Bitter Sweet.

Things are good for me right now. I'm a bit of an all over the place, emotionally-rollerly-coasterly type person at the best of times, but it seems at last that things are coming together. When people ask me what I do, I say I make dolls with a little grin on my face, because I know it sounds funny. In the past I've always been in the middle of something that was leading somewhere else, and what I did was either quickly and inaccurately explained, or explained over several hours incorporating quotes and references from the book I was reading at the time. 'The Real World', which I keep hearing about, has never much been my thing.

But anyway, I seem to be making my life as a grown up work. I'm not really ticking any of the boxes that we were brought up to want to tick like marriage, children, career, mortgage, new car, attempt to win lotto and so on and so forth, although I would like to tick some of them eventually... but I'm no longer prone to crippling bouts of depression and/or anxiety, I feel calm, and that's enough for me right now.

The funny thing is, and I don't mean funny 'ha ha', is that some of the most important people aren't here to see me pull it all together, especially since I know they'd be the proudest, the most supportive, and possibly the most useful!

I don't want to make a soppy. morbid post, I just want to say that there are some types of friendship that are so important, and I had one of those. Sometimes I feel ripped off by the universe, and yesterday was one of those days. I just need to remember that some people never make friends with people they really, really click with, and I did. 

Oh Nellie! The things I'd tell you if you were here! xxx.

B.

hopey, changey stuff:

There are so many great blogs out there about being eco and ethical and green, and I've started reading them, like really reading them-- not just looking at the pictures! And the lovely thing about the internet is that whilst a suprising amount of people in my day to day life are quite resistant to change, it turns out that lots of people around the world are thinking the same things I'm thinking... and that's that something has to give... we can't keep living this way...

Aside from the whole sustainability problem, the carbon footprints, and all the environmental arguments for consuming less, the basic human decency argument has to be enacted too... unfortunately, my high standard of living is paid for with the poverty of the third world... if we're not ripping the guts out of resources in Africa, we're getting super cheap labor in Asia... and I'm over here, living like a queen in comparative terms, I have running water, a telephone, and a 2 bedroom flat! It seems meagre compared to what a lot of other people I know have, but it is massive compared to what most human beings around the world have.

I'm certainly not perfect, or above judgment, I have coke in my fridge, I have reeboks in my wardrobe, and most of the stuff in my house was probably made in a sweat-shop, even if I obtained a lot of it from the op-shop, but anyhoo, I'm going to try and be better at this whole thing, and marry my ideological commitments with my everyday life.

A couple of weeks ago, I signed up for this pledge at Isis' blog, and I'm really digging it. Already I've noticed how those cute, cheap clothes I see everywhere are just off limits, they might be cheap, and cute, but they are not worth having. I should also confess that I've been watching an this doco on ABC2 each week, and it's bringing the reality of sweat-shop life a little too close to home, this and reading No Logo by Naomi Klein, are all making for a pretty heady mix of anti-consumption-for-consumption's-sake sentiment around here...

This is the pledge, as copied from Isis' blog:

----------------------------------------------------------------------

E T H I C A L  C L O T H I N G  P L E D G E

I pledge to only wear clothing that is one or more of the following:
1. Pre-loved
2. Handmade (preferably by me)
3. Reconstructed
4. Made with ethical / environmentally friendly materials
5. Made by a company with strong ethical policy & workers' rights

* Companies with environmentally friendly practices (such as cutting down on waste/energy/water) get brownie points
* If I get one little inkling of sweatshop labour, I'm outta there!
* Above all though, I think the most important thing is reducing the amount of things we use in the first place. Not purchasing ANOTHER piece of clothing just for the sake of it is the biggest statement we can make.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

This all leaves me in a bit of a pickle about where some of my doll fabric comes from, whilst the majority is made in Japan and the US, and a lot is second-hand... I do buy the occasional Spotlight fabric for half the price of my other fabrics, and it does clearly read 'made in India' on the roll... I'd love feedback, suggestions!!

B.

P.S. picture via here.

P.P.S. my title is poking fun at Sarah Palin, not Obama!

I do love you, but no thanks.

 
Ok, I lived in Sydney for 8 years, I didn't grow up there, I was transplanted there for uni, where I managed to change courses once, and drag my degree out to five years instead of three, just for the fun of it... so most of my time there was as a starving student, in fact, I went part time at uni so that I could work more hours at my crumby job, a means of coping with my own personal 'rental crisis'-- and this was years before the official one occurred. 

When I left, it was because I had been crying every morning before work because I hated going into the city. I was working on George St as a humble pen selling girl, where I didn't much enjoy the prospect of having business types eyeball me over $700, gold nibbed fountain pens made in Switzerland. Where the men were so blatantly pervy, and the women were so blatantly frustrated and resentful. The fact that I was a vegetarian with a creative arts degree and some big opinions about conspicuous consumption habits got shoved a little deeper down into my gut everyday... and so I left...

And ever since, I have been one of those people who go around complaining that nothing works outside the city. I hate bad food, I hate bad art, I hate when I go shopping and I can't find what I want, I hate the stares you get outside Sydney when you dress ever so slightly differently from the mainstream... but yesterday really put some things into perspective about why I did leave Sydney, and why I'm not about to move back there.

To be fair, it was raining and I know that things are a little hiccuppy on rainy days... but still...

1. Your traffic is a joke, like an actual laughable joke. Nothing works, and I try be to pretty reasonable and relative when I look at things like this- in the scheme of world problems, Sydney's transport network doesn't really rate in matters of importance, but all the same, it is one massive joke, where between the roads, the trains and the buses you just can't seem to get it together. The structure of your streets are so outdated that nothing moves. It shouldn't take 2 hours to get from Concord to the city.

2. The price of real estate is a joke, like an actual laughable joke, the type of thing which could severely paralyze lifetime dreams and such. Who in their right mind would work a 40 hour a week job to come home to live in a cupboard and spent all day Saturday in traffic? Yummy food and pretty art don't justify this.

Ok, well really these are my only qualms, but they are big qualms! Maybe Sydney when you get this stuff sorted out, we can talk. 

B.

Edit: Some cats are the best people!

Some of you may have noticed from the status updates on twitter, that I have doubled the amount of cats at my house over the weekend... Paco arrived on Saturday night, bringing with her 8 years of cat experience to teach to my beautiful, gentle, INNOCENT & snuggly Henry. It's an interesting dynamic, H is friendly and welcoming, he's trying to sneak her food in a nonchalant sort of way, not phased if you take it away from him, he's very interested in everything she does, he follows her, stares at her, copies some of the things she does. Paco is tiny, she was the runt of her litter, and she is one strange little kitty... she likes humans a little more than H, and she seems to take more to me than Joe. She isn't a daytime cat at all... and I am one tired human being... tired and uncomfortable! 

P has decided that she needs to be out there among the action in the trees, the trees full of birds which she can see from sitting in the window cill. She has spent the last few nights trying to shake the window screens out of their frames, so that in this hot and muggy summer weather, we have had to have the windows closed, and the vertical blinds wide open-- she keeps getting herself tangled in them whilst running along the window ledges. Exhausted and frustrated at 3:30 this morning, we let her onto the balcony for some air, where we watched her trying to calculate the mathematics of jumping off, whilst Henry watched on, with a completely baffled look on his little face. After much hissing and a little scratching, a towel was used to wrangle her inside, and she spent the night inside... much to her disgust...

Lets hope things improve!

B.

Constant Companions...

He's taken to sleeping behind my machine pedal, in between my sewing desk & the afternoon sun... I really don't understand those anti-cat types...

B.

Clutter...

I've been having a completely chilled out sort of week. I've been to Sydney two times, I've been to almost every op shop in the immediate vicinity and I even found the perfect book shelf for $15 at one of those stores. I had some beautiful fabric arrive in the mail from an Etsy Shop I found a little while ago.

I had a great time at Reverse Garbage. $9 buys so much, including a bunch of old school zippers-- I love these ones with the big chunky metal teeth. I have no idea what I will do with them, but I started collecting them a while back. I also managed to get some awesome coffee sacks which I will turn into big tub/buckets to store toy making blankets in (they will be lined!) using this tute. Jess' use of hessian has inspired me, although I'm still a bit apprehensive about putting it through my sewing machine.

And despite adding to my mess, I'm in the midst of a major declutter. Something I do every couple of months, I have no idea why I keep certain things... I've been going through all the random pieces of paper I "file" in random places-- I've found a bunch of scribbles, some long lost pattern pieces and some fabric which I thought I'd used up... 

I've been wanting to make this girl for such a long time!

AND... in a massive bid to really, truly declutter-- which I tried to do with my PIF month, and many, many Toy Society drops, I'm going to take all the old stuff-- including prototypes, one offs, and muck around toys and have a very big sale at my stall this weekend. I will have things priced from as little as $5!! I will of course have my current stuff at regular prices as well, but I will devote one side of my stall to 'old stuff!'.

Someone was asking me how I came up with the blinky pattern the other day... well, if you come and see these 'in-betweeners', you'll see all the work that goes into turning an idea into a toy!

Yikes! I still have some finishing up to do on these ones, but they'll be there!

Ok, well back to the massive pile of fabric on my table I go...

B.

Finally some pictures:

So, I managed to finally find my camera chord, it was of course sitting less than a metre away from my usual work space with all kinds of fabric entwined around it. There are hundreds of photos, but these are just a select few-- some crafty, some not so much, I'll post more soon!

Turning Mum's coffee table into a Toy Society tag factory.

A drop at Corrindi Beach.

And Bellingen-- I like Bellingen! :)

And Woolgoolga.

Stuck in traffic outside Gosford... And handwriting that reminds me of lovely hands!

Almost home... ahhhhh...

B.

I'm Back!

1. vintage thrifty sheets, 2. pin back badges, 3. Lovely Lady--Vintage Sheet Music--When I think I of You--, 4. disguise 2 

I'm home, and so is Henry, and so we are a happy little family-like unit again. Lots of sleeping, drinking tea, eating toasted sandwiches, snuggling, cuddling, meowing, talking, laughing, and mucking around with pretty new things. Unfortunatley there has also been what seems like an awful lot of washing up-- I got used to family members and their dishwashers.

As soon as I find my camera chord-- --that's right, still looking! =/-- I'll share some funny and cool stuff with you, for now, I'm sewing faces, looking at other people's nice stuff on the net, and freaking out that I'll be turning 29 in the VERY NEAR future... eek!

Goodnight!

B.

Good Morning!

So true... and now I'm off to screen print!!

B.

My Christmas Wishlist...

All completely practical, necessary, sensible things that I need to be one of the cool kids...

Relaxing Kitty stamp, available here.

Locket ring... I LOVE lockets! and rings! and little flowers! Available here. It's actuall pretty safe to say I'd happily take anything in this shop...

Does it get cutter than this??? I doubt it very much, and in this loopy weather I shouldn't even be thinking about scarves, but this one is so perfect on so many levels! Available here.

What more can I say?? Available here.

Happy Tuesday-- yay to cool weather again today... shame about the climate...

B.

Thank you!!

I'm feeling a little over-whelmed with all the lovely messages and comments I've received since my post yesterday! I've been smiling and laughing reading them all-- and thanks to all the people who complimented my stall set up... I was feeling pretty happy with the way it all looked too if I do say so myself.

Joe and I have been talking so much about that strange experience, and my mind has been wondering around this horrible concept of blue for boys and pink for girls, and the way that people didn't know how to understand my toys, how to look at them, and how the comments I heard were pointing to the need for classification/categorisation/pigeon-holing/stereotyping etc. The worst part for me was seeing kids dragged away from the toys, and thinking about what else they might be dragged away from, and why. Why it really matters if you give something blue to a girl, although that doesn't seem nearly as taboo as giving something pink to a boy. I really think it all comes back to homophobia and the preservation of the idea of happy families... trying to curtail the ever rising divorce rate and other 'unsightly' things. Rather than write a sociology or history essay, I'll just say I find it so sad.

I do however talk about things like this each week with my Glebe customers and I know that there must be lots of happy kids out there, who are being nutured and encouraged to find themselves, and it's another reason that  I'm happy to have fluked my Mum and Dad, and my awesome brother, who don't seem to be so strangely affected all this craziness...

B.

P.S. that rad card is from this rad etsy shop!

I've been busy!

First attempt at my little PJ wearing, afro hair-styled little girl... I've gotten a taste for painting since the wooden dolls, and that's been making me think about my dolls in a whole new way...

Tracing drawings onto fabric to paint, which meant that when 2 young and extremely enthusiastic crafters visited, we ended up with some stunning art work-- which will be sewn up into softies very soon!

2 dolls, a bunny and a puppy!

And I mastered (well really just survived) the art of attaching woollen hair to a fabric doll, which Bella-- who is only 8-- had made herself!

And of course, there has been a little bit of toy making going on too... although it's been a week of trying very hard to get ideas to turn into reality, which did not go hand in hand with productivity...

And I've been working on my Dew Drop Girl pattern which I plan to sell soon-- hopefully in a couple of weeks!

I'm exhausted, but hoping that Glebe will go ahead tomorrow after having been cancelled last week due to atrocious weather... whilst it's looking pretty miserable at the moment, the showers are meant to clear tomorrow, so fingers crossed!

Happy Friday!

B.

I'm back!

Well, I got back late on Sunday night, but couldn't resist the opportunity to continue on holiday mode, esp with Monday being a public holiday and all!

Firstly, here are the dolls... they're not perfect, but they are my first attempt.

One for each member of the family.

Secondly, since I was at my Mum's place for a night, these are her amigurumi snails. I send her a pattern a little while back.

I think they're very sweet!

Almost as sweet as a certain little black cat that I missed so much!

 

More soon, for now, I'm cleaning up the mess that exploded when I got home full of ideas, and spending some time with a super cuddly, slightly clingy Henry!

B.

Off I go...

Well I'm all packed. My shop is all packed. Joe has instructions and Jacqui and Eleni will be taking turns helping him out at the markets on the weekend. I'm going to a concert tonight and then flying up, up and away tomorrow for a wedding... I'll be back by Monday. I'm a little bummed about leaving my mess, but it will be good to see people and soak up some warm, sunny QLD weather! And I will definitely be posting pictures of the wooden dolls when I get back!

Have a good weekend, not sure if I'll be writing while I'm away... but I'll certainly be photographing!

B.

Always, never, sometimes...

I always:
   * feel loved
   * am happy in my heart
   * envisage living & non living things as toys
   * drink too much coffee
   * cook delicious foods...

I sometimes
   * refrain from chocolate
   * remember to exercise
   * draw pictures of my dream (shipping container) house
   * think about getting dread locks
   * imagine that I am married to Don Draper...

I never
   * leave a fight un-mended
   * eat veal
   * watch horror films (or voluntarily watch crime shows)
   * place my pattern pieces in a sensible place
   * drink tequila... any more!

- list idea from Leslie's blog, which I have just discovered and am enjoying immensely! :)

Hope you like the shot from my bedroom window... it certainly was a strange day!

B.

My Sunday...

Based on today's experiences, I have compiled a list of all the things you cannot do whilst the power is out. Luckily I got the note in the mail box a couple of days ago, and was preapred, most of my neigbours however were taken by suprise, and could be heard and seen running in and out if the building checking the power box and asking each other questions about it...

The List:
- use a sewing machine
- have a hot shower
- have food in the freezer, still freezing away like normal
- do a load of washing
- clean the kitchen... using hot water...
- watch a DVD
- take the DVD from last night out of the DVD player
- have light in the bathroom... we have no windows in there...
- cut out toy pieces... this requires an iron
- have a coffee/tea/toast/toasted sandwich etc.
- go on the internet using a laptop... modem is off
- fix up etsy shop photos and upload
- sculpt with wax because you need the heater or hair dryer to melt it...

- and you can't read a book, because all the electricity company people are outside on the street talking very loudly and using lots of obscene language...

It sure does make me appreciate stuff though!

B.

A hard day's work...

Henry is slightly confused about everything being so tidy...

But Abigail is happy...

 

And Sofia is happy...

And the up & coming blinkies have a well-ordered new home...

I know where all the cotton is...

And where all the bobbins had gotten too...

And the fabric is as tidy as it's ever going to be.

But Joe just smiled and asked how long will it last... I give it about 36 hours!

B.

Flickr Faves this week...

1. pacific wheel 3, 2. Remembering Who We Are, 3. love shape♥, 4. The Rainy Day's Roller Coaster

I have spent ALL of today cleaning up my room, my sewing desk and my actual desk... and what an emotional minefield that has been, a roller-coaster so to speak... old photos, some not so old photos, letters, invitations, tickets, cards, memories of important people who I haven't seen in a long time, and some of people I don't ever get to see again... I feel like I've been up, down and all around... smiling, laughing and crying too... my room is looking sooooooooooo much better though, and I have found a bunch of things I had given up on... it turns out that I have 4 seam rippers, a bunch of bobbins (full of cotton) that had fallen behind the cupboard, not to mention A LOT of beautiful fabric that had been pushed up the back of the shelf and out of my sight, and therefore mind.

Head over to Mitsy's blog to see her very sweet and soapy clean faves for this week, as well to check everyone else's faves.

Goodnight! I have a little cleaning left before bed...

B.