This pattern is a highlight from the book "More Handcrafts from Kit Harris", published by Landsdowne Press, Sydney in 1980.
The doll sits on her own as she has strong wire inside her that goes all the way up to the head. Most Riot Art and Craft stores now sell a great, soft but sturdy armature wire for this kind of project.
Click here to view a pattern for a similar doll on my Flickr page.
Since my Mother died I've been spending more time at her house and have unearthed some treasures belonging to (mainly) my Grandmother - who passed away in 2003. This book - Das Schoene Zuhause - is one of them.
The pictures above are the pictures I've chosen to share, however I think this page below, with the paperclip my "Oma" used to mark it's place, sums up my Grandma perfectly.
I have somewhat mixed feelings about these small pieces of evidence of someone's existence. It's wonderful that my Oma lived, and enjoyed and planned a nice life for herself and her family, but it also makes me contemplate how much I really didn't know about her. As her grand-daughter I wasn't privy to her dreams, aspirations and desires, and now that I'm older and have more in common with her than I did when I was in my 20s and playing in a rock and roll band, I really miss that I can't talk interior design with her, and home making and all those things.
I feel the same about my Mum going. It's newer and more raw, but still very similar. Every second day I start to feel the lack - that I haven't spoken to my Mum for ages and I think - oh, must call Mum... and it hits me all over again. See, we didn't talk daily. We weren't overly involved in each other's lives, but we did share a lot in common, and there's some things you can *only* share with your Mum, and I feel a bit like I've been gagged; like there's things I want to talk to someone about, but the only person who'd 'get it' isn't there any more... and therefore I too am silenced.
So last weekend I had big ambitions to make six of these, however I only made 2. Why? I had to oil the sewing machine and I had some web work on so my time was kind of fractured. Am I going to finish them this weekend? Probably not... but hey, what would life be without a long 'to do' list!
I was extremely thrilled today to receive my first metre of fabric from Spoonflower.
Excited enough to not even follow my usual rule of 'no flash photography'. Excited by the prospect of a long weekend and enough hours to whip this lot up into something.
As usual I begin my blog post with a weak apology about my absence and an even weaker promise to do better in future.
Firstly, I have changed the look of my site... please enjoy. Fresh content would probably be more valuable but I haven't had a lot of time to concentrate on this.
Secondly, I wonder whether I'll write much at all in future... at least about 'life', as one of my regular readers is no longer watching.
On April 24th my mother passed away unexpectedly after (at least to our knowledge) a short illness. We're yet to find out what exactly it was, but she had a tumour in her heart which may have been cancer. It's very rare, but I'm keen to know what it was.
So here are two tributes to my mum. One that I wrote so that she'd know how cool I reckon she was, and that she read...
And one that I created so everyone else could see how cool she was.
Bye Mum... I'm so sad I can't share anything with you any more.
This was done with iMovie and it was pretty easy. I just got Final Cut Express and now all I have is a headache. I'm sure it's more powerful, but power is probably not necessarily what I need?
I got a cute app for my phone the other day (Lo-mob) that does some of the photo post-processing of applications like picnik (which I love), but directly on your phone, and then enables you to upload them to sites like flickr (which I love), and picasa (which I know nothing about really.
Here's an example of my doggy done using the 35mm Medium Format 2 (if I recall correctly)
And another picture using 6x6 TTV grid of the 70s
There appears to be a bug in the app that means you can only use existing pictures (every time I've tried to take a photo and then apply the effect the screen is blank). Also, actually, the function to upload to flickr doesn't actually seem to work. Still, there are other ways to upload your photos and other ways to take photos - some of which i prefer anyway so I'm not too fussed - although given it's a paid app it would, of course, be better if it all worked without a hitch.
