The rumours of my death....

Ok, I won't lie to you. I haven't been beavering away industriously in the time since I last posted. Not at crafting, anyway! Just about every night for the last 2 months, my routine has been this: Go Home. Get changed. Drive to gym. Work my ass. Drive home. Collapse on couch. Grunt. Maybe work on something really simple and mindless. Go to bed.
My fitness level has gone up from near the bottom of 'Fair' to near the top of 'Average' on their incomprehensible yet whizzy chart. Yay!!

I'll keep it quite short cause I'm not really in the mood for blogging, but here I find myself. I started working on a new kokeshi doll, but things kinda petered out when it came to the part where I had to cut some felt decorations for the body. For some reason, I just couldn't be bothered getting out the scissors. Oh well. One day, I'm sure.

I made some zines for swaps on Swap-bot. I had a lot of fun making these, though I got a bit behind on the send-by dates and had to slog a bit. The first one is Randomnosity. The theme is randomness. There are experiments, activities, articles, stories and poetry. There are instructions on how to make your own dice out of origami. All hand-drawn by me. It took quite a bit of work, and I hope it makes sense! The second one was to be about a recurring theme in my life. I wrote it about a blue ute that I often see driving recklessly around Melbourne. It's a spine-chilling tale of fear and paranoia. And road rage.

I can't decide which one I'm more proud of actually. (*head swells*)

Available in the shop now!

I keep getting creative urges at work, which is great, except I'm supposed to be working! I've set up a little dinosaur diorama in my potted plant (which I've named Jeremy) and I always have my ideas notebook on hand, just in case. Last week, I was waiting for a batch to process on the scanner. A fine-liner pen had appeared there recently. There was an almost-full book of sticky notes. What else was I to do? I doodled some characters that have been swimming around in my head for a while onto the bright pink sticky notes. I snuck them into my bag, took them home, and incorporated them into a collage in my art journal. The full-page photo came out really blurry, so I'll only subject you to the detail:

It's on a background of discarded envelopes that I also stole from work. I coloured over them in pencil, then stuck on the doodles and random bits of ephemera floating around on my crafting desk. I also did a sketch of a cat in gold texta, airbrushed a couple of shapes and globbed some liquid paper on there as well for good measure.

Then, on the weekend I bought some stuff at the supermarket and I always forget to bring my enviro-bags, and I ended up with 6 plastic bags. Six! I was so environmentally ashamed! So I decided to revive an idea I had a few years ago to make a bag out of plastic bags! (I know, everyone and his canary has had that idea since then, but I don't care.) I read about the technique of cutting up a bag to get a continuous strip in a book a few years ago. I got out a crochet hook and did it:

It's been my 'brain-dead gym-junkie zombie' project for the last week or so, so it's coming along well!

I toyed with setting some goals to do with my craft and my shop, e.g. to have 50 items listed, to make so many amigurumi, etc. But time and motivation factors are very low at the moment. Oh well, what are you gonna do?

Oh, I nearly forgot. I'm working on a top-secret project that can't be revealed under any circumstances, under pain of death! It's a moderately big one, intricate and hopefully well executed. If it works out I'll be really excited about it. Just a few more days...

What I Did at Easter

Yeah, I know, I'm a bit late on this one. I've been busy, OK?

Here we go...
I was so happy with the first mouse I made, that I tried it again with Maus II:

ze front

ze back
The embellishments are orange wool instead of red, but basically he's the same. I'm not quite as happy with the overall shape, but meh, he's good enough.
I also finished the zine I've been making. It was quite the epic production. All will be revealed when I can get some proper paper to print it out!

Also, I've been obsessed with kokeshi dolls at the moment. These are Japanese dolls traditionally made of wood, with a rounded head and cylindrical body. The bodies are painted with either floral or striped designs. One of their distinguishing features is that they have no arms and legs. Kokeshi dolls were probably originally used as massagers in the hot springs area of Japan from which they originate. Other theories include that they were teething toys for babies, or that they were sentimental keepsakes for parents who had been forced to sell or abandon their babies. Kokeshis seem to be the source of quite deep sentiment - artisans name each doll and sign it on the base.

Ok, essay mode off now.

It got me to thinking though. Firstly, they're so cute!!!
Secondly, they have no arms and legs! Perfect! The one thing that was putting me off churning out hundreds of amigurumi was sewing all those bloody arms and legs on!
Thirdly, they're embellished with cute little flowers etc on their bodies. This appeals to my need to sew buttons and sequins on stuff right now.

Kokeshi are me! It's a revelation!

My first Kokeshi. Her name is Chihiro.

Here's the top of her head with her hair clip.

Here is her base; I embroidered my signature here.
At first I was disturbed by the fact that she had no hair. Then I got over it. Also, her head is almost freakishly large. But, you know what? Who cares! I love her! I'm really quite proud of her.
I've started a second one, which has a flower theme. I love her too!

The Zucchini of Hard Knocks

I've been working on a few things lately, namely:

* a new zine on randomness
* a couple of amigurumi
* something I can't name.

I haven't had a chance to take photos of anything in good light, so I'll leave you hanging with this:

The Zucchini of Hard Knocks, originally uploaded by apartmentcat.

I'm just giving them away!

Last night I made Mouse:

I made him as a going-away/thank you gift for a the guy who's been training me at work. His cat is a major part of his life, so I thought I'd make him a cat toy. I started out using the pattern from the book I bought on Sunday, but I didn't really get it, so I just made it up. It turned out so much better than I expected. I was going to make the eyes out of felt and add whiskers, but I really like the simple, embroidered effect of the face. I almost regretted giving it away, but I'm trying to be a vaguely good person. (Sure, Sparky's birthday present is 4 months late, but she will get it eventually!)
It took a much shorter time to make than I thought it would (about 2 hours). I might make a few more for the shop, put bells in them, something like that.

That gave me enough time to work on Frankenstein's Toyster for a bit. His body is all finished, and I just need to make his head now.

Right now I have to finish my next zine though!

Cool yet hot yet dorky yet hip

Today I went to the Stitches and Craft Show. I was expecting it to be staid and boring. I was expecting to see endless quilts and embroideries of puppies and teddy bears. I was expecting to feel way too young and frustrated. In some ways, it was just like that. In other ways, it was GREAT! You just need to be discriminating and walk straight past the stalls you're not interested in without lingering. For me, that was the quilting and the beading, to some extent.

I did spend an indecent amount of money, and picked up some pretty cool stuff. Viz -

One of the first stalls we came across was a stamp craft one. I haven't been into stamping so much before, but recently I've seen some stamps with amazing images in magazines and online. I throught they'd be really hard to get hold of in Australia, as so much is. I was proven wrong though! I got some from that stall and also a couple further on:

Rubber stamps - fashion ladies, trees, Venus face, etc ; grab bag of ribbons, etc.
I also bought some ribbons and a $5 bag of random goodies (I love the grab bag!) from a pretty plain-looking stall a bit further on. It had some good bargains though! I needed some ribbons for a scarf I've had in the back of my cupboard for a few years now that I really should finish. Hopefully this will provide the impetus.

I then nearly had a multiple orgasm at the oriental bead stall, where I purchased these:

beads and pendants
I love all kinds of Chinese and Japanese styled items, and I really had to hold myself back from buying half the stall! In the end I just got a pair of lantern-shaped beads to make into earrings, and some larger ones to make into pendants. I'm just thinking something very simple with a black silk or velvet ribbon. The silver ones are very similar to a pair of earrings I lost last year, so I was very excited to see those! I'm sure I have some findings somewhere....

Then I ran out of money. Well, technically I had more in the bank, but I'd already been to the ATM once, and it was just getting ridiculous. So I spent the rest of the time collecting flyers and business cards. Some of them are pictured below.

Various paper thingys
Also pictured is the one and only book that I bought. It was a bit expensive, but I had to have it! If you've read Knitorama or Crochetorama by Rachel Mathews (I have Crochetorama out from the library at the moment!), it's by the completely insane Japanese chick that models some of her designs. Hey, I like completely insane Japaneseness! Her name is Annie Obaachan. The amigurumi in this are so adorable, and made in many different styles to give you a thorough grounding of the craft. It also has a section on designing your own, which is fantastic! Not all designers are generous enough to do that.
I got some free mags too, about papercraft, working with wooden items and a wedding one (*gag*, but it might have some good ideas).

There was one section of the show which I need to mention. It was like all the hip, young, cool crafters were all collected together in one place. There was a huge, amazing, garden-themed display on one side with retro clothes, knitted vegetables, bird stuffies, etc. It even had real, live bunnies! It was so cute! And on the other side, like a line-up was a counter with about 6 crafters showing their stuff. Some of them had Etsy shops, and I felt like I was in company at last! I spent some time chatting with two women from Audrey & Maude who do retro sewing patterns incorporating embroidery and other embellishments. The fabric they were using was wonderfully kitschy, and they told me it was from a shop in Melbourne called Amitie. The woman who runs it was there, but she was being hogged the whole time I was there, so I just grabbed her business card. I HAVE to go to this shop. Soon.

The best part of that section though, was that I ran into Hollabee there! It was great to see a familiar face from the Etsy seller's meetup. She had even been asked to do some demonstrations by Creative Living (or is it Living Creatively?). It's really wonderful to see people on Etsy doing so well.

I certainly have a lot to go on with now! When I got home, I was torn between doing crochet and doing papercraft, so I went to the gym instead. Heh. While I was working off my excitement there, I was still having ideas! I had one which involved buying cheap-arse frames from Ikea or similar, and decorating them with paint and 3-D embellishments using a hot glue gun, etc. I could use them for framing cross stitch, etc.

Phew! I need a rest!

Game On!!!

If you're into computer games, retro stuff and fun, and have at least 4 hours to spare, go to the GAME ON exhibition at ACMI. It's truly amazing. It was like the last 15 years never happened for me. Bliss!
Plus, it's cool and dark in there. 37 degrees outside. Need I say more?

The early arcade games have also given me some ideas for digital art, and maybe even some fair-aisle patterns. I've got brightly-coloured squares floating through my head at the moment. Things with little crosses on them are featuring heavily as well. So far I only have the books from the library to show for it. Every new idea starts with a trip to the library for me. Hopefully I'll have the energy to have something more to show for it soon. Wage-slave issues are are starting to piss me off again. :[


I've written a love poem:

My Boyfriend

My boyfriend has a computer. I love him!
My boyfriend has a colour printer. I love him!
My boyfriend has a scanner with photocopy emulation. I love him!
My boyfriend has a laminator. I love him!
My boyfriend has a dimo labeller. I love him!
My boyfriend has a long arm stapler. I love him!
My boyfriend has a guillotine cutter. I love him!
My boyfriend bought a graphics tablet last weekend. I love him so much!

More when weather sanity returns.

New but not new

SHOP STUFF

I've put a couple of knitted projects on my shop that I've just had lying around for ages (it's self-sabotage central in the hobby room!). They are:

Skinny Tubular Scarf ; Moss Stitch Baby Tunic

I'm quite proud of both of these, the baby tunic especially. I designed it myself. I'm thinking of making a few more - I could do an Elizabeth Zimmermann and make them bigger by using thicker wool. When it cools down a bit...