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Saturday 27 November 2010

Update on Chrismas baubles

Earlier this week I posted about the temari balls I've been making for the neighbours in my street. I am about half way done with this project now. Here is a new progress shot. I can see from the finger marks on the plate how many times this project has been moved around the coffee table.


All the small size temari are completed. Three of the medium size are also done and another has the obi band done and is awaiting the pole designs. There is still only one large temari finished, I am saving the large ones to stitch last. I still can't decide whether to string the sets of 3 together to make one graduated bauble or if they would be better as 3 separate pieces. I am leaning toward the prior but I've never strung temari together before so I need to work out the best way to do it, also I am trying to decide if they would look better hanging smallest to largest or largest to smallest... and lastly would I use a tassel and which thread would I used to make it?

The more I stitch these tiny temari the more I am falling in love with them... they're just so darn cute. I've been chanting to myself  'I am making these for all our lovely neighbours' from time to time as I stitch but truthfully the neighbours could possibly end up with baked goods for Christmas instead of these temari.

Happy stitching!

Tuesday 23 November 2010

Ooops, I missed a week.

Sorry there have been no posts since last week. I got a bit distracted by physio and some strange 'fever and chills combination' that lasted several days and made it impossible to make temari (or do anything else for that matter). All better again now... yay for good health!

Shaking off last week... and so here we are with a new week and a new project. On Sunday I helped my Mum make some cushion covers for her friend's daughter. Mum was having trouble getting the bits all folded in the right places and thankfully I could remember how to make the covers from my high school sewing classes.

My temari project for this week involves making some little temari ball sets for the neighbours to hang on their Christmas trees. I am making 3 temari for every neighbour... lucky I live in a short street... there are only 8 houses. I've got 5 stitched so far and the other 16 are wrapped and ready to go.

These temari are a lot smaller than the ones I usually make. These bases are made with foam cores, I only used thread wrap for the small size and for the other two sizes I used some very thin machine knitting yarn under the thread layer.
The circumferences are 8.5cm, 11cm and 14.5cm. Obviously I can't use perle 5 for these so I am using Gutterman Rayon Sulky #30 for small, Gutterman Top Stitch for medium and Thread Art Cotton Perle #8, for the marking thread I'm using Rainbow Gallery Treasure Braid Petite for the smaller sizes and Nordic Gold for the large size. Luckily I did some experiments with several threads when I began making yubinuki so I have a few sizes of thin thread.

I am making 3 different designs, S8 on the small temari have a Maki Kagari design with a simple herringbone on the obi, S10 for the medium using a Hoshi Kagari (Star) in different colours on each pole with a stepped herringbone obi and S12 Uwagake Chidori Kagari on the large balls with a double herringbone on the obi. I cant decide if I want to place these on individual hangers or make a larger ornament  by stringing them together with a bit of tassel on the bottom. I guess I need to percolate on the idea a bit  more.

I'm taking a break from my recent yubinuki bead project and when these temari are done I've got some fabric notebooks to make for my Mum and Miho.

Hope you can settle down and enjoy some stitching through the week.

Monday 15 November 2010

I'd rather be... stitching temari

... than stuck at this traffic light! This was my thought this morning.  I think someone programs the light changes to deliberately make you stop at every intersection... maybe that person is in cahoots with the oil companies... do I smell a conspiracy to make us use more fuel? This morning I travelled about 23km in about 15 minutes along the highway (no traffic lights) and then it took 20 minutes to travel just an extra 8km along the surface roads. I stopped at 11 sets of traffic lights because every one of them was red... two sets had no traffic coming at the crossroad either. Nevermind it was all worth it because I had a physiotherapy appointment today, and I do feel much better, my brain can process thoughts again and I can even look over my shoulder to reverse the car. Yippee! I've got another appointment booked for Wednesday which should take considerably less time to get to as I'll be going from home instead of via Lesmurdie.

Before the physio I went to school to take another class of girls for temari making. This was my last teaching commitment for 2010 so now I guess I am on holidays!!???? Er actually... No rest for the wicked (and I must be particularly so) I've got 2 JTA temari to make, 2 birthday cakes to bake (I am so lucky to be making my nephew's 1st birthday and niece's 3rd birthday cakes), then I will get stuck into all the Christmas baking. My assigned course is dessert (another conspiracy I suspect) and everyone has given me a long list of requests. I daren't make anything new because I know it will be added (nothing every gets left off) to the request list for next year when I mysteriously get chosen to make desserts.

Today I am made photo boards to help the girls finish off their design. Click here to see them.

I also finished off a yubinuki bead to go on a necklace. This one is green and navy and is quite cute but still no good for entering into Chloe Patricia's share your thimbles for this month... not to worry though because I am half way through one that will qualify. This one is made with Orizuru No9 silk in green and navy on a base made of bias tape, cardboard, cotton thread and yarn. There are 11 sections and each colour is stitched in the opposite direction.


The new thimble bead is also 11 sections but I am experimenting with 3 colours. 2 sections of red, plus 1 section each of gold and silver. I'll share a pic when I've finished it.

Wednesday 10 November 2010

Weekend Workshop

Ahhhh we are having a bit of rain today and my garden is so thankful as it has been particularly thirsty weather for the last few weeks.

Last weekend I had an awesome workshop with 9 ladies in South Perth. One participant flew all the way from Melbourne just for the weekend. On Saturday morning we were so lucky to have Miho come to help as everyone marked up C8 division temari, for some ladies this was their first time to mark a into C8.

We stitched our way through several temari designs together over the weekend. I managed to convert one lady from foam bases to rice hulls when I gave her one of my bases because her prepared base was just a little too small for the design we were stitching. Once you go hull you don't go back.

This week is a bit quiet... for the first time in ages... I am waiting, waiting, waiting for a giant delivery from Japan. I haven't done much stitching (my neck, spine and arm are playing up) but I have something to show which is my latest effort. I finished this one last week but hadn't had time to take a photo. I think the pattern is from Cosmo 2 but I can't remember because I started it a while ago and it sat for several weeks waiting to get the last light yellow triwing  stitched on it.

I am beginning to suffer from increasing numbers of UFO's again. I am hoping to get some of them finished soonish. Some of these may get wrapped back over and started again as something else. Let's see: I will finish off the green based one (right) and the one on the front left but the middle one is just a ball I use for laying out new patterns and the one at the back is Joan's stitch along I still haven't finished. I don't like the colours so it will get wrapped over or pulled out and something else done on it. Also you can see through the bag my latest thimble bead almost done, this is the item closest to finished so this is the next thing I'm doing.


Now that I look at the photo it's not too many UFO's... I just have to put out of my mind all the crafty things I promised to do for everyone just now. [Just kidding people... you know who you are]

I am looking for C10 projects to make right now. I need two awesome temari to finish off my JTA requirements. When I started the C10 above I planned to use it as a JTA submission ball but in all honesty I did a terrible job of the stitching and when I tried to diagram the pattern... well let's just say I couldn't without just redrawing exactly what was in the book. I like to make my diagrams from my understanding of the pattern rather than just reproducing one verbatim* from the source.

*I know this means word for word... is there a term that means picture for picture?

I had a Chinese hacker attack on one of my 5 email accounts twice last weekend. Grrrr!!! I don't even recall opening or clicking on anything dodgy recently so goodness knows how it happened. I want to apologise if anyone got a weird message from me... I wasn't even aware of it until some kind folk began to email me to tell me what they received. I've changed everything, every password for every account and my modem and anything else I could possible think of and now I scan every hour (instead of once a day) for potential problems. There seems to be a lot of nasty Internet goings on at the moment so let's all stay alert.

Friday 5 November 2010

Thrilled all over

I have a few temari UFO's kicking around but my arm has been too sore to settle to them. Here is my latest temari. I really enjoyed working on this one and just love how it turned out. It is inspired by a pattern in Cosmo 4 p24 #6 (pattern p52). I changed the colours a little from the original ball because I wanted it to really pop with rainbow brightness. After I stitched it I was unsure if I had got the rainbow colours right... despite just coming out of winter here I haven't seen any rainbows for a while.

I really like this eye catching cheery little C8 fellow. I think I have 3 all time favourite temari that I have made so far (I mean those I worked out on my own rather than asking for help on) the other two are.

This one is a C10 and it is almost an all over design. My other favorite is below, a S16.


I'm sure I see a theme... they all have blue on them. I've stitched the last two many times, and I think I'll make the top one again in graduated shades of colour to see the effect.  Hmmm what colour might I use? Can you guess?

Till next time... just keep stitching!

Thursday 4 November 2010

Store updates.

Just before the big bumper bingle* last Friday, I had spent a few days updating the Temari Addict Australia Supply Store. It had been quite a while since I did any housekeeping in the store so it was well overdue. 

I've changed the banner to match this blog background, updated many product images and added some new product lines. All the books are now featured 4 to a page so the cover images are a little bit bigger. I also did a mini stock take and found a book I've had in stock that wasn't yet listed in the store. It is now of course!

I'll have more time (theoretically) coming up so I will be able to be more vigilant about keeping all the listings fully stocked so I've changed the inventory system to show all items again (this will allow you to back order any out of stock items as they will no doubt be on their way from the supplier). I'll be ordering more frequently so things should get back to being rarely out of stock. There is a big KYO and Cosmo series order about to arrive at the door so if there is something you wanted head over to the store to take a look. Also I am getting colour swatches in for threads and will add some starter kits to the store for those that just want to try temari without diving too far into the deep end.

*Bingle: an Australian informal noun which means collision or minor traffic accident.