My life as a powder keg, and afterwards...

I haven't written a post here for about nine months, not since last June/July. My blog tends to be more personal than anything else that I write and the problem nine months ago was that everything became a bit too personal when I was found to have a shadow on my lung.

Who can say that they HAD lung cancer? And what does that actually mean? I have lots of questions and not very many answers so it's a difficult place to visit or revisit even now.

I was surprised to find that cancer, dying, death...all those phantoms...were not so frightening to confront. I went into hospital one morning and came out without half one lung less than a week later, and that was, apart from being excruciatingly painful, not all that terrifying an experience. I was so very well looked after by doctors and nurses, and I was, by and large, a very good patient and did everything I was told to do.

Really and truly, my main if not only concern was the distress I was causing my family and friends - my sons, my parents, my husband, my sister... Bad, bad wimcee for being such a nicotine addict for so many years and bringing this on everyone around me.

After my operation the prognosis was that there was no need for further treatment - no chemo, no radium. The nature of the cancer was such -  so new, so small, so contained - that there was nothing to indicate a better outcome if I underwent further treatment than if I didn't.

I had initially gone to my GP with a recurrent pain in my chest - in the left side - which led via tests to the discovery of the shadow - on the right side - which was unrelated. To this day nobody knows what was causing the original pain - possibly the rigours of learning crochet which I took up about that time (and which kept me sane in hospital it must be said!) - but it probably saved my life.

I don't know what comes next with this - the thoracic specialist said before Christmas, 'now we watch, and we wait' - but when my eldest son became engaged to his long-term sweet-heart in January, and my middle son took up a terrific new position in Sydney at about the same time, and my baby boy embarked on his thesis more recently, how could I not feel blessed for having been here to enjoy and savour these moments?

I did a very few markets towards the end of last year, with enormous help and support from the heavenly Helen and the others at the BrisStyle helm, but for now I'm off the marketing circuit. Sadly. Miss the camaraderie very much; miss taking my work to town; miss meeting the browsers and the customers... But I do want to give more time to my parents and to my husband this year and I was finding the markets took bigger and bigger chunks of time.

I am cranking up both on-line stores - etsy and madeit - in lieu, and giving more time and attention to real-time retail through The Collective Store, Bleeding Heart, Rosemount, Reverse Emporium, and other possible outlets instead. And I'm also hoping to get back to painting again this year, or at least working more on the art/craft combination - the soft sculptures and fabric collages and so on that I've dabbled with previously.

So - watch this space!

Life is a very wonderful, precious gift to be cherished but also to be taken at the flood and joyously exploited!

Sew Happy at last!

My mother was an excellent, creative seamstress, and I grew up familiar with sewing machines, specifically the heavy-duty Singer that Dad gave her as a wedding present in 1956.

This machine still works beautifully, and at the age of 80 she still uses it to do small repair jobs and to alter clothing to fit. Very recently she had it lovingly serviced by Henderson's at Chermside in Brisbane, and she feels it's working better than ever. 

Mum used to make her own clothes before she was married, whipping up dresses for dances with a wing and a prayer, literally, as she had no time for patterns or conventions. And yet she understood all about cutting on the bias and how to drape fabrics. A genuine creative.

I learned to sew on this machine, but believe me when I say that I was an absolute disaster at it - to the extent that my mother's heart was always in her mouth when I went to work, wondering if her precious machine would survive. Not one of life's naturals, by any stretch of the imagination! Which just goes to show that where there's life there's hope, and it IS possible to teach a more mature dog new tricks, so to speak. Unlike my mum, I used patterns, which I didn't always understand, nor have the patience to follow when I did, and my frustration with the results lead to vigorous arguments with Sally Singer. Finally, leaving a trail of threads and scraps all over Dad's study where the sewing machine lived in those days, I was banned...a relief to me, Mum, and the sewing machine no doubt!

Which didn't stop me feeling a need to sew. When my boys were born I made tentative steps back into the sewing world with a little basic Janome, a pile of Top Kids magazines, and the strangely sparse retail fabric world of Queensland in the 1980's. 

My sons got to wear some interesting dressing gowns and jackets as toddlers: the best attempt I could make at the cool world of German children's fashion meets Saved by the Bell.

The need was definitely there; I just hadn't found the skills (or, it has to be said, the resources) at that stage to meet my aspirations.

Fast forward to 2007, when my sister gave me a new sewing machine for my [mumble]-th birthday.

In fact, a sewing machine is the last thing that she would have thought to give me, but as she lives in London she gave me cash and I chose to buy a new sewing machine...traded in the rackety old Janome which I couldn't even remember how to thread, and replaced it with a shiny new Janome complete with instruction book, tool kit, and a determination on my part to finally master my demons!

This is actually the second machine of the modern era, a step-up after I began to feel confident that my skill set was up to the mark and my present-day sewing interest was a lasting phenomena. There is a crafters' bumper sticker that reads "my other car is a sewing machine", which is very apt, as my new car fund went towards the more recent purchase (although that wasn't generally known en famille until some time later).

After many decades of struggling I came out of the shade and into the light with my sister's gift 5 years ago and began to master the art of sewing. Number one reason for that I think is that I am a much more patient person that I was at 15 or 25...I will pull out a seam and re-do when I mess it up these days; I will make something and then do it all again, better, in the interests of mastering a skill; I will devote a day and a half, or as long as it takes, to finishing something properly.

Number two reason though is that this century we actually have the most wonderful array of fabrics and notions available to us, here in Australia, and on-line as well, so that creativity is never stunted by a void of resources. And that makes it worth getting the nitty-gritty sorted, big time!

These days I love fabric, I love clever patterns, I love opportunities to improvise and be creative, and I love my sewing machine...never thought that I'd ever say that!

I have just delivered some goodies to Rosemont Collectables in Lismore, NSW, where I have rented Candace's shop window for the month of September. These little dresses are hopefully testament to my present day ability with Dear Machine, and the cushions illustrate an even more recently acquired (if not yet mastered) skill in crochet.

Until next time, have great weeks...

Steph xx

To market, to market...

This Friday night I am setting up shop at the BrisStyle indie Twilight Market. This will be my first 'real' market all year and here it is almost the end of August.

Markets are rather special, especially when it's BrisStyle, which is hand-made only and the primary retail out-let for this not-for-profit collective of craftspeople. These twilight markets can be hugely successful, especially running up to Christmas, but it's also an opportunity to catch up with members of long standing and meet some of the newer recruits.

I've got some new work in the pipeline for Friday night, the nature of which has been in part dictated by physical limitations after surgery in July - my beloved sewing machine hates my back at the moment. So lots of crochet and some paper and glue and embroidery have been my most comfortable options.

I have crochet bags:

...fabric and crochet cushions....    

clothing for chickadees...

and some pixie houses that are actually pin cushions in disguise...

Plus plenty more.

If you are local, drop by King George Square from 5 p.m., browse the stalls, bop to the band, and grab a bite to eat at The Groove Train...look forward to seeing you and being back in the thick of a market once more!

August August

Love August!

My birthday comes along at this time of year and I still harbour that little-girl anticipation of celebrations, not to mention gift-getting, even though, if asked, I don't actually feel I need or want a lot of frivel...much prefer sourcing out the perfect present for other people in reality.

In Brisbane, August (also) = Exhibition: the mighty Ekka, the annual horticultural show, the RNA, a rose by any name...more echoes of childhood! A sun-shiny week when the Westerlies blow icy, all sorts of nasty flus abound, as the first summer fashion forces itself out on brave (very) young things.


For the young the Ekka was - still may be, although somehow I doubt it - a bit of a rite of passage: eventually you were deemed old enough to go alone and unsupervised in the company of friends to spend a day and an evening riding the big dipper and the octopus, feasting on dagwood dogs and get-your-cheerios, and collecting trophies from the sample bag pavilion. Young girls and young fellows strutted their stuff - too young perhaps for boyfriends and girlfriends, but old enough to be aware of display.

Pre-Dreamworld days, we loved the Ekka, with its something-for-everyone...baby animals for the kiddies, floral dioramas for the Mums, spivvy cars for the Dads, handicrafts for the Nannas, and traditional pit-stops like the wood-chop and the silhouette cutter's stand that were as predictable as night following day in a world otherwise full of flux and change.

August this year involves a number of wimcee ventures: a workshop, an exhibition entry, a market - more of these shortly or visit me on facebook to be kept up-to-date.

Have great weeks!

wimceexx

Almost as good as sacs...!

My nanna taught me to knit with fat pink needles and bright red wool, but no-one ever taught me how to crochet.

There's crochet and there's crochet - whole articles are written on what NOT to crochet.

But knitting is not the craft of choice for anyone who's not looking for a way to fill in an awful lot of time. I used to knit when I operated a switchboard in a little nook, shut away from the rest of the world. I used to knit when I was waiting for my babies to arrive. I still knit in doctors' and dentists' waiting rooms. But overall knitting is way too slow. Too slow, too unforgiving.

So for a number of years I have been determined to learn to crochet. I want to make granny squares too! I want to do clever things with the yokes of cotton dresses! I want to make lovely wool flower embellishments and amigurumi like all the other clever crafters! I want to be retro and play with colour and get all free-form.

Finally I mastered the hook - a combination of Brown Owls, Pip Lincoln on-line tutorials, and how-to books got me over the line. I made my very first squares, my first cushion cover, my second cushion cover, and now ...*drum rolls* ... The Boho Bag!

My inspiration for the bag, 'un sac, du crochet, du Liberty, de la dentelle et quelques fleurs' was made by Cecile Balladino and came from here: eclectic gypsy land

It looks like this:




...so beautiful!!

Cecile took her inspiration from Lucy Laine's 'Les Sacs Me Font Perdre La Boule!!' which is shown  here:

Also beautiful!

And now there's my own version:

If I take the rectangular cushion out it's much the same shape as Lucy's. And like her I've used some special vintage lace in homage if for no other reason.

Inside is some lovely Japanese print from the girls at Voodoo Rabbit.

So pleased with this, partly because I had to make it up as I went along, and pull it apart and try again here and there, so another tick against new skills learned, and a big tick also for perseverance. 

Thanks so much to Cecile and Lucy for their inspiration - go the on-line collaborative effort!!

Have great weeks!

Peeves and petulances

An interesting post from apartment therapy recently, design pet peeves   about the karate chop cushion, elicited an avalanche of gripes from readers covering everything from colour-coded book display to matchy-matchy furniture.

(Image: Bliss Studio)

Do you have pet design peeves?

I have loathed the keep-calm-and-carry-on trend since it first raised its dull and repetitious head several years ago...ok, I guess, if you are English AND living in England AND preferably lived through a war, but in Australia it just smacks (to me) of a total absence of original thought married to a lurking cultural cringe-i-ness.


Ditto union jack cushions and all things bull dog. Love that those folk on that island over there have a lot of fun with their own love of country - good for them, and they do it with a lovely touch of humour - but it's not something we can pick up and run with and why on earth would we want to?

In most respects though, on self-examination, I find I'm otherwise surprisingly non-judgmental and tolerant about interior design. Like anything in life, so long as it's not too contrived, it's legit in my book. Home is - it really is - where the heart is, and if there's affection afoot that's as design excellence as you can get.

When I was growing up, my Dad revealed a fetish for light fittings which he indulged via ceramic chandeliers (complete with little gilded cherubim) and ornate metal flower-and-leaf illuminations. As young teens we died of embarrassment over these non-early-seventies baroque-esque style statements that couldn't help but dominate otherwise ordinary family room and bed-rooms. Yet my sister and I have admitted to each other in recent years how strangely drawn we are to excessive light fittings ourselves now...


So people in glass houses, or houses resplendent with coloured glass lanterns and faux art deco frosted wall sconces, obviously have no right to throw stones of any hue.

Go the personal predilection  - if you can't feel free to have fun at home, where else could you possibly let your hair down and be self indulgent?

Just don't, please, k. c. & c. o.


If in doubt, remember: Australian = laconic...something worth celebrating.

Have a giggle!

Retro campers and kitschy kitchenesque

The little red caravan that could!

BrisStyle's craft caravan took the damp Brissy CBD by storm last Friday, with yarn-bombing, make-and-take, a Brown Owls meet-up, talks and demos all day, and BrisStylettes of all ages and shapes selling their hand-made goodness from cosy and colourful stalls. 


The caravan is a marvel - Helen, BrisStyle eventista extraordinaire, and beautiful Bel have done magic with their collection of retro lounges, beach brollies, and charming flamingoes!

I was also really tickled to see my own UFO's put to such good use at last by the Owls in their craftactive activities!

And I had a great time sharing a tent with the talented Anita from Mum's Cupboard (as in, what's in Mum's cupboard) for wimcee's first market outing for 2012.

Anita's Dr Mid-nite and Charlie the Owl glass stud earrings from her etsy shop
at http://www.etsy.com/listing/99280858/doctor-mid-nite-and-charlie-glass-stud

I've gone kitchenesque for the time being, which has been fun, in an effort to build up my stocks again after the hiatus. Had such a lovely time making five new aprons to take to market only to sell four of them before opening time...very happy for them to find good homes so quickly, but it threw my theme for the day just a little.

some new retro style aprons available from: http://www.madeit.com.au/detail.asp?id=554834

All we need now is some old-fasioned Brisbane winter sunshine to smile on the market season in full swing. Here's to blue skies, with no early Westerlies!

great snap of the yarn-bombed BrisStyle flamingo from Little Chrissy at
 http://little-chrissy.blogspot.com.au/2012/05/brisstyles-soggy-but-awesome-craft.html