October Workshop

Tomorrow I am taking a temari workshop in South Perth at Hazel McDougall House. It will be a beginner's class with 10 students. This is one of my personal ITAD activities for 2010. Here are a few photos of the venue.

I did some resreach about this building and I discovered this history. The parkland that this building sits on was actually the last dairy in the Perth metropolitan. Until 1946 dairies in this area supplied all Perth's milk and dairy needs. This farmhouse was owned by the McDougall's, a childless couple, who worked the surrounding land until 1952 when the local government purchased most of the property, which it redeveloped into housing.

After Mr McDougall passed away his wife continued to live in a small acreage while in the 1960's the land were developed into the current amphitheater, parklands and lake which provide shelter for local native flora and fauna which was the McDougall's wish. The buildings in the map below still exist today.

 When Mrs McDougall passed away she bequeathed the remaining farm acreage and homestead to the local government of South Perth with the understanding it be used to further arts and crafts in the district.  Now days many groups use this facility for sharing their artistic knowledge and skills. Thank you to the McDougalls for being so selfless with their community and giving us all such a wonderful gift.

I got it from madeit.

A few weeks ago I did a swap with another seller on madeit. There are loads of art and craft websites on the www and madeit is probably the Aussie version of etsy. The difference is that there are no supplies sold on madeit and all items sold there can only be made by crafts people in Australian.  I gave a set of 15 flower topped pins similar to these shown below.




I received this cute little felted Chickie Mini Purse from Cassie at Rainbow Lollies. The photo is a little dark but the outer is a nice deep navy blue. Click on the image to see it a little larger and you'll see all the details.

You can see the cute packaging featured in the middle of the picture... it really felt like receiving a gift when I opened the parcel. Cassie is running a 3 for 2 special at her store at the moment click over and have a look. Right now my own madeit store is empty :( I've been focusing on my temari supply store recently but when I get a few minutes I will pop up a few listings at made it.

I'm not sure if I will keep this for myself or gift it to a lucky friend... if I can bear to part with it of course.

2 weeks to ITAD... Here is a competition to celebrate.

Here is a cross post from my other blog:

Today I am announcing a giveaway competition for everyone celebrating ITAD 2010. We want to know how you celebrate ITAD.


Here are the entry guidelines:
General: Take a photo of whatever temari celebration you do on (or during the week of) ITAD. Upload your photo and a caption description just a few sentences long to the flickr group or email it directly to me at this place [intl.temari.day(at)gmail.com] The entries will be added to the ITAD blog so by entering you grant the International Temari Appreciation Day coordinator permission to use the image and text in your entry.
Time: Competition will commence on October 22 2010 and close at Midnight October 31st 2010 local time. I live in Western Australia so the time here is GMT+8.
Photography: Please ensure you have permission of any individuals in your photograph as they will be published on this blog. Ensure your photo is named in an identifiable way. This will ensure you get all the credit for it.
Caption: Please tell us what you did and where you were. No long essays needed just a few sentences, no more than 100 words. This can be in English or your own language if you would prefer. I can always translate your text if necessary.
Prize: A little parcel of 7 DMC perle 5 and 3 Kreinick braid threads, one card of 3 needles and a JTA V-ruler will be posted to the winner. Here is a picture of the giveaway.

Draw: One winner will be selected at random from all the entries received before the competition closing time.


Here's a sample entry. I have used an old photo from my other blog and just added a few sentences about it underneath. The are about 60 words which is more than enough:

This is a plum blossom tree in my front garden in Perth, Australia. A few months ago (back in the winter) we had an unusually warm and sunny day so I decided to dress up this bare tree with some temari balls. Lots of neighbours walked past and wondered what I was doing. I had a great time and I love this photo. By Rebecca from Perth

Mark your calendars

Upcoming Events in Perth - Mark Your Diary!!


October and November are busy months. There are bookings for a  1 day beginners workshop in South Perth on the 16th and a 2 day intermediate workshop booked on the 6-7th of November. The first International Temari Appreciation Day will be held on October 22nd.

West Coast Steiner School

In addition we have planned our next fair appearance at the West Coast Steiner School Open Day and Spring Fair on 24th of October. The fair will run from 10am-3pm at 15 Mayfair Street, Nollamara. We will present many handcrafted items made by our group including journals, wristlets and hand bags, wired jewellery, brooches, bookmarks, hair accessories, munchy crunchy corn.... and of course there will be a display of temari & yubinuki and some of the group will have temari items for sale. So if you live in Perth please come along and visit us at this open day.

I better get my berocca on!!!

Pattern play part two

I've been stitching my heart out lately but there's not too much I can show right now.  This week I have been playing with patterns again. I have been trying out different colours on a wrapped bands pattern. This is a fun activity and I learn a lot every time I do this. I've done four balls in this design and while I think I prefer the blue and red one, I can't really place the other three.

Which one do you prefer?

I have also been playing with one of my favorite patterns from Cosmo 1. I've mixed it up a bit and am plugging in different colours to see how they look. I really like the shape formed at the pole area. I can't say that I have ever seen this shape before... could I have stumbled on something new? Not too likely, with all the hundreds of thousands of temari that have been made over the years since the first temari was stitched, I am sure someone else has stitched this before. I've never seen it though.

Which colours do you like best?

This last set are to temari I made this week working from a pattern I stitched for my JTA submission (the red one) last year. Please excuse the stitching on the pink one, it is a bit wonky... I was watching a German movie while stitching this one and as I don't speak the language I was mostly reading the subtitles... when will I learn that I can't 'watch' a subtitled movie and stitch temari at the same time? I might go back and try to groom out that flat side which I hadn't noticed being so bad until I saw this photo.

The more I play at making temari the more obvious it is that selecting colours to use on a project can be harder than working out the pattern when written in Japanese. Sometimes the colours I select are bang on perfect and other times what seems like a nice combination in my hand looks hideous on the temari. I have grabbed a bunch of lovely pale colours only to see them turn out all faded out on the surface of my temari. The 'pop' factor can be somewhat elusive. Occasionally I've grabbed random colours that don't seem to match only to see them sync up on the ball like magic.  Also interesting is that the same set of threads can look wonderful on one pattern and terrible on another. This is why I really like the exercise of trying out several colours on a pattern.