Mosehouse Studio

starburst

2012-01-26T08:23:00.001+13:00

I forgot to post pictures of the completed starburst before I left for Martinborough, so here it is with some progress shots to show you how it was constructed.

I'll update you with the details of the exhibition when I get home next week.
Enjoy the rest of your week!

making inroads

2012-01-20T15:58:00.001+13:00

One of my goals for 2012 is to make inroads into my existing stash of vintage textiles, rather than continuing to add to it. For 11 years I've been intending to turn this gorgeous appliqued and embroidered tablecloth (unusable as such because of a large yellow stain in the middle) into pretty pillowcases. I made a pair today, and there's probably enough fabric remaining to make a couple more besides.

(detail and back-view)

I like to look after my books, but I also like to take a book away with me when I travel, which brings with it the risk of the book getting damaged. An easy problem to resolve as it turns out. Using a small cross-stitched table-runner, I sewed two seams along the edges, and hey presto, a practical and pretty bookbag!

The bookbag is perfect for transporting my Everyman edition of Alice Munro's Selected Stories to Martinborough next week where I'm helping my brother and his partner settle into their new house.

See you at the beginning of Feb. Hasn't this month flown by!

string

2012-01-19T08:17:00.001+13:00

A friend gave me a big bunch of rhubarb last week, tied up with a length of beautiful emerald green string. She said the string came from the Trade Aid store. I dropped into the Takapuna branch of Trade Aid the other day and found a basket of string at the back of the shop. It is organic hemp twine made by a collective of women in Bangladesh. I bought six balls. There's 75 metres of twine per ball and lots of kinds to choose from. They cost $3.90 for the single colour balls and $4.90 for the two-colour and multi-colur balls. I imagine there are all kinds of uses for this pretty string, so I'll have fun experimenting.

octagons, starbursts and birds

2012-01-10T09:39:00.001+13:00

What are these embroidered hessian octagons for, I hear you asking.

Well, I'm very excited to report that I've been invited to take part in an exhibition called 'Soft Cuts' at Waikato University. The exhibition, curated by Karl Chitham, includes illustrative works, and works inspired by illustration, and Karl asked if I'd like to include some of my School Journal textiles in it.

Of course, I jumped at the chance to show my work alongside the likes of graphic artist, illustrator and book designer extraordinaire, Sarah Maxey, and Auckland artist Gavin Hurley, among others. If you've been browsing through bookshops recently, Gavin's gorgeous collage of William Colenso might have caught your eye, gracing the cover of Peter Wells' new book The Hungry Heart: Journeys with William Colenso.

The 'Soft Cuts' exhibition opens at the beginning of February, so I had to bring my glorious Kapiti Coast holiday to a close and get my sewing skates on, so to speak.

Jill McDonald's School Journal covers from the mid-60s were a formative influence on me. My love of symmetry, abstract compositions and bold colours, almost certainly comes from her, and my inability to draw people or animals in three dimensions definitely does. I have a clear memory of Sister Miriam handing me a copy of 'The Hungry Lambs' in my standard four class, and quickly checking to see if I had felt-tip pens in the same colours, so that I could replicate the cover illustration on a piece of butcher's paper when I got home.

A year or so ago, jeweller Raewyn Walsh kindly gave me the three School Journals pictured above. I've been wanting to convert Jill McDonald's colourful cover designs into textiles ever since, so it's wonderful that Karl's exhibition has provided me with the perfect excuse!

My decision to use hessian for the installation of octagons and starbursts was purely nostalgic, recalling my first experiments in school sewing classes making oven mitts from scratchy pieces of hessian that we decorated with clumsy cross-stitch designs.

Jill McDonald (1927-1982)

Photo taken in the 1960s when Jill was working at Penguin Books.

Reproduced in A Nest of Singing Birds by Gregory O'Brien (Wellington: Learning Media) 2007: 126.

Next up, I think I'll make a couple of textile versions of Jill's lovely red birds to throw into the mix, and see if the octagons and birds look good together on the wall.

Happy New Year everyone!

I hope 2012 is shaping up well for you.

finishing touches

2011-12-21T07:57:00.000+13:00

Creating an eye-catching prezzy stash is my favourite part of the Christmas preparations. I love the moment when the hard work of making is done, and the finishing touches of gift-wrapping and making cards and gift tags is all that remains to do.

This year, a couple of packets of patterned origami paper supplied colourful backgrounds for cut-outs from vintage Ladies Home Journals and a bunch of cute critters snipped from assorted battered and scribbled on picture books including a Richard Scarry Christmas book.

Space is limited around here, so a bookshelf has been enlisted to host the growing prezzy stash.

And that's me finished for another year.

Thanks for dropping by everyone.

Wishing you a safe and happy Christmas and I look forward to blogging again in the New Year.

shortbread and wisdom

2011-12-20T08:33:00.001+13:00

There has been a lot of pre-Christmas socialising lately, and a lot of gifts from the kitchen to bake. My new Madeleine and mini-muffin trays (early Christmas prezzies) have been indispensable.

I can highly recommend the recipe for 'Hazelnut and Burnt Butter Madeleines' in the September issue of Cuisine Magazine. They are delicious - with a subtle nut and butter flavour, crisp outside and soft cakey interior - YUM.

My Mum-in-law's cheese muffin recipe is so simple you won't quite believe it. The recipe generates 24 golden mini nuggets of cheesy goodness. This is it:

June's Cheese Muffins
Pre-heat oven to 220 degrees celcius

Ingredients:
2 cups Self-raising flour
2 cups grated tasty cheese
1 1/4 cups milk
pinch of salt

Mix flour, cheese, salt together. Stir in milk to make wet, sticky dough.
Spoon mixture into 24 capacity mini-muffin tray.
Put an extra pinch of cheese on top of each muffin (this is essential for crunchy golden muffins)

Bake for 15 minutes.

Best eaten straight from the oven, and for extra decadence you can butter them warm (using real butter of course!).
Great with a pot of tea, or with a frosty cold lager on a hot afternoon.

Enjoy!

There is an excellent pikelet recipe in Alexa Johnston's book, Ladies, A Plate. I may have already mentioned the handy cooking tip (in small print at the bottom of the page) of rubbing the hot pan with a cut potato, instead of using butter to cook the pikelets. We enjoyed a batch of pikelets yesterday afternoon with jam, cream and a fresh strawberry on top, accompanied by a crisp glass of bubbly.

Ladies, A Plate also provided me with three tasty shortbread options to parcel up as gifts from the kitchen. I chose the recipe by Alexa's mother Paula, which you can find on page 34-35:

The recipe makes about four dozen small shortbread, which I parcelled up in cellophane tied with green raffia. A few special people are going to receive a gift of a dozen shortbread along with an oracle box this year.

Shortbread and wisdom go together nicely, don't you think...

frocks

2011-12-17T08:41:00.002+13:00

I decided to make sundresses for my brother's partner Celia and my sister Therese as their special Christmas present this year. I printed out Melissa's excellent instructions for making a shirred beach dress and managed to complete two lovely dresses in a day, which was very satisfying.

I chose a summery green, grey and white check print for Celia in lightweight cotton, and for Therese, a glorious multi-coloured print with vertical patterned panels. The colours will go beautifully with her auburn hair.

Once I got the hang of it, I found shirring fun, as Melissa promised it would be.

I've nearly finished my Christmas productions.

Yay for that because I'm a bit pooped!!

for Jack

2011-12-15T15:04:00.003+13:00

There's nothing Jack likes more than to see his writing in print, so every year I sneakily select something that he's written during the past twelve months, and create a small edition for him as a special present. This year, I chose this poem:

Britain’s Missing Top Model

I’ve only got
one hand
I’d like to be

a fashion model
Trying on her jeans
she finds a rip

on the morning
of her interview
with the Agency

This day can only go
uphill from here
heroic

nervous to the point
of near-paralysis
she manages to smile

at the brusque no-nonsense
manager
embrace the team

sit quietly while they
critique her
32 23 35

(too hippy)
23 (too old)
and then debate

her fate
cries when they say
they’ll represent her

I need to tell my Mum

Jack's poem was inspired by the final episode of a British reality show we watched when we were staying at a friend's place earlier this year. The show was based on the America's Next Top Model format, except that the contestants all had physical disabilities of one kind or another. Although the idea was to highlight the need for people to broaden their view of conventional beauty, the show itself was an unsavoury and exploitative production that did nothing to advance the cause for greater inclusivity of disabled people in mainstream culture.

The eventual winner of the contest was a lovely young woman who had been born with one arm missing below the elbow. It was apparent that she could easily be posed for photo-shoots in such a way that her disability was entirely concealed from view, thereby completely undermining the whole point of the show, it seemed to us!

In an understated way, I think Jack's poem perfectly captures the monstrosity of the programme, and I wanted to enhance the idea further by making a small edition of ten collaged poems. The design uses more images from the supply of 1950s Ladies Home Journals that I used for the picto-poem Silhouette, also inspired by a reality TV show.

I deliberately selected younger models for this series. I cut off one arm from each girl, and then I added a couple of disembodied hands to each composition, cut from an old 1940s book, How to Draw Hands. This Dada-inspired detail was designed to signal the manipulation and exploitation of the women by the producers of the show, as well as the naivety of the contestants. It's not subtle, that's for sure! Here are a few examples from the series:

Continuing with the Dada design, I made a special folder for the poems using more illustrations of hands combined with some of the captions from the book:

I added a final hand to the inside back cover:

notebooks

2011-12-14T08:58:00.000+13:00

One of the great things about having so many writers in the family is that notebooks are always welcome as presents. The Molskine range (I think that's how it's spelt) produce packs of three card-covered notebooks with thin ruled lines and stitched binding. I bought two sets in black and manilla, and I've embellished them with vintage stamps (continuing with the postal theme of this year's gifts). I love the detail of each stamp and really enjoy putting together each composition.

I'm always on the hunt for good plain notebooks, and I discovered a stack of perfect 50 page lined notebooks in the $3.00 Daibo store on Queen Street last week. They are a bit smaller than the standard school exercise book and have brown card covers, perfect for embellishment. I'm afraid that I bought all they had in stock, but there are still some unlined ones there for you to buy.

I decorated some with rubber stamps and others with shapes and flowers cut from a couple of rolls of vinyl wallpaper I found in a retro shop on a recent trip to Christchurch.

Next up - Jack's special Christmas present.

After that I shift from paper to fabric

and then it will be sunfrocks and soft furnishings

for the rest of the week!

I hope your own present productions are going well!

ladybirds and snails

2011-12-12T14:24:00.000+13:00

Christmas productions are now well underway. I made a cosy felt leaf for these two dear little ladybirds to decorate Rita's Christmas present, which is a gorgeous 'Colours' cloth book bought from The Trading Circle in Milford. I can't show you the prezzy because I wrapped it up before I realised that I hadn't taken photos of it. Sorry about that.

Continuing with the garden bug theme, one of my handmade prezzies this year is a 'Snail Mail' Stationery set:

Each Snail Mail set contains 40 sheets of hand-stamped paper and 10 envelopes. Hopefully that should encourage my nearest and dearest to put pen to paper from time to time.

Designing the templates is always the longest part of the process. I used a pack of 10 manilla folders and made up a template with scored foldlines as well as a template for the snail shell.

Jill McDonald's 1966 School Journal illustration provided the inspiration for my patterned snail,. The orange and black decoration on the shell was made with handcut rubber stamps that I made a couple of years ago after being inspired by Lena Corwin's book Printing by Hand.

The envelopes and paper were arranged in large groups on my desk and stamped in two sessions.

I'm really pleased with the way they turned out!

Up next - notebooks, notebooks and more notebooks!

everything AND the kitchen sink

2011-12-04T17:46:00.001+13:00

The book launch last Sunday was a lovely event. Huge thanks to everyone who came and supported us. You can see photos and read an account of the launch here. You can read a sweet review of my book by talented young writer Libby Brickell here and, if you feel so inclined, you can order a copy of The Second Location for yourself here.

After a hectic five weeks that included surgery, end of semester marking, a book launch, and a grueling trip to Christchurch, a change of pace, as well as a change of scene, was definitely needed. With that objective in mind, we jumped in the car on Friday and drove up to Whangarei to visit one of our favourite second-hand bookshops, aptly named The Piggery because you can joyously wallow, without interruption, among the piles and piles of books lying everywhere around the shop.

The cute kitchen sink model I found at a junk-shop en route to The Piggery seemed to me like a good omen, although Jack gave his usual raised left eyebrow when I unveiled my miniature treasure in the car!

On this occasion though, after wandering around the shop for an hour or more, I had only found one book that I wanted - a very cool book of historical case studies by people who had had out-of-body experiences. I was on the point of seeking out Jack to suggest that we go in search of lunch, when I spotted a small room, barely visible behind a beaded curtain, that said '$1.00 Specials'. When I looked inside I saw a jumbled stack of childrens' picture books tucked into the corner of the tiny space, and when I dug them out to have a closer look, it was as if they had been waiting there for me to find them!

Etienne-Henri and Gri-Gri by Anico Surany. Illus. Sylvie Selig. New York: Holiday House, 1969.

This is a curious story about a French boy who lives on a houseboat with his parents. His naughty cat Gri-Gri likes to dash off on adventures and Etienne-Henri has no choice but to follow him, even though he knows that he'll get told off when they eventually find their way back to the boat. The illustrations are magic!

Speaking of magic, I know I've raved about Brian Wildsmith before, but I happened to find two more of his beautifully illustrated books. Here are a selection of images from a 1996 paperback reprint of A Child's Garden of Verses (1966).

'The Land of Counterpane' was my favourite Stevenson poem when I was little. I had a couple of long illnesses, so this poem about making miniature worlds among the bedclothes meant a lot to me.

The find of the day was this mint condition second edition hardback of Brian Wildsmith's 123 (1965).

I've said it before, and no doubt I'll say it again - Brian Wildsmith's illustrations make me happy - pure and simple.

Another wonderful find was this gorgeous edition of Rumpelstiltskin illustrated by Jacqueline Ayer and published by Collins in 1967. I particularly love the way that Ayer uses a combination of pencil outlines with selected areas of the image coloured in for each of the illustrations:

This is the best Rumpelstiltskin I've seen. Normally he's an ugly, elf-like creature, but I find this strange little man much more convincing.

And last, but certainly not least, I found a book illustrated by ex-pat New Zealand artist, Graham Percy (1938-2008), whose work was the subject of a fabulous exhibition that I saw earlier this year curated by Gregory O'Brien. The book that accompanied the show is a beautiful tribute to Percy and contains a fantastic selection of his illustrations that reveal the scope of his vivid imagination. Photographs of the interior of Percy's London home add another layer to the book, and reading it feels like wandering through someone else's private wonderland:

The book illustrated by Graham Percy that I found at The Piggery is called The Woodland Gospels according to Captain Beaky and his Band by Jeremy Lloyd (London: Faber, 1984). Although the subject matter of the book isn't really my thing, Graham Percy's two-page illustrations are spectacular. My photos don't do them justice at all.

A very good day at The Piggery.

Have a great week everyone.

I'll be in full Christmas prezzy production mode this coming week, so stand by for a big show and tell.

Members of my family should take a Mosehouse blog break from now until after Christmas, or you'll spoil the surprise!

MY FIRST BOOK

2011-11-16T09:38:00.002+13:00

I'm more than a little excited to announce that my first book, a collection of thirteen linked stories, is going to be published by Titus Books on 27 November at a dual book launch with poet Scott Hamilton at Objectspace. Click on the image above to see a larger version. Here is the media release for the event:

BOOK LAUNCH

We invite Aucklanders to vote for literature on Sunday the 27th of November, by attending the launch of two new Titus Books: Scott Hamilton's Feeding the Gods and Bronwyn Lloyd's The Second Location.

Scott Hamilton is a widely published social scientist, and has a long history as a political commentator and activist. In Feeding the Gods, his Creative New Zealand-funded second volume of poetry, Hamilton draws on his involvement in a number of political and cultural controversies, like the ultimately successful battle to remove Vanda Vitali from her position as Director of Auckland museum, the movement against the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq last decade, campaigns against the desecration of Maori sacred sites and history, and the battle against this country's Holocaust deniers. Hamilton also writes about more personal subjects, like the suicides of a number of his schoolmates at South Auckland's Rosehill College in the 1990s, his travels through the backblocks of New Zealand, the Outback of Australia, and Western Polynesia, and the bizarre dreams which the prescription drugs he must take give him.

Hamilton's poems may deal with many topical issues, but they do not feature easy judgements or political sloganeering. Hamilton is fascinated by history and by geography, and many of his poems create an unusual perspective on contemporary problems by dissolving the boundaries between the past and the present, the near and the far. In Hamilton's poems historical figures like Hongi Hika and Karl Marx wander contemporary Australasia, the Outback fills with water, Ulysses cruises the South Pacific, and Maoist guerrillas quote postmodern poetry.

Bronwyn Lloyd has published extensively on New Zealand Art, Craft and Design and is known for her careful reconstructions of the lives of Kiwi painter Rita Angus and composer Douglas Lilburn, and for the beautiful art books she produces for Pania Press. The short stories in Lloyd's The Second Location have the insights into the subtleties of human relationships which made her scholarship valuable, and the attention to detail which distinguished her work for Pania Press. Under Lloyd's intense but not unsympathetic gaze, even small events like a civil servant's filing error or a visit to the beach become filled with significance. Lloyd's work shows us that the lives we live in our homes and in our minds can be far more dramatic than anything we see on television, and that the daily choices we make as friends and as family members can be as fateful as the doings of politicians or corporate executives.

In their different ways, Hamilton's and Lloyd's books show the continuing vitality of literature in the second decade of the twenty-first century. They are, in Ezra Pound's words, news that stays news. Titus Books is proud to ask you to vote for literature on the 27th of November.

Feeding the Gods and The Second Location will be launched at

Objectspace, 8 Ponsonby Road Auckland

Sunday 27 November, 3-5pm.

The MC for the event is Auckland poet and academic, Jack Ross

Special guests Michele Leggott and Paul Janman will introduce Lloyd and Hamilton respectively

Refreshments and home-baked food will be served

A range of Titus titles will be available to purchase for Christmas presents.

ALL WELCOME

The striking cover image I chose for my book comes from a series of untitled collages produced by Auckland artist Graham Fletcher in 2009 while completing a Doctorate of Fine Arts at the University of Auckland. The act of concealing familiar portraits of members of the Royal family using a combination of masks and post-it notes, has resulted in a series of works that might best be described as ‘abducted’ rather than appropriated images.

The book cover was beautifully designed by Auckland artist, Ellen Portch.

I thought you might like to see some of the other collages in the series. Any ardent Royalists among you should look away now!

And just to finish off, here's one of the stories from the collection. It's a very short one.

I hope to see you at the book launch, but if you can't make it, you are very welcome to place an order for the book here

Kaikuia

"What does your cancer look like?" I asked Kelsey from my bed on the opposite side of the ward. "It’s a bit embarrassing to admit, but I've always imagined it as a shadow, something like the slow moving darkness in The Neverending Story."

Kelsey seemed unphased by the directness of my question.

"Do you know what Kaikuia is?" she asked.

I nodded.

"It's like that. Cancer is a creeper just like Kaikuia, only inside your body. It spreads across the space, and strangles the life out of everything it comes across, until it has taken over all the available room in your body. The small amount of energy I have now is all that the cancer gives me because it needs the rest in order to survive and spread. When I have no more energy left, I will die, and so will the cancer."

“Sometimes you don't notice the Kaikuia is there,” Kelsey told me later, “until it is too late.”

That night the nurse dosed us with our bedtime meds and drew the circular curtain around each of the beds in the ward. I lay on my back and tried to locate the repeat in the floral pattern on the pale blue cloth, backlit by the fluorescent light in the hallway. It comforts me to work out where a design begins and ends, but on this occasion I couldn’t because the line-drawn flowers were too abstract and too numerous. They mutated into each other and spread across the whole of the fabric cell that contained me.

I turned my attention instead to the noise of ragged breathing, and bodies stirring on plastic covered mattresses, the outward evidence of internal battles being fought, and I thought about Kaikuia and endings. Just before the morphine took me under, I reached for a pencil in the set of drawers next to my bed, and on the back of a piece of gift wrap with a silver and black paisley design, I scrawled this list:

Sydney

McCahon

A Question of Faith
Caravaggio and a knife

a missing Camper, 38

bats in trees

dirty tiles

This list won’t mean anything to anyone who reads it, but it is the Kaikuia that I should have noticed, but didn’t – a marriage almost out of breath.

old school

2011-11-03T12:32:00.001+13:00

One of the things I love most about visiting Jack's parents' house across the road, is that after half a century or so of living under one roof, and throwing very little away, John and June's home is a massive archive of their family life. This is a real novelty for me because my family used to move house frequently and Dad always organised a big purge of stuff before each move. As a result, beyond a box of badly cropped family snapshots, and a few books, we have very little material evidence of our young lives. That probably explains why I get so excited whenever I come across pictures and stories by the Ross kids, and believe me, they were prolific writers and artists from a very young age.

I found the cute little batch of cards shown above the other day. You might recall a couple of posts I wrote three years ago about an amazing archive of Ross family juvenilia known as the 'Kwalic Documents'. You can read part one here and part two here. The archive related to a Kwalic Kingdom that Jack and his sister Anne invented as children, populated by a clan of koalas. Each member was recorded in a hand-drawn Kwalic family tree, and the archive included historical documents, a comprehensive list of rulers, wills and other legal papers, battle plans and written accounts of various wars, as well as an array of stuffed koalas, each with its own distinct personality, most of which were sewn by Anne.

The major protagonist in the Kwalic saga was a handsome koala named Allogee. A delightful legal document I found in an envelope last week shows how very 'serious' the contest for Allogee's affection was between Anne and Jack:

As well as these lovely additions to the Kwalic Archive, June showed me a folder containing some of Anne's hand-drawn school projects.

I took the folder home to have a proper look, and was so blown away by the artistic flair, composition and layout of Anne's projects, that I wanted to share a selection of the illustrations with you here. In the age of computers, hand-drawn school assignments of this kind are now a thing of the past, so it's nice to be reminded of the individuality of projects like these, and get a sense of the passion and dedication that went into producing each one, carefully written and illustrated on pages of lined refill, and neatly tied together with a length of coloured wool.

An illustration from 'Tales of Horses' by Anne Ross

It saddens me that I never got the chance to know Anne, and that she never got the chance to share her talent with the world, but at least the preservation of family archives like this, allow us a glimpse of the amazing creativity of a most remarkable young woman. For that, I am hugely grateful.

practical prezzies

2011-11-01T14:49:00.000+13:00

Christmas preparations are nearly underway. For this year's practical prezzie idea, I thought I'd put together stationery sets with hand-stamped paper and a nice set of calico envelopes embellished with vintage stamps. Hopefully this will encourage people to think about writing letters again instead of emails and keep our state owned assets like NZ Post active and viable. Think how nice it would be to open your mailbox and see pretty letters like these inside.

poster crimes

2011-10-26T17:01:00.001+13:00

I suppose it's not the worst crime in the world, but lately I've taken to gathering free art posters that I find around and about, and repurposing them into other things. A few posters printed by Tessa Laird for the exhibition Auratica Fantastica at Auckland University earlier this year made their way home with me during the show. The posters have a list of bibliographic entries on one side and squiggly script on the other.

Today I decided today to transform the posters into half a dozen invitations to send out to the members of a writers' group I'm starting up with six like-minded women. Each of us has a substantial writing project that we are keen to complete and we hope that regular meetings will offer us important feedback and encouragement as we write.

I've never been involved in a writers' group before, so I'm really excited about it. Jack has been a member of the Eye Street Writers' Group for the past seven years, and he says he finds the monthly meetings supportive, instructive and a great motivator to get a piece of writing completed before each workshop.

cake

2011-10-26T16:30:00.000+13:00

If you haven't yet baked the deliciously gooey Louise Cake recipe

on page 50 of Alexa Johnston's cook book Ladies, A Plate

then you really should.

It's pure sweet magic!

I hear she's just published a book of puddings.

That's going on my Christmas wish-list.

GO POSTAL

2011-10-20T13:12:00.000+13:00

What is going on with the postal service lately? It took a week for a letter posted from Auckland City to reach me here, just across the bridge on the North Shore. It took over a week for a track-packed parcel to reach my mother in Christchurch for her birthday. My colleague at work told me that a parcel she posted in June to a relative in Germany only arrived a fortnight ago. That's crazy! It's terrible to think that the electronic age is having such an impact on good old snail mail. There is no Saturday delivery anymore, and my neighbours in the adjoining units don't even bother clearing their post-boxes, so soggy mail drops onto the ground where it either decomposes or blows away.

Well, I for one am not going to put up with it! It's time to start writing letters again, and making use of the postal service, before it becomes yet another casualty of contemporary life. So, I say to you

LET'S GO POSTAL PEOPLE!!!

My brother-in-law in Scotland asked for the recipe for a hearty vegetable soup I made for him when he was home recently. Now I could easily have emailed it to him, but I decided instead to type out the recipe (really poorly) on my funny old typewriter. I made a stamped manilla folder for it, and put it in a jazzy envelope that I made from the folded posters that are included in each issue of frankie magazine. Then I went down to the post office and sent it off. Easy as pie!!

I plan to do a lot more old fashioned letter writing from now on.

I hope you will too.

CUT OUTS

2011-10-10T09:53:00.002+13:00

I've been flat out at work lately, but I decided to set aside Saturday for some long overdue crafting time. Works on paper were the order of the day, and I particularly wanted to make use of these lovely cardboard mounts in assorted sizes and colours that I bought locally from Factory Frames.

The plan was to design a couple of small editions of single poems for Pania Press, the first of which is a poem by Jack Ross called 'Lounge Room Tribalism,' inspired by the painting of the same name by Graham Fletcher that hangs in our lounge:

Bronwyn and Jack at home - photo by Katharina Jaeger

First, I typed out the poem on a delightfully wonky vintage typewriter my brother Greg bought for my birthday:

Lounge Room Tribalism

(for Graham Fletcher)

Faux sauvage

that was the

term we coined

for our in

terior

design phi

losophy

unholy

amalgam

of Gauguin

and Magritte

a strictly

rational

naive

te subord

inated

to the cor

ridor that

you can't take

beside the

window look

ing iut on

that wild lawn

Then I started playing around with this assortment of coloured paper cut-outs that Graham gave me last year. He made them while he was developing his first series of Lounge Room Tribalism paintings in 2009, but he only used a few of them, and asked if I'd like to have the rest. Some of the shapes are inspired by Polynesian statues and carvings, others look like insects and sea creatures, and some are just strange amorphous shapes. Seeing the glorious Matisse cut-outs at the Auckland Art Gallery recently inspired me to dig out Graham's paper cut-outs and have a play.

Here are a few text and cut-out combinations I've put together:

That was a great Saturday!

ORACLE BOX GIVEAWAY

2011-09-20T16:29:00.002+12:00

I've just finished my gift edition of ten Oracle Boxes (read my last post for details) and I am delighted to offer one as a gift to a Mosehouse Studio visitor. Just leave a comment on this post between now and Monday 26 September. Make sure you include your name so that I can notify the lucky winner. Readers from outside New Zealand are welcome to enter the draw. GOOD LUCK.

ISABEL (anonymous 2) WON THE ORACLE BOX. CONGRATULATIONS

ASK THE ORACLE

2011-09-18T08:24:00.000+12:00

Bronwynne Cornish's trio of Oracles are proving to be very popular in the Lugosi's Children exhibition at Objectspace. The nature of the questions that visitors are posing to the Bird, the Dog, and the Mirror Oracle, reveal that in difficult times people will often look to some power beyond themselves for answers to their big questions.

In the tradition of the Delphic Oracle, the Oracle enlisted to provide responses to people's questions throughout the exhibition, dictates answers in the form of verse couplets that people will need to ponder when they return to the gallery to find out the answer to the question they posed.

Laura and Philip at Objectspace tell me that people are spending a lot of time in the Oracle tent reading the answers and taking notes. Apparently, a woman rushed in the other day to see if her answer was there. She emerged from the tent elated, saying that the answer was exactly what she needed.

It occurred to me that it might be nice to collect the Oracle's beautiful answers and turn them into a gift for the people who worked so hard to put the exhibition together. The format I decided upon was modelled on a Word Tin that my sister Therese made for each member of our family a few years ago.

The Word Tin sits on the bedside table with the wishing stone on top.

Every morning we shake the tin and extract a word of the day.

Yesterday, Jack was 'Loving', I was 'Electric', and Zero was 'Cuddly'.

Therese wrote this lovely poem about the Word Tin in 2006, which was published in the chapbook Many Things Happened (Pania Press: 2006):

The Word Tin

Every morning after breakfast, I pluck a word from the Word Tin. The tin is a black cube – its opacity means I can never peek at a word before choosing.

There are roughly one hundred words in the Word Tin, written in gold lettering on strips of black card. Some words are better than others, but there are no bad words in the Word Tin.

If I’m extra lucky, I might find myself illuminative, creative or jubilant.

The Word Tin has become an indispensable decision-making aid. For example, on the day I quit my job, I was powerful.

Entrepreneurial had to be cut in half because it was the longest word and easy to pull out. Even though I know this, it is still vaguely disappointing to pull out entrep.

Once the word has been selected, pondered upon and allowed to influence my day, it is then placed under the Lucky Stone. The Lucky Stone? That’s a whole other story…

To make the Oracle Box, I bought ten round boxes from Spotlight, which I decorated with vintage wallpaper and a label printed in orange ink using the cute alphabet rubber stamp-set I bought from Iko Iko last week.

65 Oracle answers were selected, printed onto thick paper, cut and folded.

The box is pretty full, but there is still enough room for them to move around when you shake it while posing your question to the Oracle. Here are a few of my favourite answers:

I hope the people who receive the Oracle Boxes will find what they need in these words of wisdom.

Enjoy your Sunday everybody.

review

2011-09-11T17:06:00.094+12:00

I was chuffed to read the generous half-page review of Lugosi's Children in the Weekend Herald. Most of the 11 artists in the exhibition were mentioned by Graham Reid and he responded very favourably to both the atmosphere of the exhibition as well as the major theme of the show, which concerns the ways that people respond to darkness.

Here are a few documentary snaps of the exhibition and the artist talk on Saturday 27 August taken by various people including myself, Laura Howard and Katharina Jaeger.

Bronwynne Cornish's Oracle Howl with the other Bronwyn (me) behind it.

A view inside the Oracle tent where the three Oracles, Howl, Sigh and Screech await written questions from visitors, which will be answered by the Oracle within seven days.

The responses from the Oracle are transcribed onto pieces of paper along with the person's initials and these are pinned to the wall of the calico tent, so that people can return to the exhibition and read the answer to their question.

Julia deVille's Golden Gosling looks out onto Ponsonby Road.

Rosemary McLeod's bride, Aunt 2, casts a ghostly shadow on the gallery wall. She becomes the stand-in Miss Havisham in the exhibition.

A view of the space with the long table in the foreground with works by Katharina Jaeger, Jane Dodd, Tanya Wilkinson and Paul Rayner. The viny-cut image on the back wall is a translated curse called Loss (Study 2) by Ben Pearce.

One of Katharina's Goblet and textile sculptures is being passed around visitors to the artist talk at the Gallery.

Katharina and me at Objectspace before she flew home to Christchurch. A selection of her amazing pieces look on in the background.

Steph Lusted holding her intricately carved necklace for the visitors to look at, while I nervously hold the fragile bell jar that encloses the piece on display.

Shelley Norton is talking here about her fantastic installation in the vault, which is a plastic outline of the three figures from Manet's famous painting Olympia - the nude courtesan, her maid, and a black cat. You can just glimpse Olympia's head in the background of the image. Unseen on the other side of the vault is an installation of 69 pieces called Freud's Forest that converses with Olympia.

By the way, in the image above I am holding the A4 exhibition catalogue for Lugosi's Children, which includes a wonderful introduction by Jack Ross, a substantial 7000 word essay that I wrote about each of the works in the exhibition, and a fantastic selection of images. The catalogue, beautifully designed by Alan Deare of Area Design, retails for $5.00 per copy. Contact Objectspace to order a printed copy (only a limited number remain), or you can download a free copy for yourself right here.

The two indispensable members of the exhibition team: Laura Howard, Objectspace Programme Coordinator and Karl Chitham, the visionary exhibition designer.

A view of the table. It is so hard to capture the detail of the works so you really must come and visit the exhibition and see the works in the flesh. Inside the bell jars are five of Jane Dodd's exquisitely crafted predator / prey brooches. Paul Rayner's Grayson Perry Spirit Bottle is the centre-piece on the table. Five of Tanya Wilkinson's decorative ceramic cakes are placed around the table, along with eight of Katharina Jaeger's goblet mounds, collectively titled new skin thickens on my skull. Tim Main's beautiful wood and ceramic Rosette Southern Forest 1 looks splendid hung high on the side wall of the gallery.

The exhibition runs until 1 October at Objectspace, 8 Ponsonby Road, Auckland.

I hope you'll drop by for a visit.

At 11am on Saturday 24 September Dr Jenny Lawn and Dr Jack Ross from Massey University's School of English and Media Studies (Albany) will be giving an informal public talk at Objectspace about Gothic themes in New Zealand Art, Film and Literature.

Free admission

All Welcome

Do the maths (a photo-narrative)

2011-09-07T16:36:00.001+12:00

So what was that all about?

What it was, in point of fact, was an answer in the form of a photo-narrative to a question I ask myself from time to time - should I make crafts to sell?

The question was motivated by a purchase I made last week of four cushions from a lovely shop called Bounty in Thames (mentioned a couple of posts ago).

The cushions were made by a Coromandel crafter and they retailed for $39.00 each. I was admiring them when I got home, but then I started to think about the work that had gone into making each cushion, not to mention the cost of materials. I was suddenly beset by a feeling of guilt about how little I had paid for the cushions. One thing led to another and I found myself mulling over the dilemma of the viability of selling beautifully handcrafted goods like these. I reasoned that a good way to work it out, once and for all, was simply by 'doing the maths.' So I set myself the task of sewing a replica cushion, which I worked through methodically this morning until it was completed. This is how the cushion costs out:

Fabric:

vintage polkadot 0.5 metre = $2.00

floral upholstery fabric 0.5 metre @ $15.00 per metre = $7.50

Polyester stuffing 400 gms = $8.00

Vintage buttons x 2 = 50c

Materials total: $18.00

Labour: 2 hours at NZ minimum wage of $13.00 per hour = $26.00

Total: $44.00

and that figure is before the retailer mark-up has been added, which is usually between 25% - 40%.

So, I don't know about you, but I don't think the $39.00 cushions are a viable economic option for the Coromandel crafter in question. I think she should assign greater 'value' to her handcrafts, as well as the skill required to produce them, and she should calculate a realistic price accordingly. That being said, however, would I have bought four of her cushions if they had been $90.00 each? Probably not, and I guess that's why crafting tends to be done for love rather than money.

For now then, I am very content to craft for love, and to make and give lovely things to the people I care about.

wrap EXTRAVAGANZA

2011-09-06T14:39:00.000+12:00

My sister's birthday 'season' kicks off this week. She'll be joining us here in Auckland for a fun-filled weekend, so taking full advantage of this rare semester break without any Academic Writing assignments to mark, I thought I'd have a relaxing time wrapping her prezzies and baking lots of scrumptious goodies.

The materials I used for this wrapping extravaganza were A3 sheets of black and cream paper, strips of calico bookcloth, loose rice-paper pages from a worn Japanese book, coloured corrugated card, a selection of handmade rubber stamps I made after reading Lena Corwin's book Printing by Hand, and a sheet of florist hessian that I saved from a pretty bouquet of flowers I was given.

With no particular plan in mind, other than a vaguely Japanese theme, I got busy scoring, cutting, folding, tearing, stamping, bending and gluing, and before I knew it Tazey's five gifts were looking suitably resplendent.

That was fun.

The only problem is that they look too pretty to open!

day-tripping

2011-09-03T14:41:00.001+12:00

Jack and I have been enjoying a well earned week off after a very full-on time of it lately. One of our favourite pastimes is to jump in the car and head off for spontaneous day-trips. Yesterday, the Hauraki Plains was our destination of choice, and we stopped in at Ngatea, Paeroa and Thames before heading home in the late afternoon. Without realising it, I must have been channeling the vintage loot fairy because boy oh boy did I find some lovely things along the way. My favourite find of the day was a small tartan suitcase with a white plastic handle from Time Traveller in Paeroa. In the same store I bought a pair of emerald green gloves that look pretty snazzy with the case.

This perfect little mustard spoon came from the Brown's Bay Market last Sunday.

This satin lined cane sewing basket came from Time Traveller's sister shop a couple of stores down the road in Paeroa along with this gorgeous round powder box .

There's a great craft book section in the second-hand bookshop in Ngatea where I found an excellent 1950s sewing book with gorgeous illustrations:

I also found a 1960s book of children's crafts that includes a fantastic selection of doll house designs, one of which has a fully landscaped garden and a swimming pool! I'm definitely putting one of those on my to-do list.

Assorted other books came from a cool bric-a-brac shop in Thames.

Even though I sew cushions myself, I couldn't go past these barkcloth and button beauties in a shop called Bounty on the main street in Thames. Each one is made from a different combination of contrasting fabrics and the moment I saw them I knew they'd make great Christmas prezzies.

All in all, it was a fabulous day-trip!

Have a great weekend.

Lugosi's Children

2011-08-21T10:10:00.002+12:00

You should have seen the expression on Jack's face when I came out of the Brown's Bay Salvation Army Store on Tuesday and showed him what I'd bought. A doll-maker must have grown tired of their craft and given away the last of their bits and pieces including a pair of dainty porcelain arms, a pair of legs with pointy black shoes, a beautifully sewn and stuffed doll's body without a head, and a disconnected head with the words "Emma, Tudor, 1974" written on the back.

Although I couldn't agree more with Jack's assertion about the creepiness of this bag of body parts, the reason I got so excited about them was that they provide the perfect atmospheric props to promote an upcoming exhibition that I'm curating at Objectspace called Lugosi's Children. I posed the items inside a battered violin case with orange felt lining, and added a tiny brass lamp to the scene, as well as a lace doily, a spread from Tony Diterlizzi's Film Noir inspired version of Mary Howitt's poem 'The Spider and the Fly', and the moody card for the exhibition designed by Alan Deare of Area Design.

The design for the card is a heavily filtered version of a cropped photo I took recently of one of Bronwynne Cornish's mysterious Oracle figures that will feature in the exhibition.

Bronwynne Cornish Sigh, 2011, (detail) Ceramic earthenware, and found object, 70 x 23 x 30 cm

Here's the promotional write-up for Lugosi's Children. Those of you familiar with Jack Ross's prose style might recognise some of the over-the-top phrasing in the media release as his, and you would be right:

“Listen to them. Children of the night! What music they make!”

Few can forget Bela Lugosi in his famous role as the blood-sucking Count in Tod Browning’s 1931 cult classic Dracula, delivering these immortal lines of dialogue in his sonorous Hungarian accent as a pack of wolves howls outside in the darkness.

The idea of Lugosi’s offspring, his children of the night, and the music that they might make, is the concept that underpins the thematic group exhibition Lugosi’s Children at Objectspace, but the works of the eleven exhibitors are not simply an evocation of the darkness that is an ever-present part of our lives. On the contrary, each of the works deals, in some sense, with the ways in which we cope with, understand, and confront the darkness through humour and parody; through observations of the beauty and symmetry of the natural world; through rites, superstitions and spiritual beliefs; through myth and story; and through history and memory.

Lugosi’s Children, then, are the antithesis of escapists. They examine their own inner space for clues to the true nature of our experience of the world – in all its majesty and horror. A trio of oracles, a ceramic cross-dresser, a set of sutured goblets, a stuffed aunty, a vinyl curse, a plastic bag Olympia, a Freudian thought forest, a bejewelled gosling, a trio of predator/prey brooches, boxed addictions and charms, a floral memento mori, and three inedible cakes are all clues, potential maps of this numinous area where we confront our deepest hopes, memories, desires and fears.

When you examine these strange, dreamlike works of Lugosi’s Children you will see that their wisdom may be intuitive; their ‘music’ a response to the logic of darkness rather than that of the daylight world, but sometimes those can be the only answers one can bear to listen to.

‘Listen to them. Children of the night! What music they make!’

Lugosi’s Children features works by Bronwynne Cornish, Julia deVille, Jane Dodd, Katharina Jaeger, Steph Lusted, Rosemary McLeod, Tim Main, Shelley Norton, Ben Pearce, Paul Rayner and Tanya Wilkinson that include jewellery, ceramics, wood, fabric and multimedia works.

Exhibition curated by Bronwyn Lloyd, and designed by Karl Chitham

What: Lugosi’s Children

Where: Objectspace, 8 Ponsonby Rd, Auckland

When: 27 August - 1 October 2011

Gallery hours: Mon-Sat, 10:00am – 5:00pm, free admission

Publication available online (from 26 August): www.objectspace.org.nz

The Exhibition catalogue essay is written by Auckland writer and exhibition curator Bronwyn Lloyd, with an introduction by Dr Jack Ross.

Objectspace Public Programme:

• Curator Bronwyn Lloyd in conversation with various makers, Saturday 27 August, 11am

• Dr Jenny Lawn (Massey University) in conversation about the contemporary Gothic in New Zealand literature, film and art with Dr Jack Ross, Saturday 24 September, 11am

Contact:

Laura Howard, Objectspace Programme Coordinator

Phone: (09) 376 6216

Email: laura@objectspace.org.nz

http://www.objectspace.org.nz/

I hope you can come along to see the show.

I'll be back in a week or two.

brown paper plus...

2011-08-18T09:20:00.001+12:00

Thick brown paper is the perfect base for all kinds of gift wrap and packaging - it can be stamped, printed, collaged, tied with string and ribbon, and so much more. It's just the best. This group of brown paper packages embellished with colourful corrugated cardboard shapes and flowers are currently en route to my Mum in Christchurch who is turning 70 on Monday. Happy Birthday Mum!

a bit of silliness

2011-08-07T10:06:00.000+12:00

Among the piles of materials awaiting transformation in my craft cupboard I came across a selection of moody scenic postcards that I've found in various art gallery shops. I thought it might be fun to turn them into very basic kinetic postcards using cut-out illustrations from a selection of mangled, torn and scribbled on picture books found at op-shops and flea markets.

Here's the result:

Mrs Bunny and Baby Bunny hurried home in time for tea, waving to Mr Squirrel as they passed his purple house.

The kinetic technique involves cutting a directional slit in the card and attaching a cardboard tab to the back of the moving element. This is tucked through the slit and hangs down from the bottom of the card and you slide it across to set the character in motion.

This is what the tab looks like at the back. It needs to extend both ways above and below the slit in order to anchor the cut-out image.

Lizzy was so busy with her gardening that she strode across the courtyard and failed to notice Humpty Dumpty sitting on the birdbath.

On winter mornings Lizzy liked to take her pet elephant for a paddle in the ice lake. The elephant pretended to enjoy it, but in truth he didn't much like getting cold feet.

The woman in yellow stared with wonder at the ice cream sundae fountain as a red bird flew overhead.

"It looks like rain" said the dog, so he opened his red umbrella and set off across the field. The red bird flying overhead admired the dog's panache.

brooches

2011-07-31T12:02:00.000+12:00

I was having a pleasant time browsing in the Lopdell House Gallery shop before a poetry event on Friday night when I spotted these pretty little beaded felt brooches made by artist Tabatha Forbes sitting on the counter. I think she calls them 'Mrs Darcy's' brooches. They come packaged in a paper doily envelope tied with red ribbon, which I thought was very pretty, so I made a quick purchase of a pair in grey and crimson before the shop closed.

The new duo make a nice addition to my oddball assortment of brooches that includes a tin butterfly, a scenic slide brooch, a plastic vase that I bought from the Hawke's Bay Art Gallery shop during the Black Dress White Vase exhibition a few years ago, and a cute brooch by Justine Fletcher with a circle of vintage fabric sandwiched between two plastic discs.

Here are a selection of close-ups:

a mother-of-pearl rickshaw - a gift from my sister

A coral brooch by Meliors Simms festooned with French knots that I was lucky enough to win in one of her blog giveaways.

This striking piece was a gift from my friend Mark back in 1992. It had a long silver snake dangling from it but it overbalanced the brooch, so I removed it. I was never told the name of the jeweller who made it, but I'd love to know.

This lovely blue bead cluster was made by my ex-hubby in 1992. It looks great on my black wool jacket.

And this ribbon star cluster was made by jeweller Areta Wilkinson who kindly sent it to me as a PhD graduation gift.

I hope you're having a lovely Sunday. I'm supposed to be writing a catalogue essay, but the contents of my jewellery box distracted me...

Sanderson Prints

2011-07-24T15:27:00.000+12:00

When I was in Wellington recently, my brother Greg and I visited the gorgeous craft / florist / furniture store Juniper in Newtown where he splashed out and bought a sleek, reupholstered 1960s couch with black vinyl arms and charcoal coloured cushions. He asked if I could whip him up a couple of cushions to accessorise this chic new addition to his lounge. I knew the exact fabric I wanted to use, having spotted a display of 1950s inspired Sanderson prints in the window of Firefly Light & Design in Devonport a few weeks ago. The very friendly manager kindly sold me the 3 metre drop that they'd used for the window display, at a considerable discount, along with two other designs from the range. Ordinarily, I wouldn't be so indulgent, but I know that this beautiful Sanderson linen will be turned into a perfect pile of Christmas presents for family and friends this year so the investment was entirely worth it.

In the meantime, here are the cushions for Greg and Celia

and here's a cute pencil-case I made for my first week back at Massey

Japanese dolls and paper flowers

2011-07-19T17:08:00.000+12:00

I was admitted to hospital unexpectedly last week with suspected gallstones. The timing was particularly bad because Jack was en route from Australia, so instead of arriving home to a nice dinner he arrived home to a grumpy cat and a note on the coffee table telling him to make his way to North Shore hospital. I was super happy to see him because the only bed they could find for me was in the transplant ward with a trio of demanding old ladies with joint replacements who were not the best company. In fact, I ended up disconnecting my drip many times to assist them in various ways when the overworked nurses failed to materialise when buzzed.

When Jack came to see me during visiting hours on my second day he gave me a copy of one of my favourite books as a child, Miss Happiness & Miss Flower by Rumer Godden (1961) with illustrations by Jean Primrose. I have been looking for a copy of this book for ages, so he couldn't have given me a more perfect present. The book is about a little English girl called Nona whose mother died when she was a baby and who had been raised on her father's tea plantation in Southern India. When she turned eight, Nona was sent to live with relatives in England where she felt scared, lonely and very different from the other kids.

A gift of two antique Japanese dolls named Miss Happiness and Miss Flower from an elderly Aunt ultimately brings happiness, friendship and a sense of purpose and belonging into Nona's life. Through the process of working out how to design a replica Japanese house for the dolls, she forms friendships with her cousins, her school teacher, her classmates and the local bookstore owner, who all help her to build and furnish the house.

Reading the book again with its detailed descriptions of the process of constructing the house, sewing the tiny silk quilts and cushions, painting a miniature paper scroll and making new kimonos for the dolls, I'm certain now where my love of handcrafts came from and I'm so happy to be able to add this precious book to my collection.

Appropriately, the designs for the two paper flowers come from my Yamada Ito Paper Craft book and I used a couple of pieces of fine handmade paper to make them.

To make the camelia cut the spiral and roll from the outer edge. Let it loosen in your hand and gently feed the innermost part of the spiral through the hole and secure it in place with a blob of craft glue. I made a smaller black spiral to go inside it. To make the leaves, cut out a leaf shape, score a wavy line with a knitting needle to make a central vein and carefully bend the card into shape.

The other invented species of orange flower is made from three variations of the pattern above that were inserted inside each other to make outer and inner petals.

A stash of paper flowers like these would make beautiful decorations for presents and they would also look pretty perched on top of a birthday cake.

books glorious books

2011-07-08T13:30:00.001+12:00

I can't think of a happier fate to befall a bibliophile than to rent a home that comes complete with a family library. I'm so happy that two of the poets in my family, Therese and Lee, are now living in such an idyllic place on the Kapiti Coast, and I couldn't resist showing you a selection of pictures of some of the pretty books I discovered while I was staying there last week.

The guest room I was sleeping in once belonged to the only child in the family, and there was one special bookshelf filled with his old children's books that caught my attention. Because M's books were only handled by one little pair of hands, they are still in pristine condition, and it was a delight to take each one out and carefully leaf through them.

My favourite books in the children's section were these seven tiny books from the series 'Stories of the Ballet' published in the 1940s.

Even though I was too shy to take ballet lessons as a little girl, I would have loved to have owned these beautiful books. Look at these gorgeous illustrations:

In case you're wondering about the pretty floral background in some of the images, I posed the books on the back of a handmade rug that looks as if it dates from the same era as the books.

I can see that I'm going to enjoy my trips to Wellington from now on, taking the 40 minute train ride to get to Tazey and Lee's bach. Let's end with a rainbow that we found right outside their front door.

Have a great weekend everyone.

suit pockets

2011-07-06T15:03:00.000+12:00

The ash cloud delayed my travels last week so I found the time to make another pocket bag as a gift for a friend in Christchurch before I eventually flew out. For this one, I used the curved edge of an op-shop sports jacket and lined it with bright red satin. Further delays with my flights meant that I didn't end up making it to Christchurch at all. Instead, I spent the week helping my sis and her hubby move into a perfect cottage on the Kapiti Coast. I took some pretty pictures of the library that comes with the cottage to show you in my next post.

Houndstooth and Check

2011-06-22T17:01:00.001+12:00

I've been needing a large bag for a while now - big enough to carry a pile of student essays, a pencil case and other assorted bits and pieces. So while I should have been doing a million other things today, I decided to sew a sturdy houndstooth and check bag with a handy zip pocket on the flap. Perfect for my trip to Wellington tomorrow,. and then on to Christchurch in the weekend to spend some time with Mum.

I'll be back in early July, so take care everyone.

x 2

2011-06-16T12:45:00.001+12:00

Sometimes I love a particular design so much that I make more than one of the same thing for myself. That is definitely the case with the Baktus scarf / shawl. It's a scarf that looks great whatever way you wear it. You can loosely drape it around your shoulders like a shawl or you can loop it around your neck a couple of times and tie it in the middle or off to one side.

The scarf never feels bulky and the pretty lace pattern gives it some added visual interest. The original non-lacy Baktus was designed by a knitter called Terhimon and the lacy version was designed by Strikkelise. The super simple pattern is free to download. It's also easy to memorise for beginner knitters like me because you just repeat 8 rows the whole way except that you are adding stitches one half and decreasing in the second half to create the large triangle that is the finished product. Another point in its favour is that it only takes one 50gm ball of four ply sock wool to knit, so you can splash out on the finest quality yarn. The scarf grows very quickly on the needles which is satisfying and prevents boredom from setting in. After seeing a beautiful green version knitted by Lies, I knitted one for my friend Katy that I blogged about here. I knitted the terracotta one for myself using a ball of divine Madelinetosh wool generously given to me by Lies and a third one from pale blue merino bought from a lovely wool shop in Devonport.

So what are you waiting for - GET KNITTING - you won't be disappointed.

ps: the background to the photos is a painting by Graham Fletcher from his Lounge Room Tribalism series. I posed the scarves in front of it while I was was waiting for staff from Wellington's City Gallery to collect it from me for a show in their Deane Gallery in July where it will feature along with other recent paintings by Graham. Make sure you drop in for a look if you happen to be in Wellington during that time.

three minute bangles

2011-06-12T14:20:00.002+12:00

I had a little frenzy of bangle making after breakfast this morning using the four kinds of vintage knit fabric I showed you in yesterday's post. This is what the finished bangles look like when worn.

When we were little we used to walk home from our local swimming pool wearing head-dresses made from our rolled up towels. These bangles are made the same way. They are so quick and easy that I thought I'd show you how they're done in case you want to make a bunch of them yourself.

Step one: Measure your wrist and cut a piece of non-fraying stretch knit fabric with an extra seam allowance of 1.5cm. My fabric pieces measured 27cm square.

Step 2: Sew a straight seam and then trim close to the stitching. With the fabric tube turned inside out place it on your arm and fold back to the desired width making sure that the fold is even all the way round.

Step 3: Continue folding the bangle on your arm, but before you make the last fold, tuck the edge of the fabric under as shown above.

Step 4: Fold the final flap of the bangle and adjust to make sure that you have a neat edge. Don't worry that the fabric on the inside of the bangles goes a bit wavy - you can't see that when you're wearing it.

And that's all there is to it. You can vary the width and thickness of the bangles to create extra drama and make dynamic pairs using contrasting fabrics.
In my experience, speed crafting very seldom works out, but these three minute fabric bangles are an exception - fast, thrifty and snazzy to boot. I hope you enjoy making some of your own.

One pattern / Two looks

2011-06-11T15:39:00.001+12:00

I found four large pieces of Nana knit fabric at the Takapuna Hospice shop yesterday. Now I'm sure this style of fabric is not everyone's cup of tea, but I could definitely see the potential for all kinds of textile goodies like pocket bags, pencil cases and patchwork cushions. First up though, I decided to make a new collar design using a pattern I adapted from the shaped waistband of a child's skirt.

Because the houndstooth pattern is so busy I kept the collar simple and opted for an invisible dome fastening instead of a button on the outside.

For a more formal look I used the same pattern to make an ornate version of the collar for a special occasion using a silk panel from an old kimono in a gorgeous shade of midnight blue with a silver and pink pattern. I added a ruffle and embellished it with a black glass Art Deco button.

A versatile pattern is a really handy thing to have in the sewing room.

Up next - Nana knit bangles...

Pop Riveter

2011-06-08T11:15:00.000+12:00

I had a productive holiday weekend catching up on a couple of long overdue projects. The plan had been to make up our Pania Press edition of Jen Crawford's poetry chapbook Pop Riveter during the Easter break, but what with one thing and another, it ended up being Queen's Birthday weekend before I could get to it. That seems to be the way of things this year.

Never mind, I'm pleased with the finished result. I loved working with all the colour combinations and the pocket-size A6 format is really cute. I also like the way that the geometric elements are all slightly wonky, which is what makes hand-crafted things special as far as I'm concerned. Each copy comes in a snazzy envelope made from calico bookcloth which will protect the hand-collaged details on the covers from wear and tear.

I wrote about Jen's book in an earlier post which you can read here and if you want to own a copy of Pop Riveter you are very welcome to place an order here.

Enjoy the rest of your week.

works on paper

2011-06-03T12:20:00.007+12:00

Are you a dealer?

I was asked this question yesterday when I approached the counter of a pop-up shop in Browns Bay called Time Traveller 2, which sells a great range of reasonably priced vintage and retro clothing, domesticware and bric a brac. If you happen to be venturing across to the Shore you should definitely check it out at 21 Clyde Road, Browns Bay. The original shop operates from Paeroa and I'm told that the owner sources most of the clothes from offshore. The garments are in stunning condition - if only I had the figure of a 1950s housewife!

I think the chap asked if I was a dealer because of my very focused method of shopping. Yesterday, for instance, I noticed a basket brimming over with papers, so I sat on the floor and began to take every item out of the basket to examine them. This kind of activity always gets people's attention. Other shoppers generally start circling around me worried that they might be missing out on something cool. Eventually though, they get tired of hanging around and go away. The basket of papers contained illustrations cut from old picture books, advertisements for old cars taken from magazines, business letters from the early 20th century written by hand on crisp letterhead paper, screenprinted advertisements, and a number of small original watercolours on paper.

I selected this lovely butterfly composition that was probably intended as a design for a ceramic tile for a curved fireplace. The chap in the shop told me that he bought it in the estate sale of a woman named Mrs Holloway who was something of an amateur artist. She seemed pretty accomplished, if you ask me!

Another small watercolour that leapt out at me was this pretty sprig of Manuka blossom painted by O.M Tonkin. I'm going to find a nice frame for it and give it some well deserved space on the wall.

And I couldn't resist this free-standing screenprinted 1950s sign for the old Corban's Vineyard in Henderson. This combination of colours just makes me happy, pure and simple.

I may not be a dealer, but I do love discovering beautiful little artworks like these, and either finding a space for them in my home, or giving them as presents to people who I know will appreciate them as much as I do.

sets

2011-05-22T12:15:00.000+12:00

A round of winter birthdays are approaching so I thought I'd begin the prezzie prep by making sets of linen and silk buttons that I'll attach to cards as small but pretty gifts for friends.

four views of wolfy

2011-05-19T16:58:00.001+12:00

Jack is, by now, very used to my show and tell sessions of random items acquired during my regular op-shopping excursions around the North Shore. Generally he nods and smiles and tries to feign enthusiasm for my haul of goodies, like boxes of Agee jars, lengths of vintage fabric, cards of buttons, and nana-knitted socks. But when I arrived home last week with an oil portrait of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart tucked under my arm, bought for $8.00 from the Brown's Bay SPCA charity shop, Jack found himself at a loss for words. In fact, all he did say was 'please don't hang it in the bedroom. I really don't want his face to be the first thing I see in the morning' (or words to that effect).

Despite Jack's opinion, I happen to love this portrait painted by M. Gregory and I've affectionately named him Wolfy. I hope he'll be happy here, hanging on my office wall with a basket of op-shop toys dangling overhead, embroideries nearby, and an old violin case with orange felt lining propped up in the corner next to him.

shaking out the memory cloth

2011-05-14T15:27:00.404+12:00

In 2000 I visited Gretchen Albrecht's home a number of times to interview her for a Master's thesis that I was writing about her shaped abstract paintings. Each visit began with a cup of coffee and a chat before we climbed the stairs to her studio where I would take notes from her visual diaries while Gretchen painted.

During the course of our conversation one day the subject of buttons came up and Gretchen told me that she collected buttons from all over the world. She showed me a beautiful wooden case that her husband James had constructed for her to store her collection in, and as we fingered the jewel-like buttons inside each of the dovetail jointed drawers, Gretchen described her favourite button shop in New York, appropriately called 'Tender Buttons' after Gertrude Stein's famous poem.

Gretchen left the room for a moment and returned with a large square of black velvet that had a selection of buttons of all shapes, sizes and colours sewn onto it. It was a memory cloth, she told me, and the composition of buttons was designed to keep her elderly mother connected to the world through touch and texture, shape and colour, as dementia progressively took her further and further away.

I was so touched by this gesture of compassion shown by a daughter to her mother that the memory of the button covered cloth has remained with me since that time, stored away in the back room of my head, and protected from moths, until the right set of circumstances led me to bring it out into the light again and shake off the dust.

The right set of circumstances began with a visit from my artist / writer friend Raewyn Alexander towards the end of last year where she showed me a set of poems that she had embroidered onto found and family vintage textiles including supper cloths, doilies and an old damask tablecloth. In one of the pieces Raewyn had added a poem to an embroidery that her daughter had begun and abandoned years before. I really liked the pieces and suggested to Raewyn that she sew the poems onto a fabric backing and create a large cloth book that people would be able to easily leaf through. She immediately set about doing so, and I got to read the completed cloth book over Christmas, which is a lovely artefact indeed. You can see examples of Raewyn's embroidered poems at her Happy Teahouse Blog, and for evidence of her neat back-stitching skills, I've pasted below a couple of details from two beautiful polkadot Alice in Wonderland cushions that she made for us a couple of years ago.

After seeing Raewyn's textile poetry book, I decided that I'd like to have another go at making a cloth book of my own (after abandoning my shortlived Rimbaud in flannel project in 2009). My enthusiasm for the idea received a considerable boost when I came across a recently published book about the fabric works made by artist Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010).

From the 1950s Bourgeois incorporated clothing into her sculptural works, primarily as a metaphor for the female body, but in the last fifteen years of her life, she made use of a large storehouse of vintage family textiles, using fragments of clothing, manchester, handkerchiefs and upholstery fabric in symbolic compositions that referred to her complicated relationship with her parents who ran a tapestry repair business in France from 1905. She also employed these textiles, laden with personal memories, to reflect on the passage of time as she neared the end of her very long life.

Among the many and varied textile works that she produced during this period, Bourgeois made a series of cloth books that are beautfully photographed in Celant's book. I have included five examples below to show you the range of compositions as well as the amazing variety of sewing techniques employed by the artist in the series, including applique, patchwork and weaving.

The Trauma of Abandonment (cover and two detail views) 2001

Ode de la Bievre (cover and two detail views) 2002

The Woven Child (Cover and Detail) 2003

Ode a l'oubli (Cover, two details and full view) 2004

Dawn (Cover and detail) 2006

At the same time that I was admiring the book of Louise Bourgeois' Fabric Works, I was also reading an anthology of the artist's writings, Louise Bourgeois Destruction of the Father - Reconstruction of the Father: Writings and Interviews 1923-1997 (Eds. Marie-Laure Bernadac and Hans-Ulrich Obrist, Cambridge: MIT, 2008).

The book is full of the usual sort of quotable gems that diligent Art History undergrads carefully integrate into their essays - the kind of art patter that seems as if it means something really profound but doesn't really mean much at all. What I love about the book, however, is that the editors have reproduced a range of little known small-press publications that Bourgeois wrote and illustrated in the late 1940s - strange and grim little parable sequences like the nine part series, He Disappeared into Complete Silence (1947). Here are two (very poor) photos to give you an idea of the content of the parables as well as the layout of the text in relation to the etchings:

Alongside the parable sequence the editors have included an extract from an interview some fifty years later in which Bourgeois explained that this text was about the lowering of self-esteem and the descent into depression, but with the possibility of resurrection and survival. 'It is a descent,' she said, 'but I believe in resurrection in the morning. This is a withdrawal, but it is temporary. You lose your self-esteem, but you pull yourself up again. This is about survival...about the will to survive' (49).

In the interview Bourgeois went on to explain that writing was an occasional outlet for her, and that she only indulged in writing stories when she felt compelled to do so, in order to cope with some event in her life. 'You can stand anything if you write it down,' she said. 'You must do it to get hold of yourself...All you need is a pen and paper. But you must redirect your concentration...Words put in connection can open up new relations...a new view of things' (49).

I have taken a very circuitous route to get to my point, but here it is. Louise Bourgeois' idea about the connection between words and things was going through my mind as I unpicked my Mum's Austin Brown coat a few weeks ago, and that is when the recollection of Gretchen Albrecht's memory cloth resurfaced in connection with Raewyn Alexander's textile poems and Louise Bourgeois' cloth books. From the combination of all these things, the concept for a cloth book emerged, which will use the pieces of the coat to tell the story Mum told me recently about the garment - in essence, a cautionary tale about the lengths that people will go to in order to fit in.

The story treats the unpicking process as an autopsy of the coat that links symbolically to the larger theme of the narrative. The coat becomes something of a metonym for my mother, and I, the daughter and new owner of the coat, set about deconstructing it in order to understand the story she has told me. I remove the label and carefully separate the lining from the outer fabric to reveal all the 'behind the scenes' details of the garment - the tacking stitches, the reinforcing of the seams, the batting along the plackets, and the grey wool lining added to high stress areas of the coat like the seat, the underarms and the pockets.

I'm very excited at the prospect of working on this project when time permits between the teaching, writing and curating jobs that I have lined up for the rest of the year, and I hope you'll continue to drop by from time to time and let me know what you think of the Austin Brown cloth book as it takes shape.

Enjoy the rest of your week.

the dismemberment of Austin Brown

2011-05-01T10:24:00.004+12:00

At the end of Mum's hallway there is a useful cupboard where she stores things that are not in use right now, but that might be some day. Rolls of leftover wrapping paper live there, along with boxes of old Christmas cards, board games, and hundreds of recipes cut from magazines that she always intended to categorise and paste into albums, but never got round to it.

Among the things in the cupboard there are certain items of clothing that Mum knows she will never wear again, but that she won't get rid of either, no matter how much we pester her. From time to time, however, she decides to let something go, and during my last visit to see her, that something was a vintage Austin Brown wool coat in a glorious shade of red, best described as the colour of affluence.

Upon parting with the coat Mum made me promise that if I wasn't going to wear it myself then I must give it to an op-shop so that it could be of benefit to somebody else. I promised her that I would, but a couple of weekends ago, on a chilly Sunday afternoon, I broke that promise and dismembered the Austin Brown coat.

My justification for this destructive act was that although the coat was much too big for me, and I knew I would never wear it, there was so much material in the coat, and the quality of the fabric was so fine, that I knew I would be able to make a whole lot of things from it. These many things, I reasoned, would ultimately bring happiness to a lot more people than just the one lucky soul who would come across the coat at the op-shop. Also, in the process of unpicking this coat, and learning the story of Mum's attachment to it, a new short story is evolving, as well as a concept for a gift book, so that has to be seen as a positive!

Anyway, enough with the words. Here's a show-n-tell of two bags that I've made so far from Mum's Austin Brown coat:

An asymmetric pocket bag for my sister

A round ditty bag for Mum.

The embroidery design came from a transfer sheet in a Needlewoman magazine from 1970, and inspiration for the round purse came from one of my old craft books, Make These Yourself by I.P Roseaman (1948).

Lots more Austin Brown goodies to come!

Enjoy the rest of your Sunday.

Merope & Louise

2011-04-20T15:54:00.000+12:00

After seven intensive weeks of teaching academic writing at Massey I feel a bit tired. The photo of Louise Bourgeois massaging her temples and Emma Smith's image of dark-eyed Merope rather sums me up at the moment. With a stack of assignments to mark, a growing number of art essays to write, and an edition of poetry chapbooks to make, my fun paper and fabric craft projects will need to be put on hold for the next couple of weeks. I'm looking forward to sharing some new things with you very soon, notably a new collar design and a show-and-tell of a repurposed red wool coat.

Wishing you all a very happy Easter holiday.

PS: if you would like me to post a paper furniture tutorial please let me know.

some traditions

2011-04-18T14:05:00.000+12:00

In many respects I'm an old fashioned kind of girl and there are a number of traditions that I adhere to from year to year. At the start of daylight saving, for example, I springclean my flat from top to bottom, and on the day after daylight saving ends I get the bus into town and buy a new batch of stockings and socks for winter. Jack laughed when I woke up on 4 April and declared that it was 'hosiery day'. Off I went and when I returned home later that day I had a nice selection of unpilled socks and run-free tights to show for it. I store them in this pretty embroidered linen bag made by a lady long ago who clearly shares the same traditions as me. Her embroidery is just beautiful.

cute as a button

2011-04-11T09:46:00.000+12:00

I made a cute set of buttons yesterday using a 1950's Belgian linen napkin that I bought from a lovely vintage textile shop in Wellington's Thorndon village in 2006. On the same day my sister found a huge antique key in another Thorndon shop. She strung it onto a thin piece of black ribbon and wore it with a black wool dress that she describes as her Italian mourning dress. I have a good memory when it comes to recalling good shopping experiences. I have a bad memory when it comes to identifying what day of the week it is.

I felt that the design of this linen napkin called for a set of buttons with one large feature button (38mm) and five smaller buttons (19mm).

Have a happy and productive week everyone.

Show and Tell Friday

2011-04-08T09:22:00.001+12:00

Sometimes a shop seems more like a museum than a retail outlet. There is one particular inner Auckland treasure trove that I like to visit when I have a town day. I dropped in there yesterday to escape a sudden downpour and to dry out before making my way up the hill to University. The shop is called Upstairs Antiques and you can find it on the first floor of Queen's Arcade in lower Queen Street. The owner is a lovely old lady who has run the business for 34 years. Walking through the door, it feels as if you've stepped into her cluttered parlour rather than into a shop.

The merchandise ranges from crazily expensive antique glassware, books and ceramics to reasonably priced sewing notions, fabric pieces and other pretty items like lace handkerchiefs, still in their boxes, and lovely embroidered linen.

These are two delicate silk swatches with ceramic vase prints. The small print at the bottom of the swatches indicates that they were produced by a cigarette company, although I'm not sure why that would be the case. Perhaps the company sponsored an exhibition of Chinese ceramics back in the day.

I mainly visit this shop because if you ask to see the buttons the very nice lady will produce half a dozen shoe-boxes from beneath the counter, which you can happily root through for a good hour or so trying to decide which ones need to come home with you. I chose a card of twelve red buttons with faceted edges because nice red buttons are very hard to find these days. I also chose two toffee coloured diamond shaped buttons and three unusal green corded buttons that will be great as fastenings for a linen workbag.

As a rule, I'm not generally attracted to 'antique' pieces because really old things tend to give me the creeps, but when the kind woman asked if I'd like to have a look at a box of Victorian lace collars, each one wrapped in acid-free tissue, I found my hands trembling as I carefully removed each piece to examine the incredible handiwork. I imagined how these intricate handmade accessories would have transformed a plain linen garment into an elegant ensemble for wearing to church or for hosting an afternoon tea. The stunning piece, pictured above, with strips of silk in the palest shade of green threaded through the silk crochet, ended up coming home with me. Very indulgent, I know, but the collar fits perfectly and I knew immediately that I would be able to use it as a template to make a contemporary version of it, as I did with the collars I made from old ties and scarves using the antique Amish collar (below) that my sister bought for me at a market in Iowa.

Anyway, designing a new textile accessory will be the perfect Easter holiday project, and I hope to incorporate some pretty fabric covered buttons into my version of the Victorian collar.

Enjoy your weekend!

fabric covered button tutorial

2011-04-02T11:42:00.001+13:00

Fabric covered buttons make up a very small subset of my button collection. There's something oldy-worldy about fabric buttons that appeals to my inner Victorian, and for the longest time I've wanted to learn how to design and make some of my own. I knew the time was right when I happened upon a needlecraft booklet in the op-shop last week and turned to this page of lovely linen buttons decorated with blackwork stitching:

Blackwork is a form of needlecraft done with threads of a contrasting coloured thread on a linen fabric - usually black thread on a white ground. The technique uses simple running stitches to build up small geometric patterns. Unfortunately, the booklet didn't give any making instructions, so I just worked it out for myself, and I thought it would be nice to show you the process in case you want to have a go at making some covered buttons yourself.

First, I used a cotton reel to mark out circles in pencil on the back of a piece of linen (an old doily) and stitched around the circle to give me a guideline to sew within. I used my smallest embroidery hoop to make the linen nice and taut for stitching.

Using a single strand of black cotton (not too thick / not too thin) I sewed some little geometric patterns with diamonds, dots, dashes and triangles.

After I'd finished the sewing part, I removed the tacked guideline and cut around the circle, leaving a good 1.5cm of fabric to tuck into the back of the button fastening. You can buy button fastenings from most craft shops and the good thing about them is that they are simple to use. I don't have very nimble fingers, so I put a bit of glue around the back of the fastening to assist with the process of securing the fabric in place. Then you simply click on the back piece of the fastening and you're done.

Aren't they cute.

I so enjoyed making these blackwork buttons that I plan to continue and make a whole lot more, and put together sets as presents for my craftily inclined friends to embellish their clothes. In the background of the photo you can see some small envelopes I've made for the buttons. The envelopes are cut from a poster produced for a survey exhibition of Marilyn Sainty's fashion design a few years ago. If you would like an envelope making tutorial, please let me know and I'd be happy to oblige.

Happy button making everyone.

show and tell Tuesday

2011-03-29T11:54:00.005+13:00

Pania Press had an impromptu outing in the weekend when we were given the opportunity to make a small display of our books in a print fair being run as part of the St Paul St Gallery's 2011 Print Season. Although we don't have a lot of stock at the moment, I fleshed out the display with some of my paper models, which proved to be very popular with the kids. It was mighty nice to share the Symonds St Gallery space with the Adam Art Gallery, Enjoy Gallery, St Paul St, Artspace, Cherry Bomb Comics, and Alphabet City, among others. Here's a Show and Tell of a selection of the publications I swapped and bought during the event.

This is my wonderful and stylish sister Therese, the administrator at Victoria University's Adam Art Gallery, sorting out a display of the Adam's beautifully designed, high-end publications.

The top image is cropped from a poster/catalogue designed by Jonty Valentine and produced by St Paul St Gallery in 2005 for Stella Brennan's exhibition Wet Social Sculpture. What a brilliant aerial photograph of suburbia with all the gorgeous blue swimming pools in all kinds of geometric shapes.

From the same table I gathered up a selection of free postcards relating to the forthcoming Sightseeing exhibition, curated by Hanna Scott, that opens at AUT's St Paul St Gallery on 7 April and runs until 29 April. The idea is that we take a postcard, write something on it, and send it back to the Gallery. The completed cards will then be displayed in the exhibition.

Being a sucker for all things baking related, I couldn't resist buying a vintage fabric covered recipe book from the display put together by Bopha from Wellington's Enjoy Public Gallery. I really like the unpretentious and low-grade design of Enjoy's catalogues. I also bought a nice Ben Buchanan catalogue with a silver screen printed cover.

This is a little stash of letterpress postcards and bus ticket zines with cute eraser prints that I bought from two lovely ladies from Alphabet City. They are opening up a bricks and mortar business in a few weeks time where they will be selling hand printed goodies as well as running letterpress classes. One night a month they will be having a letter writing group where folk can come along and write letters on beautiful handprinted stationery. Doesn't that sound charming. When I asked for a businees card they typed one up on the spot for me and I heard their little typewriter tapping away throughout the day - a promising indicator that their small business is off to a great start.

A few other zines caught my eye and made their way home with me before the first day was over. An anthology of twisted fairy tales by emergent writers and artists, edited by Emily Starrett Wright, was a must have, of course.

And last but not least, here's a great photo of Alex Wild minding the Cherry Bomb comics table and shamelessly promoting her book The Constant Losers published by Titus Books in September 2010 and already into its second print run. Alex even typed up and xeroxed an A6 zine that morning to pitch her book to visitors. A very impressive and effective exercise in self-promotion.

large print 3

2011-03-22T16:23:00.001+13:00

Friends of ours are having a baby girl in a couple of months time, so I've been thinking about what 'welcome to the world' prezzie I'd like to give her. Books seemed like the best option, so for my second project using large print fabrics I've made a sturdy book bag with her name embroidered on it, and I've filled the bag with a selection of books to get Rita's library off to a good start. Here are a few of them:

Every bub needs a copy of Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar, so that they can enjoy turning the nibbled pages of the book and watching the wee critter munch its way through a week's worth of food, then build a cosy cocoon, and emerge as a gorgeous butterfly on the final page. Nobody does colour like Eric Carle. Even after all these years, his illustrations continue to fill me with joy.

From one greedy critter to another, no little one's library can do without Judith Kerr's classic, The Tiger who Came to Tea.

After reading this book when I was little I longed for a tiger to show up at my house for a tea party and then devour the contents of the pantry. Of course, I couldn't resist buying a copy of the book for Rita that came with its own little china tea set.

I know I've said it before, but in terms of essential picture books, you simply can't go past Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are, so a copy of this book was the first item to make it into Rita's book bag. The emotional arc of this story of a young boy's anger, defiance, and regret was a huge influence on me when I was young, so I hope that it will resonate with Rita too.

Our Dad was very fond of reading us sad stories - 'little tear-jerkers' as he called them. His favourites were Oscar Wilde's stories, 'The Selfish Giant' and The Happy Prince', and just thinking about those stories still brings a tear to my eye. But perhaps the story that resonated most powerfully with me, my brothers and sister, was The Lorax by Dr Seuss.

This story about a passionate 'eco-warrior' and his quest to save the beautiful Truffula trees from being destroyed by the evil capitalist Onceler, never failed to get our blood boiling. But then you come to that image of hope at the end when the reclusive Onceler places the last Truffula seed into the hands of the young boy to whom he has narrated the whole sorry saga, and you close the book hoping like heck that that seed will grow and eventually restore the landscape to its former beauty.

We found Rita a nice edition of The Lorax printed on recycled paper, so I hope this moving little tear-jerker of a tale will matter to her as much as it did to us, and I hope too, that our contribution to Rita's library will mark the beginning of a long and wonderful relationship with books in her life.

large print 2

2011-03-20T10:07:00.000+13:00

For my first 'large print' project I reused the cane handles from a worn linen knitting bag and gave the bag a new lease of life. I used the leaf print fabric, lined it with cream coloured cotton, and added a handy inside pocket. The bag goes really well with the string of chunky wallpaper beads I made last year and my favourite woven scarf.

large print 1

2011-03-20T09:50:00.001+13:00

I have some lovely upholstery and curtain remnants with large leaf and flower prints that I've been planning to do something with since last autumn. I think I'll devote my next few crafting sessions to turning these pieces into something useful, other than a cosy bed for Zero, that is.

pop

2011-03-19T10:46:00.001+13:00

In the process of playing around with woven paper last weekend, I stumbled upon a cover design for our next Pania Press poetry chapbook, Pop Riveter by Jen Crawford. The sequence of poems describes a summer job that Jen had a few years ago working in a sail making factory.

Pop Riveter is full of text columns and lists describing the repetitive nature of the tasks that Jen and her co-workers had to carry out: sanding the sail frames, cutting the cloth, glueing, ironing, stapling, trimming, stacking and packing the sails. The rhythmic and repetitive descriptions of the job itself are interspersed with Jen's observations of the people working with her, subtly revealing the interpersonal dynamics and the hierarchical structure of the workplace. All of this is set against a background of pop music blasting over the radio in the factory, with Britney Spears voice bursting into the poems with the lyrics from 'You want a Piece of Me?'

I wanted the cover design for this small (A6) chapbook to replicate some of the processes described in the poems, so cutting slits in the card and weaving strips of paper through it seemed like the best technique. The pop colours work well with the theme of the book, and I'll be creating different colour combinations and woven designs for each book in the edition of 30.

It always feels good when the prototype for a new publication is completed. I've set aside time over the Easter break to make up the edition and I'm really looking forward to it!

woven felt

2011-03-13T12:41:00.008+13:00

Something about this experiment pleases me. Maybe it's the simplicity of it - the fact that the woven felt strips hold themselves in place without the need for stitches. I haven't figured out the 'what' or 'why' of weaving with felt yet, but I think that if I saw a cushion made out of four joined squares like this, or even a big winter tote bag slung over someone's shoulder, I'd be intrigued and want to take a closer look. Anyway, it's definitely worth a bit more experimentation.

woven paper

2011-03-12T17:16:00.011+13:00

I noticed that my handmade card supply was getting low this week, so I topped it up with a batch of cards made from textured Canson cardstock in assorted colours. Instead of my usual collage technique, I decided to make vertical and horizontal slits in the card and weave thick and thin strips of card through them to make intersecting areas with contrasting colours. I'd quite like to try something similar with felt...

Have a lovely Sunday.

Sunday

2011-03-06T11:06:00.008+13:00

Pink hydrangeas in an Agee jar. An eclectic assortment of bedside reading. A batch of warm bran muffins. A tidy office. All the fixings for a quiet and relaxing Sunday at the end of a busy week. I hope you're having a relaxing Sunday too.

Eileen's Books

2011-03-03T15:33:00.013+13:00

On a recent trip to Whangarei we happened upon a second hand bookshop, as we often do, and there I found a charming book about shells, written and illustrated by Dame Eileen Mayo (1906-94). I knew that Eileen Mayo was an English born printmaker and designer who settled in New Zealand in the early 60s, but I didn't realise that she had illustrated so many books for children in the earlier phase of her career. I've been fortunate enough to find two more of Eileen's illustrated books over the past few weeks; one is a compendium of circus stories, and the other is described as an Art Deco Alphabet of Toys. Who could resist! Here's a sampling of some of my favourite illustrations:

I hope you enjoy the rest of your week.

paper room

2011-02-22T12:28:00.011+13:00

On the day of the Christchurch earthquake I drafted a blog post with three images of a white room with one uncluttered paper table standing in it. The room was intended as an experiment in scale and perspective for my second picto-poem, but looking at it again, after the dramatic events of the past week, I find it resonates with other ideas - silence, loss, and absence, but also the possibility of starting over and recovery.

Although today is the first of March, and one week after the earthquake, this post retains the date of the disaster and acts as my quiet tribute to all those whose lives have been affected, including my Mum, my brother Richard and his family, my friends Caroline and Graham and Katharina and Tony.

read the instructions!!

2011-02-22T11:57:00.008+13:00

That is the big lesson of the day. The context for that pearl of wisdom is that in the 13 years since my lovely ex-mum-in-law gave me her old Janome sewing machine I have always assumed that the machine's particular quirk was that it liked to chew up stretch fabric. As a consequence, I've steered clear of all delicate and stretchy materials and stuck with good, reliable cotton.

But when I was tidying my craft room last week, I came across the instruction book for the sewing machine, and like a prize fool I realised that the dear thing does in fact sew stretch material - it just needs a special needle to do it! So I bought the special needle, dug out a length of pretty rose print stretch fabric that has waited patiently among my fabric stash, and made a comfy little gathered top.

And the moral of the story is that from now on, I will always read the instructions whenever I get a new appliance.

gipsy caravan

2011-02-18T14:23:00.005+13:00

There's nothing like a spot of paper-crafting to get the day off to a good start. The wheels actually turn too, with the aid of a button on the inside and a bead on the outside, although I wouldn't go driving it over rocky terrain.

felt geometries

2011-02-11T09:59:00.012+13:00

The combination of playing around with felt scraps and constructing the packaging for Katy's present led me to these geometric compositions in felt. Triangles, cylinders, semi-circles and intersecting planes have been sewn together to make these structural forms.

I'm pleased with them and when I have some more felt scraps I'll definitely make more. Don't you think they look imposing (and kind of crazy) fastened to the lapel of a winter coat?

It always feels good to have a new accessory to wear.

When winter comes I'll be ready for it!

Have a great weekend everyone. I'm off to Wellington on Monday, so I'll be back later next week.

thrifty fifty

2011-02-10T10:42:00.014+13:00

These days 50 cents doesn't go very far, but if you happen to be thriftily and craftily inclined then you can make a meagre sum of money stretch a long way. A remnant of machine embroidered raspberry and white cotton, for instance, bought from my local oppie yesterday for 50 cents has now become...

a chic pair of pillowcases

and a pretty drawstring pouch and quilted needlecase

Now that's 50 cents well spent!

Wrap

2011-02-09T14:14:00.010+13:00

Coming up with new ways of wrapping gifts is one of my favourite things to do. Multi-coloured A4 sheets of corrugated cardboard seemed the perfect material to make a modular kind of packaging for Katy's scarf (previous post). The style of giftwrap is a good match with Katy's furniture designs (some of which you can see here), so I think she'll appreciate the gesture when the prezzie and yellow card arrive at her place later this week.

two kinds of wool

2011-02-07T09:48:00.006+13:00

There were a couple of days last week that felt prematurely autumnal, so I briefly turned my attention from papercraft to woolcraft. I made some striped grey and aubergine felt to turn into a blanket-stitched pouch for a friend's birthday, and I finally completed a baktus shawl that I began well over six months ago as a prezzie for another friend after she had her second baby. For novice knitters like me the pattern is really easy to follow and the long, lacy triangle of knitting that you end up with can be styled in a number of ways. The baktus shawl is a lovely winter accessory and makes a nice change from the conventional knitted scarf. Thanks to Lies at Anemone for the above link and for her valuable advice on fixing wonky knitting!

scraps

2011-01-30T09:09:00.005+13:00

My low waste approach to crafting means that I inevitably end up with bags and bags of scraps. Wallpaper scraps, textile scraps and cardboard scraps fill the cupboard in my overcrowded workroom. I particularly hate to waste felt scraps. After all, it takes an hour of hard labour to make one 30cm felt square, so I'm reluctant to throw any part of it away. In the evenings I've started to blanket stitch around the edges of the odds and ends and to decorate some with rudimentary embroidery.

Even scraps have their uses

As a nice closure for a felt pouch, for instance.

Fold 3

2011-01-28T09:47:00.009+13:00

This week I've been experimenting with making small models out of paper in preparation for making more complicated 3d scenes that incorporate stand-alone features, like this bridge, as well as pop-up technology, like this church:

In the quest to master more and more dazzling techniques with paper, it's good to remember that the simplest pop-up forms are often the most effective, and that even the most complex pop-ups derive from the simple fold / cut / fold back principle.

Experimenting with paper craft, according to Sadami Yamada and Kiyotada Ito, leads to 'a planned development of your powers of observation and your sensitivity to plastic forms and a gradual growth toward orginality...' Having attained these, 'you will be able to bring poetic and romantic materialisation to the images that flow forth from your inner self. You will be able to discover beautiful forms. These things also nurture vital elements in growth in knowledge of the functional and physical makeup of things.'

Now that's a goal worth working towards isn't it.

Have a great weekend!

Fold 2

2011-01-21T10:31:00.019+13:00

A couple of days ago, I found the most stunning Japanese paper craft book in a second hand bookshop (published by Isaac Pitman and Sons, London, 1967).

It's one of those books that makes you want to get busy crafting immediately because everything in it is so amazingly designed, from the sophisticated simplicity of a paper lounge suite, to the imposing figure of a paper horse with a wide flowing mane. Only a selection of the works are accompanied by instructions on how to make them, but the beautifully shot full-page black and white photographs make it easy enough to work out how to create many of the other objects in the book, or better still, learn how to apply the various techniques to your own designs. Here's a sampling of some of the other pieces in this fantastic book: