Hello Monday, why so grey?

Being made redundant due to lack of funding sucks. Being unemployed in an expensive city (and just generally) sucks. I am counting today as my first 'official' day of unemployment since my final paycheque included last week. I haven't been super productive so far (although I've written about a million job applications - which you need to do in a town this big) but I am aiming to be positive & do things I've wanted to do for ages. At the moment though I am looking out the window at the grey, rainy outside world  and putting off doing the groceries...not the best start. 

Okay - I'm going to brave the 10 minute walk to the shops & stop complaining on here. All in all things are pretty damn good, I just need to find a job. In the meantime I am going to:

- Crochet the stash of yarn I have lying around

- Make curtains

- Apply for jobs

- Cook/bake a lot

- Walk to the park or Heath whenever it is remotely sunny

- Apply for jobs

- Visit nice cafes

- Go to ALL the free museums in London

- Try & have a regular routine, stop stressing too much & wake up at an appropriate time

Here are some pictures from the lovely Brighton (possibly my favourite place ever) where I hope to be in a few weekends time. 

Best veggie burger ever. Cheap & Cheerful after a night at a gin bar. 

Mmmm...pita chips + cider

Have a lovely start of the week everyone! 

Xx

To keep you warm during the cold days ahead

There is no denying that my toes have been fairly cold this winter and we can't have a real fire in our little apartment so I stitched this one to keep our empty fireplace happy. My toes, however, are still cold. 

Percy the Friendly Fireplace Softie

A snowy Monday walk on Hampstead Heath (quickly followed by coffee in a warm cafe)

 Primrose Hill on Sunday (along with the rest of London)

The snow is beginning to melt and I have lots of itty bits of sewing at the end of crochet projects to get done tomorrow.

Xx

Crochet confessions & neighbourhood cats

I have a confession to make: I have had this yarn sitting on our coffee table for a while now. Eventually I intend to turn it into a beanie (or perhaps a beanie & something else...) for a little person that is on the way soon. Remember when I got these? That was a while ago and I still haven't used them. Terrible! I now have 2 weeks in which to make & post said items to Japan. I'm going to be honest - it doesn't look too much like that's going to happen at the moment. Here's hoping the little one decides to be fashionably late! 

The colours are a bit nicer than they look in this picture... this makes them look like something found in a curtain from the 1970's.

So now for some procrastinating from starting the above crochet...

Neko! 

Despite the foxes there are lots of cats in the neighbourhood. I miss Harley the ladder climbing cat who I got to hang out with while living with my lovely Perth friends. (I miss them too, obviously!) It's nice to see the local cats lazing around on top of cars and walls. Porter the pub cat is all grown up & counts himself amongst the 'outside' cats now too. 

One of the many friendly neighbourhood cats.  It's amazing how many people here have pets (especially dogs) considering almost everyone lives in apartments/tiny terrace houses.

Other crafty projects I have not yet started/completed:

1. Making 'non sew' curtains for the living room. The ones we have now are pretty gross.
2. Friendly Fireplace Softie
3. Dyeing permanent marker stained dress & embroidering collar
4. Finishing this blanket. Yep, that's right - It's still just a bunch of squares! This one doesn't count anyway because the squares are currently on the other side of the world. 

I really am terrible at actually getting stuff done. Even stuff that I want to do and enjoy doing. Go figure. I need some motivation. Please help me (come over for a crafternoon perhaps? It's a long journey if you're back home but I will make some noms...that's totally worth 24hours in transit, yeah?)

Brewery Putt Putt & why you should check the sauce lid

Last weekend our lovely friend Cam was in London en route back to Australia & so we spent the weekend doing some London-y stuff. Borough Market for cheese sandwiches, Kernel for afternoon drinks, Boris Bicycling to Islington for shopping/coffee and putt putt in the brewery.

Yes. There was a Putt Putt (or mini-golf if you so prefer) course set up in the brewery. I started off strong with a hole in one which turned out to be an absolute fluke considering how far downhill my game went after that. Benjamin was trying out some fancy (and surely highly illegal in the putt putt world) 'chipping' moves which looked a bit more hockey than golf. Pints and putt putt are a good mix I think, although perhaps not too many pints. 

The course was harder than it looked, but then again the pints might be to blame

Granary Square at Kings Cross where I dragged everyone so we could check out the new Caravan which turned out not to have actually opened yet

CoffeeWorks Project 

This is why you should check the lid is on properly before shaking sauce. Also, for those of you out there with beards - if this happens to you, don't look down to survey the damage, your beard will end up covered in sauce also.

The people sitting next to us had a very lucky escape, the majority of the sauce ended up on Ben. Well, I am off to enjoy the sunshine at Street Feast & get me some Bhangra Burger & Sweet Tooth Factory goodness. I am also going to attempt to make a lion headband for a party tonight without the necessary craft supplies. Wish me luck!

Have a lovely weekend & remember to check the lid is on the sauce.

Xx

Is it like riding a bicycle?

There has been a lot going on work-wise lately & I must have been running around and complaining a lot because today I arrived home to a lovely card and a crafty present!

I didn't bring a crochet hook with me to London and it's been a while. 

Hello again crochet & welcome back. 

Now to begin the hunt for good yarn.

NB: I know, Ben is making cakes & buying presents while I complain and stress out. Don't worry, I will crochet a nice something for him... I have to now that it's in writing, yes? (I don't get around to actually finishing many yarn-related things I set out to make, hence the 50 odd crochet squares sitting in a box back home waiting for me to stitch them into a blanket.) 

Artillery

Friday night was the Artillery Festival Art Exhibition (for Amnesty International) which I made a piece for. It was a fun night - despite my work being a very last minute thing which I wasn't at all happy with! Oh well, that's what happens when you leave things to the last minute!

I didn't put it in this frame. Gah. Embroidery & Painting. 

 

We had a party...

I made sushi! So fiddly. There was an eclipse which we managed to see most of - until some lovely clouds got right in the way!

Explanations of the process.

Light painting with my friend the moon.

5 days to go! 

Xx

cross stitch

What a lovely goodbye present from my friends at Propel! 

 

Craft was not their motive.

I'm sure that the thief returned home only to realise they'd left the alphabet stamps behind. How disappointing for them. 

Midweek tunes and crochet

 

Also, the lovely Captain Plaknit is letting me help out on the 'Knit A Wish' project for Subiaco, we spent yesterday measuring various objects and a bird pooped on me but it was fun anyway! We put up a couple of tags to get things going, I haven't made anything for it yet but there will be lots of crochet soon. More wool is on the way for Ben's blanket as well, updates soon! 

It's a red, green and white theme for Christmas. 

 

Happy Wednesday everyone!

Xx

 

Outskirts and impromptu picnic-ing

My new housemates are absolutely lovely and on Friday we went for an impromptu mini picnic in the park (living right next to the park is so nice!) 

 Outskirts happened on Sunday and so we wandered down to check it all out (we got there a tad late and so didn't quite get the full experience!). It was a great event and the amount of things to do and see was amazing...

This piece is amazing when it's lit up.

Hidden works all over the place

The Perth Zine Collective residency at PICA was awesome, I am so glad to have finally been (It's only next door to work and yet I tend to miss a lot of exhibitions etc, must go more often!).  

Who knew that one small city could have so many vintage clothes? There were a tonne of vintage pop up shops during Outskirts, none of which I actually had a good look at, so little time and money, so much to do!

 

Finger Knitting! We headed to Frisk (amazing coffee) and learnt how to do us some good ol' fashioned finger knitting...It was much easier to learn than crochet and quite similar, nice to know I could do this on a plane since you don't need anything except some yarn.   

Just as a final note - Ben is in Scotland now and I am super jealous and missing him a heap, but at least he's having fun...

SANDWICH!

Xx 

Alphabet stamps & Beer

Some lovely friends of our are tying the knot rather soon and since we are making the move to Scotland we won't be able to be there on the day but Ben made a special beer as a wedding present and I finished it off by making the labels...

I love my new stamp sets, it is painstaking to individually stamp each letter but definitely worth it in the end I think...

I accidently stamped the 'i' upside down on the 'Special Occasion' label, oops!

A beer for each anniversary and one for a special occasion! I hope they arrived intact!

p.s - Ben leaves for Scotland TODAY! Crazy times :)

p.p.s - I am all settled in my new place, it is lovely and so are the people I am living with! There is also a lovely cat. Bonus! More on my new life in Perth later!

Xx 

furniture restoration

Last year when we moved to Perth we had nowhere to put our television, it had been sitting on my Grandmother's coffee table looking rather sad and making our necks hurt for quite some time when some suitable furniture was spotted on the verge not far from our house.

Getting it from A to B was a mission and I didn’t think we were going to make it. With the help of a borrowed skateboard and lots of swearing we managed to wheel the damn thing down the road and then drag it across the park (to the amusement of all the dog walkers) and finally dump it in our parking space.

There it stayed for a while, looking sad and sickly pink until I managed to head over to Bunnings and raid their rejected paint section. I love the rejected paint section, it’s the best and cheapest way to buy paint and I usually manage to find something along the lines of what I’d imagined.

To transform our horrible new acquisition I got a tin of pastel-ish green from the reject section and splurged on a spray can of ivory – all up it cost me about $15 for materials.

Here are the results, I sanded it back and gave it a nice new coat of paint, got some new screws and in no time at all it was looking much more house friendly and not quite so ugly! I still haven’t put the drawers on runners and the handles on the bottom cupboards don’t match, but that’s just part of it’s charm. 

It's old but it keeps our television happy and it's great to hide the mess in when people come over! Be careful scavenging on the verge though! A man was arrested recently for 'stealing' a vacuum cleaner - check it out.

finished.

After lots of late-night crochet and swearing I managed to finish my piece and get it up on the wall late last year for the grad show. It's funny watching people look at something you made, I think that was the best bit about the whole process. The quizzical looks.

It's over. Thank goodness. 

Hammering in all those little pins sucked.