crazy ladies!

We’ve just been flicking through some of the shots from our last catalogue shoot and decided this is one of our favourites. Biba is a very good model we think! And the Oyster Catcher messenger bag is the perfect bag to take you through the Spring/Summer 2013 season.

Patricia Sullivan: “Widget Locket #4: Homage to Mexico”, chased/repoussé copper, sterling silver, patina, Plexiglas, archival paper, hand-fabricated/oxidized sterling silver chain/clasp, 17″ x 1.75″ x .3125″, 2013. Photo: P. Sullivan

Patricia Sullivan: “Widget Locket #4: Homage to Mexico” (front and reverse detail). Photo: P. Sullivan

Patricia Sullivan: “Widget Locket #4: Homage to Mexico”. Locket body-only (without chain, inside detail, aerial view:) 2 5/16″ x 1 3/4″ x 5/16″, 2013. Photo: P. Sullivan

My Widget Locket #4: Homage to Mexico is more of a celebratory one-of-a-kind jewelry piece and does not seek to take sides with the NAFTA debate. I wish to merely point out how the two nations have grown to work together for a positive outcome.

My favorite line: As a new writer, “you can only write what you give a shit about.”

This one is based on the Funky Wrench by The Happy Zombie, in the requested colours:

This is a spiderweb in pink and purple (which was hard for me since I have virtually no pink in my life):

And this was based on the Stashbuster block by Little Miss Shabby. I had been wanting to try this block for quite a while, and although I love the way it looks, I didn’t enjoy making it. It was much harder to get the balance of scrappiness right than I thought it would be. I guess I’m not as comfortable with randomness as I thought I was.

Kensington Central Library

Welcome to our May 2013 blog post. We’ve lots of events happening at Kensington Central Library in next few months for adults and children – check out our events page for full details.

Adult Learners’ Week 2013

This week is Adult Learners’ Week so if you fancy trying a new skill such as creative writing or hand sewing – take a look at our taster sessions happening in Kensington Central Library. And there’s more information about this festival of learning on the Adult Learners’ Week website.

Fit to Rule – How Royal Illness Changed History

Fit to Rule book display

This month we have a special display of books to support the recent BBC TV series, ‘Fit to Rule: How Royal Illness Changed History’. This series was by Dr Lucy Worsley, Chief Curator of Historic Royal Palaces.

Fit to Rule book display

In the series, Lucy Worsley argued that the success of kings and queens was dictated less by their strengths, than by their weaknesses.

Fit to Rule book display

You can use this collection to make up your own minds, not only by reading the biographies of a range of monarchs, but also by comparing how they handled their illnesses with contemporary books on the same topics.

Did you know?

William III suffered from asthma – he bought Nottingham House in the village of Kensington so that he had a residence close to London which was surrounded by fields and so had clean, fresh air – this house would eventually become Kensington Palace.

George II suffered a heart attack  – whilst having a hot chocolate as he sat on the toilet in Kensington Palace!

For more facts like this – come and see our special display.

There’s a more information about the series on the BBC website.

Jodie Green

Jodie Green

Lending Librarian

Pirates story and craft session

Pirate time!

Ahoy, me hearties! This month’s story and crafts session was all about pirates! Aaaarrrrgggghhhh!

My Gran is a Pirate by Val McDermid

We started off a lot fuller then before, with growing levels of kids and parents, after a lovely read by Gemma of “My Gran is a Pirate” by Val McDermid, we continued by making pirate hats.

Pirate hats!

Was all the mess at the end worth it? Yes! Both the kids and parents as well as myself and Gemma had a great laugh with the whole crafts section. An all round great session, with lots of smiling faces, laughter and pirate lingo!! Aaaarrrrgggghhhh me matey.

Haider Ali

Haider Ali

Customer Services Assistant

Old sujunis had motifs from religion,nature and daily life.The shift in narrative themes is recent,after voluntary organizations encouraged women to stitch their lives, so to say, on the sujunis. Efforts by concerned agencies to contemporize sujuni have struck gold-not only has a product diversification been achieved, sujuni had also entered the international market,like Busra,an important productin cluster in Muzaffarpur, sujuni has changed the story of many a woman`s life.

I am so happy with it so far I don’t want to ruin it at the last moment with a wonky seam, so I grabbed some cute fabric I found in the remnants section of my local haberdashery and the fleece left over from backing the patchwork blanket and thought I would practice by making another blanket of less emotional investment.

The fleece had been cut pretty wonky in the process of trimming it down to back the patchwork blanket, so I found the widest section I could and got to work on cutting it down to a relatively straight rectangle (in my eagerness to continue my newest obsession of sewing, I am cutting a few corners…worry not, the rotary cutter is on its way!). I pinned this to my lovely new found fabric (right sides together) and cut around the fleece so the fabric matched the ”rectangle”.

Then I got to work sewing a nice seam all the way around leaving one corner open so I could turn the blanket right way out, snipping the corners at an angle first so they would turn out nice and square, after pinning the opening ready to be closed up with the top stitch, I ironed the whole thing, making the edges nice and tidy and then got to work sewing a nice, straightish top stitch (considering the already wonky nature of the blanket…lets call it character, not wonkiness), and the result….

Not bad for an afternoons work, and it has left me feeling much more confident about tackling the top stitch for Bubs Totoro Patchwork blanket, so stay tuned, I will be posting the result in a few days time, but here’s a sneak peek, and even if your not a My Neighbour Totoro fan, check it out purely for my Nans super old sewing machine….

See…I told you it was old!

Prosea paling rempong adalah saat decrease. Karena musti mengganti alat dari circular needle ke double-pointed needles. But it is worth.

Warnanya unyu, patternnya unyu pula.
Mau bikin yang mana lagi yaaaa *woi inget kerjaan woi*

Toodles

(30) Days of Sundresses is coming in June and I might just have to break out my sewing machine . Every day in June, a different blogger will have a sundress tutorial on Melly Sews.  This is the 2nd year of sundress tutorials on her blog. Here are 20 from last year!

Click on any picture to go to the post and sew that sundress.

First is pieces for a World’s Fair block in dark blue and white. I haven’t made many blocks, but I really love how it is going.

The next are two log cabins, again using dark blue and white. One is made with 2.5″strips, and the other with 1.5″strips. The thinner strips give  a much more elegant look, but I don’t think I have the patience for many more blocks that size. In fact, it may be time to turn all of these into a pillow cover or table runner or some such thing, just to get them finished.

The last one for tonight is also blue and white. Do you detect a theme? It uses the first jelly roll I ever bought – Flag Day Farm by Minick and Simpson for Moda. It was also the first time I ever bought fabric from one collection (or ever really was aware of such things). I sewed all of the blues and neutrals together, then stalled because I don’t really like tan and it looks too muddy. There weren’t enough red strips to really be useful. I’ve played around with a few different settings, none of which I really liked. I should probably just set them this way with alternating plain tan squares and be done with it.

Most weeks I have plenty of time to please myself but for the past ten days or so I have been extra busy, with more work than usual in my part-time job and another casual job that crops up just twice a year.   I have also been visiting a friend recovering after an operation.  Plus, I have been emotionally supporting my son who is avidly revising and taking exams.  (Emotional support equals reading his mood swings, providing an ear when needed, giving sugary snacks when needed and complete avoidance when requested!) 

Am I the only one who never finds enough time in any one day?  I read in a recent article elsewhere that those who needed to find time should stop watching their ‘stupid soaps’ and just get on with whatever it is they need to get on with.  I fully believe everyone needs some ‘down time’, be it watching tv, going for a run, doing a craft, making a telephone call to a friend or whatever they wish to do that is not work or a chore.   

I favour any of those (except a run – I don’t!).  So, I shall stop beating myself up about not knitting yet today.  I plan to get the pins clicking a bit later on and to tell the friend to wait a while before she pops out baby number three! 

In my 3rd period stage craft class I built a fence for a dance show.  My best friend Penelope Kehrer and I did everything to build this fence.  We went and found every piece of wood in the shop, we measured them all, we cut them with an electronic saw (which I am now certified to use), we screwed it all together and made repairs where needed.  It took us 4 class periods and I am very proud of it.   

Over the last few weeks I’ve been learning 3d modeling programs and graphic design software in order to create my own 3d paper cuts, things are going well and I’ll soon have a few designs to show which I’ll also make available for download on another site (which I am currently designing) they will be in SVG format initially so can be cut on a number of die-cut machines.

Here is a sneak preview of one of the designs, I hope you like them :)

In other news the lovely CHA-guy presented a paper at the Linux Audio Conference where he explained his project on FM Oscillators and 4 dimensional space, the picture bellow shows the output of the program he made, which he kindly framed for me as a present. :)
I don’t understand any of the maths involved or the coding but its does look pretty… :)
Gotta dash now

Hope your week goes well..
xx

Hello! I was recently gifted these champagne glasses and wanted to personalize them, so I decided to spray paint some gold patterns on them, and I’ll make any excuse to paint something gold! I love Gold!!! This project is perfect for dinner parties when you want to add a little sparkle to the dinner table. This is a unexpected detail that everyone will like, and also your friends can fight over which champagne glass they want!
I used painters tape to create designs on the glasses. Cut out any shape or design and apply the tape to the glass, make sure that the tape is completely down so the paint does not get underneath the tape. Whatever color you want to use, spray at least 12 inches from the glasses. Remember to go outside to do this! Apply small thin layers, and don’t cake on the spray paint because the paint will run, unless that is the look you are going for. Which I did create the dripped look on one of the glasses. I used a clear lacquer to create an antique look. To create this look I sprayed the lacquer on before the gold paint dried, you do not need a lot of the lacquer, just one thin layer will do. If you want a shinier finish, let the gold paint fully dry before applying the lacquer. Let fully dry and remove the tape. Cheers! Enjoy your new champagne glasses!

*Oh, I think I should mention that the spray paint should be non-toxic, which I think I forget to do…Whoops!! A little extra flavor for my guests!*

xo Lor

Ingredients

Champagne Glasses
Non-Toxic Spray Paint
Non-Toxic Lacquer
Painter’s Tape
Scissors
Champagne
Friends

I won’t lie, I’m a bit of a Pinterest addict… standing in line? Pinterest app. Waiting for Josh to get home? You’ll find me on Pinterest. Waiting for food in the microwave? You betcha, I’m back on Pinterest. So as you can probably imagine, I’ve built up quite the collection of pins from the internet and my lovely friends. And then it happens- Pin-nesia. Aka, forgetting about what you’ve pinned until someone else pins it again (I like to make up words…)… that happened to me this week when a college friend pinned this little beauty:

And it sent my heart all a flutter (from here)! I had pinned this way back when I was still in college myself, but it was one of those cute ideas that I had never gotten around to, until this week! Thanks for the nudge, Em!!

So, here’s the run down of what you’ll need:

But mostly what this project needs is time. Time for the stain to cure and absorb into the wood if you add more than one coat which I almost always do because I’m a sucker for a nice dark stain.

When staining, it’s a good practice to have your brush strokes go with the grain of the wood. Otherwise it might look a little funky when you’re done with it. You also don’t want to have any drips or runny lines of stain as you go along because if that is allowed to dry, the drips will show in the finished piece. Here I’m using a Minwax stain in Provincial 211 that I had leftover from another project, it worked perfectly for this crate (Also, for health/safety reasons, make sure that when you paint or stain, work in a well ventilated area- I chose to do it outside on our patio, this stuff is a little fume-y!)

Once the whole crate is stained (which doesn’t take long) go back over the whole thing with a rag to remove any of the excess stain that hasn’t been absorbed. And wait a couple of hours for the stain to cure. The wood will only absorb a certain amount of the stain, so the longer you wait the better. You can always go back and add another coat or two, but be sure to wipe it down to remove excess stain (otherwise it becomes sticky) and let the stain cure.

I wanted this to crate to be used to store all of our doggy accoutrements in, so I added little personalization to it- Levi’s name. To make the template, I wrote his name out in a Word document in a font that I liked (I used Mayonaise from this site). Using an xacto knife, I cut out the letters to make a stencil of Levi’s name.  Using painter’s tape to hold the stencil in place, I stippled in white paint onto the crate itself to spell out Levi.

Once everything had been dryed and cured, I sprayed two coats of polyurethane (also from Minwax) on the crate just to protect it a little bit and let the whole thing dry over night, which was probably a good thing since I was running out of day light.

The next morning, on our walk, Levi and I tried out the new doggy-toy crate…

He hopped right in! He was quite cute in the little crate, just like a special delivery- I should have put a bow on him…. next time! We spent a few minutes getting acquainted with the crate, he was content to just sit in the crate the whole time…

Apparently Levi is part cat and likes to sit in boxes… such a strange pup! But seeing that crate on our front porch has inspired me even more! I hope to make a few more of these bad boys to make planters out of and fill to the brim with lovely, colorful flowers! I think it would make the perfect addition!

As for how much this crate took to create, he’s the run down:

• Wooden crate from Michael’s: $13.87
• Minwax Wood Stain (already owned): $0.00
• Paint brushed (from my stockpile..): $0.00
• Total (after tax): $13.87

Not too bad for some new storage! Who knew dogs needed so much stuff? Just kidding, I knew that. I’ll definitely get on some new plantings here soon… maybe next week! I’ve been seeing some absolutely gorgeous flowers at all the nurseries lately, might have to get on that sooner rather than later!

What have you guys been creating lately? Ever suffer from a Pin-nesia episode? It certainly happens to me a lot more than I would like to admit…

I’ve been messing around! Somehow time has flown by. Maybe because I have been spending time in the garden where I have no idea of time. Unless I keep track, a quick half hour outside turns into several hours, then time for other projects disappears.

This week has been just like that. I have been pottering outside and not getting anything done that I had planned. One evening, I found an app for the iPad called Brushes and tried experimenting to see what I could do with it. It is free although you can pay to upgrade to have layers to build up images. I had fun with the single layer trying different brush styles, altering the pixel size, colour and transparency as I went. You can tweak the settings of each brush to change the effects. My first thought was some kind of background that could be printed on transfer paper and used for an embroidery background when ironed on to fabric.

If I get more of a hang of it, it could be used for all sorts of projects. It is like finger painting for adults!

In the end, I think the time I have spent in the garden showed and my favourite image was one of dandelions.

I think it will make a nice card design printed on photo paper.

Immediately after taking the class, I became an embroidery fool.  Sitting and impatiently waiting at the Doctor’s office, I would bust out my needle and hoop.  Every time I send off a gift basket of jams & jellies, I would throw in a towel.  It is therapeutic and relaxing.  It forces me to slow down in a wold that is constantly go, Go, GO! The best thing I have gotten out of embroidery is the bond that has been created between my Grandmother and I.  Whenever I start a new towel, napkin, bag, etc. I always think of my Grandmother.  Would this be something she would want in her kitchen? On her table?  I have been completely in love with embroidering flour sack towels with herbs or produce.  I have gotten the Nettie Stamp of Approval.  Now, I’m not quite to her level of mastery, but I think I’m on my way!

See, this new project makes use of an alternative history.  Which means I have to go research the ACTUAL history that I’m messing with to know what I’m messing with.  So I’m picking and choosing what looks interesting or relevant, deciding what will stay the same, what will change, what I need to do deeper research on.  And my brain, it is ESPLODING with ideas.  I keep bulleting off emails to Susan and Claire “and then I’m gonna do THIS!” and getting back grins and “hee!”s and “THIS SOUNDS LIKE FUN” because, yo, it really really is.

Susan made the observation this morning that I seem to be a lot more comfortable (and having more fun) with taking this stuff and manipulating it to my purposes than I was with DOTH.  And she’s right.  I’m kind of mulling over why that might be.

I often have something “real” or that comes from existing lore that inspires what I write.  It’s the sexy lure of that “What if…?” that fuels a great deal of my inspiration.  And it’s part of why I stopped trying to write classic romantic suspense, because with the truly “real”, I worry about “getting it right”.  There’s more freedom in the paranormal and fantasy realms.

And for some reason, with DOTH, I felt much more…bound by the existing lore.  Which is nuts, considering that the lore is inconsistent and sketchy in a lot of ways.  And maybe it’s that I tried to research as I went, doing the worldbuilding around the story rather than building the story around the world.  I felt a really strong urge to just DIVE RIGHT IN, and I did.  To the detriment of the final product.

The toolkit is intended to help with that.  To show me the pieces I generally need.  Which I can usually work on some while writing other projects, but also something that gives me a very visible and measurable achievement of OH I DID STUFF in a way that prior versions of plotting didn’t (which is why I sometimes dove in without sufficient planning–because not writing felt like not getting anything accomplished).  But this really isn’t meant to be a post about plotting.

I guess I’m wondering this morning, how we make that call of “I want to take this thing here, and put my personal spin on it.”  Why are some things easier to MAKE that choice for than others?  Is it a personal thing?  A genre expectations thing?  An “I’m going to do something DIFFERENT, damn it” thing?  Inquiring minds want to know.

I got my yarn out and casted on, so far so good. Well almost, no gauge conducted, just went with my gut feeling on the weight of yarn I was using. Come on, that is hardly not following a pattern (especially for someone as hardcore a non-follower as me). I made the raglan increases and it was going to be a straight forward knitting project following someone else’s instructions. But hey, no baby likes a plain onesie, what if I had a motif (it will break the monotony of just stockinette stitch as well). Yes that sounds fab, plus I am technically still following the pattern (“yeah right” mumbles boyfriend). So off I go and find a perfect gender neutral boat motif. This made the boring circular knitting fun and challenging enough for me to keep at it.

Now as I come closer to the shaping of the leg inserts, I think to myself, “Oh the bother of getting a crying baby in and out of this complicated outfit.” I am sure my sister-in-law would appreciate something simple to operate. Also, I have just seen this cool tutorial of the i-cord edging by a fellow blogger which I was dying to try and somehow the length of this onesie was just right to bind off as a jumper! This is perfect. I am doing my sis-in-law a favour and also learn something new. Surely I can make a onesie on the next go, I will give her two gifts. Yes thats what I will do. So thats exactly what I did. I bound off the supposed onesie as a finished jumper with a lovely darker colour edge.

Do you like it?

The story of my digressions do not end here, dear readers. It gets worse. My sister announces that she is going to have twins soon!! Oh the joy! that means twice the knitting! That’s it, the onesie can now be finally followed to the letter and I will redeem myself. You know where this is going don’t you?

Here are my faults all plain for you to see admire…

I have managed to learn a few more things with these new jumpers, a two colour long tail cast on (that totally eliminates that nuisance of guessing the amount of yarn you will need) and how to rib the neck before the raglan increases. Its funny but it is such small little steps forward in the learning process that makes knitting so addictive. To hell with plain ol’ stockinette… here is to more modifications and digressions from instruction sheets.

Okay, so I’ve just been on Tumblr and I’ve seen a set of pictures which have reminded me of how much I love minatures. Miniature sets/scenes or artwork. Genuine love. I love the work put into them and how beautifully accurate they can be. It probably started with Victorian dollhouses. I never had one, but i used to love how intricate they always looked.

(click the image to see more)