Nearly there!

All lined up and (nearly) ready to go - my new Pattern Lady blocks, inspired by my stash of vintage sewing patterns.

The builders should be finished with the repairs and renovations in a day or so, and then I'll be able to print these ladies all over bags and book covers. And perhaps a few panels for home-sewing too.

Oops!

My printing studio, aka the kitchen.... The ceiling was only supposed to come down tomorrow, and I thought I'd be able to sort of maneuver around the roofing work until then. But alas, no.

So I'll have to take a bit of a blog break until I can get my new prints printed. In the meantime, have a look at my contribution to Sibling Mine's Spring Fling. And thank you for all the sale excitement in my shop!

Sale!

Sharp-eyed folk might have noticed that I closed my jezze Etsy shop a little while ago. I've moved everything over to my jezzeprints shop - besides liking the name better, it makes more sense to have everything in one place.

This means, of course, that my shop is really full! To make some space*, I'm offering free shipping on everything in the shop until Monday the 21st.

And because I offer free shipping within South Africa anyway, South African buyers will get 20% off any purchase.

*for all the new things I've been making!

Inspiration

My print, looking oh so classy on fashion designer Alexandra Hojer's business cards. Read more about the inspiration behind this design on Inklore today!

Tags

Playing around with ways to tag my brooches. And I've been tagged by Living in a Matchbox, lanalou, and beatnik bazaar. Time to tell you 10 things about myself that you might not already know:

1. I have a tattoo, but I'd have to know you really well before I showed it to you. Not because it's horrible, but because of where it is.
2. I have a piercing in my nose, but I haven't worn anything in it for ages.
3. I'll try any food at least once.
4. I think the Pixies were the best band in the world ever. Everybody else might as well give up.
5. I studied French at school, but I can't speak it. Loved the illustrations in the textbooks, though.
6. My handwriting is horrible.
7. I draw just like my mother.
8. I played 6th team hockey at school - there wasn't a lower team!
9. I think tequila should be sipped slowly.
10. My full name is Jesse-Ann: my two grannies' names put together.

Tatting for dummies

When I was trying to learn tatting from books, I became very frustrated at the how-to illustrations that didn't seem to explain properly. After resorting to YouTube tutorials, I looked back at the illustrations and they'd improved! I suppose everything is easier once you know how to do it.

But here's my attempt to fill in what seemed missing on my first tries. I've added swirly arrows to the standard hand illustrations, and also a more simplified schematic drawing. I found that the position of your hands was less important, initially, than understanding where things were supposed to go.

First part of the stitch:

Second part of the stitch:

And here's the bit that's really hard to draw:
When you draw the shuttle through, the knot looks something like the drawing on the left. Relax the top thread and yank the shuttle to flip the knot from the shuttle thread to the top thread. The shuttle thread should run freely through the knots you make, so that you're able to draw them up into a loop eventually.

You can learn the stitch using a bit of card instead of a shuttle - simply cut or fold paper to a reasonably small size, wind some thread around it, and start knotting. Do look at YouTube and other tatting instructions for more complete explanations; these drawings are supplementary.

Monkeys!

On Saturday afternoon we went for a stroll around Monkeytown.


The monkeys are in big enclosures, the humans are in small cages inside these. Every now and again a monkey takes an interest and comes up close to see what's going on.


Some of them follow for a bit, on top of the cages, from where they can poop on you.

New fruit

New to me, at least: kumquats. In both the grown-up and the kiddie version (fresh or glaceed) they're pretty amazing tasting.

It's in the library

Anairam of fra(a)ing sent me this photo of my book in the Prins Albert library. It's even better than seeing it in a book shop! Thank you!

P-p-p-printing!

My 'studio printing table' is also our kitchen table; sometimes clearing away the printing stuff, making supper, cleaning up after supper, and then getting the printing stuff out again feels like a very long day. So when I found myself alone at home last night, I made the kind of supper you barely need a kitchen for (roast tomatoes, mash them, add green leaves, mix into pasta) and printed to my heart's content.

I can already see these as bags and books and purses! If there's anything you'd like to cut up yourself, let me know, because I won't be putting these in the shop as panels. Some of them are one-offs; the textile mill I get the base cloth from is closing down soon, and I doubt I'll be able to get the same colour and texture combinations easily elsewhere.

Instructions

Working on a new product for Urban Degree.

Kamersvol Geskenke

It's that time of year again. I'm printing like a crazy person, and trying not to sew like one. Kamersvol Geskenke opens on the 28th of October.

Malva Pudding

Good with coffee! I've always been confused about the name of this 'poeding', because malva means geranium in Afrikaans, and there's no connection that I can see. According to Wikipedia it comes from the name of a wine; or a woman. Neither sounds convincing to me, but here's the recipe.

It's an old-fashioned recipe, so there's more butter and cream in it than you should probably eat in one go. It also contains apricot jam, which is apparently the staple ingredient in South African baking.

I checked my copies of Tafel-Vreugde (1920) and Lekkerkos (1945) for older versions of the recipe, but no luck. Perhaps it was called something else then. I found recipes for 'Maanligpoeding', 'Plumpoeding', 'Goedkoop Poeding', 'Macaronipoeding', 'Slappoeding', 'Polisiepoeding', 'Ertappelpoeding',* and a few recipes for something called 'blamaans' - blancmange? The spelling is pretty random in these old books, and also just pretty. A lot of words don't make sense until you say them out loud and realise they're English words, written in Afrikaans.

I'm going to have to try some of them.

*Moonlight pudding; Plum pudding, obviously; Cheap pudding; Macaroni pudding, yuck; Sloppy pudding; Police pudding; Potato pudding, also yuck, I should think.

Cape Town Creatives

Work by Helen Vaughan, Vogel, Cheryl Malone. Images from Cape Town Creatives.

Cape Town Creatives is a new site showcasing all kinds of creative work being done in Cape Town. Browsing through the portfolio pages is addictive, and surprising - even though I live here, I had no idea such very beautiful things were being made in this town.

Read their blog and news pages for the latest updates.

Spring flowers

I got a little bit of printing done this afternoon, playing around with different colours and base cloths.

I'll have panels of these for sale in my shop within a day or two.

Birdie

Printing wasn't on the menu today either; this bird illustration is taking longer to finish than I thought it would. Maybe tomorrow, though.