corner #03

Posted on Posted in design, home

The things on my desk, from left to right: A red apple-shaped ceramic container, from a grocery store in Cabramatta, bought maybe a year ago. There were lots of colours at the store, but red’s my favourite. The design is plum blossom and bamboo. Blue/green ceramic jar, from Glebe markets, around 1997. I have a matching teapot, and the guy selling the teapot said if I left the jar a week, it’d be sold. I came back next week, and it was still there! Pretty green tea tin, from a Marrickville Asian grocer’s. Black ink, from Chinatown. Hand-painted pot, from a pavement / moving house sale in Redfern. I think they’re all beautiful, and all under AU$10 when I bought them ;D.

Mood: First assignments done, maybe I can do some craft this weekend … before I start on the next lot of assignments

what I’m doing when I’m not crafting

Posted on Posted in random2 Comments

… learning Japanese. Above is the simplest, first letter, ‘a’ or あ. In Hiragana, the native-words syllable system. It’s an interesting process, learning to write again – starting to feel comfortable that it’s my hand writing the letters, that they’re part of my world now, not just some foreign (VERY FOREIGN) script. I guess it’s a process that illustrators must go through to develop their style, their look. When I get time, I’d like to try and find faces I like, as Lynn Roberts / mollychicken has recently.

corner #02

Posted on Posted in home3 Comments

Otherwise known as … the living room wall, viewed from the sofa. Blu-tacked up, during those first 2 intense months of having a newborn to care for, when I worried about how much visual stimulation kid was getting, but didn’t have the energy to move far from the sofa. If you’d like to reproduce this look, simply buy a set or so of origami paper and arrange (as Vogue Living would say). ;D

Yay, I finished something, an amigurumi!!!

Posted on Posted in Amigurumi3 Comments

And I’m rather proud of her ;D. She was inspired by these photos of a vintage amigurumi on needle book / Claire Milne’s blog. Inspired, because my little amigurumi girl is rather different. Same green, same flat face and little stubby arms. But she has peachy / red hair, skinny legs and looks overall a modern Miss. Not quite as demure as she looks, I reckon!

Details: She sits 5.5cm or 2.25 inches high. Green chenille, peach mohair from Lincraft, other wools from Kmart, wooden bead from empire beads, painted with nail polish.

I think she might be the prototype for a few other little amigurumi people / animals.

Mood: Spent all Saturday struggling with the green chenille. No way could I crochet with it! I tried different sized hooks, no luck. Went through all the wools in my stash (which is very small, only 5 balls really), no luck. Different sized hooks for each ball, no luck. Then on Sunday … suddenly, no problems!

Dunno why, but my best guess is – all that changing my mind was good practice, got my eye in so I could see where the loops where in the funny chenille. Or I was over tired, and stopped fighting with the crochet, just went with the flow ;D

street art #02

Posted on Posted in random

(To the tune for the verses of Waltzing Matilda):
Once a silly council planted some native trees,
Hoping that one day they’ll give us shade,
And we sang as we watched trees grow into the clear blue sky,
Won’t it be a nice and green sub-urb?

Along came the RTA to pu-t up a stre-et sign
Why not in the centre of the bottle-brush tree?
And we sang as we watched trees grow into the clear blue sky,
Won’t it be a nice and green sub-urb?

Up rode the Power Co, “the trees might touch the power lines”
We must lop the trees down, one two three!
And we sang as we watched the trees grow all dis-to-r-ted,
Won’t it be a nice and green sub-urb?

Seriously, does this happen elsewhere???

Ah well … I guess the red “No Stopping” sign looks good amongst the bottle-brush ;D