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WIP

This is my desk yesterday. This week I've been working on a litter of bunnies for orders, swaps and gifts. I don't have a craft room, so everything I use for sewing and making toys, plus the computer, is crammed onto and underneath a big old table in the corner of a room off our lounge room. It's nice to have it all together, but a bit of a bugger when all the little bits of thread get stuck in the keyboard. Keeping it neat is quite the physical challenge. I try to keep this area tidy, but it inevitably ends up looking like this. At least it matches the rest of the house now! It's forecast to rain all weekend, and after a busy few weeks we don't have much planned so I'm looking forward to some baking, some recreational sewing and, to poorly paraphrase Billy Bragg - putting the hoover around to make a start (if I must).

Work in progress Flickr group is here.

Happy monkey

My happy monkey has landed. Matt for one will be extremely happy, because I won't be following him around the house anymore pushing a half-completed monkey into his face saying things like: "look! I sewed the head to the body!" and asking life-altering questions such as "which eyes do you think work best?" I'm sure he sometimes feels like there are two toy-crazy toddlers in the house, but to his long-suffering credit, he just grins and bears it.

I agonized over this one. She still doesn't quite feel complete, but the things that I'm not overly in love with will change in subsequent happy monkeys (sorry, yes... you think I could stop at just one?!) Her apron is made from some fantastic fabric that Lisa sent (it's vintage, right?). It matches her ears and the tip of her tail.

She'll be off to Plush You next week, and if I get the time between now and then, I'm hoping to make a little chap to keep her company and share peanuts on the long plane trip between Adelaide and Seattle.

In progress...

When Sooz mentioned to me in an email recently that she'd started working on her submission to plushyou, it jolted (some would say panicked) me into action. Then an email this week from Kristen with a reminder about the July 20 deadline really sealed the deal. Must start now! I've been thinking a lot lately about the soft toys I admire, and one of their unifying factors would have to be a cheerful kind of cheekiness in their expressions. So, a happy monkey is in the works, loosely inspired by the little monkey in this sweet book we currently have out from the library. Fabric is piled at the ready, now I just need to do something about the 'progress' bit...

Work in progress Flickr group is here. Thanks to everyone who has already joined and posted your photos! :)

Phew!

I finally finished the big toy order I have been working on. Most of these chappies above will soon be off to the very beautiful looking Kol Kid in Toronto, Canada (670 Queen St West). I'm so happy to see my toys going to a shop that specialises in unique and interesting kids stuff, and I hope they will find similarly happy Canadian homes very soon. This represents about a month of work for me, in my part-time snatched-minutes here & there kind of way... so please bear with me while I pop a few close ups here:

These bunnies finally got their faces. From left to right: Jasmine, Rose, Dahlia, Lupine, Laleh and Briar. I've been trying to name all the bunnies with flower names, slowly working through this page, this page and this, this and this page. Thanks, internet!

Monkey boys: Clarry and Hubert.

Betty and Gracie kittens, made from vintage grey wool flannels and cotton prints. The green floral is a feedsack reproduction.

And, finally: Victor and Lulu kittens. Black wool flannel plus other bits and bobs. I'm hoping that if I start to put waistcoats on my boys instead of vests, I might be able to justify the purchase of some of the gorgeous old buttons I've been stalking on ebay sometime soon. ;)

When themed posts collide

This is my attempt to be sneaky and take a photo of something red that I'm working on. Thus covering both my current work in progress as well as colour week. This is a dress for one of 5 kitten dolls in pieces on my desk this week. I love these red buttons, they look a bit vintage (to me), but they were actually from Lincraft about 3 years ago. Still working on that big order and trying to cover a couple of swaps and other orders at the same time. The bunnies have aprons now, but no faces yet... and I'm sure there are 3 monkeys in here somewhere as well. I've been living and breathing these things of late: I'm up to the gills in toys.

I also wanted to say thanks to everyone who put work in progress shots on their blogs this week. Very exciting. A few people suggested that I set up a Flickr group for these photos, and not one to knock back good advice, I have done so here. Please join & add your work in progress/piles/desk photos - everyone is welcome! :)

Colour week: thursday

For blue Thursday. I love old ceramics, and these are some of my blue ones. I'm by no means a serious collector or expert, but (like so many of us) I'm completely charmed by the interesting shapes, details & colours of older pieces. The tall bottle has "James R Rea... New York" embossed on the base - I found it a few years ago in an antique shop in Willunga for $10. The pale blue pitcher/jug is J & G Meakin from a local shop (Cool & Collected on Magill Rd, local folk!) The little striped candle-holder(?) is from the same place, I think it must be hand-made because it only has "HM" mysteriously carved into the base.

Also, I've been tinkering with my banner & blog design (co-incidentally, also blue!) I'm still going, so please bear with me if anything looks out of place.

Colour week: wednesday

For this week of colour - thankyou Stephanie and Mav for reactivating this wonderful idea! There were plenty of examples of grey and black here for today's challenge. Adelaide is more renowned for its long, hot summers than winter frosts like the one we woke up to this morning. This is our cat, Gus, gingerly braving the chill.

Action shots are go

Ok then! It's reassuring to hear that I'm not alone in liking to have a peek at other people's work in progress. So... shall we say Fridays then? Weekly, in any case, post a photo and/or a few words on your blog about something you're working on, a pile of craft materials, or even a few pieces of fabric stacked together that are calling out to be made into something great (all that possibility!). Even if you know that it may not happen - because who ever gets the time to see all - or even half - of their ideas come to fruition? Sometimes it's the action shots that are the most revealing and have the potential to inform others most about the process of making something. I couldn't begin to tell you the number of things I've learned through other bloggers this way.

Anyhow, for the last couple of days I've been trying to make a dent in this pile of bunny pieces. This is where I'm at thanks to a day with my Mum's sewing machine (mine is still out of action), Audrey taking a rare sleep today, and a couple of nights on the couch hand-stitching on heads and stuffing bodies (the 2 hour Amazing Race finale last night certainly helped. Very pleased the 'hippies' won). They are almost ready for dressing. And faces. I've never made this many toys en masse before, and it's been a bit overwhelming, in an 'I've got that many to go??' kind of way. But it's fun to see so many coming to life at the same time. Really looking forward to seeing what other people are in the midst of, too!

WIP

I read a quite a few knitting blogs, and it seems that the abbreviation WIP (work in progress) is fairly common in knit blog vernacular. I think us crafters should embrace the term, too... I really enjoy reading about what people are in the process of making. There used to be a show your desk friday - anyone interested in starting up something like that again? So, in that spirit, a snapshot of my desk today:

1. Piles of cut out toys (these ones are bunnies). Alison has written before about the little piles she makes, and I can so, so relate. I also love to pile. These are for a wholesale order I am working on for 12 bunnies, cats and monkeys (yes, 12! Given that each toy takes me about 3-4 hours, it's going to take me quite some time to amass that many).

2. New fabric. Purchased last week after both Audrey and Matt were sick and everything in our house was breaking down as part of some much needed (ahem) fabric therapy.

3. A doll I am working on for Audrey. She (doll) has been sitting here body-less for almost a month now because I'm feeling very lukewarm about her. Not sure if this lass will ever be finished. I casually draped the gingham trim over her unsewn neck because headless dolls are such a creepy spectacle. Don't really think it helps decrease the creep, though.

4. Not exactly a work in progress as something that I'm staring at with much happiness. A bundle of wonderful fabric scraps (most of them much larger than scraps) sent as part of a swap with lovely Mindy of Juniper. Thanks so much again, Mindy, having this land on my doorstep yesterday was this fabric lover's dream come true.

Moving right along

Phew. Thanks for listening to my dummy-spit. Mostly, thankyou so much to those who took the time out to leave your kind, thoughtful and empathetic words after my last post. It means so much. Although the idea of a whole lot of time-pressed stressed out women all over the globe is pretty damn alarming, it's incredibly comforting to know we all feel the same from time to time. On Sunday, Audrey came down with a nasty virus, my poor sweet girl. There's nothing like a sick and miserable child to help put everything into perspective, is there? Then everything took a turn from the sublime to the ridiculous when yesterday my sewing machine (my new one at that!) and our airconditioner (only 3 years old!) broke down. Sheesh! I'm thinking someone/thing is wisely trying to tell me to stop navel gazing so much (too often my specialty subject, I'm afraid) and just get on with it.

So, along with a photo of Billy monkey above (he's off to live in Queensland with a new baby boy), some happy links for the day:
- this photo of yellow flowers on a windowsill by photobird.
- a new release of sock monkeys by the incredibly talented Peng Peng.
- applications are now open for Carly's Morphe soft toy exhibition. I can't wait.