Making Stuff, Finding Stuff, Giving Stuff, Selling Stuff

Life is full of STUFF.  We are made of stuff, we surround ourselves with useful and not so useful stuff, we covet stuff, we give stuff away, we find stuff, we keep stuff, we buy & sell stuff.  "Stuff" is such a weird word.  We use it to describe what we are doing or wanting or making or collecting.  We use it when we can't find real words for the individual items in our life or when we want to be a bit mysterious and not give away the whole enchilada.  And we use it when we can't be stuffed.  Or when we have had too much food or activity and feel stuffed.

This is some of my recent STUFF

Stuff I've Made

Stuff I've Sold

Stuff I've Bought




















Stuff I LOVE




















Stuff I've Given

Hope you've enjoyed my recent stuff!

Stuff and Nonsense
x Miss G

I Crocheted Some Fruit Nests

I love fruit!  I love it so much that I thought I would use the fabric strips I picked up at Resource Rescue to make some nests for my fruit bowl.  I used a giant tunisian hook (about 11.5mm) and the bright orange and turquoise t-shirt fabric strips for these bowls.  My first attempt left the nest with a friend about 2 hours after being finished.  Then I made another orange one and an orange and blue one.  Forgive my crochet language below - please get in touch if you require an interpreter… I am still very much learning this lingo!

The technique was pretty simple.  Start with a slip knot and crochet a chain of about 7, connect the chain into a ring and treble crochet into the ring about 7 or 8 times.  Next round is increasing so treble crochet twice into each gap of the first round, connect round and do the same for the third round.  Then to make the walls of the bowl, double crochet once into the gaps of the 3rd round and continue doing this until the wall is the desired height for your desirable fruit.   I finish with a single round of double crochet and then tie in and sew in all ends.

It is very deceptive, but you do need quite a lot of the fabric strips so if you are cutting up a t-shirt or heading to Resource Rescue make sure you get yourself a goodly pile - you can never have too much of this stuff.  Any small lengths can be used for staking plants in your garden!

Happy Nesting!

x Miss G

Hottie Challenge!

I love hot water bottles!  I had a red one when I was a kid - it had no cover on it.  And now we seem to use wheat bags more and more.  Wheat bags are great but there is a nostalgia embedded in hot water bottles - the way they feel, smell, stay warm, get cold, leak etc…. takes me back to the good ol' days!

Last night, the opening of the Hottie Challenge exhibition at Open Drawer Gallery in Hartwell, saw crafters and their families mingle amongst magnificent hand made hottie cover treasures.  So many to look at, so hard to pick a favourite, harder still to choose which one to buy!  Scroll down to the end to see which one I bought!  The one I made is second from the left in the first pic and in the third pic on its own.

Get along to the exhibition and support the Margaret Pratt Foundation, pick your favourite  hottie by a coin vote, and even buy one if there are any left without red dots!  All proceeds go to the Margaret Pratt Foundation and all Hotties are for sale at $50.  Thanks to Cam from CurlyPops for mobilising all her crafty friends to create Hotties for the exhibition and fundraising!  It was great to meet her in real life!  Check out Cam's blog for pics of more gorgeous Hotties!  Using our craft for good made us all feel AMAZING!!  And also Liz from Betty Jo Designs has more Hotties on her blog -  Find Make Do !

Yes, I bought this gorgeous Robot Hottie! He caught my eye and kept me going back for more!

Hope you're feeling HOT!
xo Miss G

I bought, I made, I picnicked …..

 The Queens Birthday long weekend always means a trip to Rutherglen to hang out with my father-in-law, Frank, on the farm.  The barrel rolling, the street market and the wineries were great fun.  We caught up with some friends and looked after Frank as he's recently had surgery.

Main Street, Rutherglen was a throng of people.  The air was crisp but the sky was blue and by mid morning people filled every available space.

Handcrafts and food are always good at this market.  There is also the obligatory racks of clothing and socks that people also really like.  Soaps, jams, jewellery, vintage clothing, quilts, wool the list is endless.  This market has always been somewhere I go on my own and where my family meets me later after I've had a good look around.  I like markets on my own.  I am a mono-marketeer.

I made this floor cushion.  It is really ace, I think.  It took ages and cost very little in materials and I think it looks really effective.  It has also become something of a centre for play for the boys and their toys. As you can see James is loving this for his Club Penguin Puffles….

I also made this Hot Water Bottle cover for the Hottie Challenge - gee it was fun to make.  And the charity it is supporting is the Margaret Pratt Foundation Heart Lung Transplant Trust.  www.mprattfoundation.com.au So many beautiful Hotties are being made for this super cause.

I was so inspired by this Hottie that today I made myself a picnic rug,  It is made out of 12 Dimmeys retro-esque teatowels and a lacy crocheted table cloth.  I also made a cushion and a bag for the picnic rug.

And here are a few things I've bought recently.  My eclectic stash from the Camberwell Market, a stack of lovely crafting fabric from a couple of op shops and an amazing coffee table from Ebay.  I had been watching the coffee table and bid $1 over the reserve price.  I was the only bidder so I won it. so lucky.  I picked it up from the seller and popped it in the loungeroom where it looks great along with its twin baby tables, I think.  The kids have very strict instructions to use the COASTERS! and my husband thinks I did a great job as it really is beautiful!   

That's been my week.  Hope yours has been fun, too.

Happy Everything
Miss G

Future Fashion Now - pics!

me and Tamara - looking lovely, Tam!

some knitting examples

my kit

more kit

This is what my workshop looked like!

thanks to the lovely Miss Tallulah Porkchop for this photo!  x

Knitting Workshop Wrap Up

I loved teaching knitting yesterday!  I was asked by my friend Belinda Evans to help on the Future Fashion Now event (see previous post!).  She asked if I would like to teach some people how to knit.  3 twenty five minute sessions for 5 people at a time over a couple of hours.

Over the last month or so I gathered all my bits and pieces together,  wrote a little knitting manual, cleaned all the bits of sticky tape off my lovely vintage knitting needles, found lots of balls of wool in my stash and at the oppies and grabbed a stack of knitting books to display.  I packed all this into a very vintage suitcase and off I went to the St Kilda Town Hall.

On arrival, I found my very cute little table behind a white picket fence.  I laid out my thrifted embroidered tablecloth over the other lovely tablecloths that were already there and set up my materials.  Knitting needles in an old metal milkshake container and my balls of wool piled generously in a wicker basket.  Looked lovely.  Lots of people looked at the loveliness and then wandered on.  I settled myself at the table and started knitting.  Maybe it was the act of knitting that attracted people because very soon I had a full table of knitters for my first session.  It was really fun and also very interesting. There are so many different ways of knitting - I saw about 12 different ways of casting on alone!  I had a couple of ladies come to the table who knew how to knit which was great because they helped the novices with tricky things.  Also, I had a few young girls from the local high school who were gorgeous!  the quote of the day came from one of them: "knitting is slow and it hurts my arms."  So funny and true!!

By the 3rd session I had dragged over about 6 more chairs - there were 12 of us at the table - some knitting happily and showing others how to do things, others taking their time and redoing their work, some becoming frustrated but laughing about it.  I know there are photos floating around which hopefully I will be able to post on this blog.

Everyone who attended was given the knitting needles and wool they had been working with and also the How To Knit instructions in a little bag.  I hope they took what they had done home and kept going.  Teaching knitting was the most satisfying thing I have done in a long time.  Loved it.

xo
Click Clack
Miss G