Finally, after months of being busy with my new company, Simply Written Pty Ltd, I took a weekend off to stitch, crochet and complete a few ‘in train’ projects. And it felt good. My partner was away so the house was mouse-quiet, and I didn’t feel compelled to cleaning up the mess right away because I was the only one home.

The first thing I completed was a spring lariat, knut on a knitting nancy with a mohair/lurex yarn blend, and finished with mohair crochet flowers, secured with French knots.

I quickly moved to completing a few more shabbies. These are upcycled brooches (pins) fashioned from the off-cuts of other projects. Making a brooch from off-cuts is a bit like fashioning underfelt (or making yoghurt from scratch?) and feels somewhat like painting. I love the layers, the textures and the surprises that emerge as each brooch tells its story through my needle.

Recently I sold a lot of my wares through a beautiful shop in Healesville called Clarence. The woman who owns and runs the shop has whimsy in her veins and an eye for the beautiful. We have this deal. She sells my stuff and I get credit in her store, which is completely the best deal for me because she buys so well, and so creatively.

Until I take these creations to Clarence, you can find them (and many more items) on my Etsy site – handmade3777.etsy.com

Until next time, wishing you soul soothing creativity that invites you in at every turn.

Spotty, my hand-reared hen

About a year and a bit ago, I was lucky enough to be asked to care for a small chicken that was possibly dropped by one of the kinder kids, during a chicken hatching and bonding experiment.

I work from home, so Spotty lived inside with me, in my office, for nigh on three months. The room was alive with untidiness. There were towels on the floor, toys made of paper clips, which were strewn about, cats locked out of the room, budgie mirrors and small bird feeders clipped to a cat cage full of straw and there was straw on the floor. Oh, and a 40 watt lamp was constantly on.

Spotty and I became very close during this time. She sat on my lap as her leg repaired, climbed into warm places in my clothes often getting close to my neck. She made a high and contented whirring purring sound as she relaxed. She joined me in Skyping my friend Sonja when we were co-lecturing a technical communication subject for Swinburne.

When she was a about three months old, she was old enough to join the big hens outside. I bought her a surrogate mother and a chick about her own age and, happily, the match worked and she soon seemed comfortable with her new surrounds.

Most mornings when I feed the hens and ducks, Spotty runs down the stairs after me and comes inside to get first dibs.

She still comes upstairs now and again and has a look around. She still likes to sit on my lap when the sun is shining. As before, she climbs up high and buries her head in my hair. The difference now is that when she sags to sleep and her little eyelids close from the bottom up her purring sound is now much lower.  To me she sounds like I imagine a small dinosaur would.

I drew a picture of Spotty last night. If you ever get the chance to save a little hen, take up the challenge and reap the benefits of crossing the species divide and loving a chicken, and having a heap of fun as you learn new experiences.

Dots - pin made from remnants

My innards are out of kilter.

I’m heading down the slope into a sad-sack state.

I am working constantly (a good thing for a small  business owner) but am finding it hard to still my overactive work nature and my noisy mind. While usually engaging in some handmade activity or drawing brings me back from the brink, lately I’ve opted for walking instead.

I’m listening to Radiolab, the greatest joy of this year. The stories are well crafted, the content is clear, and the sound scapes add value in such interesting ways. Mostly I find myself touched to the point of weeping, on my long walk home.

So, is this because the content fits into the curve of my ear, or because I’ve found a source that makes me feel like there are others like me out there? I feel like I want to engage in something important, yet I have a torpor that surrounds my feet like concrete, and often I don’t act.

I wonder how to stem the desire for something that I can’t exactly articulate. I have a great life, a great job. If you matchgirled in,  you’d say I am very lucky.

I think I should spend time being grateful, and trying to find a way to change the story I’m telling myself about who I am and how I feel. Perhaps the feeling is just the product of a story I’ve unwittingly created for myself, which is played on an endless loop.

Here is Dots, a brooch made from leftover remnants. At least it’s something. There’s a lariat in progress too…a long, slow lariat (I might call it Loris, after the Slow Loris who licks her baby with a poisonous lick, a lick that delivers a stun-like blow to any creature other than the Loris and Loris baby).

Time to take a walk and change my story.

Forest fairy – lariat with a woodlands feel

I made this Forest Fairy lariat today – it has the greens, greys and blues of woodlands, with pretty French knot berries dotted about. It looks a bit like something you could eat, like a fancy red mushroom with spots. Beware of the conequences. I guarantee you a  fur ball!

You can see more of these at my handmade3777 etsy site.

Butter yellow lariat with French knots

I’ve used magenta mohair knots again because I love they way this colour jazzes up the butter yellow.

And did you know the word ‘lariat’ means a lasso or a tethering rope? It has Latin origins – to tie and to join.

So let’s still use it to tie, but how about we untie the animal and re-tie humans to handmade, and to kindness and consideration as the first position.

An op shop. A five-dollar price tag. A cute, hand-painted face on a French knitting doll. Who could resist? Not I, said the ten-year-old Knitting Nancy queen, and purchase I did.

And while the ten-year-old me was delighted at reviving memories of Knitting Nancy and days gone by – of pink Angora wool (favourite) eaten by the neighbour’s dog (I cried) and of the remnant that could still be knut in Nancy, way back then – the 45-year-old, right-now-me struggled to see such fine stitches on such small, small nails. And I’m not really that long sighted, but how I longed for a halogen lamp.

I persevered, however, and here are two lariats. A moss-green with magenta mohair French knots, and a silver metallic with Rose-Red (of Snow White and Rose Red and the Bear fame) French knots. I love them. And I loved the memories. I hope you love them too.

I drew Lemur with conte crayons, charcoal and watercolour pencils. She’s on A4 brown paper.

I’m hoping the process of drawing something each Wednesday (a new ritual with an old art-school colleague) will help me to improve my compositions, illustration techniques and will soak me in whimsy.

Birthday Lemur waiting for Tom Jones to arrive

I hope she makes you want to go to an outdoor concert at a place near you, one day soon.

Give it a bit of a twirl and hand-shape it, then embellish it with embroidery in many different colours, and see what emerge from the mix.

Maybe something like ‘underfelt’?

Here’s one I made from remainders: a happy accidental and spur-of-the-moment piece.

Underfelt - brooch/pin made from bits and pieces

And here’s another:

Your bag has lost a button? Create an 'underfelt' pin replacement.

And another, because when you start, you can’t stop.

Brooch made from remnants

Could there be more?

Underfelt flower pin with muslin leaves

Go on – try it. It’s mesmerising.

Bollywood - magenta cotton and bamboo scarf with sequins

This knit scarf is made from three strands of yarn: two are bamboo/cotton (60%/40%), and one is a sassy polyester, sequined number!

The colour is a deep magenta and the effect is razzle dazzle. I’ve crocheted some rosettes for each ent to finish it off. Originally it had crochet ‘arm’ tassles with baubles at the end, but they looked a bit odd. The rosettes work much better.

There are more pictures on my esty site.

How to make it:

You’ll need: Three balls of yarn, each allowing at least 100 metres. (Use two threads of the same yarn, then add a bit of bling yarn as the third. ) Note: I used three balls on this. 100 m of sequin yarn; 260 metres of cotton/bamboo, with a tiny bit left over.

How it’s done – scarf :

1. Cast 14 stitches onto approx. 13 mm needles.
2. Knit plain rows until you run out of wool! (Though leave a ball aside for the rosettes.)

The rosettes:

Bollywood scarf rosettes up close

1. Using your doubled-up yarn and a hook that feels about right for the ply (perhaps 5 mm), chain 23 stitches.
2. Turn, skip a stitch, then double crochet (Australian/UK DC) into each stitch to the end (22 DC).
3. Cut the yarn and sew ends in.
4. Sew the strands of crochet into rosettes by twisting them around themselves from one end, and securing with a couple of stitches.
5. Sew rosettes to scarf. Note both sets need to be on the same side of the scarf.

Of course my Siamese, Peabody Wiggle, is way too interested in this number due to the high natural fibre content.

Bollywood scarf with keen Siamese cat, Peabody Wiggle

Swirls of Merino wool flowers, ready to be felted into a scarf or two

I did a felting course on Thursday and Friday last week, so on Saturday I wanted to play around with what I learned.

I dragged out an old bag of leftover Merino bits. The bits were all mixed together and not that inspiring. A bit like when you mix too much paint and all you get is brown. I set about untangling and sorting and had a lovely time creating these ‘flowers’ above.

I am not an experienced felter yet, so thought I’d experiment with embedding them into a scarf. I didn’t know how they would take, given they were a bit worked already, just from hanging around with other bits of wool in the same bag. I placed a thin layer of wool fibres over the top of each flower before felting, just to see if they’d anchor in place.

I am delighted with the result!

Emmylou - felted scarf with 'flowers'

So delighted, in fact, I made another one straight after it, though this time I shaped the scarf around the flowers shown in the first picture.

Felicity - purple, blue and orange felted scarf with 'flowers'

You can see more pictures on my etsy site.