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Tuesday 28 July 2009

Temari 101 Class update

Some ladies from the June Temari 101 class called in over the weekend. They had a show and tell about the gorgeous temari they have been making and also about the temari class one of them took in Kyoto at the beginning of July. She was well chuffed that she was removed from the beginners class and placed with more advanced stitchers due to her abilities. I must say I am so proud to see their temari making blossom. They are really awesome!!

We discussed Japanese threads temari books and gladly my order of marking threads had arrived on Friday so they got to choose some of them. I have ordered some Kyo and Cosmo 5 threads to try after seeing how beautiful it looks on the balls.

We chatted for a few hours and it was sad to pack up and say goodbye, but we have made plans to get together again in a few months time.

On Thursday our next round of 101 will begin... I can't wait to share temari with a new group!

Friday 24 July 2009

Temari 101 Redux

A new round of temari 101 classes will commence next week. We love sharing the addiction to temari with others. A friend of my Mum saw the temari trio I made for her Birthday/Mother's Day and decided to gather some friends and learn how it is done.

Also the ladies from the May/June class are popping in this weekend for a chat and cuppa. One of these ladies has recently returned from a trip to Japan and I am excited to see what temari things she purchased.

I have placed a link to our new temari addict australia shop on the Australian madeit website. Right now it is just a link - our shop is empty... but soon we will begin listing a few items. Supplies and so forth and also temari we just can't keep :( ... if we can bear to part with them that is ;)) The banner is up in the shop after my 3rd attempt I managed to save it before the computer all went crazy and crashed.

Wednesday 22 July 2009

Getting organised.

I stitch on the move mostly so my 'movable' temari supplies are compact and organised. But my 'at home' stash is.... hmmmm... how can I describe it???? My husband usually refers to it as ".... that disgusting mess...."

Well maybe a photo might help... Hold on, brace yourself ....



Just so you know: I tried to make the picture an iddy biddy tiny one to make it look a bit better my hubby caught me and said to re-size it to show the full magnitude.

I admit it is just awful. But yesterday I felt inspired and met my Mum at our 'other' favourite store IKEA and we searched high and low for something to fix this nasty problem.

We found our most elegant solution in the office furnishing section (that only part of the IKEA store I always walk past). I think it is for storing A2 sized papers. I have a drawer for wrapping cottons, one for my take away boxes of perle 5 & 8 cottons, another for books and one drawer for bits & pieces that go into class kits. You can see in the left picture the bendable lamp I use at night (also from IKEA purchased on a previous visit). There are two natural light sources near this area so I think I just found my new temari photo set. Bonus!!


There are many great features in this little unit but the best is that it's on little wheels so when we stitch at my home I can move the supplies right to the table for everyone to dig in and play. Below is the draw of 'share thread' I use it for learning balls etc...

Now if only I could get it into the back of the X-trail.....

I do have to be honest: I still have a box of stuff that wont go into the drawer unit. All my completed temari, but no matter they go into storage elsewhere. And I know this wont store all my bits soon but the silver lining is that in the Alex range at IKEA there is a tallboy style unit that matches this one - and I can fit it into the room. Yay!! Now just don't tell my hubby.

Sunday 19 July 2009

Cosmo 3 Page 3 Headscratcher

Since I purchased the Cosmo books I couldn't get a particular pattern out of my mind. It was a real conundrum. This week I decided I just couldn't stitch another ball if I hadn't stitched out this design. In the top of the photo you can see a scan if the original picture. It had no instructions at all and wasn't even mentioned in the text.

I had a feeling it was a C10 and the stitching area was on the 6 part triangle. Also I could see that the shape was a mitsubishi stitch. I researched Mitsubishi stitching and discovered that the design is made by stitching and linking square or pentagon shapes. This meant that all the Mitsubishi were connected and this was not the case in the photo so this theory was a dead end. Additionally there was no way to get the points to meet inside the C10 pentagon if I followed this method and stayed with my C10 original thought.

What I didn't know was that when you see a shape in temari it is not always stitched the way you might expect and this can lead you to look for an answer to a much harder problem. I decided that the points were a kiku of sorts because I thought it would be too hard to stitch a triangle and then diamond shapes over the top. It must have been a continuous stitch. I had seen a kiku stitch similar to this that is worked inwards towards a center but it was always stitched into a star shape.

SO that was it I was firmly stuck. So after many weeks of trying to decipher its' secrets with little luck I decided to call on the brains trust at the Temari Challenge and Talk Temari groups. Thankfully the folk were more than happy to help out :)). I was on the right path but with the assistance received I was given the final piece of the puzzle and that was confirmation that what I had guessed was correct and that the stitch path could be adapted from a star shape to a triangle. The stitch used was Sakasa Uwagake Kagari.

I can now say that I have completed this ball and am moving on to my next challenge. Thank you to everyone that helped out on this one. If you are interested in temari and like to join the groups online the links are here http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TemariChallenge/ and http://groups.yahoo.com/group/talktemari/.

Thursday 9 July 2009

Preparing for ... Christmas in July

Well being July what better time to look forward to Christmas? Last week I posted about the 27 balls I had wrapped in Christmas colours and here are a few of the photos.
As you can see I am working in Green, Red, White, Gold and Silver.
When I have completed these balls I plan to make more in 'Non-traditional' colours like Purple, Blue.
The photo of 3 temari show my latest efforts. The top left temari is the ball I was working when I wrote the last post. The bottom one I made whilst trying to keep my fingers from freezing watching my Son's soccer training and the right ball was made today. Although my boys say "Oh no! Not temari again..." stitching this one inspired my Son's little buddy to make a teeny temari today which we attached to a mobile dangle for his backpack.
It is pouring again outside so it looks good for stitching more temari tomorrow.....

Temari Articles in Australian Magazines

Temari projects have appeared periodically in Australian craft magazines over the years. I have been tracking down copies of these articles and so far have found seven. If you are interested they are in the following publications.
Inspirations Magazine (published by Country Bumpkin) Issues 62, 25 and 20.
Australian Embroidery and Cross Stitch (Published by Express Publications) Vol 3 # 3, Vol 4 # 4, Vol 14 #12 and Vol 16 #1.
Do you know of any others? Drop an email and let us know.

Monday 6 July 2009

Temari To Do List... a never ending challenge

Cosmo books have all arrived (apart from #7 which is currently out of print - I'll catch that one later...) and I have spent days pouring over them. I have distilled the first list, I am sure there will be many more, from the range which comes to approximately 80 temari. This will keep me busy for a good while.
I had a wrap-fest on Saturday which netted me a total of 27 balls which were wrapped in either Red, White or Dark Green thread. Can you guess that this might be the start of my christmas temari campaign? I made the balls with 3/4C of hull and used approx 500g of hull all together.

So far I have been working on Cosmo Book 1 and have completed 3 balls with a 4th in progress.


Cosmo Book#1: Top is #5, P6; R is #3 P3; L is #1 P2 (in progress)
I have made two of the design featured on ball 5 page 6. I made it the first time as a spindle (as I already had a ball with an obi on it) and then I made it again as a wrapped band. I liked how it turned out both ways, although the wrapped band method was faster. Although you can barely see it the 'in progress' ball has a dark green thread wrap (these are 3 of the 27 I wrapped on the weekend).
These are the first of my Christmas Temari. The tri-wing is also featured in the Cosmo books but a similar design is in Mary Woods book so I can't say which was the real influence... I guess I smashed both ideas together and arrived at something a little different.
Here are a few spindles I worked on back in June. They should have been in a previous post but I fried my SD card & lost all the data on it that hadn't been backed up :( Luckily it was mostly temari pics so I just had to re-shoot them. Sorry for the poorer photo quality but we haven't had a 'bright' day for a while and had to take flash assisted pics.