Busy head - busy hands

I am busy getting ready for Australian Quilt Market next weekend and I seem to have been struck down with a thinking bug. I've been thinking small thinks, and tricky thinks and some really big thinks. 

When this happens, I need  some brainless repetitive craft to work on and so,

I have been busying my hands by cutting felt and making kits for the alphabet animals.

They are all in my Big Cartel shop, and each animal is available in natural or multi-coloured.

The kits (or fabric packs) don't contain a pattern but they do have delicious 100% wool felt, safety eyes, buttons for joints and embroidery threads. the patterns are in the shop of course but it got too tricky offering with and without pattern versions.

Being easily distracted I have to admit that they a bit of an endangered species. 

( lets call this an experiment)

Do you have a particular craft that you do when you need to think? 

A craft that soothes your mind?

(If you say crochet I may want to hit you)

Soft 5

 Friends, I'm trying but obviously still suck at popping in here.

I've been sewing, getting yelled at in supermarkets and making toast. 

I was trawling the blog this morning looking for a photo that I know I have but apparently I also suck at naming photos. Some of these blog conversations feel like a lifetime ago. I have been reading old posts in that kind of happy sad way when something feels a long way away.

For example: This photo that is quite obviously of a pear shaped pincushion is 

called "soft 5 ". 

The inside of the computer, much like the inside of my mind is arbitrarily organised by someone who thinks they will remember all these weird things when they are needed. History reveals time and time again that this is not true.... and yet I get no better at it.

Posh pears pattern

D is for Deer

A sweeter soul you will never meet. He thinks the best of everyone (people and deers).

This fellow brings my little family of hand sewn animals to six. I love making these !!! I want to make the whole alphabet, so at the current rate of about 3 per year we might get done in about 2021.

This Saturday I'll be teaching a class at The Cotton Factory.  Its a great fun class where you can choose any one of these six little friends to make on the day.

 Hand sewing classes are awesome, very relaxed and apart from the peals of laughter, pretty quiet (in a no sewing machines kind of way).

 The cost of the class includes the pattern, coffee and yummy lunch.

Beginners, novices and never-sewn-a-stitch folk are most welcome.

Which letter will I do next ? Got any ideas? Want to take a guess?

(you might want to check out tomorrow's newsletter as well folks...nudge nudge wink wink)

and when the thinks won't stop........

sometimes you just have to give up and let them out.................

The Honest Bio

I am writing a bio about myself. 

 'Jodie has a house (full of toys) that she shares with Mr Ric Rac, and the fur children, the real children having long since fled in horror"

 'Jodie has reached a point in her life where she can no longer pretend that she likes people more than dogs'

'Jodie thinks writing about herself in the third person makes her sound like a wanker'.

Have I missed anything?

The been away giveaway!

This evening I started on the BIG selvedge project. I know you are all probably sick to death of the selvedge thing by now but I just can't stop myself. You know how most towns have a crazy cat-lady who had about thirty cats? I think that I might become the crazy selvedge lady.

The crazy selvedge lady would cover her own couch in selvedge and wallpaper the laundry in selvedge.........

(the scary thing is there is a part of me that thinks that would be pretty cool.)

So for now these are my selvedge cushions. Gorgeous red linen on the back and bright green zips because that it what I had to hand. I like the backs almost as much as the front. If you want to give them a go, make sure you foundation piece your selvedges to some cotton first for the fronts.

I have been away all weekend . Mr Ric - Rac organised a two night stay somewhere lovely and his mum to babysit , all very strange and romantic and puzzling until he admitted in his particularly Mr Ric -Rac style that it was a birthday present for me.........he'd just gotten the month wrong.... and his mum forgot to turn up for the first night so we had to call in back-up. What a crack up. We had a great time.

So while we were away I held a giveaway. If you commented on either of the last two posts you were entered (whether you liked it or not I guess), and now the following people might like to send me their address and then keep an eye on their post box.

I love the retrospective giveaway and these guys are the winners of a little birdcage.

Curlypops

amandajean

twocheeseplease

Softies for Mirabel

Hello my name is Mirabel

but you can just call me Belle if you want.
I am being a bit grumpy at Jodie because it has tooken her about twenty hundred days to make me be ready and lots of time I was naked with no clothes at all!

I am very special because I am going to find a new home and I will in a auction which is about people winning and paying money to look after kids whose maybe mum or dad is not very well.

Jodie said I have to go to meet a nice person called Pip and she will look after me until I go to a very new home. If you wanted me to come to your house then you would have to know about Softies for Mirabel cause that is where I will be going first before my new house.

I hope my new home has some children who aren’t babies. Do you like babies? I think they look nice when they are all bubbled up in their pushers but when they get let out and get near to you they are all gross and they dribble lots and grab at stuff. And did you know my friend Sara has a baby that pulls hair all the time and makes Sara cry even!

Today at the park I saw a boy who was not very nice at all. At the slide he just pushed in straight in the front – even pushing in to the little kids and he had funny sticky –up hair and I said “you are pushing in” and he told me to go away and I said no he should go away instead and he said I was a baby and I said I wasn’t and then I said he was a stupid head.

Then I dobbered on him to Jodie and she said just to go and play somewhere else and I said I couldn’t because he was just being everywhere. So Jodie came over to the slide and looked at him funny when he tried to push in and I said to her to tell off him but Jodie said you are not allowed to tell off other peoples children , you can only be telling off to your own children and dollies, and I said that you should be able to tell off stupid head boys who are mean with sticky up hair.

After we left the park we had to do jobs which was boring and going to the supermarket which was a bit funner because we bought some nice things and the man at the meat place said aren’t you cute and gave me a piece of meat and I said thank you but he had sticky-up hair like the mean boy at the park so I just held on to the meat and I didn’t eat it and then I dropped it on the floor a bit on purpose, because I thought he was maybe the mean boys dad and that he gave me a poison meat and I told Jodie and she said he was not the mean boys dad because he was too young and that I was being a bit silly.

I said “Well you don’t know everything in the whole wide world”!

Jodie said she thinks it will be a long weekend.........

The thinks you can think...........

I have been thinking this morning. The house is quiet and I have been wandering the past Christmases of my blog and thinking about all that has happened this year.

Did you know that around this time last year I was invited to join in the Stitches and Craft show in Melbourne. That invitation pushed me to have a go at pattern writing. I needed to get and ABN, which means I am actually a business - ooops !

I have been thinking how funny it is that I just fell into this whole "business" thing with no plan , no desire and absolutely no bloody idea what I am doing. As a business ? well lets say I am still working at the day job. I wonder if this business could ever be self-sustaining or if I even want it to be? Do I have the energy needed to take up all those opportunities? Do I want to push ? Do I want to hand over some of the responsibility to someone else, join a distributor or do I want to sit at the kitchen bench folding patterns and popping them into plastic bags in my pyjamas ?

I got to go to Sydney and step waaaaay outside my comfort zone by talking to a room full of people about blogging. I was really really surprised by how much I enjoyed this... I had an absolute blast! I would happily do more of this - all those school report cards were spot on - I can talk !! A LOT !!!

I have met, in real life some of the best people EVER. That whole meeting bloggers thing, at craft group or markets or get-togethers blows me away every time. This meeting and joining and sharing I want to do more of for sure! (and I want to win lotto so I can go and meet all my international friends - a bloggy world tour perhaps ? )

I have amazing friends who are so supportive of this crazy craft adventure and so many of you I have never met. You visit here, and provide a massive cheer-squad, you test my patterns for me and you share awesome stuff all the time. I owe so many thank you's.

I seem to have morphed into a person who makes toys, and I know this disapoints lots of people (and thanks for the emails telling me just how disappointed you are) and maybe it is a strange thing for a 40 year old woman to do - but I love it ! If I had the time and the skill I would make every single toy in my sketchbook....... It seems to make perfect sense in hindsight, I have toys in almost every room of my house. I wonder if this is some deep dark childhood piece of weirdness.....

BUT I also love to make "not-toys" like the robots at the bus stop. I can't explain how much I enjoyed that little project this year.....I really want to get better at that "not-toy" making stuff and better at taking photos .....so much to learn there ...

I think perhaps I am finished with selvedges for now. I'm sorry but that was not really a marriage as it turned out , just a brief but very passionate affair.

I had a market stall which I loved. I had such fun doing that market but I can't see it ever becoming a permanent fixture for me. I sew too slowly to ever have a great amount of stock and to be honest I don't want to make 20 or 30 robots or 40 elephants. I might want to make 6 or 7 but then I want to make something new. (and I suck at selling, really suck. I suck at putting a monetary value on something I have made. I suck at making sensible choices and adding costs and all that stuff and I give discounts to anyone who seems like a nice person - This was a bit of a revelation for me, I am quite uncomfortable standing behind the stall selling stuff, but I love to be at the front of the stall chatting and buying stuff from others. I suck)

I want to give a bit more....Does that sound weird? This year particularly I feel like this blog has opened up so many opportunities for me. I feel like I get so much from this blog and I am thinking of ways to maybe balance things out a bit .

If someone told me about all this "stuff" that would come about primarily because of my blog, when I started my blog I would have thought they were bonkers.......
I apologise if this all sounds a bit self indulgent ...basically it is me saying "far out ! what a year" and indulging in a bit of a one sided conversation with myself.

(one of the photos that I didn't send to a posh magazine when they asked me for a pic)

So I guess I'll be heading off into 2010, running a small business, folding patterns in my pyjamas, making toys and Not-toys, fondly thinking of selvedges but not sewing them, meeting bloggers, sharing stuff, talking, more talking, hopefully some giving, and saying thanks .

Yep that sounds like a plan , its as clear as mud !