net of tears

A few years ago I was shown an amazing piece of crochet, about a yard long, that depicted an ANZAC soldier standing with head bowed. Hand crocheted it was beautiful and poignant and infinitely melancholy. I think it was the bigger more detailed version of the one below and was probably designed by Mary Card. The Australian War Memorial has some amazing pieces in their collection including the huge bedspread pictured above, I don't know whether that piece was ever meant to be slept under, I think it would have weighed a tonne of sorrow.

I find the mix of lacy crochet and memorialising war to be strange bedfellows and yet some how so perfect.  How many dreams and lives fell through those holes, a net to catch tears in. Filet crochet is as much about the gaps, the negative space, as about the pattern each stitch makes. The lose of a person, of years, of possibility leaves a hole too and the lives led around that hole are effected and the pattern changes.

To me these pieces are like a meditation, of the maker sitting, slowly working, stitch by stitch locking a ghost into a lacework of memories. It is always good to keep the hands busy in both times of grief and joy.

sorted

Morning all.
The kitten and I had a lovely sleep in this morning (that is, Jethro didn't try to wake me at 5.30am and let me nap on through until just before 8am). Fresh sheets, cool weather and tired bodies- perfect knock out drugs.
It took hours to sort the shop yesterday afternoon, unpacking boxes, moving stuff around, changing the window display, stacking plastic storage bins and smashing down cardboard boxes. I still have stuff to move to the car and rubbish to get rid of, a bit of vacuuming to do and a lot of head scratching to work out where in hell we are going to put 150kg of angora yarn. Sometimes I think the Cottage way of interior design is having boxes stash under every horizontal surface in the shop, it's not a nice look but I do get to the stage of not seeing it...... which is pretty much the way with the piles of moth infested laundry in the bedroom.
We are waiting on a couple of boxes of new stock to arrive from the lovely Lisa in the US of A. I'm very excited...... and perplexed as to where in hell we are going to display it. I'm (as usual) way behind on the clothing front but we are about to have all peripheries covered, hand knitted beanies for the head, gloves for the hands, feet things and when I get into the studio later this week there should be a bit of scarfing about happening. Mohair hot water bottle covers, wheat bags, new cushions and soon some new quilts, crocheted Afghan rugs, tea cosies for our tea pots, bring it on Winter, throw us everything you've got!

saturday too far

Excuse the dodgy photo, taken under fluoro lights, all a bit piled high.
I am totally delirious today, last night was huge, crowded, noisy, intense.
And now we have a long day to do it all again.
Please come and visit, buy stuff so we don't have to carry it all home again jiggity jiggity.
I've been awake half the night with a stuffed back and have been lying on my bed doing twist stretches in the hope I will be able to stand all day. Now for some toast, tea and a handful of painkillers.
Apart from needing  to put the shop back together tomorrow I am so looking forward to doing 'nothing'.
Remember Finders Keepers finishes at 5pm today!

the kinders feepers, the kipper's flippers, the finders keepers

Evening all!
So Finders Keepers starts tomorrow evening.
Here is our plan.
The Cottage is going to close at about 2pm tomorrow (Friday) so that we can pack up a whole shebang of stock and load it into the cars. We will be looking slightly frazzled but if you knock desperately and beg we might let you in. Then at 6pm after a frantic set up we will open up a mini Cottage Industry (perhaps a more Lean-to Industry, a Thrown Together Industry or a Gypsy Caravan Industry) at the Exhibition Building. The Cottage will be closed on Saturday, as we are only just up the road we decided it was just too difficult to do both.
Please come and visit us, we are at stall C35 (we always seem to get shoved in a corner...), downside is we are near the stage (although as Isobel pointed out this evening if we are behind the speaker stacks we'll be fine), upside being we should be able to semaphore our taco orders to Raph over at the Taco Truck.
I'm still not sure what we are taking but if you have a request then please drop me an email or call the shop before the 2pm box packing time. As usual I'm feeling very disorganised. I still have things to do in the morning (like buy some new plastic storage boxes that don't come from Bunnings and are so brittle they explode five minutes after you buy them), pick up the shelving unit from the studio (where the lift has stopped working) and buy two long bamboo poles to string some bunting on.
I think I'll press up some gloves and hit the hay. An early-ish night might be nice.
Hope to see you at the Exhibition Building!

dip dyed

Well it was a late night last night but I managed to finish all the granny purses that I should have made ages ago, ah yes, procrastination thou art my evil mistress. So more shibori/ikat purses, vintage linen purses and our new digital print tapestry purses, the photo below doesn't do them justice. I'll be working on more of the tapestry purses once I actually get through to the other side, post Finders Keepers.
I've also managed to get a few balls of our new yarn dyed up, I won't have time to get more dyed and dryed in time for FK but if your quick you can snap some up. Hand dipped dyed slubby wool blend, a 100gm ball will knit you a more than decent scarf, 20 stitched on 15mm for a nice width and length or 12 stitches for an extremely long skinny scarf- or you can make up your own combo. I'm loving it and Dell nearly jumped out of her shoes in excitement when I showed it to her.

I'm trying to press a batch of gloves before I go out to pick stuff up and get to the studio. I think today will be one of those days where I just don't have quite enough time to do everything I need to do.

a better sort of wednesday

Dyeing, dyeing, dyeing. That was my day yesterday. Today will be cutting, sewing, cursing my laziness.
The high point of yesterday was definitely the arrival of our new shipment of the CWA Classics and the Tasmanian CWA 21st Anniversary cookbooks.
The low point was when the school group came through and both Anna and I were a bit (!) taken aback by the way it was all handled. They arrived late and no one in the group (that is the teachers) bothered to introduce themselves, so suddenly we had what felt like 30 people crammed into the shop and we had no idea what was going on. We have been spoilt for the way student outings are run, normally the groups are from institutes like RMIT or Box Hill and the lecturers there always instil in the students that slamming a shop on mass is not the best idea.
I better go get dressed, I have a thousand things to do today.
Please remind me to post about Finders Keepers tonight, I have things I must tell you.

we all went to a 'wetting'

... and what a lovely 'wetting' it was.
The three and three quarter boy named it 'the wetting' so 'the wetting' it was. There was a bit of a near incident with a fountain but no rain and nothing spilt so all went well.
We all made ourselves sick at the Windsor and couldn't finish our hight tea which was a bit pathetic of us really. Remember if you do the high tea to take a Tupperware container just in case you need to slip a few petit fours in your bag. Mind you it could have been the celebration chocolate mousse cake that tipped us over the edge. I do love a finger sandwich.
And look! Miniature jelly lamingtons! For that alone I was in heaven, you know how much I love a jelly lamington!
So today is back to normal.
No weddings to break up my drudgery.
I have a great deal of work to do, a pile of stuff to make, damnation, Finders Keepers starts on Friday!
Crapola!!
And we have a school group coming through the shop this morning to cap it all off.
Jethro is still asleep in bed the lazy little kitty. How jealous am I?