A young pirate and a winter moon...

Two pieces I've been working on in the last 2 or 3 weeks.  The pirate is a sort of commission, one of two paintings for a very old friend...two paintings I  have been procrastinating over for....embarrassed whisper...about 18 months!  I'm simply not good with commissions, I worry about them too much and it makes it impossible to even start.  When I paint a painting that I like (or at least am mostly happy with), and someone else happens to like the finished product, that is wonderful.  But to paint something for someone, to try and live up to expectations (because there are always expectations even when people don't mean to have any), to try and make my work as good as, or better, than what they see in their mind's eye, that is another kettle of fish entirely.  But here is one finished finally, now I must start on the other.  I hope it's as good as she dreamed it would be!

I think it's called 'Land Ho!'

And a little bit of stitching that I began just before Christmas, inspired by all the wonderful photos of snow on my favourite blogs across the sea.  You must understand that as an Aussie, snow has a magical fairytale quality for me, I've only ever experienced it once, and so such pictures are not only a delight but almost a necessity in the depths of our long hot summer!  I'm still working on this one, it's just a bit of fun, so I don't know how it will turn out.

Wildberries and old pants...

Oddly enough, it's the pants in the cooking pot, not the Wildberries!  The inaugural issue of 'Wildberries: Journal of Mythic Fantasy' is out.  I have a poem ('Beauty Remembers') and two paintings in this issue.  You can view the issue online here, and also download the PDF if you prefer.  Please pop over and have a look, there is a great selection of poems and short stories, and don't forget to let Joel know what you think, it's a labour of love and he has put so much into it.

More of this happening now...an old holey pair of cotton 'bali' pants gifted by their owner.  Typically, I forgot to take a 'before' photo, so I dug out the discarded waistband to show the original colour.  I was hoping for more of a greenish hue, given that the onion skins were over-dyeing a blueish fabric.  But that is part of the mystery of natural dyes, you don't get a guaranteed result, you have to be patient and wait and see.  I rather like it, nonetheless, but I do want to incorporate more greens and reddish browns into this piece...well, I think I do, though it's very amorphous at the moment...so I may have to resort to commercial dyes.  I'm tempted to buy some of the gorgeous hand dyed fabrics on Etsy and the like, and I may do that, but I would like the majority of this piece to be old bits of fabric that have some meaning to me.  But it will be a long time in the making, so who knows what it will end up wearing!  It will have story incorporated into it too, but that is something that will develop in the weaving and stitching, not something that I can decide on now.  That's part of the journey, the story unfolds as the cloth unfolds.  Perhaps it will be a sad story...perhaps happy.  I won't know until I get there.

Christmas pendants/hangers...and some slow stitching...

Christmas is coming and like many people, I love handmade decorations.  Of course, I have my fair share of plastic (ie. small people friendly) ones, but I can probably jettison a few of them now that my girls are big enough to be a little more careful when decorating the tree.  So with that in mind, I thought I'd make some that were special, OOAK, unique and customised.  A Christmas decoration that is a perfect gift all by itself.  These are the first, painted today.  An old mother winter, with her wise face and long silver tresses, and two little tiny faery babies fast asleep in their tiny cradles, rocking gently high up in the Christmas tree.  Customised with name (on front) and dates (on back) added, these two would be perfect as a gift for a new born's first Christmas.  I'm still twiddling around trying to decide on details, but thought I'd 'show and tell' to see what you thought.  I've done a very rough 'dummy' up in photoshop to show you how the lettering might go, though it would be hand-painted on the actual pieces.  As with my other hangers, these would come in a small hand-made gift bag, and I'll probably include a little certificate of authenticity or similar.  Any suggestions are welcome, including what you think would be a reasonable price...yes, I'm hand-balling that to you, my trusty followers, because it's the part I hate the most.  I am NOT the fastest artist out there, each faery baby took almost an hour to paint (and the wise winter woman took almost an hour and a half...but her face was being very troublesome!), though these are the very first and hopefully I might get faster with practice!

There is a little of this happening now...VERY slow stitching this is...I suspect it will be a long while in the making.

Mending memory...

A little of this happening now, inspired by Jude.  Not the usual kind of mending I suppose, patching a hole or fixing a drooping hem.  But a mending still, and not just of the cloth.  Mental mending?  I wish I could stitch the bits of myself that feel torn or worn thin back together as easily.

Another kind of patchwork memory mending.  Digital patchwork.  Fabulous in its own way, but I can't help feeling it lacks substance if you can't flip it over and see the tiny stitches holding it together, see where the joins were made, where one piece finishes and another piece starts.  A kind of false memory, masquerading as a true one.  But I suppose memory is like that anyway.  A memory years old can be undone by learning something new...a truth you thought was absolute suddenly isn't any more, something you believed in dissolves into nothing, having never existed at all, or perhaps becomes something entirely different. Nothing is fixed, even the past is mutable.  History is written in sand.

My maternal grandmother's wedding...a little Photoshop magic

Dyeing....

Scraps and rags dyed with brown onion skins.  An old pair of jeans with such an enormous rip in the backside, they were irredeemable as clothing.  Some silk snippets...a beautiful cream piece with delicate embroidered bees, some recycled torn sari, and an old scarf that fell apart in the wash.  The things I might have once put in the bin, but am rethinking now, rediscovering their tattered beauty.  A piece of pale apricot silk...left over from my wedding dress...with a 'shibori' style experiment in resist stitching.  The poor onion skins had dyed everything else by this time, so the colour is quite delicate, but it worked well enough for me to see the potential.  I will be trying it again.

I had plans for these, but I think I've changed my mind.  I think I am going to just start, and see where it takes me, see what I end up with.  Something just for me.  I won't be selling this piece, it will be large I think, and take a long time.  Too much to put a price on, and it will spoil the pleasure of making it if I worry about that.  It might become a gift...but I think it might just stay with me.  There will be memories stitched into it.

A little stitched choker I made for a lunch with some old friends.

And I've added a Facebook widget in the right column...so you can 'like' me...if you like.  :)

A birthday...

My little shining light, who brought joy back into the world for me when my heart needed mending all those years ago, turned nine yesterday.  My little Autumn faery.

I feel a little as if I have lost something precious.  Perhaps I need to tie up a loaf of bread in a spotted hanker-chief, sling it on the end of a stick over my shoulder, and set out on a quest to find it.  I would also need a warm woollen cloak with a hood, and a song to sing.  You can't go on a quest without a song to sing as you tramp the by-ways.  And the cloak of course, to curl up in at night under the stars.

This is my 100th blog post.  Thank you to all who have wandered by, and stayed to hear my stories and see the things I've made, and left behind such wise words of support and encouragement.  It has been wonderful.  There will be more to come.

Faeries (or Fairies) and the next project(s)

There were nine excited little faeries (and two little pirates, one excited and one, unusually for him, very shy) at the Pickled Fairy in Fremantle on Sunday.  A glorious sunny, warm day, despite the fact that it IS supposed to be the middle of Winter and we DO need some rain.  Much fun was had, much faery bouncing happened (possibly due in part to the amount of Faery cake consumed), and a welcome flash of green among a sea of pink.  It's not that I really hate pink, but as the mother of two girls I am SOOOO sick of it.  But that's another story.

That's big sis in the background wearing her purple cloak

No, I didn't make these wings...luckily found this pair in exactly the right colour.

Awaiting the arrival of the Faery Queen.

Faeries conferring with mummy faery...no grey hairs showing thankfully!

I have two and a half weeks before the next birthday to finish the Autumn Faery.  Unfortunately I couldn't get wings in the right colours (too much pink, again!) so I've made this pair.  Well, it's a joint effort, as Beloved hubby made the wire frames, out of coat-hangers.  A pair of red stockings that I've worn once I think (yes, I DID wash them after), and some gold acrylic and gold glitter paint.

This is the front.  I've since added gold glitter over the whole thing.

And here's the back, with some of the glitter in the top corners.  

So, I still need to sew a red leaf hood, a pixie skirt, and some pixie pockets, and make a goblin stone, a magical invisibility jewel, a faery necklace and of course, a wand!  Phew!

*   *   *

While I'm at it, I'm making a new sign for the Mulberry Lane Cafe.  My almost nine year old has lately shown an interest in 'secret' clubs and the like, wanting 'spy girl' items from school bookclub.  I went through this stage too, about the same age or a little older, and so my favourite books were of course, Enid Blyton's 'Secret Seven' and 'Famous Five'.  So I thought I'd try and get some of them for her, and was very chuffed to get hold of a new boxed set of the first ten 'Secret Seven' adventures for her upcoming birthday.

But...my beautiful girl is struggling a bit with school, and is having some trouble with spelling and maths (though not as much as SHE thinks she is).  She also told me last week that she doesn't like reading and sometimes just turns the pages and pretends during free-reading time at school.  This is something we will have to sort out, as it's far more to do with her confidence level than her actual ability...she reads perfectly well at home with me, but she gets flustered when she hits a word she doesn't immediately know.  She seems to think she SHOULD know everything, and is embarrassed and upset if she doesn't...and she thinks she's letting me down somehow.

It's hard to understand how I could not have noticed, and I feel bad, but I suppose I just presumed my children would be good at the things I was and probably not at the things I wasn't good at.  Silly really, but there you have it.  So as a life-long book lover, I buy books, beautiful children's books, whenever I see them on sale.  So she has lots of books sitting there, 'waiting for her to read them' is how she put it, and making her feel guilty because she isn't.  Oh dear, my poor little one, all this angst and pressure at only eight.  And she also got upset because she thought I had probably bought her books for her birthday and it would be MORE books waiting to be read.  And of course...I have!  I thought they would be perfect, and now...well, I realise they're not so perfect.

I know she can read, and I know that for me, and for so many other people, the love of books can be traced back to one book that as a child just grabbed our imaginations and made us want to read.  So I thought that perhaps, rather than presenting her with the whole, daunting set, I might just give her the first one to start with, to be read together with mummy so we can get through any hard words easily, and if it gets a bit too hard or too tiring, mummy can take over and she can listen.  And to help make it a little more fun, I'm making this.  Perhaps I'll make some special members' only badges like the Secret Seven have as well.  And maybe she'll let mummy be an auxiliary member...I can supply the 'lashings of ginger beer', and hugs whenever they're needed.

Looking for magic...

I suppose it's something I always knew, but sitting on the couch in my family room yesterday morning, basking in the winter sun, coffee in hand, just day dreaming a bit...it occurred to me that what I'm looking for, what I've always been looking for, is magic.  Not wriggle-your-nose-turn-into-a-toad magic, but some indefinable quality of beauty, mystery and wonder.  At first it dawned on me that that was the quality I looked for in a house.  That what I wanted in a home when I was ten years old, is still what I want in a home today, what I've tried to create.  Some special spot where magic might happen: a secret nook, a twisted drooping tree, a lovely window, a climbing rose over a pergola, a corner of a room even, where something wonderful could happen.  The house I spent most of my childhood in didn't have much magic actually in it.  A long brown brick box with a verandah, built in 1974, on a concrete pad, one story only (2 story houses being something rare and therefore very magical that only appeared in the books I read), with its fair share of bad 70s wallpaper and bathroom tiles.  But I managed to conjure a little in my own room, with its green walls and pictures of fairytale castles and Cornish villages cut from travel brochures and stuck to my brown built-in wardrobe doors.  And my small bookcase (built by my dad) that held my precious Narnia books, and others of a similar vein.

Outside in the garden there were places under the grapevine, and the frangipani and the May.  There was the moss covered old log at my friend's house, their old overgrown orchard and the huge pine tree at the bottom of their very large garden.  And a little further away, there was a magical valley with a stream running through it, where I played and dammed the creek and tried to catch tadpoles and jilgies, where huge granite outcrops stood like sentinels facing the setting sun, tall gum trees waved in the wind and magpies sang their warbling songs and cheekily expected tit-bits.  It even had a magical name...'Whistlepipe Gully'.  In the last house at the end of the road before Whistlepipe began, lived an old lady who had once been an art teacher.  Who knows if she might have been a kindly old wise-woman as well.

I told myself stories about this place, invented characters and names for the stones, a language for it, and a whole array of scribbled ideas about the different kinds of magic that existed there, what creatures were aligned with each, and charms and spells to use for protection in encounters with them.  I think I still carry this with me now, and I go looking for it all, that sense of otherworldly-ness, in my mundane life.  And so I realise that houses that I like and dislike are judged on their potential for magical possibilities.  This is why, I can now see, modern glass, chrome and steel boxes hold little attraction for me, and old, rustic, slightly decrepit houses made of wood (especially wood framed windows) always do.

The house my parents moved into when I was 22 (and me with them...late to leave the nest) definitely had magic.  The house itself had some (wooden windows for a start).  But it was the garden that truly captured my imagination.  It was the garden I'd always wanted.  Big, and green, with real full-size trees including, most magical of all, an oak tree.  I was married beneath that tree.  Sadly it is no longer standing, the house gone with it, victims of 'developers'.

But it isn't just houses.  As I thought about this, I realised that I do this with almost everything.  Clothes, furnishings, jewellery, music, shoes...everything needs to have a touch of magical potential.  How odd I think now, to decide between two kitchen implements on the basis of which one seems to have more magic in it (new wooden spoons win over cheap new stainless steel, but an old metal spoon found in a dusty Op Shop's back shelves would win over both).  Silver jewellery is almost always more magical that gold.  Green velvet and suede.  Boots.  Red Hair.  Long skirts.  Old tea cups with roses and gold edging.  Second-hand books with scribbles in the margins.  Sea-glass.  Feathers.  Shells.  Rocks with holes in them.  Every time I pick something up, there's a little voice in the back of my mind, the voice of a child steeped in Narnia and Faeries and Green Men and Hobbits, that asks "but is it MAGIC!?"

One forest faery outfit finished, and a happy newly six year old faery!

Trouble with forgetful faeries.

Oh dear.  Small five year old person with enormous eyes in downcast face looked at me on Monday morning as I wandered into the family room still half asleep.  "Mummy...the tooth faery didn't come."  OH DEAR!  She showed me her tiny tooth, still sitting in the bottom of the special tooth/trinket box with the violets on top.  Off the top of my head I made some excuse about Sunday having been such a lovely day there were probably lots of people out playing sport and lots of teeth being accidently knocked out, so perhaps the Tooth Faery just got a bit overwhelmed.  And that I was SURE she'd be back on Monday night.  So after the girls were off to school, Monday found the Tooth Faery squinting through her magnifying glasses trying to write a very tiny apology on a small leaf from the Crepe Myrtle in the backyard.  As it turned out, the rather disorganised Tooth Faery then managed to forget AGAIN...until about 12.24am Tuesday morning.  And then she couldn't find a $2 coin, so had to scrounge around for two $1 coins.  Then she came up with the brilliant plan of scattering some glitter around too, just to make sure everyone understood it really and truly WAS the Tooth Faery...as the girls know how much I HATE glitter because it gets into everything and is impossible to clean up properly!  But to cut a long story short, there was much excited shouting (though mostly from my eight year old) in the morning of "Mummy, come and see, come and SEEEEE!" and a much happier little person.  So I had to go and get my glasses to read the message, and goodness, faeries' spelling is ATROCIOUS, but it turns out she got lost.  By the way, I believe that's 'lerning' not 'lerking', although perhaps Tooth Faeries do 'lerk' (or rather, 'lurk')...how else do they know when a tooth has dropped out?

While we're on the subject of faeries...the new outfits are coming along slowly but surely.  'Slowly' partly because I have so many ideas in my head and I know I can't do them all, so I faff about trying to decide which one I should go with.  But mostly because my sewing skills are rather BASIC and my ideas are not quite so basic, so there tends to be a discrepancy between the two that is filled with cursing and swearing and a lot of unpicking and re-sewing.  But here's where I'm up to.

Still a bit more embroidery to be done on the front, a couple of spirally swirls.  The headband is finished, with more lovely Autumn leaves, roses and ribbons.  I have a red long sleeved top to go underneath.

Detail on the headband.

This is the 'Forest' Faery as of yesterday.  Headband finished, but lots to do on the jerkin.

Detail on headband.  Green leaves on this one.

Jerkin as of this morning.  Not quite finished, but getting there.  And managed to buy a green top cheap (in the 'boys' section of course, because all you can get in the 'girls' section is pink, black and lilac...aarggh!), but it was a skivvy and miss doesn't like skivvies, so the polo neck had to come off, and the cuffs as well.  Now I need to find/make/dye some leggings to match!

Detail of front.  My sewing skills, or perhaps more my pattern drafting skills, are pretty woeful and this isn't quite sitting right, but I'm trying to be very Zen about it...IT'S JUST A PLAY DRESS-UP!!!!

A mutual love of Scots Gaelic music may have redeemed my Country and Western faux pas!

Over a week this time, oh dear!  But I HAVE been doing something, really, I'll show you in a moment!

I think I mentioned my 'foot-in-mouth' trick at my first guitar lesson?  My teacher asked me what kind of music I liked, and my answer was "everything except Country and Western."  Of course, it turned out that he loves C&W...oh dear, please excuse me while I remove my shoe from between my teeth!  I meant that 50s style, very even rhythm C&W, not ALL C&W.  But anyway...we were chatting today and I mentioned that I used to sing in a group that sang in Scots gaelic (it's one of those things that's great for those "10 weird facts you didn't know about me" lists) and it turns out that he was born in Glasgow (came out to Australia when he was 10, so not a trace of accent) and loves Scots Gaelic music...he even called it 'Garlic' music which is closer to the Scots pronunciation, most people here don't know that.  My grand-dad was also born in Glasgow and...OK, more weird family facts...my mum and dad met because they both played in Highland Pipe Bands.  So the lesson was abandoned for the last 10 minutes as we chatted about our favourite pieces of music, singers, soundtracks (both of us have the music to 'Cal' and nobody else ever seems to have heard of it), the connections between Irish fiddle music and Bluegrass, and a mutual love of bagpipes.  He's promised to introduce some Irish and Scots pieces into my lessons, and I promised to bring along a CD of the group I was with.  I'm looking forward to the next lesson!

As for what I've been busy with...well, I have two little people birthday's coming up, a 6th and a 9th, and as they've rather grown out of the faery outfits I made for them in the past, I promised them new ones.  So a little green Forest Faery, and a Russet coloured Autumn Faery are in progress...here's some pics of the jerkins so far, with the fingerless gloves I made to match.  Lots still to make, and of course, as usual, my sewing skills aren't up to my grand ideas, so there's a fair amount of cursing and un-picking happening.  I must remember they're JUST dress-ups!

No, I didn't make the leaves...I've been keeping them for years and decided this was a perfect opportunity to use them.

Lots still to do on this one...slightly different design, supposed to look like it's actually made out of leaves.

I'm hoping the leaf 'points' will flair out a bit.

And the same at the back.

And I'll leave you with a beautiful Gaelic song by Capercaillie, from the 'Rob Roy' soundtrack, 'Ailein Duinn'...brings back memories, we used to sing this one.