The Solitary Thread: Blog

Suitcases and sewing boxes.

Hello! I'm in a great mood because everything in my portion of the house has been cleaned and de-cluttered to within an inch of its life. Phew. Our new craft room storage/workspace unit has arrived along with two uber cool white stools, and I've moved my very comfy couch in there too, so the room is just lovely to be in and work in. Everything has been categorised properly too so I know exactly where it all is. I've also created a packaging station which will be really useful.

While cleaning I found this old little sewing box which had a not-so-pretty floral fabric on the top and yucky hot pink corduroy lining (complete with bows!). I thought the shape and the woven sides were very cute though so I decided to recover it on top and insides. I'm quite pleased with it and it now houses a variety of special little buttons and beads and bits and bobs.

I used a yummy button print from Superbuzzy on the top, I already had this in the cream colourway but the peachy/pink was on sale last time I ordered so I got that too, of course. :) And I sewed the buttons on before I started. I really like re-covering things when all you have to do is push the edges down into the crevice, it's much less fiddly than having to get out the glue. I covered some dodgy plastic edging around the front with some lovely Liberty ribbon sent by Esmerelda.

I really love the big beads that you can see on the tassel, I got them at Spotlight (and I think Big W has them too).

The inside was a little more difficult but with the aid of hot glue, short pins and ribbon it all worked out. I ripped out the hot pink fabric and replaced it with these soft pink cherries cut to size, using the pins as nails (and luckily there was a removable inner base which I wrapped with fabric and then was able to use to set the side edges in place at the bottom). Then I hot glued strips of ribbon over the raw edges at the tops.

I did have a little trouble with it closing properly because the ribbon added a bit of height around the hinges, but I managed to pull off some plastic strip type things from each side before I secured it and now it's much better.

I also haven't shown you the mini suitcases I got for my birthday! I have lusted over mini suitcases for holding craft supplies for a long time, but couldn't justify ordering them from the US because they are too bulky.

FINALLY, finally, I found an Aussie source for them, and they are available online and they use express post. So if any other Aussies have the mini-suitcase-bug, you can find them at Babys Got Style (click on Accessories, 'for the nursery', and they are on page 3 & 4 in all different colours and sizes). This polka dotted lot are actually sold as a set, and I got them after I got my blue/pink/green ones, as I loved them so much.

And for those in the US, Mahar Drygoods has some mini-suitcases too, very cute!

These are the blue/green/pink ones I got for my birthday (L, M, S), so delicious!

I also finally organised my trim, below. I cut strips of cardboard and then wrapped each trim around and secured with a pin, then I lined them all up in the biggest red suitcase, with big rolls and flat boxes of larger amounts of trim in a layer underneath. Very handy! This strip above is my favourite, all my Japanese trims (mostly linen), yum.

It was very fun deciding what to put in each container. I ended up with the pink holding zips, the green as a hand-sewing/planning and crochet on-the-go container, blue is holding felt scraps, and then the red set holds trim, textile supplies and tools, pens and pencils and white vintage buttons.

Anyhoo, now that I have a tidy workspace, must get to making some pincushions! x

Sewings...

Hello! I have been cleaning, oh have I ever. The craft room and my car are spic and span, it took almost a week, crazy (and people next to me in traffic no longer have to look at my car piled high with boxes and textiles, with a giant knitted scarf in the backseat). I passed the time by listening to Harry Potter audio books on my Ipod, that was great. You know how I joked about us needing to hire a skip for all my junk? Er, yes...so we actually did have to get one, who would have thunk! (I'm not sure if they are called skips in other countries, I mean a really big bin delivered and taken away by a truck...meep) But I have now finally purged all of my old uni stuff, the papers and books and the old supplies and old works, so am now just surrounded by things that I love to work with.

So I finally got the urge to sew something today, I had almost forgotten how much I love it (well, not really, but you know what I mean), the uni burnout is finally over. My favourite part of sewing is picking out the fabrics, ambling along my open fabric shelves and putting them together into piles and adding and editing until the colour scheme is just right. Even though I haven’t been sewing anything fun for the last few months, I have still been acquiring new fabric, so the choosing of the fabrics is made even more fun by all these piles of brand new lovelies that I haven’t had the chance to use yet! Using new fabric for the first time is the best.

I had to stay small as the work station hasn’t arrived yet and there isn’t much room to start piecing a quilt top or anything, so I decided to make a slip cover for my two lovely Jill Bliss journals which are being filled with handmade business and product/design ideas. And then I made a little cover for my sewing supplies basket so as my scissors and rotary cutter and things don’t get all dusty.

The notebook holder is made from gorgeous Japanese import fabric, linen, vintage Thai silk and some quilting cottons, and I used a little piece of sewing linen tape on the front and some vintage shell lace from lovely Elizabeth. I am in absolute love with the fabric on the inside, I think it’s Joel Dewberry. The basket top is made from quilting cottons, Echino, shot cotton, Japanese import and two vintage buttons. I lined both with 100% wool felt instead of pellon or quilt batting, and I really, really love the effect! Quite an expensive inner though :) I wanted them to be quite thin but more weighty and crisp than a quilt would feel, and it worked really nicely.

It was so wonderful to finally make something for fun again, and in a nice clean, clutter free room. And I can’t wait to jump into this pile of Lara Cameron, Aunty Cookie and Kristen Doran fabric…mmm. And this little cutie of a pincushion is from Natalie Rensink on Etsy, love! She has a whole store of the sweet things. And speaking of pincushions, I can’t wait to get to making a batch for the shop opening :)

I also decided to quickly gussy up some of the boxes I keep bits and bobs in. I was on the hunt for some cute boxes, but I couldn’t find a thing! Well, I found some, but who is going to pay $50 for a cardboard box? (a pretty box though, I must admit) Not me, that’s who. So I just threw a bit of brown paper, polka tape and scrapbooking paper on some recycled cardboard boxes and voila, I can now live with them and don't have to break my budget (still going really well, yay!).

Tomorrow I’m tackling my email inbox, sorry! *Really* need to work on the email situation, I constantly feel terrible about not answering emails fast enough, which makes me even more slow because I’m too busy trying not to look at them building up and feeling like the most awful email-replier in the whole world. Edit - I should add, I love emails! Very much. :) I just don't love my lack of self discipline!

Little Fruit.

Hello :) Thank you all so, so, so much for the kind words, they really made me feel a whole lot better. I didn't really have a post ready to go today but wanted to get that whining off the top of the blog so here are some pictures of this little piece of fruit that I became obsessed with the other day. It's from my neighbours garden (obtained legally :P), and it has a little berry inside, although I absolutely cannot remember the name of it! Isn't the shell interesting though, it's like the thinnest paper and all veiny.

Anyway, so I've found that the most that this hacking ordeal is going to cost me is $35, plus...1 cent to Paypal. Yeah, don't ask. :P The bank really have made it hard though. It was a little bit eye-opening, they have been fantastic in the past with credit card fraud that they themselves have picked up, but this being something I picked up, and involving more than one account...let's just say that they have not been as helpful this time. And Paypal have finally stopped attempting to take the money, and have refunded me properly. And Mr M is fine, he says his arm (where he had to have a tetanus shot), hurts worse than the leg does. :)

Anyway, at least this waiting got me to really get into the craft room cleaning this weekend, it's going really well! We are getting an absolutely fantastic new workstation, full of storage and with an overhang on one end and a huge flat top. Today I'm giving the stupid bank a miss and going on a hunt for some of those cute coloured, lidded boxes to use in the craft room instead of all my old wine boxes and packaging boxes. I want cute! I'm also finally getting rid of a lot of supplies that I had kept around for uni (you really have to keep everything that could possibly be made into something if you're a poor art student), and doing lots of general errands. I think we'll need to hire a skip to take away all my uni junk!

Thanks again lovelies, you really made me feel better, as you always do :) xo

Wasted days.

Yes, I dislike my days being wasted, especially when they are wasted because of horrible, dishonest thieves hacking into my Paypal account and removing thousands of dollars from my bank account and credit card. It feels even worse when you realise that this is being done by what seems to be (from my research), a scam company somehow illegally obtaining credit card and Paypal account details of internet users, as well as ripping off their own clients with unauthorized credit card charges. From what I’ve found out they have illegally charged hundreds of people, be it straight from their credit cards, or by hacking into their Paypal accounts, and they have been accused of fraud by many.

So please be wary of Betamax GmbH & Co.KG, or Betamax Voip, who operate a large number of domains, and who are some kind of telephone service company in Germany. I hesitated in putting their name in my post, as they could be an innocent victim in all of this, but really, my research has really lead me to believe that something is very, very wrong here. There are numerous forum posts, articles, consumer trading reports and Ebay threads and blog comments on illegal charges and account hacking all involving this company, with the victims either having accounts there or having never heard of them before (like me). I will gladly remove this paragraph with apologies if I find out otherwise.

I am so exhausted.

I must say, that the service I received from Paypal was amazing. A lovely girl called ME (and all the way from America too, it was about 8pm here, and I think it was about 5am in the USA) just as I was about to go into meltdown, dealt with me bawling my eyes out and got everything fixed up on their end. The bank…not so easy. I’ve been trying to get this all sorted out for three days now. It is SO hard to get things that happen with your debit card fixed, the credit card was relatively simple, but the whole situation is proving very, very hard to rectify. I think I’ve talked to about 10 million bank employees in the past three days (and nights). I wish the bank knew about about how Paypal worked a little better too. I now have to leave my terrible looking accounts until Monday, as no-one can do anything more until then.

I had to take the day off work yesterday, as the bank needed me in person after all the phone calls couldn’t fix things. I also needed to change my passwords on every single site that I use. I was also warned that the Paypal system would reattempt the charges, which it did, even though a dispute was filed, which caused more bank problems.

And today Mr M was attacked by a pit-bull whilst at work, and was taken hospital by ambulance, but he is okay, just now missing a chunk of leg.

Wah :( I’m sorry, I don’t like to do self pity posts, but I am so over this.

The regularly scheduled non-venting program will continue very soon, hopefully involving fabric or yarn, or both. And buttons. And trim. *thinks happy thoughts*

xo

Crochet and yarn and stuff...Mmm.

So as I was talking about in the last post, I am officially declaring my love for crochet. And luckily, while I was trying to love knitting I gathered quite a collection of yarn, so after collecting a few more crochet hooks (and some more yarn, of course), I’m all set.

This is what I was working on in Albany, I totally understand the granny square addiction now, they are fantastic fun! I used the pattern that came in ‘Simple Crochet’ for the granny square blanket, although brightened it up in the yarn department.

I’ve read the Amazon reviews of this book and some mention that it isn’t a good one for beginners trying to learn, but I must say that it has taught me how to crochet in the round (I could never figure out how to start off), how to single crochet (or double crochet in English terms) and how to make granny squares and I found it excellent. There wasn’t even any swearing that I can recall. I think it’s funny that I learned how to double (E: treble) crochet before I could single, because of the ripple blanket. Actually, now that I think back, I did had trouble with single, when I was making the container further on in this post, I could NOT figure out why it was so difficult, until I realised that I was slip stitching the entire thing instead or crocheting, ouch!

I do however agree with the comments that state that there aren’t enough pictures of the entire finished items, most of the projects are fine with the lovely arty/close shots, but in the blanket section, there aren’t any pictures of the actually blankets, only close-up shots. I really want to know what a blanket is going to look like before I put in all that effort! But apart from that, I love the book so much, such gorgeous projects, simple, natural colours and materials, yummy.

Anyway this is going to be a cushion, I’ve used 8 ply cotton (and the blue is 4 ply by accident) which I just got from Spotlight, and the cream is lovely organic cotton from Ecoyarns. At the moment I’m doing some rows of double (treble) crochet around the edges in the same colours and then I’ll get to making a back.

Before I went on holiday I made this little container to hold all the junk I keep beside my bed (some of it anyway), I just skimmed the pattern in the book for making a big, soft baskety thing and started. I used string and then jute for the edge, and just folded the top down. I love that this book has lots of ideas on using things like string, linen, cotton, flax, hemp and etc. All such lovely and interesting fibres (and I have some more of them to show you later!).

This little container I got from mum, I’ve been lusting over it for years, and recently she gave it to me as a bribe to make me do something for her, although I can’t remember what it was. It must have been good though. I adore the pattern on it so much, and it’s so little and sweet.

And I did get a bit more yarn. Though BTW, I must point out, that at the moment I am in full-on budget mode and not buying anything fun, but I have about 6 months worth of blog posts to catch up on, so I do have lots of goodies to show you that I have already acquired before said budget started!

This lots is from Ecoyarns (online and based in Australia), soooo lovely. These cakes (haven’t used the winder for awhile, must get back to spinning!) are all O-Wool Balance, so nice and tweedy and soft, they’re 50% Certified Organic Merino Wool and 50% Certified Organic Cotton (in Slate, Carnelian and Jade). One pink will become a scarf, and one of the others will turn into the slippers pictured on the cover of the crochet book. Not sure about the other one!

The Pakucho organic cottons (right) are what I really ordered for though, they are delicious, I just got two balls of each colour except the darkest ones, for random housewaresy projects. Mmm.

And I have got one other crochet WIP, but I’ll show you it another time. I’m actually following a pattern properly, that’s a first. :)

By the way, now that I’m back properly, I completely missed posting on the rest of Christmas, I’m sorry! I made so much stuff too. What I’ve decided to do is to post it all next Christmas, when the only thing I’ll be working on is my Christmas quilt and thus will have nothing to post until that it done. Sneaky eh?

Welcome!

Hello, welcome! I’m so glad you made it over (and me! phew) :)

Well my business name is finally registered so this here is my new home! I can’t wait to get posting again (and as you can see all the old posts came with me). I would appreciate it so much if you could take the time to update any of your bookmarks and links, that would be lovely. The old blog will be left up until August, as it has been paid for until then, but after that any links to it or to any posts on there will be broken as the site will be deleted. You can find all the old posts in the categories and archives on the right on this new blog.

Anyway, back to it, I thought I’d show you where I’ve been for a wonderful week of relaxation (although I’m back at work now, boo!). We had a trip down to Albany, which is in the southern part of Western Australia, it is so lovely there. We've stayed at the same place ever since we were little (it’s called Coraki Cottages if any Perthians are interested) and it is such a nice place to stay.

There was much of this done…

I spread the love between all three comfy couches and the balcony, dragging my quilt, cushions, crafting supplies and reading materials with me on each move. Wonderful.

Can I just say it, I am officially hooked on crochet, I love it to pieces. I was hesitant to declare my love as I’ve always tried to love knitting, but knitting didn’t love me back, but I think crochet does! I’ve got some projects to show you when I finish them off. I got Simple Crochet by Erika Knight for Christmas and it is just my kind of book, I love it (it’s in English terms so I had to do some quick relearning, as I learned to crochet with American terms because of the ripple blanket I started). I also did a little embroidery, but mostly I just read a ton of books, it is so nice to read books for pleasure instead of reading them for study. I did bring one DVD, Howl’s Moving Castle (thanks Barbara!), as I love Studio Ghibli but hadn’t seen this one), and it was fantastic. And it was also fantastic to get completely away from the computer for a week, and not have anything else to do except read, eat, craft, sightsee and take photographs.

And speaking of photographs, I took my new camera (I still haven’t done a post on it, gah!) and all my lenses including my wonderful new wide-angle lens that my grandparents got me for Christmas/Bday (thank you!), and I had a ball. I wanted to test how many photographs I could get on my memory card and came home with it full on 530 shots, excellent!

I’ve just picked a few (or possibly a tad more than a few), to show you…

L: On the board walk above Middleton Beach, very nice, although continually had to dodge gimungus people-eating lizards (or maybe not people-eating).

And then to Little Beach, so beautiful, but it was too windy to go in the water unfortunately, it was really rough (and I’m afraid of the ocean at the best of times), so we headed over to Two People’s Bay for a more sheltered swim.

L & R: Lots of walking around where we were staying on photography expeditions with mum, I love the landscape here, I got so much inspiration for designs and new work! Coraki is situated in Oyster Harbour on the King River.

On the left is the jetty at Middleton Beach, much fun had with the wide-angle lens here. And to the right, more board-walking, this time near the Wind Farm (which is cool in real life, especially the sounds the wind-making-thingies make, but not so interesting in pictures).

A wee spot of walking and shopping in the town (only window shopping for me, did I tell you I’ve started a new budget? I really have! It’s going quite well so far). I found the most luscious grey yarn in a patchwork shop and I had an extremely hard time not buying it. I’ll just pretend that I did and that it’s in one of my yarn drawers waiting will all the other yarns that need crocheting (yay, crocheting!).

This phone booth had wallpaper in it, squee! And I thought the building above was extremely gorgeous, it doesn’t look like Australia does it! And the one below was interesting too, I wish I had the wide-angle with me for that one.

Below: There are two emus that live at Coraki, and they certainly had their photographs taken a lot of times by mum and I, in fact, mum earned herself (or her camera, rather) a hard peck, ha! And I just missed getting it on film. This was my favourite emu shot, tehe. On the right is some of the area outside the cottages, on the river.

Below: Emu mirror! And on the right is our little cottage, the balcony that you can see is wonderful, as are the aforementioned couches and the fireplace.

And after all that and more, back to the cottage for some more of this…

Yum.

I also took an absolute ton of macro shots, and I’ll put some up in another post, I’ve got so many things planned using ideas from them. :)

It was wonderful, and I’m feeling so energised now, that really was what I needed after finishing uni! Now I can’t wait to get back to making for fun, and continuing with setting up my business, and finally getting back to regular blogging (finally, finally!). I really want to make some more quilts this year too (and finally make Mr M’s quilt!).

I actually thought of the new blog/business name on the holiday, which I think is very cool, as it was already a very inspiring time even before that. I’d just read Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert (loved it! Found it a little…annoying? Although I don’t know if that it the right word to use, at the very beginning but very quickly started loving it, especially the India section), and had started on The Simple Living Guide by Janet Luhrs and so was thinking a lot about solitude and meditation (whilst being totally relaxed in a place which is much more silent and less distracting than at home). I went to bed and started thinking about business names again, haf asleep. I have a Word doc full of words that I had been putting together and chopping and changing around in order to try and come up with something, and I just made a mental note to add ‘solitary' to the document. Then a second later ‘The Solitary Thread’ popped into my head and it just felt right. I was so excited. I stumbled out of bed in the middle of the night and wrote it down, luckily this was the day before we came home, as I was just about bursting to hop on the net and see if it was already taken or not (it wasn’t…just as if it were meant to be!).

I’m so happy with it. I love my time alone, I’m very much an introvert and I need to recharge after spending time with people. I also love the solitary space that you are within (even if you aren’t alone), when you are concentrating on making something within that small area of personal space between your hands and your eyes. It also plays right into all the ideas that I investigated within my uni degree, about the single (solitary) thread, or line, which can be drawn out, can create imagery, can create cloth, and ideas about thread as thought. So I just love it. A perfect fit.

xo

PS. I’ll let you know more about the actual handmade business blather as I go, but for now I’m planning to officially open it on the 1st of March, and at the least I’ll have my Etsy store (US dollars) and a bigcartel store (which will be in Australian dollars for those who prefer them). I've also set up The Solitary Thread.com yay!

No Longer Under Construction!

Edit - Yay, done! Thanks guinea pigs :)

Er...Is this thing on?

Um...well as you can see my blogging is going brilliantly. And now is  probably where I should say MerryChristmasandHappyNewYear to everyone and HappyBirthdayToMe!

Just a quick note to say that I will be on holiday (yay!) and offline for the next week and a half, starting tomorrow. I will definitely try to get my head and blog together after that (I was going to say I promise...but decided not to, so that looks positive doesn't it =P).

These gorgeous embroidery threads from YarnPlayer on Etsy are coming with me, along with a bag of organic cotton and wool from Ecoyarns AU, a container of DMC and a whole bunch of new crochet hooks.

And not to mention a tower of books, a sketch pad, a camera with a million lenses and gin squash making supplies. Woot.

Catcha when I get back :) x