A tiny part of my vintage scarf collection

Details of some of my favourite vintage scarves, above. Apologies as usual for my mediocre photographic skills. My criterion for a collectible scarf is largely subconscious: if it grabs my eye and doesn't look too much like something I already have (e.g. Italian tourist scarves) then I grab it! As it happens, looking at this little bunch I can see some common themes emerging: a certain level of kitsch, maps and travel themes, bright colours and a simple illustrative quality. The final one is my favourite: a relatively large Jacqumar London scarf commemorating the QEII, which according to last August's The World of Interiors may well be worth a couple of pretty pennies. Or it would be if I hadn't blu-tacked it to the hallway wall one summer and stained its corners permanently. I love it too much to part with it anyway.

This post is part of an ongoing game over at the lovely Meet Me at Mike's, which anyone is welcome to take part in. This week's theme of collections was dreamt up by Kate at Fox's Lane.

Working 9 - 5: Painted Eggs

Above: I designed these A G E S ago and couldn't wait to show them here, and now that they have arrived in stores for the Christmas toy rush, I can. They are small handpainted wooden eggs that make a lovely sound when you shake them. Below: the artwork which was sent to China for the manufacturers to interpret in three dimensions. I think that they did a good job. (There was a fourth design -- a flower -- which was deemed boring by the higher powers and cancelled.)

Lessons in Australiana!

An important lesson about Australia for foreign readers of this blog (hello dear cousins!). Here, kangaroos deliver our strawberries...

Butterflies guard our homes (this one is quite close to mine actually)...

Pineapples help us to see...

...and our ubiquitous tomato sauce comes via a koala.

The last three images are from Barry Humphries' Treasury of Australian Kitsch, Melbourne, 1980 (though most of the images in the book seem at least ten years older). This book is out of print as far as my brief internet investigation has gleaned. Why, oh why?!

Hans and Huey

Above: Gustav and Franz now have a rather poetic little brother called Hans, who bravely asks "Do you believe in love?" inspired by the 1982 song lyric by Huey Lewis and the News. Click here to watch the video -- I know you want to.

January 7 addition: my little band of brothers are visiting a beautiful blog called Enhabiten, based in New Hampshire. They are very pleased with themselves!

My Secret Weapon!

I am taking part in a game started by Pip Lincolne over at Meet Me at Mike's. This week, players have been asked by My Bricole to share their special creative weapon. Mine has to be my beloved copy* of Auguste Racinet's The Costume History, first published in the 1870's. A seemingly endless, enormous treasure trove of people, costumes and cultures that I open at random pages regularly and always find something that intrigues me. There's nothing to beat the colour, pattern, detail, interaction between the figures, oddity and variety of human glory that it documents with Victorian zeal. And when I feel that I have been too saturated by this dip into history, I go for something cooler, like Vitamin D. But when I want to go back to the endless glories of human culture, I go back via (Un)FASHION by Tibor and Maira Kalman. Brilliant!

* Until recently I had been borrowing the E N O R M O U S copy of Racinet held by the City Library in Melbourne. Do NOT attempt this unless you have a wheelbarrow. I found my (smaller) copy at The Brunswick Street Bookstore, and it was pretty well priced as Taschen is celebrating an anniversary this year.

Gustav the Little Wooden Man

Above: presenting Gustav, brother of the previously posted Franz. My obsession with the strangely proportioned little German doll continues. In addition to that obsession, Gustav gets to have another manifestation of one of my great loves: Scandinavian/Spode inspired blue and white decoration. He is quite a profound little fellow, containing in his body both a blue citrus fruit tree and and entire landscape. Perhaps I am becoming the hippie I have always threatened (my mother) that I would become. Om!!!!

Movember is in full swing!

So Movember is in full swing! By the second week you can really start sorting the men from the boys, from bum fluff shadows to the full plush handlebars. However, I myself will always prefer cheap wine and a three day growth.

...Yep, even Barnsey was once a young spunk.

Franz the Little Wooden Man

Above: meet Franz, the Little Wooden Man. He is based on an early 19th century cloth doll which I found in a book a long time ago. I have always been charmed and intrigued by his strange proportions and I thought that I would have to use them as inpiration for something one day: whether it be a drawing, object or even an ongoing character. Franz is the first fruit of that exploration, and I don't think that he'll be the last. I have put him up for sale in my etsy shop and I feel a little sad as I am quite fond of him. But hopefully he will have all sorts of brothers one day who will visit me, if only briefly. And I kind of like the idea of him going to live somewhere exotic. In the meantime I badly need to improve my photography skills...

Mirrors from my Etsy shop

A selection of mirrors from my newly opened Etsy shop! They measure 18 cm across and are all hand painted using acrylic, then varnished. I really enjoyed painting these little mirrors, especially choosing images from books like Auguste Racinet's Complete Costume History and Bernhard Roetzel's oddly named Gentleman: A Timeless Guide to Fashion and various ephemera from both my collection and brilliant sites like this one.

Working 9 - 5: Vacation in Hawaii

A Hawaiian vacation print for Seed. The scenes were all painted separately in watercolour on textured A4 paper. I used colours which were not correct but as contrasting to one another as possible. The pictures were then scanned into Photoshop, and each colour was 'picked out' (made easier as they were contrasting), placed in a different layer and re-coloured until it looked right within that month's range. My favourite image above, and the finished repeat fabric artwork below. The resulting shorts will be posted onto this page in the last week of October.

My Favourite Patchwork Book

These images are from my favourite patchwork book (more a magazine, really) All About Patchwork: A Golden Hands Special, published by Marshall Cavendish, London, 1973. The above image is one of my favourite photos ever. I also wish that I owned that bicycle.

Above: this boy is a dead ringer for my brother when he was little. Almost as cool, too. ;)

Above: this patchwork dog is so much better than the soft toys everyone is making now! Easier too!

Above: who could resist a patchwork robot?!

Above: the back cover.