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.

Testing

Printing wasn't on my to-do list for today, but I couldn't resist trying out some new blocks.

I can't wait to start playing around with colour combinations tomorrow, when printing definitely is on the list!

Panels

As well as new bags, I've just added some screen printed fabric panels to my shop. There are 2 of each print, enough to make a bag or cushion cover from. The unbleached calico is gorgeously thick and creamy, but the grey and white print on the right is really hard to part with. It's printed on pieces cut from a sheet I found in a secondhand shop, and is so crisp!

The craft group knits!

Last month's craft group meeting fell on Nelson Mandela's birthday, so Michelle suggested that we knit for charity for our 67 minutes for Mandela. We made beanies and booties and bears, and today I took them to the local library. Their own knitting group regularly donates knits to the Mowbray maternity hospital; it felt great to be able to add a little bit to the pile!

The last bit of daylight

Phew! Just managed to get these finished before the last bit of daylight faded, so I'm afraid these aren't great photos.

On the left, a bag I'm tempted to call the Blossom bag, but I think I've used that title a bit too often - any ideas? It has 2 small pockets inside and a smart stripey lining. On the right, the Basic Bookbag - no bells or whistles or zips or pockets, just a big sturdy bag.

I made them from the panels I had printed a little while ago; each bag takes just 2 panels.

(Oh, and it's pretty door handle, don't you think?)

Small-scale embroidery

I spent a few fun hours this weekend playing around with printed fabric scraps, a badge maker, and needles and thread.

Mentions

Snippet from Design Indaba magazine

I'm featured on today's Pieces of Me on Sibling Mine - thanks, Casey!

There's a review of my comic in the latest Design Indaba magazine (the snippet above is from there). Outer Tumbolia also gets a mention.

And Emile popped up on Willow Decor a little while ago! Phew - what a household!

New brooches

New brooches in my shop, made from bits of broken plates and embellished with my transfers.

Inspiration

Detail of drawing by Charles Rennie Mackintosh

Recently a client gave me a bunch of botanical drawings as part of a brief. I found them mesmerising, and have kept them stuck up above my desk since. When I finally had time to do some research, I learned why I was so captivated: they're by Charles Rennie Mackintosh.

Have a look at a whole lot here.

Taking photos of your own feet is really tricky

New socks, in luscious wool from Carle. I used this pattern.

M.I.A.*

I've been doing a lot of sewing. I promise I'll start replying to emails again soon.

*feels more like D.O.A. right now.

Isn't she lovely?

My new sewing machine, an Elna 3210! So far, it's great - things like transparent bobbin covers and sharp thread cutters are a complete delight.

And the best way to learn all about your new machine: sew 40 bags to a deadline. Nothing like flipping through the manual at 2 am to get bobbin winding fixed in your memory.

Presents

Pretty stitch markers and a beautiful print that I won in l'atelier's giveaway. Thank you!

Blossom bag

On sale soon, exclusively at Urban Degree shops, in a limited edition.

Tatting - first tries

My first attempt at tatting, and my second! A bit lumpy, I hope better tension control will come with practice.

And the winner is...

Sibling mine! (picked by random number generator.) Thanks so much to everyone who entered my giveaway; you all left great links!

Apologies for the patchy posting recently. An illustration job went from 'urgent' to 'not so urgent' to 'take your time' to 'very very urgent please can you stay up all night and finish this'. Planning around this sort of thing is tough. And tiring. So I'm going to spend this long weekend sleeping and making lists, and come back next week with plans and timetables and efficiency and new things in my shop at long last.

At least, that's what I intend to do. I might end up catching up on blog reading, because I'm so far behind I'm almost scared to open my Bloglines.

Silhouettes

Some drawings from a school book I did a little while ago. It's a book of plays. Figuring out how to convey expression and character using only silhouettes was really fun. It's easier, in a way, than when I'm able to draw in more detail.

Lace Exhibition

On Saturday I bunked work and went to the Cape Lace Guild's exhibition.


Alongside the more traditional lace was this piece, based on a cross-section of a plant stem:


A piece of what was described as 'modern' lace, which has a decidedly vintage "mid-century mod" look about it:


These pieces are made with sewing thread; they're so finely worked that they seem to have been made with variegated thread. But these are solid colours.


There was some lovely tatting on display too:


There are more photos on my Flickr page.

I hauled out some old craft books and scoured the internet for tatting instructions, being pretty sure that somebody would have come up with a way to do it without a tatting shuttle (it was Saturday evening, and I wanted to do this now). Turns out you can tat with a bit of card for a shuttle, and it's really easy.

Really easy, that is, once you give up on illustrated instructions and head for YouTube. There seems to be some sort of conspiracy going on with the illustrations. They make no sense, but have been drawn the same way for decades. The tatting elite seem to want to force you to learn from a real person, instead of a book. I will remedy this as soon as I have time: bad craft illustrations annoy me. All you need are a few slightly longer twisty arrows, people.