I'm a Little Teapot

This blog's been a bit low on the craft postings this week, so to make up for it, here's a rather hurried shot of a teacosy I made a little while ago.

I used this pattern, and 4-ply courtelle. My teapot is apparently quite far from standard, but the cosy works well enough.

Staving off the pangs...

Before you ask, the pincushion in the first frame does not have resistors stuck to it. Those are beads.

Things My Mother Said Part 2

Things My Mother Said

She did, she said this all the time. My gran also did (obviously). I have no idea where they got it from, but I know other people who were told the same thing.

Click on the picture to see it bigger; I couldn't think of a way to split the page up neatly, sorry.

Craftzine

Thanks for Craftzine (and Eva) for mentioning my small dolls pattern! I hope the pattern doesn't present too many problems if you're trying to follow it, and I'm more than happy to answer questions.

Craftzine has loads of links to interesting work as well as patterns. I can personally vouch for the Bitty Booties pattern; very pretty!

Recipe

It's nearing the end of the month, and cupboards are bare. But there's no need to feel sorry for ourselves if we emulate our resourceful heroine!

Obrigado!

Blackbunny becomes Fontbunny.

Vida e Caffe is a chain of coffeeshops with coffee that makes your scalp tingle (that's a good thing!), great food, and a free magazine called Obrigado. Apart from being a good read, Obrigado provides a fine way to look busy when you arrive too early for a meeting.

All coffee shops should be this considerate towards their customers.


The latest issue has a bright green cover with spot varnish that you can't see in this scan...


... and an article about craft, art, and the distance between them that mentions me and Heather, among others.


Click on the picture to see a larger version you can read.

About that walk ....

Stop, thief!

That's what you yell if you see this bag anywhere. It went missing somewhere between South Africa and the USA.

It was a custom order for an Etsy buyer; I'm very sad because I had a great time making it and conferring with her about the exact colours. She was so friendly and enthusiastic throughout the process and I was so looking forward to her receiving it.

I've put production for my Etsy shop on hold for a while (not because of this disaster, but because I have to concentrate on finishing the comic). Everything that's still in the shop is still for sale, but I won't be adding new things for a while. When I start again I think I'll concentrate on making small, flat things, so I can save on shipping and afford proper insurance!

These boots are made for walking....

... or, more accurately, for the idea of walking. No-one this small would even know they had shoes on; all they'd be aware of would be the warm cosy feeling.

The pattern is from Uniform Studio Journal and really is very elegantly and simply put together. Mine are very tiny, for a newborn, because I used wool that was approximately DK weight, and therefore slightly thinner than the recommended wool. I also made the top part longer; it rolls over a bit further, to fit more snugly.

Now that I've done one pair I'll have to figure out a bigger size for certain babies (you know who you are...) who have grown too fast.

Friday!

Disciplined, me?

Wait till you see the next page - this one was plain sailing in comparison. What was I thinking?

My, what a lot of work!

I'm sure that's not what I wanted people to think when reading this comic, but it's all I can think while I'm inking it. When I drew it more than a year ago, I clearly remember wanting to draw something fiddly. Now I can't imagine why. But that's what discipline is all about, and I'll finish it the way it's intended to be.

I can't even listen to my usual inking fare (Pixies!) while I'm doing this - nope, it's got to be something equally fiddly, like Joanna Newsom.

On a weather note, it's still raining non-stop here, so I bought some wellies for walking the dog. How could I resist something with a logo like this?


We're feeling all posh stomping round the fields now, what with having special shoes just for, you know, tending to the livestock.

Knitting in Public

Well, hardly... very few of us there today. I thought I'd show the sock to the public, so this is me doing my best Yarn Harlot impression, with the sock and the view from Heather's studio.

Low attendance could've been due to the weather, which was miserable, or more likely the hostage drama taking place just round the corner. If, like normal people, we actually bothered to listen to the radio, we might've known what all the police cars and fire engines were there for. But no, we just stared a bit, parked, and headed on to Kraft. Later we realised that the sound we'd heard when we were getting out of the car, the one that sounded a bit like a gunshot, was, in fact, a gunshot.

I'm reminded of the last hostage drama I came close to: wandering through town in my usual vacant state, I was so busy staring at all the actual real live people and pretty buildings and general outdoors-ness that it wasn't until a man in a bulletproof vest shouted at me that I realised I'd sauntered through the only gap in the police barriers and was standing in front of a bank ... in mid-holdup. People with guns were staring fixedly at me. And past me at what were presumably more people with guns inside the building. I've never moved so fast to get out of the way.


So I'll leave you with some nice peaceful photos of the Kraft meeting - that's Heather and Gabby on the left, making things, and Leia on the right, at her first Kraft meeting, doing the unimpressed baby thing. Really the epitome of that tea-towel I've been seeing around the internets: "Keep calm and carry on."

It's what we do here.

Birdy!

The Loerie Awards are South Africa's annual advertising awards, and Migrate magazine is the Loerie Awards magazine. A few months ago I was asked to contribute a drawing to the magazine with the theme 'Seeking'.

As usual I couldn't make up my mind, so I did 4. I ended up not submitting the tree, because, let's face it, it doesn't really say anything about 'seeking', but was very flattered to find that they published all of the others!

Heather Moore of Skinny laMinx and the Am I Collective were also featured, with amazing illustrations.

Tomorrow is World Wide Knit In Public Day and luckily for me this coincides with our monthly Kraft group meeting. We're having it at Heather's studio this time, and I figure that's fairly public.

(A more public meeting is being held in Joburg. If you live around there, go here for more info.)

Correction

Quick correction to the Winter Mitts recipe, and apologies to anyone who tried to make them and then discovered they weren't long enough:

Instead of 12 rows of stocking stitch before the thumb gusset, knit 16.

Finish!

And that's it! Thanks for sitting through 16 pages of this comic, only to find that there's no real punchline...

In fact, there are another 4 pages of the story, and it really does have a proper ending, but I ended up getting distracted by other bigger things, so I didn't draw them. I do intend to finish it off one day.

Home

Rushing along...

Time to get done with this comic and back to stories about food. There are only about 2 pages of this one left, I think - and 2 months till deadline on the food comic.....

Sold.