An earlier generation's craft

An old lady from the lovely coastal town of Port Fairy in Victoria died recently. When her dearest were going through her worldly belongings, a stash of incredible notebooks full of craft patterns, ideas and other ephemera was discovered in an old hat box. Even though I didn't know her, looking at her carefully pasted patterns for doyleys, embroideries and crochet made me feel a sense of kinship with her.

This funny milkjug cover caught my eye: I had naively thought that novelty knitted/ crocheted objects (like these gorgeous Lark ones) were a contemporary invention.

"A Hot Soup is just what the children want this cold weather" though in 21st century Australia it's unlikely to be Rabbit and Macaroni or Kidney, is it?

Some of the transfers above are made up of tiny dots. I think they're very beautful.

The elegant lady rests after a hard day of turkey rug knotting. This is how we all look after a day of making things, don't we?

It's easy to forget that until fairly recently crafting was largely akin to the daily grind of washing and ironing: something women did because they had to, whether they enjoyed it or not. From knitting for the war effort above, to darning socks or re-making a new garment from old.

I wondered too, when going through this lady's notebooks, what a future generation might make of all of our crafting, our patterns and ideas. And what would the old lady from Port Fairy have thought of the way that we communicate ideas now via the internet? I hope she'd have liked my post.

Many thanks to my friend Jason for lending all of these things to me.

AND if you found this post interesting, have a look at this beautiful blog from Oregon: Unsung Sewing Patterns.

Ill Conceived: a mobile made of wood

A plywood mobile I have been working on, and haven't quite finished, called Ill-Conceived. The first picture shows the pieces piled under a scanner. Below that is a picture of the pieces 'assembled' like a mobile in Photoshop, using scanned pieces of twine to 'hang' them from... I really, really need to improve my photography skills. No gallery curator would ever be convinced by such a grade 2 attempt at showing a mobile. But I hope that it helps communicate what I am trying to achieve, for now.

In case you are wondering, the hand is about 3/4 of an adult hand's size, the Drum packet and epaulette are about actual size. The little Speedos and Ouzo bottle are -- unintentionally -- kind of cute.

Follow Me magazine, 1984

When I was young and very impressionable, Follow Me was the Australian fashion magazine. Photographs by the talented Grant Matthews (e.g. above) and super styling by his then wife Nicole Bonython ensured that Follow Me was just that little bit ahead of Vogue Australia. We didn't have our own Harper's Bazaar or Marie Claire then, and sweetly cool original titles like Frankie and Peppermint were but a glimmer in their mother's eye.
The Polachrome fluoro cover above brings to mind M.I.A.
Of course inside there are some things that seem odd now, like all-white oversized Japanese fashion shot in a surgical theatre, an ad for Klorane Mink Oil Shampoo (no, really) and plenty of models dragging on cigarettes.

Couple with Strange Hat

I am trying to be good this holiday week and spending as much time as possible in the studio. (It's not all fun and games: there is some discipline required, you know.) Monday gleaned this decidedly odd couple, a variation on a drawing that I made a few months back (to see that, click here). I love strange old doll proportions, and wondered what it might be like to breathe contemporary life into some. "Contemporary" ended up being clothing and hairstyles from a Schiffer compendium of early 1980's Sear's catalogues. I chose to keep the colours to neutrals + cobalt blue + red. I tend to overdo colour so it's good to be disciplined on that front occasionally -- very much like when I have to stick to a certain palette at work.

Because I decided to include this picture in my online illustration portfolio and shop, I scanned and then cleaned it up. Sometimes I feel as though I am cheating when I play around with my pictures in Photoshop, but at the same time I know that it's something alot of illustrators do. And in this day and age of internet and reproduction, most people will get to see the work in scanned form anyway, so it may as well be clean. Unless of course "unclean" is part of its raison d'etre. In this case, I thought that those spots on and around the man's face above were unnecessary, and I didn't like the way that the white paint 'sat' on his face.

I actually started by cutting the figures right out of the background, which being textured paper was very shadowy and spotty, then I cleaned up some spots and little bits around both of the faces using the stamp tool. Faces I find really important: if they look wrong then it's all over as far as I'm concerned.

...If you have an opinion on all of this, let me know!

A Beautiful New Blog

Image above by Anna
It is with great excitement that I announce that my incredibly talented friend Anna has started a blog called Pencil and Pipette. Like the woman herself, it's beautiful, thought-provoking, warm, irreverent and exactly what the world needs right now. Go Anna.

Biology Study Models circa 1980

I bought this 835 page 1981 biology supplies catalogue yesterday at the Tyabb Packing House. There are some scary moments: care for some "pig embryos in formalin, 12 for US$44"? And some funny ones: "New Section: Computers"! There's butterflies mounted under glass, filmstrips on teenage contraception, human skeletons in wooden carry cases, "Pollution" board games, earthworm dissectograms and psychrometers. Many of the items shown are very beautiful, highly covetable or at least fascinating. I'd kill for some of the educational posters and I'd love some of the models, a few of which I have reproduced here.

This post is for my friend Anna, because if she actually gets to see my book she might want to steal it.

By the way, this is how the company looks now.

'79 bedroom wall revsited

Happy 2010!

Back in 1979, I made these little girls. They skated in a row around my bedroom walls: a little parade of well dressed chicks doing my favourite things. When the room was later divided into a study and hallway, I kept my little friends along with the sticky tape that clumsily held them up, on sheets of A4 paper for safekeeping. While the sticky tape slowly turned yellow and the marker went pale, I tried to think of a way to display them again. A couple of months ago, I found a sheet of wallpaper exactly as I had in my bedroom at Meet Me at Mike's, bought a frame at Ikea (then subsequently broke the glass) and put it all together. Ta da!

...I love a good holiday project! (You?)

I love stamps!

I love stamps! I often wonder what to do with them. I hate hiding them in books and boxes and wish that they were bigger so that I could show them off on my walls like posters. (Now I have made them a little bit bigger at least.) This is the tip of my stamp iceberg: I could turn this blog into the Agence Eureka of stamps as the collection that I have been given recently is so huge and gorgeous. Oh: the last stamp is actually from my lovely friend Anna, from a letter that her dear grandmother sent her.

Working 9 - 5: A Magnetic Girl

Having a play with an item that I designed for seed a few months back. The little girl is actually an 'extended version' of the Lady's Face which I first designed for November '08. The clothes in her holiday wardrobe are all from the current summer range, albeit in tiny magnetic form. (That was the boss's idea: if it had been left to me she would have had a red beret, a sailor suit, a Liberty floral dress, argyle socks and a Fair Isle vest. Sometimes the boss has a point.)

I like having her in my house. It's a nice way for me to keep a tiny souvenir of my toucan and horse t-shirts too! Funny how tiny= cute.

My Place and Yours: The "Me" Wardrobe

Hello All! I am proud to announce that I have been chosen as Theme Queen for this week's game of My Place and Yours courtesy of the lovely Pip at Meet Me at Mike's. I have decided to take the theme a wee bit sideways this week, I hope that nobody minds! ;)

It's really easy to change your wardrobe every season, every week really, with all those cheap little shops everywhere. I should know -- I work in the fashion industry: some of my colleagues never wear the same thing twice and wouldn't be caught dead in anything from last season. I think that's a shame, not least because clothes take alot of work to make. They deserve a bit of love, especially as they do so much for us: keep us warm, looking pretty (even sexy!), show the world who we are and even what we think.

What's your favourite item of clothing, the one that you feel special in, the most "you" in, keep going back to, can be spotted in by friends from miles away, wear over and over and hope will never fall apart and die? Perhaps you've even had to darn it already? (There's to keeping an old craft alive!) It might be a scarf that you made, a pair of gorgeous red high heels, a vintage printed dress or even a pair of old pink flannelette pyjamas. Or it can be more than one!

How you show your item is up to you. If you feel too shy to play model, photograph it in a happy setting or maybe you could even draw it! That way if it dies you'll have a lovely souvenir...

Above: my chosen item is a heavy cotton embroidered Moroccan dress which I bought in the exotic locale of Malvern Road in inner Melbourne. (There used to be a lovely second hand shop there but it exists no longer.) This dress was a huge floor length djellabah. I shortened and fitted it and wear it day and evening in winter with my boots. No thought required, and I always feel special in it!

By the way, my apologies for being so tardy with this post. I had an unusually late night, enjoying The Black Eyed Susans and friends at The Thornbury Theatre. I am mentioning it partly to get out of trouble but also because I'll bet that at least one of my fellow My Place and Yours players was there...

Home: Two Relaxation Spots

Those who know me well say that I am actually not very good at relaxing at all. However, when the TV is on and the phone rings, I take it to the quiet of my bedroom, above. (Note for patchwork freaks: the above quilt is made up of ready-cut squares of leftover Hawaiian shirt fabric that my mother bought at a market in Honolulu some years ago. They speedily became a very happy summery quilt!) Below is where I might otherwise lie and read a book (with my head resting between the four red roses on the lovely aqua pillow) or sit up knitting and listening to the TV. Please note reflection of photographer with bed hair in the small round painted mirror.

This post is part of a game started over at Meet Me at Mike's by Pip Lincolne. This week players were asked to show a place of sanctuary within their home. A lovely theme dreamt up by Pilgrim.

I am going to be Theme Queen next week. I hope that even in the midst of pre-holiday madness people find time to play! I might take the theme a little bit sideways...I hope that nobody minds.

Knitting Frenzy Part II

First Date Vest, unfinished. I made this last weekend: that's when the knitting REALLY got frenzied.....

Home!

Again I am taking part in a posting game started by Pip Lincolne over at Meet Me at Mike's. I LOVE this week's theme by Myrtle and Eunice, which is (roughly) about choosing items one owns that would make any place feel instantly like home. I found it very difficult to limit myself to only a few things. Above: my patchwork mannequin. Although I love doing patchwork, I did not make this particular piece. I bought it from The Chapel Street Bazaar, where it was warming a wooden crib. The piece itself is unfinished: it is actually shaped like a giant hexagon, has been made entirely by hand, and has some very sweet 70's fabrics in it. Above: I am also a big fan of globes. This one is my favourite: not only is it a beautiful colour, all the countries and capitals are in exotic Dutch AND it lights up! A Chapel Street Bazaar purchase too, I think. Behind it is my Barbapapa wallhanging which I bought in Stockholm last year at a lovely little shop called Under. Another less visible item in the above photo is a red geranium. Flowers and plants are VERY important in making a house a home. Red geraniums also remind me of my grandmother.

Above: last but not least are my books. Without my books I would feel as though my brain had been put away in a box. In fact, last year when I did have to put my books temporarily into a very large number of boxes, I did feel exactly that way.

How a picture came to be

This post is for my dear writer friend Kate Constable, with whom I was recently discussing parallels between the process of writing a story and the process of making a picture. We decided that there were many. But I wonder whether anything important gets lost in the process sometimes? Above: the final Lady and Egg. Below: the initial sketch. I doodle sometimes, a relatively new habit, but one which always gleans at least one little creature worth dignifying on its own in a more "finished" medium rather than just remaining on a page of numerous biro scrawls.

Below: the first attempt at a "finished" picture, done using a fountain pen with pencil over the top. I thought that it looked too laboured, especially the egg yolk, which seemed too dark.

... I'd be interested to know which of these three pictures people like best -- the one that I consider to be the "finished" one -- the simplified one with the green background (top) -- might not necessarily be the one that viewers connect with. Let me know!

I have also been admiring the work of the French artist/illustrator Marie Delafon lately. I wonder whether I was thinking of her work while I was doodling that day?

A wall disguise courtesy of Melway's

I am again taking part in a game started by Pip Lincolne over at Meet Me at Mike's. This week, the theme is roughly this: what makes your place noice, different or unusual? (Of course this to be pronounced in Kath and Kim style.) I might have photographed my entire house for this post, being a 100 year old weatherboard place with all sorts of cracks, quirks and patch up jobs everywhere. However I decided that I was most proud of this particular disguise for my half painted and pock marked kitchen wall: an extremely large polystyrene board on which I have glued the entire eastern section of an old Melway's*: from Warrandyte to Fawkner in the north down to Dandenong and across to Black Rock in the south. People quite admire it. It also serves the purpose of actually helping to work out where you're going occasionally.

* two copies of the Melway's are actually required for this little project. A random patchwork of pages would look good too, although it might be very confusing for out-of-town visitors. Spare pages also make nice wrapping paper, I have found. Especially for out-of-town visitors.

By the way, the theme this week was dreamt up by Toni from Little Suitcase.