Birthday Flowers

It's become a habit for me to miss my blog anniversary; it's been going for 3 years this month (and remembering on the last day of the month isn't too bad, actually). So to celebrate, how about a giveaway? How about one of my new ceramic transfer brooches, so new they're not even in my shop yet?

If you'd like this little brooch, leave me a comment with a link to your favourite recipe, knitting pattern, sewing tutorial, gardening advice - you get the idea. Links are what blogging's all about, so spoil me! I'll pick a winner randomly from a hat on the 7th of August.

See how versatile the colour scheme is! You can wear it with anything.

Knitting

Some bits of my knitting in the August House and Leisure, sharing the pages with very interesting other bits of knitting.

That's my coffee pot cosy!


And there's my grey cushion cover, knitted in gorgeous thick rug wool.

(Click on the pics to see them bigger and read the names; I've googled, but can't find much online.)

Blossoms

A new bag design I'm working on: a new print and a new bag shape.

New brooches, new tiles

I finally managed to collect a new batch of ceramic transfer brooches today! They need to be finished off and photographed, but I do hope to have them in my shop soon.


These were such fun to do - adding bits of pattern to existing patterns does seem to take longer than coming up with a whole new design, but it's really fascinating to do. Edges still need to be sanded, and pins attached, and then they need to be photographed. I'm hacking my way through a thicket of deadlines right now, but as soon as I'm done I'll be able to update my shop again.


And I can't wait to play with these: tiny handmade porcelain tiles. They're a lovely creamy colour and texture, and the transfers will look great on them!

Soda Bread

Really yummy bread, and just about as quick as running to the shop for a loaf.

Recipes all over the place, with not much variation. This one has the basic ingredients, as well as the sensible warning not to add all the buttermilk at once. (But if you do, and the dough is dry, slosh a bit of milk over it.) Don't even bother with the kneading, either - mix everything, plop it on a baking tray, and bung it in the oven. Go and have a bath, and it'll be ready when you are.

It's good fresh, keeps for days, and makes great toast. Wrap it in a tea towel to keep the crust soft.

Hmf!

Why the long face? Well, I was feeling very pleased with my impulse-buy-yarn scarf, thinking it had something of a swarm of bees about it, and something of early 80s stripey mohair. Then my niece said "Schkarf has Utties."

So now it's a scarf with Oaties breakfast cereal in it.

No-fuss printing

A quick way to 'screen print' in a small space without a silkscreen. It's stenciling, really, but then so is screen printing, if you think about it.

You'll need a flat surface for the (fabric silkscreen) ink and a credit card. Yes, credit cards can be useful!

A stencil. Mine is cut from acetate; thickish paper would also work, but won't last as long. This stencil is a cross shape because it's also a nifty registration device. If I line it up just so, the prints end up neatly arranged in a geometric pattern. (Smug, me?) The design needs to be small enough for you to hold down with one hand.

Hold the stencil down firmly, and scoop up some ink with the credit card. Scoop generously!

Pull the ink lightly across the stencil (keep holding the stencil down - I let go to take the pic). Don't press too hard, otherwise the stencil will move, or ink will bleed under it. You can swipe across it a few times to cover it properly, adding more ink each time. Because it's not covered by a silk screen, you can see whether you need to add more ink - phew!


Perfectly printed. Peel the stencil off carefully.


I did some 'proper' screen printing today too, and .... I just don't know what I'm doing wrong. Apart from not having an expensive squeegee and clamps to hold the screen. I do love this design, and it sells well, but printing it is a nightmare. Perhaps it's simply too big? I printed 8 prints to get 4 good ones, and while I'm the kind of person who'll painstakingly touch up a print with a paintbrush, I know that isn't cost-effective. With block printing I get variations in the print, but they're all good prints. With silk screening, there's just good prints and bad prints, nothing that could pass for 'interesting variation'.

Another concern is the amount of water needed for clean up, and the amount of ink wasted. The ink that stays behind on the screen ends up being washed down the drain, along with enough water to keep a small garden going for a few days. Is there a more practical way to clean up?

Perhaps silk screening really does only make sense for large quantities?

Jammy

Found at the Willowbridge Slow Food Market. Best eaten like this. Planning to bribe a Brazilian person to make the right cheese.

Birds of a Feather

Textile designers giggling in a fountain in Cape Town's Gardens.

From left to right: Cara and Chloe of Twine Fabric, Heather of Skinny laMinx, Melissa of Lula Fabrics (pdf link) and me. Photo by Xander Ferreira, make up and feathers by Jade Leggat. Ultimately responsible: Georgia Gardner from Obrigado magazine.

For an article in Obrigado about, yep, textile designers. The issue's been out for ages, but I've been pussyfooting around about blogging it. It all felt a little strange: the feathers, the designer clothes, the tourists taking photos, the walk through town to the Gardens, the squirrels trying to eat my toes because my nails were painted yellow in case our feet were in the shot.

Ghost process

Illustrations I did recently for a ghost story: rough sketch, final pencil, and inked.







It'll be available as an e-book; I'll post links when I know more.

Links...

This lovely little address book comes from Grace of Gracie Sparkles. (Maps of places I've never been to, and probably never will visit, are seriously one of my favourite things. Even better if the map is out of date. Forget Google Earth, that's all too real. I'd rather imagine it.) There are more books in her shop, and she has a book of a different kind coming out soon.

Head on over to Jacci's blog for a chance to win fabulous shwe shwe stationery!

Use this Etsy treasury as a starting point to discover some South African Etsy sellers.

And then treat yourself to color strips, a mind-boggling attempt to catalogue fabrics sold on Etsy by colour!

There's prints and then there's prints

I'm reveling in absolute luxury today, as I collected a batch of fabric panels printed by someone else! It's taken me a long time to decide to do this, but the two-colour block prints are very time-consuming. My new plan is to have batches of a basic design screen printed in a single colour, and then to block print over them. That way the placement is already done, which speeds things up considerably. It also means that I retain some of the lovely qualities of block printing: the softer inking, the variable textures.


Here's one over-printed. What do you think? I kinda like it! I know it's sort of cheating, but it's so efficient.... they're still hand printed, just silk screened, and not by me. I'm also thinking of selling just the panels, over-printed and plain. They're A3 size, so that's big enough for a reasonable range of projects.

Steampunk?

One last look at Grahamstown, and a thing no-one ever believes me about. This contraption is the central hub of Birch's department store's payment system. Birch's was pretty swanky in it's day: ladies (or gentlemen, depending on the department) served customers at various counters. A slip was written out for purchases, and the money and the slip place in a wooden container (you can see it in the bottom left photo, on the end of the metal arm). The assistant pulled a dangling handle, and the container whizzed off along a wire to the cash desk. The cashier made change and sent it back to the counter. It seemed like magic.


Birch's also had dusty polystyrene dioramas above their shelves, all around the shop. I remember a lot of neon orange, purple, and olive green. And the sense of a slightly deranged mind behind it all.

Home

My trip to Grahamstown was fun; meeting the other panelists was great, and I think I did okay at the discussion. I didn't drop the microphone, and I didn't say anything too dumb. Not sure if I said anything intelligent, but as I was mainly concerned with not shaking visibly, that was really outside the scope of what I expected to do.

Being back in a landscape that's as familiar as your own handwriting is exhilarating! I didn't dare take any photos of the landscape, I don't think I could do it justice. It begs to be drawn or painted - the textures are those of etching or charcoal scribbles, to me at least. You can see a smidge of the sparseness at the end of this road:

Instead of hills and aloes I took photos of some of the houses I've lived in. That was where I lived when I was a toddler, and this is where I lived when I shaved my head and wore steeltoed Docs:

No satellite dish or security gates when I lived there. I remember sitting in my room and seeing a hand come through the door to grab some clothes off the clothes rail. I was too surprised even to chase after the thief.

Very odd to see a gothy-looking person step out of this door just as I was about to take a picture. Some digs are just meant to be that way, right?

This house was an experience. We had rubber slip-slops to stand on for washing the dishes; otherwise, if you put your hands in the water, you'd get a small shock. When it rained, we used umbrellas to get from the living room to the kitchen. And the floor in one corner of my room dipped by about 10 cm if you were silly enough to stand there. But it was so close to the art school that I didn't mind walking home alone at 3am.

My school. I tried to find the Aspect Most Evil, and this view of the hockey field does cause a chill of despair to run down my spine.

Other things of interest to people who also went to university there: Bambi's, Naran's, Avalon's and Wellies are all gone. I can't imagine where the kids buy sweets when they're coming down on a Saturday afternoon now; standing in a cafe giggling tiredly was such a perfect end to a good Friday night. And the Vic is now a steakhouse, not a bad one, but the toilet floors are still sticky. They'll probably be that way forever.

You can only get bottled water if you eat at this steakhouse. Grahamstown bottled water. It tastes just like the stuff that comes out of the taps. For some reason, we thought this was hilarious.

No Picture

I'm flying off to Grahamstown for a talk on comics at the National Arts Festival, so I'll only be back on Monday. Hopefully I'll have lots of pics - I'm going to do a little nostalgic walkabout, checking up on the old digs, the art school, that sort of thing. And I'm going to enjoy the taste of the water! There's something about the water in your home town....

(I meant to have an appropriate pic for this post, but no time! Must rush!)

Cheeky Beaks

This wonderful print by Kristen Doran arrived in my postbox a few days ago. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it eventually; for now, it's enough to just enjoy looking at it, loving the colours and the precision and the playfulness!

Flowermill

All photos by Flowermill

I've just rearranged my studio, and it's looking very functional and very bare. I may just have to treat myself to a studio-warming gift of one of these sticky notice boards from Flowermill! They're screen printed canvas with a sticky surface, perfect for keeping all those notes and pics on display and off my desk.

Flowermill also produce luscious gift wrap, cards, notebooks, and boxes in beautiful colours and designs (but I'm very, very partial to that red print). Oh, and screen printed canvases to hang on your wall, too!


Even more tempting: they produce custom ranges. Imagine the possibilities.....

Pens

True, I was cuddling up to a pair of scissors just the other day, but these really are my new new BFFs. Sir Josiah Mason's pen nibs are the best I've ever used. Fine-pointed but flexible and strong, they'll last a through a good 8 months of 12-hours-a-day drawing, and still be good to use.

The first one I found years ago, completely by accident, in a random collection of nibs at a local shop. When I'd used it, and fallen in love, I tried to get more, but no-one seemed to know how it had landed up in the shop in the first place. Occasionally I'd search online, hoping against hope, and finally found Scriptorium - honestly, I can't believe my luck!

(I'm still looking for a Koh-i-noor artpen, the one with the fountain pen nib. I had two, one was lost by a friend, the other had its nib split by another friend. They're not made any more. There never was a better pen. Perhaps, one day....)

Repeat, printed

A print I designed for Alexandra Hojer, using my 'sprigs' block, live and in the flesh and made up into beautiful clothes, at the Biscuit Mill market.

(Edited: I didn't mean to imply that I printed all the fabric for Alex myself; I set up a repeat using the block I'd carved, and it was silk screened by a local printer.)

Struwwelpeter

Meet my new BFF, affectionately known as Struwwelpeter (don't click the link if you're squeamish). I could be imagining it, but this heavy metal implement seems to hurt my hands a lot less than the lighter, mostly plastic ones.