ready to trans-mitt

Grey/ Blue Snowflake

In German, the word for gloves translates literally as hand-shoes (Handschuhe). This feels appropriate for my handslippers - the fingerless mittens. I love gloves and I like mittens too, but I'm constantly taking them off and dislike having a system for putting my coat on.

Pink/Red "I heart Robots" with bike

The design process was slower than I'd like but I'm happy with the result. I came from making full mittens and semi felting them, which creates a slightly less warm but more flexible fabric - important if you are wearing all-encompassing mittens but less so if the design creates its own wriggle room. There's elastic round the cuff (not tight, it's not going to create a sorry imprint everytime you wear them, just enough so it doesn't stretch out of shape) and some around the top too, and a contrasting gusset, call it off-kilter if you like, I just think it looks more interesting.

Yellow Polka Dot (Grey contrast) with Louise Doherty Toaster mug. 

 Okay I got a bit carried away trying to get a good picture of this mug. Louise Doherty's robots, astronauts, toasters and other flights of illustrated fancy are simultaneously comic and stylish. I want her to design a t shirt! She doesn't have a website, not yet anyway.

White/ Green Graph Paper with contrasting Brown trimming, and Purse.doc

 Mittens.doc My office at work is freezing, so I do end up working in gloves sometimes

 Which picture should I use? I want to print one off to display on my market stall

Also Makers online gave me a little feature :-)

Busy day

Now that H & A have sent their wedding invites out and all the guests have received them and admired them, I can blog about them!

All three of us harbour elements of geek, and a love of the tv show The IT crowd. We wanted to incorporate elements of that without alienating the less computer literate of our guests (not sacrifice aesthetic for nerddom).

The design mimics the Windows 3.0 browser windows with some artistic license harnessed to set the font as the readable-but-fixed-type-font Consolas.

I used a the same box for the details, but changed the browser heading to "Invitation Information"/ "Evening Invitation".

I created a dialog box for the reply slips. I think this bit might be the coolest bit, I love the OK button! Technically I created the image separately then incorporated it into a mail merge (the bride is very organised).

Tah Dah!

Knitting and Stitching

I was selected by Craft Guerrilla to exhibit at the Knitting and Stitching show at Alexandra Palace last week

They're led by a lovely trio of (rather glamorous) ladies who make stuff. They are based in Walthamstow and lead crafty evenings. Their manifesto can be read here. I hope to hang out with them again at one of their craft fairs.

The event was exciting, massive and incredibly tiring. I am so pleased that I exhibited alongside 5 other lovely crafters.

Ariane of Peppermint Twist is a member of the Craft Guerrilla and makes patterned bags and purses. She sold so many she ran out of paper bags to put them in! 

Forgotten Stitches by Rebekah boasts a selection of meticulous embroidery inspired by the 40s and 50s and often featuring vintage fabrics.


Off for some tea. Will fill you in later xx
 

6 fest, more things and knitting and stitching

In the build up to the knitting and stitching show, I got my new feather cushions online. I'm loving the pink and red for the robots, and I'm thinking it might make a good colourway for the slippers too. I've had requests for girlier slippers and would love to grant them.

The Knitting and Stitching show was mad, I'm still recovering! In the course of it, I met too many crafters to mention in a skim through list, hopefully in time I can mention them all. Lauren of Stitch London (formerly Stitch and Bitch London, one can only assume they ran out of things to bitch about and just concentrated on the craft in hand), who said some lovely things about my work here.

I'm mulling over the idea of creating some knitting patterns, hopefully not too complex, which is tricky, as a lot of my processes are a bit complicated, for example, the stuffing of the digestive is a very delicate procedure which I often have to do twice. Small knitted biscuits are ten to the dozen out there, so scaling it down is not an appealing option either.

For the record, I'm blogging more personal (but not too personal) entries here and I'm aiming to update in a more official format on my news section. That said I've bought the stuff they use for slipper socks to put on the soles of my booties & slippers, so they'll be suitable for the running children and unsteady old folks.

In other news.

My nephew can officially say my name and said "Happy Birthday Sarah" to me over the webcam. He didn't say "belated" but he did get out the blanket I made for him when he was born and sat with it on his lap running toy cars over it. It is nice to see him enjoy something I made for him and I'm really glad it's part of his everyday life, as opposed to sitting in a cupboard as a keepsake.

I managed to find time to go to 6 fest. It was awesome, and definitely a reason for being on twitter! Highlights included: Metronomy (cool), Sweet Babou (indie), Adam Buxton (hilarious), Modified Toy Orchestra (edgy) and the Jim Jones Revue (loud). Modified Toy Orchestra piqued my interest in particular. The clue is in the name, but more so than you'd think. They don't use synthesisers, just the sound the toys make, amplified. I think it's more complicated than that, the sound is darker, more beautiful and less "quirky" than you'd think. Check them out:

Black Star (Live Hong Kong) from Modified Toy Orchestra on Vimeo.

Joseph Mount of Metronomy described the even as looking like a disaster shelter, referring I think to the diversity in the crowd, or maybe the fact that we looked like we'd just walked in off the street. Anyway the atmosphere was fabulous and wholly joyous at saving 6 music, which was a wonderful boost in my otherwise relentless mission for the show.

Goodnight Friends