One of the main reasons I craft is for the joy of process.

I find nothing more calming than sitting down with a cup of tea, a good podcast or tv show and picking up some stitching.  Sometimes though, stitching can turn in to a bit of a chore.  I do most of my stitching for exhibition or testing designs for sale as patterns.  And I enjoy both equally.  But it is super important that I give myself a balance between the two otherwise it does sometimes start to feel like work.

And occasionally I like to sneak in a stitching project just for fun! We truly can’t take ourselves too seriously all the time otherwise it’s easy to lose perspective on why we’re being serious.

I’m guessing I’m not alone in the craft community in feeling like crafting is a form of meditation for me.  What I find particularly interesting is how my wandering thoughts change depending on what it is I’m stitching about.  I have spent time stitching and thinking about craft history, feminist organising, radical parenting, environmental activism, identity politics just to name a few things.  And I very much enjoy this intellectual space crafting provides for me.

However, when I’m working on a bigger project I sometimes find I need a BREAK! The problem when you’re on a deadline though is that it can only be a little break. It’s times like this I often crack out the sewing machine and make a small project or two. Or I do a small cross stitch project, often on a kids tshirt or something.

My latest short break was inspired by a dig in my craft room and I stumbled on a wee frame I got in an op shop. It had been lying around for a while and I decided I’d had enough looking at it and wanted to use it.  So I grabbed an opportunity to make something new and little and frivolous.

And I’ve decided to give this one away.  I want to give this to one of our readers just to say thanks for your ongoing support.  Despite not having too much time to blog at the moment it makes me so happy that people continue to visit and say hi.  And people keep joining up on Facebook, Twitter & Tumblr to share ideas, projects and thoughts.

So to enter this give-away, just comment on this blog post and I want to hear what it is you get out of your craft? What sort of fulfilment do you appreciate from having time to make stuff? Comments before July 16 go in the random draw.

xox

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How are ya? Things are cruising along rather nicely in Radical Cross Stitch land; projects slowly coming to completion, babies growing nicely, plenty of baking going on. Goodness this winter is a bit chilly isn’t it? Really can’t wait for Spring and Summer to brighten our lives again.

In the meantime, there’s a couple of events coming up you should know about.

Firstly, as part of the State of Design Festival, the Craft Cartel is going to be part of a panel discussion during the Counter Point project at Melbourne Central.  Together with Citizens of Elysium, Clothing Exchange and The Social Studio, we’ll be chatting about the social and environmental realities of consumerist culture and what the alternatives are.  I’m really looking forward to this event, there’s some great people on the panel and it’s part of a really interesting and subversive larger project.  I do hope you can come along!

(click on images for larger view)

Next up on the events calendar is SUPER TOP SECRET and I truly can’t tell you about it yet.  But it is ACE!!!!!! and it’s about craft and it has some other super people involved and it’s in Melbourne on August 1st. So put that day in your diary, I swear I’ll tell you all the details as soon as I can. One word though. SQUEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!! Ok one more word, POPCORN.

Flicking over in the calendar a bit the Craft Cartel are heading to Sydney in October to participate in We Craft This City at Object Gallery.  We’re pretty super excited about this one! We may even be heading up a bit earlier to do some sunny, spring time crafting in the park to get people ready and excited about the show.  Will let you know if that happens.  But what’s definitely happening is some hard core Craft Cartel knitted dynamite action.  And you can be part of the fun! Just pop over to the tutorial and grab yourself some wool.  We’re trying to get the worlds largest knitted ammunition cache together.  We’d LOVE you to help!

Finally 3CR subscribers would have already got your copy (I think..) but the theme of this years Radiothon was ‘Handmade Radio’ and the lovely Nicole asked me to help her make a handmade radio tutorial.  Nicole did some ace instructions for a plushie radio and I contributed some patterns for some speech bubbles to come out of the radio.  Pretty darn fun!

And to help with the super important efforts of keeping community radio on air, I will pledge $20 for anyone who sends me photos of their completed hand made radio.  G’arn!

(click on images for larger view)

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I’m not doing terribly well at the blogging these days since I rarely have two hands free.  And try as I might, I just can’t stand the tedium of trying to write with one hand.  So I have been keeping my updates in Twitter land and my new Tumblr.

Are you on Tumblr?  It is FUN!  It’s kind of like blogging but more asthetic.  It’s almost like mini curating.  There seems to be two types of Tumblrs.  There’s people Tumblrs, where people just post and reblog all the stuff they like and then there’s theme based Tumblrs which anyone can submit to so long as it fits the theme criteria.

I started a Tumblr account for Radical Cross Stitch and already have a bunch of followers and have found a whole bunch of interesting people to follow.  I’m especially enjoying finding all the activisty, vegany, crafty, feministy womyn out there.  Tumblr sure seems to be a great way to surround yourself in like minded awesome people.

I’ve also started another couple of accounts (because I got carried away!) and these are theme based ones.  Inspired by great accounts like Fuck Yeah, Owls! and Fuck Yeah, Cultural Appropriation!! I started Fuck Yeah, Granny Square.

Firstly I started FYGS because it was such a brilliantly lovely rhyme and I couldn’t believe no one had already done it.  Also Granny Squares are FREAKIN AWESOME and absolutely deserve a tribute site (or ten).  The FYGS blog has been set up as a community one so anyone can submit so you should totally go and submit your favourite pics.

If you need some extra inspiration, there’s a couple of cool projects online that you can check out.  Firstly Little Miss Apocolypse got inspired to do a call out for radical squares to make a collective afghan.  This is such a cool idea and I reckon the aim will be to auction off a final piece to fund raise for some cool revolutionary organisation.  Maybe RAWA? Dunno, anyone got any ideas?  In the meantime, jump aboard and crack out your crochet hook.

And if you need incentive to actually finish one, check out the Meet Me at Mikes Granny Square a Day 2010 challenge (yeah I know it’s June, but it’s never too late to start something fun!).

The irony of all this granny square enthusiasm is that I don’t actually know how to make them myself (sigh).  BUT I want to! So hopefully all this excitement will lead to me getting off my bum and DOING it.  I am enlisting help and the lovely and awesomely clever at doing granny square, Gemma Jones is coming over for a solstice feast and I’m going to bat my eyelashes until she sits down and shows me.  Promise I’ll share my results.  You should join in too! If I can, anyone can!

Since Tumblrs are so much fun I got carried away and set up Fuck Yeah, Vintage Craft (I know, I’m hours away from rehab).  I’ve always wanted a space to put all the beautiful/hilarious photos in all my vintage craft books.  And there’s so many clever people out there photographing vintage craft supplies and finished pieces.  So I set up FYVC to celebrate the beauty in vintage craft.  This is also a public blog so if you’ve got stuff to submit, please do!

Finally, there’s been a bit of fun and games going on at our Facebook Page.  If you don’t like us yet, please do! We’re almost at 1000! The best bit about the Page is seeing the Fan pics that people add of their latest projects.  There’s been some brilliantly inspiring stuff.  Would love to see yours!

Stay tuned for some Craft Cartel newsy writeup!

xox

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I’m super pleased to present the latest RCS collaboration, this time I got together with Katherine Beefheart who designs some super awesome pieces.  I said ‘go on, make one for our shop!’ and awesomely, she said ‘for sure!’.  So everyone, say Hi Katherine!

Helloooo,

I’m Katherine Beefheart and this is my design.  I’ve been embroidering for what feels like forever, mainly for my own pleasure.  But in the last few months I have been encouraged to put my stitchings out there which meant taking it a lot more seriously and consequently producing some huge pieces which have taken me months to complete.  My inspiration comes from anywhere and everywhere….overheard conversations, music lyrics, my beautiful family and friends, literature and my constantly twittering inner monologue.  To me, there is an enormous sense of creating when many hours, days, weeks and sometimes even months go into a piece along with a sizeable chunk of my heart and soul.  It’s ridiculously therapeutic for me which relates to this particular pattern.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I did making it

www.behance.net/BeefArt

You can buy the pattern in our store (AUD) or in our etsy shop (USD) and you should grab it now while it’s at our special introductory price.

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This episode, we do something quite different and check out some of the best the world of Creative Commons music has to offer.  So grab your latest craft project, kick back and enjoy the show.

I decided to let the music speak for itself and leave the ranting to the writing, so what follows is the ideas behind this podcast.  I’m very much interested to hear what others think on these issues.

xox
Rayna

And as always we’d love to hear from you, comment below or drop us a line. And don’t forget to check out the archive if you’re new round here.

The best way to listen to the podcast is to subscribe and download today!

If that doesn’t work you can download the file directly from here.

We really don’t like advertising very much round these parts, so if you like what you hear, please make a donation to help support future episodes. It’s what an ad-free world sounds like.

OK here’s the spiel!

The idea behind Creative Commons or as it is otherwise known as ‘copyleft’ was about trying to find a way for creators of content to protect their work that wasn’t as rigid as the copyright system.  The copyright system is very much geared around stopping people from using your ideas.  Yet there were tons of creative people out there who did want people to use their ideas, they just wanted to be able to put some conditions on the use.  CC is based on the understanding that knowledge isn’t created in a vacuum.  As artists, creators, designers, engineers etc, our knowledge is built on and informed by centuries of knowledge.  The CC movement uses the slogan “standing on the shoulders of giants” which acknowledges that all the creativity, intelligence, technology and risk taking that exists in our world wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for sharing and collaboration.

The notion of copyright, or to claim an idea as something which is exclusively owned, is a very modern phenomenon and for many creators is simply incompatible with the idea that creativity is a community based activity.

The copyleft movement arose out of the free software movement as a response to the hyper patenting that was happening by certain sectors of the software industry (yes, looking at you Mr Gates).  A lot of the stuff that was being patented was not being patented by the person who invented the software.  As most of the ideas were generated by communities of engineers and mathematicians.  The patents were often being granted to the person who applied first.

Software is effectively a pile of equations.  Technically, you’re not supposed to be able to patent a mathematical equation (or nature for that matter, but that’s not stopped Monsanto who want to ‘own’ the food we eat).  But somehow certain people were able to convince the American Patent Office that they should grant patents to software.  And as anyone in the Open Source movement will tell you, this is why proprietary software is so expensive and often inferior to the community created software alternatives eg Firefox (pattern here!).

The same problem applies to the music industry.  While people have been making music and sharing that music for millennia, it has only been recently that the concept of ownership has been applied to music.  The justification for this is of course to ensure that musicians can make an income out of their creativity. But we all know this is rarely the case.  Because the musicians themselves rarely own the copyrights over their music.  It is the recording companies, or as is often the case with very popular songs, private individuals.  Music is not seen as a part of our living culture, rather a commodity that can be bought and sold.  This approach to music creation means it’s about ‘investing’ in the music that will create the most profit for the holder of the rights, not creating awesome music.  This is the main reason there is so much crap music on our airways.

With the introduction of the internet and all the wonderful tools modern technology has to offer it is now totally possible for a musician to make, produce and distribute their own music. It’s still hard work and the profits are still hard to come by, but if we as consumers make an effort to be more conscious about how we buy our music, we could make this chart look a lot nicer for musicians.

(via information is beautiful)

And of course this line of thinking brings me to talk about craft.

While I think it is wonderful that there are so many people out there making, buying and selling craft, I don’t think it’s so wonderful that so many people are adding copyright licenses to their work.  Sadly, I think too many people are doing this because it’s what everyone else does, not because they’ve really thought about it.

Copyright as a way of protecting your work is a very rigid system, and doesn’t allow much flexibility for other people to share, and build upon, your ideas.  And arguably copyright is not that useful a tool if someone does rip off your ideas.

The list of examples of big companies ripping off indie designers is probably 10 times longer than both of my arms combined.  And most of those designers would have a copyright on their work.  But did it do any good stopping them being ripped off?  Clearly not.  So why is it useful?  Well, if you do decide to take someone to court over a copyright violation it is of course helpful to have copyright in the first place.  But you also need to have the legal funds and sadly not many of us have massive bank balances.

What has been more effective recently is the use of the internet in the naming and shaming of copyright violations.  Being named and shamed by big name websites can be enough for violators to pull the offending products.  But of course this doesn’t cover lost income.  But certainly if enough of us decide to boycott companies that rip off indie designers, they’ll certainly lose some.

But back to Creative Commons, if we, as indie designers and makers use Creative Commons licenses we still retain the ability to legally protect our work.  CC licenses are based on copyright, the difference is

“Creative Commons licenses give you the ability to dictate how others may exercise your copyright rights—such as the right of others to copy your work, make derivative works or adaptations of your work, to distribute your work and/or make money from your work. They do not give you the ability to restrict anything that is otherwise permitted by exceptions or limitations to copyright—including, importantly, fair use or fair dealing—nor do they give you the ability to control anything that is not protected by copyright law, such as facts and ideas.” (source)

This means if someone uses some of your work to inspire some of theirs they have to source you as opposed to a copyright license where they’d have to pretend they’d never heard of you.  Which is a bit sad really.  Because wouldn’t you rather hear about the work you’re inspiring? And more importantly, wouldn’t you like your customers to hear about it too?

So, as a cross stitch pattern designer, I put a Creative Commons license on all of my work.  My license says you can’t re-sell my ideas but you can change them so long as you share them with the public under a similar license.  This means you can buy my pattern and share it with your stitching group (something most cross stitch designers HATE).  I also allow people to sell finished pieces that result from the sale of my patterns so long as they’re hand stitched and they acknowledge me as the designer.  If I had a simple copyright on my patterns, people wouldn’t technically be able to do that.

On a philosophical level, CC licenses allow me to proudly put my work into a community based sphere while still enabling myself to earn a (very) small income from my work.  I get the best of both worlds because I can design, make and sell like any other crafter but I also get to develop creative relationships with my customers – whom I can now treat as friends and colleagues.

As you can see CC enables non-heirarchical relationships.  And I reckon that’s what craft is all about, don’t you?

Copyright is something worth paying attention to if you like to stitch and sell things out of books (or write books for that matter).  I’ve seen tons of people that sell stitched pieces from a popular pattern books.  I’m pretty sure in most cases the author doesn’t mind but if one day their publisher decided they did mind (since it’s usually the publisher that holds the copyright), it would be within their legal rights to sue all of those makers for damages.  That would be both sad for the makers and the authors.

The other big issue that copyright and craft raises of course is if we have the right to copyright craft.

Craft is part of our culture.  And the massive body of ideas, skills, designs and techniques that make up what we call ‘craft’ is the product of millennia of practitioners sharing their work.  It is in fact, our cultural commons.  We all own it, so who says some of us have the right do draw a fence around some of it and call it ours and then charge others for the right to use it?

I would argue we most certainy don’t.  But it is happening, and it’s not just techniques, styles and designs that are being copyrighted, patented and trademarked, but even very common terms and sayings within craft practise including this most famous example.

I hope the craft community can have more discussions around these issues so we can educate ourselves about what this all means.  And more importantly, make some decision about how we, as a community, want to treat and protect the knowledge that we, as a community, hold and own.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

More resources:

creativecommons.org
archive.org
freemusicarchive.org
Phlow Magazine
aaahh records
Beep! Beep! Back up the truck

Track listing:

1. Princess Melodiae – Aleksi Virta (…Meets Torsi)
2. The Confrontation – Crookram (Through Windows)
3. Bag of Nothingness – Comfort Fit (Bag of Nothingness)
4. Les Mains Sales – Dustmotes (Beats for the Subverted)
5. Grizzly – The Banjo Consortium (Fall Is For Lovers)
6. Bracken Bed – Malty Media (Nivel Del Mar – Sounds for Soulsurfers)
7. A Heart That Beats No More – Ryan Harvey (Rise Like Lions)
8. Rise Like Lions – Brenna Sahatjian (Rise Like Lions)
9. Pirates – Entertainment For The Braindead (Roadkill)
10. Treehouse Lullaby – The Wind Whistles (Animals Are People Too)
11. Making Your Own Stuff – The Wind Whistles (Animals Are People Too)
12. Resolutions – Entertainment For The Braindead (Hydrophobia)
13. Nightlighter – Big Blood (Big Blood & the Bleeding Hearts)
14. Childhood Friend – Emilie Lund (Emilie Lund EP)
15. That I Love You – Het Gloren (Acrobaat)
16. Barefoot Girl - Twizzle ((Nivel Del Mar – Sounds for Soulsurfers)
17. Satisfied Mind – My Bubba & Mi (How It’s Done In Italy)
18. Through Windows – Crookram (Through Windows)

Enjoy
xox

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We’ve got two!

Woke up to contractions on the morning of the 18th. They were steady at about half an hour apart most of the day. So I spent it in bed saving up energy, snoozing, playing mindless computer games etc. Tara – our 3 year old – decided to put nail polish in her eye so Karl nipped her to the doctor in the morning. Can never all be about mum!

My contractions picked up around 6pm and by about 9.30 the midwife was around and I was down to 5 min gaps. All was going pretty normal until about midnight when I started to feel really frustrated because it felt like I really wasn’t progressing. I didn’t have any control around my groin. Couldn’t relax or push or anything. It felt numb, like I’d had a local anaesthetic. But it sure as hell hurt everywhere else, despite the awesome relaxing power of our birthing pool.

Before my labour I’d spent a fair amount of time meditating on the birth of my first child. Since that was such a dream birth I wanted to be able to visualise it happening again! But it turned out that preparation came in more handy in helping me identify when things weren’t progressing like last time.

At about 1am I started to really feel like there was something wrong and started talking about getting me to a hospital. My waters still hadn’t broken so the midwife suggested we try breaking them first and see if that moves things along. So we gave it a go, but they were so tight they wouldn’t break. Spent another hour in the pool and then tried again. This time they broke and it made a massive difference. 5 mins later we gave birth to a baby girl!

Had some nice time cuddling her in the water but it was a bit hard to bring her up high on my chest as her cord was really short. About 5 mins later I started getting more contractions and really had the need to push. I figured it was just the placenta and deciding that I was well and truly over it just pushed it out. But when it came out it only went halfway and stuck. I reached down to feel what was going on and it felt really hard. My midwife got me to pull my hips up so she could have a good look. Her first panicky thought was that I’d pushed out my uterus since it was so hard. But then we both saw a foot!

Holy crap call ambulance!

I had a boy twin yet to come out and he was breach. The paramedics on the phone told me to get out of the pool and onto a chair with my legs up high and just push him out. That was the most intense 10 minutes of my life. I was pushing and pushing but baby still wasn’t coming out.  I then experienced this amazing moment of clarity and my brain just clicked on and said you’ve got another baby and he needs your help, get him out now! So I took a deep breath and pushed until out he flew. Through the midwifes hands even..

Just as she was cutting him out of his placenta which was still in tact, the paramedics ran in and took over care. He had a cord around his neck, wasn’t breathing and had no pulse. After 5 mins of resus they got his pulse back but were still taking care of his breathing when they took him to hospital. I was then able to birth the first placenta – which was delightfully easy after all the other bits! It was last to come out since she was on top and had pushed past her brother to come out – thus the intense labour! We spent about half an hour calming down, cleaning up, feeding baby girl etc then followed to the hospital.

Brilliantly, my three year old stayed asleep through all of this!

We then had the most intense week ever. Long story short, he suffered from Hypoxic Ischemic Encephalopathy, basically a shortage of oxygen and blood flow to the brain which can be really really serious. At one point there was also evidence of a stroke. The first couple of days he was having frequent seizures and was looking very ill. We were bracing ourselves for some pretty severe brain damage and early on there was conversations about the possibility of decisions around life support. But since then he has done nothing but improve. And on the following Monday we finally got him to have an MRI scan which came back normal. Including the news that the stroke probably didn’t happen, it was swelling on the brain which looked like a stroke. That’s now gone. So while he’s still got a way to go before he’s called a healthy baby his chances at a ‘normal’ life are almost on par as with any new baby. It’s been nothing short of a miracle – hugely helped by an amazing care team in the hospital. He truly couldn’t have been in better hands.

After a couple of days out of intensive care and into special care, the team decided to transfer him to our local hospital which also has a special care unit. This meant it was heaps easier for us to visit. And a less intensive unit meant the focus was very much on bringing him home. And it was only a couple of days before the doctor invited us to ‘bed in’ with him so we stayed at the hospital and were in charge of his care but the nurses were on hand if we needed them.

Unbelievably, less than two weeks after a pretty traumatic birth, we got to bring our little legend home.

We named the babies Curtis Taonga and Jamari (hasn’t got a middle name yet..). When I told my Dad the news on the first day he said oh he was just being a gentleman and letting his sister go first. I really liked that take on it. So given Curtis means courteous and polite we thought that was appropriate. His middle name is a Maori word and it means treasured object or person. He’s our polite treasure! Jamari is French and means strong girl warrior. Since she likes to lead the way! She’s an awesome baby and is doing everything she should be. Sleeps like a legend!

I’m recovering pretty well. I had a couple of stitches and ended up having a blood transfusion a couple of days after delivery. But home and settled now and starting to get our heads around the realities of three kids… We have to buy a new car, eek!

So that’s a really long story short. It’s been insanely surreal. It’s only been a week but already our lives have been completely changed. But thanks to some serious amounts of positive energy, unbelievably amazing support from friends and family and liberal doses of tears, it’s definitely a change for the good.

Wow we have a wee tribe!

Lots and lots of love and kisses.

Rayna and the rest of the Braybrook massif!

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In knittning class we’ve learned to use both hand knitting machines and big industrial ones, and in weaving class we’ve worked with several kinds of  weaving looms. And I love it, especially the labs. It’s not often that school is so fun you forget the time.

A sample of what I’ve been doing:

Owls from an old cross stitch book that me and my lab partner modified to work as a weaving pattern. The owls are about 2 cm wide.

A knitted skull fabric I made on one of the big circular knitting machines. Each skull is about one cm high. (I put the coin there to show the scale, and only afterwards realized that it’s probably not so useful if you don’t use Swedish money and know how big it is. )

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(Click for a bigger image)

And a close-up to show off the stitches.

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Hear ye all ye westside crafters!

My awesome clever friend Jo is running a series of FREE craft workshops in Braybrook, yes, Braybrook!  I know! Exciting!

You should come.  And bring your friends.

Hooray!

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It was a tough call to make. But when I looked at it from an efficiency perspective it was quite obvious. I don’t actually craft in there very often. I was limited to being in there when Tara was asleep otherwise a) I couldn’t watch her or b) she’d tear the room apart. So I really wasn’t in there much. And it was turning into a giant hoard room. Hardly practising what I preach when it comes to sustainable crafting.

So I decided to set myself a challenge to consolidate the room to one filing cabinet and one tall set of shelves. I’m only allowed to keep what will fit in there. This means getting rid of a heap of stuff.

Readers might remember last year Cate from Polka Dot Rabbit started the Buy Nothing Craft Month. It completely changed my crafting. Rather than buying piles of crap because I might make something out of it one day. I stopped buying and started making. It did truly radical things to my output and my savings! Other than embroidery floss and sometimes aida fabric I’ve pretty much stopped buying stuff. But I got given a fair bit so the stash wasn’t going down too far.

But now I’m getting serious!

My mission is to make, give away, or sell as much out of that room as I can over the next couple of months. And I’m gonna share the results. But to add a bit of a challenge I’m going to try not to throw any of it away. So I’m trying to find uses for all the scraps too. Given the massive environmental impacts of the textiles industry, I believe we’re obliged to at least try to find uses for our scraps. And given the resources out there, it shouldn’t be too difficult.

A little while ago a friend gave me the book Generation T – 108 ways to transform a t-shirt (warning – last time I opened their website there was a blimmin loud auto play video on it that started with an ad. I’d mute before clicking..). It’s a fantastic resource and filled with heaps of ideas on how to reuse fabric. While most of the projects do rely on t-shirts in an existing form, a fair few of them don’t. And a bunch of them don’t even need t-shirt fabric.

I’ve been inspired by a couple of projects. Firstly there’s a great tutorial on how to make an ‘it’ doll. A nice wee baby friendly gender-neutral soft doll. Given how livid the mainstream toy industry makes me, I thought it made perfect sense to get organised and make my own. Now I have a stash of future presents and stall items for markets!

The first bunch I made I used some terry towling I had lying around.

Believe it or not, I wasn’t actually intending to make aliens.  It was just a fluke I picked the green fabric.  And it wasn’t until I finished them I had that ‘would you look at that’ moment.  I gave one to the neighbours wee boy and he loves chewing on it.  The best things about them is that they can be thrown in the washing machine if they get dirty – perfect baby toys!

I decided to have another go making them but with a bit of variation.

I call these ones ‘little hugs’.  Gave them extra long arms so they can give their friends lots of big cuddles.  And I gave them faces; stitched on, so there’s no dangerous fally off choky bits.

I’m quite proud of them, they look really cool!  And were nice and easy to make.  I think all up it took me about three hours to make four of them at a time.  Can’t wait to give them to some certain little people…

Next up is still a WIP.  But I decided to get into my scraps bag and make something fun with all the crazy unmatched scraps in there.  Another project in the Generation T book is a couple of great patterns for rugs.  I decided to make a braided one as a new mat for our toilet.  Our existing one is pretty damn ugly.  And it’s a room in our house that needs more craft in it!

All you have to do is cut your fabric into strips, stitch the strips together (I used a zig zag stitch on the sewing machine but you can hand stitch it no problems), braid three lengths together and then using a running stitch/whip stitch, stitch the braid on the under side into a spiral.  It’s a bit slow to do but it looks cool!  And a great way to use a heap of fabric.  I started with three lengths about 3 metres long and I’ve got a rug about 30cm wide.  I need to add another couple of metres worth I reckon, to make it big enough for a loo mat.

This last shot shows the underside.  The red thread is my running stitch holding it together.

This is a great project for using very different types of fabric since they get mixed up so nicely.  I used everything from nice japanese cottons to upholstery fabric selvedge.  It’s a fun way to remember all your past projects!  Will post a pic when it’s finished.

My craft room is also supplying all the resources I need for the Interventionist Guide.  Other than a roll of gutter guard I picked up from an op shop.  Everything in the show is coming out of my stash.

I’m also planning to sell a few things.  Mostly things I know other people could really appreciate that I’m simply not appreciating enough.  All in the Radical Rags store and living in the vintage supplies section.  Yesterday I listed a couple of Golden Hands books.  They’re in excellent condition.  Don’t think the original owner ever used them.  And I haven’t either..  I’ve got a few of them to list yet so if you’re a collector and have a hole in your collection, let me know and I’ll let you know if I’ve got it.

So it’s a blimmin big mission but one I’m determined to complete.  Stay tuned for updates.

In the meantime I have to share this pic of Tara.  I so wish I was as cool as her

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