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.

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.

週に一度の手毬の会では

だいたい週に一度、メンバーで集まっています。

もちろん手毬作りがメインですがもうひとつのお楽しみはランチ。

みんなで持ち寄ったプレートが机の上にぎっしり。

どれもこれも手作りで美味しいものばかり。

気の置けない仲間とおしゃべりしながら過ごす時間はとても素敵なもの。

もっともっと仲間が増えるといいなぁと思っています。

もうすぐマーケットもあることだし口だけではなく手も動かさなくては。。。

Japanese Cosmo books

I got my first 3 Cosmo books on Friday.

Oh My GOODNESS... they are lovely!!! I can't decide what I want to do first. I have been working on a translation sheet for English - Japanese to help with interpreting the patterns and also got a copy of Barb Suess' Translation Cheat Sheet which she kindly had posted on the Temari Challenge group. I have decided a mixture of both will be what I end up referring to but it will take a little more work. I highly recommend looking on eBay for listings of the Cosmo books as they usually have sample pages displayed. I can't quite decide what the 'It' factor is that Japanese temari have but what ever it is I want to work it out for use on my own temari.

The remaining 4 Cosmo books will take about another month to come from Amazon.jp - which is a good thing because I have plenty to keep me busy until then...

I can't wait to share my new books next week with the girls.