Marvellous Marmalade

Mmmmm Marmalade - but I'm fussy about my marmalade, it has to be chunky and it has to have loads of ginger in it. So I make my own and with oranges in season and cheap ...

Pretty! and as a bonus, the house smells wonderful :-)

Nothing but Blue Skies from Now On

The weather has been all grey and wet here for ummm (feels like) ages ... so on the weekend I spun this up to remind myself that sometimes the sky looks more like this:

It is "ReadySpin" from Bendigo Woolen Mills - which I dyed with Sandolan dyes to a pretty sky blue - then I spun it with approx 16% undyed bamboo fibre. I think the shiny bamboo looks like Cirrus clouds - perhaps with silver linings :-)

I'm going to sell this in "a Coffee and a Yarn" - which is a fab combination of yarn shop + cafe in Newtown. Ellie, whose shop/cafe it is, has taken some of my hand-spun yarns and beanies on commission and they've been selling quite well :-) Yea!

Knit knit knitty knit

I've finished my "198 yds of Heaven" already :-) and as I have so much knitting to do for other people this little lace shawlette has been something of a guilty pleasure - like chocolate really and in these photos it even looks chocolate-ish.

Rather more beige was this knitting job - part of a costume for the musical I'm working on. It was too large for the new performer and the solution was to shorten it through the shoulders - so I un-knitted then re-knitted the shoulders, the neck band and arm-hole bands. A lovely texture and really easy, 6stitch 2row blocks of alternating Knit & Purl stitches.

Autumnal Crafting

Must be something to do with the season - I've been working with a lot of yummy russet browns, tans, oranges and berry colours.

There is a new yarn shop in my neighborhood - called "A Coffee and A Yarn" it is both a cafe + a yarn shop ... in other words, it is my version of heaven :-) Spent part of last weekend there are simply couldn't resist the last 2 balls of heavenly soft, Eli Riva BabySilk Cashmere (70% baby alpaca, 20% silk 10% cashmere) in a yummy russet / brick colour. Have already started turning it into a "shawlette" (198yds. of Heaven by Christy Verity this link through Ravelry).

This is going to be a match 'made in heaven' for my favourite overcoat - as well as an excellent match with my kitchen tiles :-)

In a previous post I showed you some crochet trim I got to do at work (being paid to do craft - Heavenly!) well, we had to alter the orange version and so I had to replace the crochet trim. This time it was a cotton yarn and as I did the unravelling of the original trim, I was able to work out what they had done originally and reproduce it ...
This photo also shows the fabric of the garment - knitted cotton - made on a knitting machine or a commercially manufactured fabric (I think).

Another Etsy Front Page

I wondered why I made 2 sales on Etsy yesterday ... one of my hats was on the Front Page WOOT


the emerald green felt with the peacock feathers :-) I didn't know this treasury had made it to the front page but did some sleuthing to find the reason for the sudden burst of interest in my shop. Being on the Front Page of Etsy is great :-)

Vintage Wedding Dress and MonoChromaticism

Stiff tulle and shiny satin - first in white and now in black?



Anyone would think this was a production of the ballet Swan Lake. Which reminds me of an old joke ... Odette is the white swan - Odile is the black swan and then there is a grey swan called ... Oh Dear. erk!


But I digress - these are not tutus but their close relative - big petticoats for 50's frocks. Seems everyone wants one at the moment - even our cat!
The black is for a black circular skirt that I've altered for a client - the white was for my recent bride; that vintage dress make-over I've blogged about previously and now that her wedding has been - I can show you all that make-over involved.

BEFORE: dress from the early 1950s, nylon fabric with all-over embroidery of clover leaves over nasty acetate - the nylon was quite grey, the acetate had gone a slightly pink beige. The original frock had wide straps (tucked inside in that photo) a very strangely shaped bodice and huge circle ++ skirt - but no petticoat so sad and limp. And that bodice fitted not at all and nowhere!

AFTER: unfortunately I have no decent photos of the finished frock on the bride - just a quick click at a fitting

here it is on on the mannequin. After washing and much soaking I got the fabrics as white as possible - the nylon brightened considerably. I completely re-made the bodice, mounting the fragile nylon onto a new, very boned bodice of thick satin - this worked as a corset and achieved the 1950's figure.

We kept the original slightly dropped waistline, adding a black silk sash - with the zip being in the side seam that pussy-cat bow is permanent (lots of costumier's trickery here!) The bride wanted a massive bell-shaped skirt - and with 12m of stiff tulle ... that's what she got :-)












I also made her a veil - all frilly and fluted with lots of fishing line - again no photo on the bride - but at the front it fell to her shoulders, nearly reaching the bow on the dress at the back.
It all fell from a comb with a simple little tiara-ette I made from diamantes.