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A weekend away to celebrate an anniversary, involving lots of nice food (above is part of the edible garden at Elk Horn Roadhouse) and pretty views of the sea in winter. The crazy midnight wind on a lonesome hilltop was not so great, but the rest was. Hope your weekend was lovely too (and didn't involve flooding or earthquakes).

It's a Greens slide

A belated cheer for the fact that I now live in a Greens seat. Yay, go Melbourne, here's some Greens bunting for you. Now if only we could figure out the deal for the rest of the country...

OMG, my first Etsy Treasury

OK, after trying a bunch of times a while back (and giving up not long after) I've finally got an Etsy Treasury, yay! It was super easy to get, so I'm thinking it's open slather now with treasuries, none of this waiting around until the sun aligns with the moon and the magic number of 324 is reached (or whatever the system was before).

It's called Winter Warmers and here's the spiel:

It's winter in Australia and as much as I'm sick of it, there's also a lot I like about it...woolen things & knitting, heaters, umbrellas & rain and also the feeling that spring is just around the corner.

Catch it while it lasts!

Some new stuff

Have just put some new things in le Etsy shop...plush cushion covers in two styles and hemp/organic cotton tea towel packs - a polka dot 2-pack or a polka dots & letters 2-pack.

And here are some things you might not know about hemp, more reasons why it's such a great fabric:

• It is very absorbent and has a natural antiseptic character
• It also holds its shape and does not fade in the sun
• When blended with organic cotton, the fabric gains strength & elasticity and is extra soft

I noticed Etsy seems to have had its layout tweaked again - every time I look, something's been moved around. This time, each seller's main shop page has been tweaked to fit four items across the width and it looks great, go Etsy peeps.

OK, now time for some book shopping and weekend-planning. Happy Friday!

Craft Hatch market is done!

Here are some pictures from the Craft Hatch market I did a week ago...no idea if anyone else is interested in such things but I love looking at pictures of markets, so here goes!

It was the biggest Craft Victoria market to date, with 19 different stalls, and I just wish I had looked around a bit more at the great stuff there...next time. Markets are exhausting, for me anyway, but I came away from this one full of ideas and happy to see so many familiar and new faces (both selling and buying stuff). And a big thanks to the lovely Kim for organising!

It's...the Tree Towel!

Tree Towel in two-tone green

Tree Towel in chocolate brown & pink

OK, so my new design, The Tree Towel, is ready, yay! It is inspired by my recent travels in Sweden, can you tell? Sometimes new things seem to take forever to get from idea to object...in fact I got so impatient this time that I've already got another design figured out, all before this one was even released. But more about that later.

As I was so excited about The Tree Towel, I created a little flyer for it -

And of course, the towel's available in my Etsy shop now, in two colourways - two-tone green and chocolate brown and pink.Speaking of fliers, if you buy any of my tea towels or fabric goods, you'll also get a cute little sheet explaining more about the fabric - linen or hemp/organic cotton. For example, did you know that linen absorbs 20% or more of its weight in water and is bacteria resistant & can’t provoke allergies? Or that the hemp plant grows rapidly, requires only a modest amount of water and needs no pesticides, herbicides or fungicides? Well you do now :)

Happy Friday.

A gift for me

I've wanted some blank babushkas (matryoshkas) for a while now, and today I got them - a winter's gift to myself, let's call it, to fit in with my mid-winter melancholy. There's something so beautiful about the blanks and I wouldn't dare attempt to decorate them, much to the shock of the shopkeeper at Babushkas.

OK, time for some mid-winter cooking-of-hearty-food (a tip from Mattt, and great) while listening to some sad music.

Craft Cubed

OK, so I've been beavering away in my wee studio (ie: lounge room, my new workspace, more on that later) preparing for a wee market that's on soon. And then I realise it's on THIS SUNDAY! Better beaver a little faster, me thinks. I'll have a bunch of new things, including my new Trees tea towel in two colourways (the other to be revealed as soon as I can get a half decent photo of it), which is super exciting.

The event is part of Craft Cubed, for Craft Victoria’s annual festival, which this year has a theme of childhood. Looks like I'll have some pretty fine company (how cute are those bearded brooches?!) And hopefully I'll have some wee baby booties, which I am loving and decided to make some more of. Below is them on Lily's legs, aw!

Craft Hatch

Sunday 8 August

11am-4pm

The Atrium, Federation Square, Melbourne

Trees

Have been doing some test prints for my new tea towel design, 'Trees'. It's a fun way to spend a chilly Friday.

Bosnia

It's deep winter here in Melbourne and today, when it didn't stop raining all day and was just miserable, I needed a little something to cheer me up. So I had a flick through some of my photos of Bosnia in spring and I felt better right away - so pretty. The buildings, while a little sad looking, are still amazing and buildings like them were everywhere.

Knitting and crochet to warm the heart on a winter's day

Knitted Lemons, by Sharon Russell.

Whew, that's a long title blog post title. But a fitting one, as knitted and crocheted goods really made my day today. Sharon's lemons, above, are so sweet and seeing them in a cafe at lunch today made me smile. And Sandra's mini granny square, below, nearly ended up in the bin as I didn't see it in the package along with my wrist worms. Thanks Sandra!


Mini granny square, by Sandra Juto.

Knitting the night away - Part II

I did end up finishing my knitting the other night and here's a snap of the finished shoes. Almost want some for myself but that would be weird...adult baby shoes.

The pattern is here for any keen knitters, although do not underestimate how long it takes to make such tiny little things...unless you're a more experienced knitter than I, in which case it might take you no time at all!

London: Clerkenwell Design Week 2010

Another little story from my recent travelling adventure...

At the tail end of our holiday, while back in London, I literally stumbled upon Clerkenwell Design Week (it was three days, actually, on 25-27 May), which in the words of its creators is a "three-day annual festival celebrating design’s creative richness, its social impact and its power for change."

I remembered Clerkenwell as an interesting area that I'd briefly visited years ago, and one that seemed worthy of further investigation. And I felt kind of lucky that I'd randomly chosen the first day of the festival as the day I'd have a look around the area, as I had not heard about the festival before landing amongst it.

The first thing I saw was a small designy-crafty market (below), perfect start! Opposite it, some large and colourfully decorated lamps which looked great against London's blue spring skies.


Not far down the road was what seemed to be the festival hub, the Farmiloe Building, an old Victorian warehouse filled with displays of design objects/furniture/furnishings and more. One of my favourites was an accordian-style chair called the Flexible Love Recycled Paper Chair (below) - it stretches out to an impressive length and supports the weight of 16 people, apparently, even though it's made of just cardboard and wood waste.



And the highlight of the festival for me was a discussion called 'Design Thinking - Thinking Design' featuring four design professionals including Kevin McCloud (from Grand Designs, which I love.) Seeing the man in the flesh, observing his articulate manner and hearing his insightful ideas and his wholistic and ecologically responsible approach to design was refreshing and insightful.

And back to the here and now... The State of Design festival starts on Wednesday and runs through until 25 July. I'm looking forward to it, a taste of design that's Melbourne style.

Knitting the night away

For the last few nights I've been making a little something for my sister's baby...something I would have made before she was born, but being on holiday kind of threw things out of whack. And looking at her wee little feet gave me a good (OK, obvious!) idea.

I've knitted quite a few scarves now, but have never actually made anything from a pattern and thought it was definitely time to branch out a bit. Booties are the perfect starting point, I thought, although I had not idea how many new stitches I'd need to learn to make such tiny little things. But after a bit of swearing and a lot of YouTubing, I'm nearly there. And Lily is going to have some cute little Mary Janes that are only a little bit wonky, yay!

I'm stuck on the couch with a cold today, so am hoping I can muster up the energy to finish them off, but in the meantime you can see what they're supposed to look like here.

Friday chalk

Chalk - so simple yet so fun! Looks like it's school holidays again and the local kids have been playing in the park.