My particular favourites:

I worked out the drawing style for these books with two illustrators as inspiration: Shirley Hughes and Freya Blackwood.

I love how modern and subtle Freya Blackwood's work is, and how people are half real half simplified. I later used her watercolour style as my guide to watercolouring—she's a lot better than me, but better trained and more devoted, so it's only fair. Oh, I wish I could draw like her.

I read some Shirley Hughes when I was little. I love how she fills her pages with childish details: grubby hands, frowns of concentration, pants falling down, wind-blown hair. She has a very unique style I have no hope of attempting!

I also used the photography on pumpkinpatch as a guide for little kid's proportions. By the way, they have a nice range of little girl clothes this summer with hardly any pink.

Coming soon: How I actually figured out my own style.

First sketches.

Starting many months ago...

This is the first thing I drew, I think. It is for a book in the MM series still in the pipeline about a toy picnic or something, and it was a test run when the idea for doing these kid's books was still a hazy potential. It's rather cute and very on the realism side. Realism is a lot of hard work, it was a good thing we didn't go down that path.

Storybook time!

I'm currently doing some illustration. I'm doing some freelance stuff, not very exciting: diagrams of the safe transportation of gas bottles. But at MM I am doing another children's book. Which is a lot cuter. I think I might run out of things to sew soon, so I'm going to share some illustration stuff. I think I might show you the work as I do it. The book will actually come out next September I think, so you are in for quite a ride!

Rosie's Walk is up there because I remembered about it yesterday. I loved it when they read it on Playschool. The sneaky fox steps on a rake and gets hit in the face, haha!! The pictures are cool. It's from 1968. It's so different from the style of drawing I try and do. 

Vegetable couscous.

I had massive pumpkin cravings for a few days. Really needed to eat some veg, after a few days of bread, toast and other simple carbs I wasn't feeling good.

I don't often buy these packets, because they all taste the same: salty. They are so salty. Curry, mozzarella, all are salty. But it inspired me as a base for this veggie and couscous meal. I baked some pumpkin, and some mushroom. I boiled some carrot and a tin of chick peas for a few minutes before I added the couscous packet. I added some garlic, of course. Then I mixed in the pumpkin and mushroom and scooped it onto a plate of baby spinach. Once I put some fetta on top, it looked pretty fancy. Tastes OK not amazing, but it makes me feel healthy, and it looks pretty gourmet for something I invented.

Big patchwork cushions: blue.

I finished the bigger bluer version of this pillow. I bought a sort of chenille upholstery fabric at Spotlight, it was pretty cheap and feels soft and sturdy. 

It's synthetic, not cotton, so it flops around more and is harder to sew, and the edges of my patchwork were not straight, but as always, once you turn it the right way and put it on the pillow it looks fine. European pillows are cool. Very nice to snuggle up on. I have the pink pillowcase folded away because this is my new favourite—the pink cover is smaller than the blue one, so the cushion inside is fuller and firmer. That's a good tip—overestimate your cushion insert size if you want plump pillows.

 

I have crossed a few tasks off my UFO list last weekend!

Skirt #2 finished!

Well, almost. A little hand sewing remains on the inside of the waist to finish off the lining. This is Apple's practise skirt, her first attempt, before she tries sewing with the lovely floral satin from Tessuti. This purple poplin was actually a bit hard to sew with, because it doesn't stretch or mould very well. So the inside of the hem is all scrunched, the blind hem was very awkward to sew. But you wouldn't know once it's being worn!

I'm wearing my green linen Skirt By Summer today, it is lovely. I think the quality of the fabric isn't just easy to sew, it helps it to sit nicely, the satin one will probably turn out the best.

Sherlock over...

It ended on a standoff. Gasp, growl. But there are promises of more to come! If only it was on the ABC and I could watch it without ads. How I love Martin Freeman as Watson. I am pleased that he is going to play Bilbo Baggins. Moriarty was awesomely creepy, such good acting.

In the meantime, The Mentalist is back on tonight. My other TV love. In the ads he seems like another friendly psychic, but he's really a nasty tricker, much more interesting.

I used to like Glee, but I've stopped watching it because I'm not home when it's on, and now that I've stopped watching it I've stopped liking it. The balance has tipped and the things I don't like are outweighing the things I do like. Sue and cover versions don't stand up to shallowness and sameness anymore.

Skirt #1 finished.

Hemmed my skirt and it is finished! I successfully did the hem on my sewing machine, which if you put it on the right stitch and fold the edge the right way, you get a hem which finishes the edge with a lot of zig-zags and doesn't have a seam show on the front (tiny stitches if you look carefully). It's so tricky I could never have invented it. Every time I want to do one I spend 15 minutes in confusion folding it wrong.

 

Mulberry time.

I'm walking along, staring at nothing, and suddenly I see on the ground the evidence: purple bird poo. I have now found two trees in my suburb. One is very sweet, one is less so but has more berries.

Library DVD review: The Man from Snowy River.

FIrst time watching this Australian classic. It is beautiful. The mountain country is just stunning.

I think it was made in the 80s when period stories were heavily romanticised and women wore a lot of lace and men wore puffy shirts, but they all seem to be wearing pretty normal clothes. Period clothes, but they were plain and real-looking, and also drizabones and boots. Very easy to identify with the place.

It's not an amazing script, and the story is pretty simple, but it's a really good piece of Australian rural culture. Girls on the ag college I use to work at loved it. It's a shame there isn't more like it, because I think bush culture is under represented. It was cool watching Australian men do rugged, useful things like crack whips and boil tea on a fire, foggy forests and horses running over mountains, and that stuff is still there today. The whips, the horses, the mountains, the roughness. I don't get into dramas like Mcleods or East of whatever it was. It shouldn't be a soap and it shouldn't be false nostalgia.

It is basically a coming-of-age story, which is another story rarely told in our age of delayed adulthood. I've been hearing a lot of media conversation about when do boys become men in our society, how do we mark that... so there is a line in the movie that stuck out to me. The young bloke says "it's more than a man can take" and the old fellas say "Man?" and he answers "my dad raised me to be a man".

Anyway, it was good. Sigrid Thornton and Tom Burlinson are quite good. The horse ride down the cliff is very good. The landscape is the best part, and the people on horses improve it. Make another one and I'll watch it.

Skirt by summer.

Apple and I have a skirt sewing project, first we chose a pattern and bought materials, then we spent another saturday cutting out the pattern and pinning bits.

I had a bit of time to sew on the weekend and I decided it would be easier if I did my sewing bit ahead of her, so that I would know what to do and we wouldn't have to keep swapping our threads in the machine. It was very quick, the actual sewing bit. Even the zipper. All I have to do now is hem it. I'm considering trying some fancy pin tucks around the bottom, but the fabric might be a bit heavy.

Note the pincushion: I made it myself. It was so annoying when Jess came over and we had to put the pins in and out of the packaging, I gave up and made this the next day.

Anyway, I shall photo the skirt once I've finished it. Currently it is "hanging up to let the bias hang out" for a few days so that the hem is straight.

Flags and butterflies.

Brooke Fraser has just released another beautiful album, Flags. She has a wonderful voice with a really sweet break, and because I never know and understand all her lyrics I never get bored listening to her. Once I know a lyric, there's no mystery. Particularly nice on Flags is a duet, Who are we fooling?. Duet's can be really special, and they aren't done much.

The more I discover nice music for myself and own it, the more it stays with me. When I like someone else's music, I get tired of it too fast.

I saw this massive butterfly this morning on my favourite street. I thought it must have been stuck in a web because it sat there for so long while I moved a twig out of the way to snap it, but afterwards it took off.

Sherlock Holmes

Television is so dismal these days that I recently found myself getting slightly excited at a poster for Beauty and the Geek. Scary.

All my hopes for good television rest on Sherlock. It has almost everything: mystery plots, modern take on vintage literary hero, good British casting—Benedict Cumberbatch is one of my favourite names, and he is so interesting (he was apparently in the running to be Doctor Who, which would have been cool—and now I notice how much Matt Smith looks like him), and he's been in good stuff, I have such high hopes for his Holmes. It rated really well in the UK. I'm surprised it's on NBN not ABC, it's a shame it will have ads.

Can't wait to see.

Knitted hats.

Karen B is a really good knitter. I've known the basic knit stitch for a long time, but I find knitting proper shaped items very daunting. Karen helped me follow this pattern, and helped me start and finish the hats, otherwise I wouldn't have made it.

I gave my final finished hat to Apple on her recent birthday picnic. Yay!

Other than having a Karen to help you, the secret to impressive knitting is probably nice wool. And cool knitting needles make it feel better.

If I knit something else, I'd like to try this pattern for a mobius cowl. I tried to put a mobius strip on the cover of a book once, but it was shot down and replaced with an hourglass, which is not as cool.

Dress to skirt.

I bought this pretty dress 4 years ago. It was about $60 from Portmans. I love the dress, it is beautiful, but it was not a successful purchase, because it is so low cut at the front. Also, it is really too pretty so I feel overdressed in it. I prefer to blend in and look a bit dull.

I kept it in the wardrobe for ages with some lace pinned across the front, wondering if I could make it not so low. I also wore it as a skirt a few times.

So last summer I decided to sacrifice the beauty of the dress I never wore to make a skirt which i would wear, and get better value out of. It is a shame, but I am much happier with the skirt than I was with the dress.

I cut the top off the dress, and sewed the two layers of the skirt together—it has a petticoat built in. I bought some elastic, sewed it into a loop, and put it between the two layers of the skirt, then sewed the skirt together over the elastic. I didn't quite estimate the length of the skirt perfectly, so it is a little long, but it works really well.

T-shirt recycling.

I have a couple of t-shirts and a couple of cotton zip hoodies I want to get rid of, but I'm too sentimental to say goodbye. Can they be used for other things? Can I be thrifty or creative? Oh yes I can!

• Cleaning rags is an obvious one, instead of buying chux. I used some in my recent mould war.
• I have a headband I made out of an old t-shirt. It is great for jogging or keeping hair dry when washing my face. Kind of a shower cap, too.

In a search on the net I found:

• Long-sleeved tops and hoods can be made into sling bags. I wouldn't bother. I already have bags. But it would look cool. Sew the bottom together, knot the sleeves.
• As seat covers for chairs. Sensible, but probably daft-looking.
• A braided rug for a bathmat or something. Cut strips, plait them into a long rope, and then sew the rope into a rug shape. Or possibly weave them.
• Some sort of quilt. An ugly quilt made of memories that I don't have to keep pretty and clean. But it means saving up enough shirts to make a decent blanket.
• Cushions and pillows. This one is very cool.

Big patchwork cushions.

A while ago I spent nearly a whole Sunday making patchwork squares out of quilt fabric leftovers. I ended up with seven I think, and was probably going to make a whole lot of cushions with them. But I changed my mind because that is a lot of cluttery cushions, and not very trendy cushions either.

I had a genius idea last week, to make them up into just two jumbo cushion covers!

I made a pinkish one out of a pinkish square and a lot of other strips and scraps, including a square cut from a favourite worn out shirt (a sentimental touch). I laid it out on the coffee table, then sewed the bits together. I aimed to make it about 22" square but it's not a perfect square in the end. But it looks lovely. I like that I was using up scraps, which is what patchwork originally evolved as.

I made a blueish one, slightly bigger, just by sewing 4 squares together. I'm now on the lookout for giant zippers, and jumbo cushion inserts.

Library review: Wicked audiobook.

So this is a 16 CD audio recording of the book Wicked by Gregory Maguire. It is read very well by John McDonough. I had expectations about what the book of Wicked was, and it's not really like what I expected. I'm not really enjoying it. I guess it's an interesting story, and the world of Oz is richly detailed, but it's not nice, but it's not funny, in fact it's pretty coarse and unpleasant. I wonder about all the teenage girl fans of Wicked who buy it. The musical improved on it a LOT.

Sweet peas in the lane.

I like lanes. They are the best short cut, even if they aren't a very short cut. What I especially like about this lane is that someone plants flowers in it, outside their fence. Today I dropped a note in their letterbox, thanking them for planting sweet peas.

Bible cover 1.

This is my first bible cover! I have a couple more in progress. This one I tried to do rounded corners, but they are too hard and the square ones look good anyway.  I am so pleased with how it looks and it feels so nice to use. It makes my tatty ancient cheap paperback ESV look so lovely—it is admired wherever it goes :)

The main problem is with the press studs on the closure: way too strong. They are ripping out of the cover, even with a lot of reinforcements.

So I have purchased some magnetic buttons, like on handbags! I will pull the studs off this one and have a go with the new buttons. Then if it works, full steam ahead on bible covers! I have lots of lovely scraps of material leftover from making shirts last summer—this is a Japanese print from Tessuti at Surry Hills. So they only cost a few dollars to make, for buttons and vilene. I am so pleased!