Stencil-along on hold and other things in my not-as-productive-as-I'd-have-liked weekend

No Mr Robo

So today I finally had time to stencil. I'd been hanging out all week and today I had my design all ready to go, I had made preparations for how to deal with stencils with islands. Then realised Gib had reinstalled windows so had to reinstall drivers/adjust network settings/fuss about with cables etc etc... only to discover that the printer had no ink. It was 4:45pm on a Sunday and no way would I make it to the shops in time to remedy this.

Sorry robo-dude, you're just going to have to wait a little longer...

No printer meant that I couldn't print out the soft baby shoe pattern (I have been asked to make some more!), and so I started cutting out some pieces for a bag I've started making (hear that, Kat!) but didn't get very far beyond cutting out bits. But some things were created on the weekend (not that I did much to help with them, but provided moral support).

Kate's veil

My friend Kate, who is getting married in November, came over Friday night. My mum helped her to make a veil in about 2 hours. I provided food, cups of tea and jovial conversation, while my mum and Kate busily worked away cutting and stitching. All that was left to do in the end was attach the comb. In total it cost her $16 for all materials + $12 for the pattern - and was therefore 10x cheaper than what you can pay in the shops for a veil (She tried on one in a shop that was $300 and looked similar to the one we made - obscene, isn't it?).


Taro taste sensation!

But I did get to try a new Taste Sensation last night. About 2 months ago I finally tried taro for the first time. We spotted it in the shop, took it home then worked out what to do with it later. It was quite bland, but definitely not unpleasant. Last night we were out with some friends at a newish claypot restaurant that's opened up in our area. One of our friends loves taro and he ordered a taro dessert. At first they got the order wrong, and provided this taro dessert (which was just chunks of taro, ice and ice cream... with yes, that is parsley instead of mint)


instead of this one (which still came with parsley on top).

Taste Sensation! verdict: Taro ice cream is really nice - it taste especially with sago, although I'm not so sure about the taro on its own... I don't particularly like the texture, but it could grow on me. I would order this myself in future.

Stencil-along with Hoppo Bumpo

The wonderful Hoppo Bumpo is having a freezer paper stencil-along, and now that I have some freezer paper (thanks Liesl!) I can join in! I have my noodle bowl design that I made for applique a while back that I want to stencil up and I also want to do a robot too. It appears it's hard to find a cute simple robot stencil these days. Stencils have progressed a lot since I was a kid, and robot stencils have now progressed to stuff like this:

Thank you katutaide

I think I'll have to make one myself.

I think I'm being way too ambitious, but I'm the sort of person

that rushes in head first and thinks about how it's actually going to be done later. I like to think this is a good thing, otherwise I wouldn't have attempted nearly so many things that I have (but no, sky diving is never going to be one of those things).

So tonight I'll tinker with my designs and hopefully I'll get some time to stencil them up over the next few days. What fun!

Leaf printing: testing part 1

Gib is away doing an open water diving course and although I'll miss his company, it means I get to totally overrun the study with my crafting and sewing for the entire weekend. I'll be updating this post as I go so please comment and provide suggestions as I've never done anything like this before and it's quite likely that I'm doing it all wrong!

Already I'm learning about how much to load up each leaf with paint, how much pressure to apply etc. There's a definite knack and it's a good I have lots of scraps on hand to practice with! The best leaves I have used so far have been from our lemon geranium and a fern. They're a bit heavy in spots, but I don't think it's such a bad thing. The black ones smudged a little because I rolled the roller over the leaves twice. Learning.




This is actually quite a lot of fun. Reminds me of kindergarten and watching episodes of Playschool where they did painting and all of those awesome things that I "grew out of".

I got bored of printing (because, like in my kindergarten days, I have the attention span of a fly) so I decided to whip up a pin cushion using some one of the leaf prints.