the original design and how it all began:

Here is the project at an intermediate stage. The main design is finished, but the border and the details are in progress here:

After finishing the cross-stitch component, I had to decide what to do with it, as I didn’t just want to give it to my friend as a piece of fabric. I didn’t want to get it traditionally framed either, as I don’t think it’s the right sort of design for that. So I decided to make it into a wall hanging by attaching it to a fabric “frame” made out of dark purple velveteen, which complements the bone-coloured aida fabric nicely:

The frame took a long time to make – I had to really think about how it was going to come together, how I was going to decorate it, and how to make it into an actual hanging. I used bamboo sticks for the top and bottom of the frame, to give it some structure and rigidity. I also had to be careful with my sewing as I wanted most of it to be “invisible”. The whole thing ended up being hand-sewn except for the hemming on the back cover, which is machine-sewn.

After many, many hours of work over a period of about a year, here is the finished wall hanging:

Details:

I used metallic silver thread to mark the corners of the dark purple frame, and I sewed a little silver metal heart charm in each corner section.

I used silver chain at the top of the frame as well as at the bottom. To the bottom chain I attached a fairly heavy metal teapot charm, and I used plum and rose round glass beads along the length of the chain.

I’m very happy with how it turned out. The only problem is that the cross-stitched fabric got a bit warped since I took so long to finish – in the future I will try to work faster and to store my sewing more carefully.

Drawing – Week 3

This was one of those days…I was tired after work, I didn’t feel like going to class, but I went anyway – the prospect of working with ink was quite exciting. The teacher brought some “toys” to class – for example, some brushes made by her out of bamboo skewers and pieces of thick wiry string, and bits of wooden clothes pegs. Basically we dipped whatever we could find in ink and let loose. Got some fun stuff done:

Some details:

This last one was done by rubbing a piece of wax on the paper first (roughly in the shape of a spiderweb), then by inking the area using diluted black ink:

Then we drew a goat skull that was brought in by the teacher. I used a few different methods:

My favourite one is this one:

Details:

I was pretty tired by this point, and so I was not overly keen when asked to draw a horse (we were copying a drawing by Toulouse Lautrec, but changing the composition). I won’t even link it, it was really appalling…what can I say, I don’t find horses that interesting to draw, so I’ve never tried!

Here’s a couple of ink details with tweaked colours instead, since the colours of the photos in this post are all over the place anyway (I used different cameras and light sources):

Next time – portraits!

Painting – Week 3

This week’s painting class was quite fun. We are now working with acrylics, and I love using my Jo Sonja collection every chance I get! We had to paint a still life again – the wooden vase/bottle thing, a different mask, a fruit basket and a sun hat at the back, spread on a purple cloth:

Not that inspiring a subject (to me), but it was made interesting by the use of impasto (gel medium). I’d never used this before. It’s like a very thick, white, sticky paste that can be diluted or mixed with paint, or used as it is and then painted over. Basically it provides texture, and brings 3D effects to an otherwise flat medium. When mixed with a colour, it makes the colour look as though it’s mixed with white (unsurprisingly…).

I worked with it using the brushes as well as a palette knife. I’m sure you can get really interesting effects by using other tools – things like chicken wire, for example. It’d also be interesting to see if you could embed things into it (beads, glass eyes, etc).

Here is my WIP:

We’re allocating a couple of weeks to this. Next week I’m going to add more detail to this canvas, like shading and extra bits of colour.

We’re also supposed to start thinking about our “major work” – what we’ll be working on for the rest of the term. I can’t decide between a more abstract charcoal piece (or a series of them), a watercolour cityscape (I was thinking of painting a wet road – this would have ample opportunity for bleeds), or something precise and minute in acrylic. Hmmm.

Be afraid, be very afraid…

Hokay. So. When I was a young and naive teenager, I graduated from the Goosebumps series to Fear Street. A natural transition for someone who was used to devouring these books like Halloween candy corn. Later on I moved on to Poe, Lovecraft, Stephen King, assorted folk ghost stories, books on anecdotal evidence on vampires and werewolves, and so on, not to mention bad, bad horror movies – Stephen King adaptations, teenage series a la Urban Legend and Scream, video game adaptations, etc. Needless to say, I am an absolute sucker for horror, both good and bad. Horror has its own tropes, which can be both unsettling (given the context) and reassuring, or even comforting (because they’re always there). A while ago, on a flight to Europe, I started writing an essay on horror tropes. Perhaps one day I will finish it, or at least, you know, use it to actually write some horror fiction.

However, this post is not concerned with academic musings on the horror genre, or even with my own attempts at writing horror.

I used to work in a hospital. Every month there would be a second hand book sale in the hospital to collect money for various medical charities. I always used to pick up five or more books at each sale (quick note: I love books. I collect books. I hope to one day own a little bookshop. I especially love second hand books – the colour of the paper, the old editions, the smell, the pencilled-in ex-owners’ names on the title page, etc.) At one of the last sales I attended, I managed to secure two Fear Street books. Like a lot of my loot, these were stuck on one on my many bookshelves, and promptly forgotten about.

Until about a week ago.

I picked one at random and read it on the train on my way to work. It was…so, so bad. Words almost fail me. The atrocious attempt at a historical setting (American Civil War period), the stereotypical beautiful (but stupid) sister and the ugly (but smart) sister, the dark mansion with grim, creepy servants, the unrealistic, improbable, tacked-on violence, the Gasp! moment in every second line of dialogue…If I was trying to find the worst teen horror book ever written I think this would be a serious contender.

Without further ado, I give you…Forbidden Secrets:

Look at it. Really. Look at it. It’s…it’s all there. The beautiful, vapid, innocent and troubled-looking Southern Belle; the dark forest about to engulf her; the huge, bleeding black rose; the broken doll with creepy dead eyes that look right through you. This cover is an absolute masterpiece, and completely encapsulates the very essence of the book.

Next in line – The Boy Next Door:

The creepy stalker dude, the (again: beautiful, unsuspecting) girl, the tagline (“They were flirting – with death”) all seem very promising. I hope the dude turns out to be be some sort of undead rotting zombie from Mars. Gasp!

Stay tuned!

(For Goosebumps covers, visit Gamebooks. Did I mention I also used to be a huge collector of Garbage Pail Kids cards? For a full picture collection, visit the Garbage Pail Kids Archive.)