A rolling stone gathers no moss

but I do...

The crafty weekend also yielded advances in my moss terrarium project.

I was originally going to gather some moss, blend it up with some beer and lather it onto some soil as I have seen suggested in a few places around the web. But as I am horrendously impatient, I ended up going for the transplant method...

The street I walk to to get to the Kensington shops is chock full of radside moss, so, bbq tool and lunchbox in hand I set about removing some moss to be placed into my little glass jars found in Arthur Daley's on Swanston St, $2 shops and Savers of Footscray.

So here are the results:




Notes to take from the first lot:

• don't overdo it on rocks...otherwise you can't see the moss or the decorative bits...and it's almost impossible to pull it out and re-do it...
  
• use smaller pieces of moss and squish them in...it's way to hard to get big bits out cleanly once they're in...
• non-shaped glass is probably better as you get a clear view
• create mushroom bases first and only after you've finished make the tops...the fimo gets coated on yr fingers and white bits turn to pinky red bits...messy!

Thanks to Blithe Gardens for the idea.

What a caper!

I downloaded a free cape pattern from fitzpatterns.com a while back and have been intending on making it for a while. After a few false starts, i.e the printer stopping working part the way through printing (faulty cartridges!), then the pages that were printed from the work printer didn't match up with the ones printed at home... I finally started on the weekend.

After a 3rd attempt at piecing the pattern together (I had made 2 previous attempts, both ended up screwed up and with me at the point of giving up) , I finally decided it'd just have to do...yes the lines weren't matching up completely but isn't it close enough? Sewing is not an exact science and a lot of the time, yes, she'll be right!

Well, Spotlight, you need to train your assistants how to cut a straight line...when I folded the fabric and placed my piattern pieces on the fabric as instructed on the pattern, I found that I was short due to poor cutting! So after a LOT of umming, ahhing and swearing, I decided the facing would just have to be done in another fabric...she'll be right!

Digging through my remnants and bits and pieces I found some large scale Birch in Fuschia by Miss Lara which may not be exactly right buttttt....so I promptly cut it up, accidentally cutting one of the facings the wrong way, wasting more of my precious fabric...bahhh!

The pattern said it would take 2 hours...hmmm...due to my lack of sewing skills, the not very thorough instructions and unpicking bits, I think I'm up to about 12 hours!

Last night I had a go at thinking about lining the inside which I eventually dismissed as I just could not work out how to do it! I ended up sewing the hem and trying to work out why i have flappy bits around the neck...which i just intend on hand sewing down so they don't flap...next step is a button and a good pressing and then it should be done! Will be lovely for sitting at my work desk. I have an air con vent above me that keeps me at a sub-zero temperature most of the day.

Macchiato brown Tonia cape with Birch fuschia facings
- Sorry about the crap photo, taken at 11:30 last night in my bathroom...not the best lighting situation

An introduction

The name comes from my approach to craft in general...the good old aussie style approach of "she'll be right" and sometimes, yes she is right, but other times, very wrong...

I intend to use this space as a dumping ground of things I've seen that I like including craft and design ideas, my forays into craftiness, and projects I would like to try, links to sites I don't wanna lose (yes I know about bookmarks but I have too many bookmarks these days and I need a catalogue to get through them...) and also photos as I want to get into a bit more photography, especially the kind where you see something cool on the street so you document it.

I have many projects and ideas in my head and this past weekend have made some come to partial fruition.
The first being re-organising the bookshelf. How is this a crafty project you ask? Well it isn't really but I wanted to try something that I hadn't thought of before and saw on a blog somewhere (that I have now lost the link to, hence new blog) and that is sorting books by colour. Not by author name or title or anything like that but purely for an aesthetically pleasing display of books.
Now I don't have many books left as I sold them when I went overseas so it's a pretty piddly effort but on a grand scale I think it would look awesome...maybe I should pop down to the book store now...