July » 2009 » Loobylu

Moonstruck

My studio floor is covered in drying gocco prints. I did two different colours for my moon print; a bunch with a pink background (evening sky, or apocolyptic depending on who you ask) and a bunch with a dark blue night sky. It wasn’t meant to be dark but it is – and I don’t like it – so I have just ordered some pastel blue and will do a reprint when it gets here. Gocco is all a bit trial ‘n’ error for me but brilliantly fun regardless.

And have you seen Kirst’s quilt project? Have you signed up? I am about to work on an embroidery design for my square and will make it available as a pdf to download if you want to make something similar (though, if you are playing along on Kirsty’s quilt project you need to make yours unique).

Have a happy weekend – we’ll be glamming up for a black-tie event tomorrow night – I have my dress and now just need to fit into it. Oh dear!

Salads!

I have already posted this on twitter, but it’s so worth a quick mention here. 101 Simple Salads for the Season in The New York Times – unusual ideas that all look pretty yummy. The season referred to in the title is Summer, but as salad seems to be the only thing Lily will eat regardless of the season, 101 variations on a theme (9 A4 pages) are a welcome addition to my recipe file. I’ve been making my own crutons lately, and feeling like that makes me adventurous… but now I have large amounts of inspiration.

via @swallowfield

My Creative Space – sunshine

After a huge amount of rain (for Melbourne anyway) in the last 24 hours we now have lovely clear sunshine spilling in our windows. The studio is especially good on such mornings – lots of light and floorboards. I have already done some gocco printing and now have to wait patiently for my new supplies to arrive next week. This week I have also been painting more wooden dolls (I am especially happy with the little traditional shaped doll in her red stripes) and sewing the skirts on rabbits.

I have hit a bit of a roadblock with the wooden dolls. I have used water based inks to paint them which is crazy, I know, but I have had previous experience with these inks (Art Spectrum’s Artists’ Pigment Ink) and they have always dried with a kind of plasticky, water resistant finished. I expected the inks to dry similarly on the dolls so I could coat them in a varnish to seal them and finish them off… unfortunately when I started to paint on the varnish (Atelier’s Satin Medium and Varnish) the inks ran… I am hoping I can find some kind of spray on finish which will help waterproof and seal the dolls. Off to the art shop for advice!

Special Stuff – Thursday: Nuptial Quilt

My grandma made me this hand-stitched, paper-pieced, queen sized quilt for me when she still lived in Adelaide, when I still lived in a sharehouse. She kept it for me and told me she would give it to me when I got married. It was to be my “Nuptial Quilt”. At some point she gave up waiting, and gave it to me anyway. It was probably about the time that it was clear I would be spending my life with Phil but would go around shouting that I was “NEVER going to get married – there was no point to such an outdated tradition” etc etc. So we had it on our bed and then we decided it would be kind of fun to have a wedding (party-dress-rings-friends : what’s not to like?) and so we got married anyway.

The floral patches are made from hundreds of little scraps of Liberty material and it has a kind of timeless charm. It’s a beautiful, but delicate quilt. About a year ago, we decided we needed to store it as it was not standing up to the love of small children. Bed jumping (and the resulting spilled coffee), vegemite hands, smeared banana and the tunneling games, cocooning games, underwater adventure games were all starting to take their toll. We have replaced it with a lovely Nathalie Lete quilt which does the trick but isn’t quite so special, because Nathalie isn’t my 93 year old grandma.

Special Stuff – Wednesday: Moomins

Our house is full of Moomin paraphenalia… how could it not be? The Moomins and all things Tove Jansson have been a life-long love for me and now my girls. I grew up in a Moomin kind of family in a Moomin kind of house and now I even have my own Mimble and My as daughters… I will tell you a secret; if you love the Moomins and you meet another Moomin fan (a guenuine one, mind you) you can be sure that they are a pretty nifty kind of person, and most likely worth making friends with.

A handful of my kind friends know & understand my passion and indulge it with gifts of figurines and books, mugs and fabric (oh so good!), stamps and inflatable snufkins… but my most special piece is the little framed drawing that Amelia did when she was three or so of Mimble, Snufkin, Moomintroll and Little My. It sits in the kitchen just near the stove and is quite often splattered with spaghetti sauce but I like to look at it often.

** By the way, if you happen to have a copy of The Dangerous Journey:

- in very good to excellent condition, pref. in English, please let me know if you would be willing to work out some kind of trade for it, (loobylu rabbit? Kokeshi? print? illustration?) because you would make me very happy ***