sunday worship, monday shipments

I do love Sundays up this end of Fitzroy.
It's so quiet and restful.
I alternated tea drinking, cassata cake making, newspaper reading until it was time to go sit in the Westgarth Street backyard for a Marriage Festival with home made sausage rolls, dog patting, blood orange soda drinking and chat.
A good way to spend a Sunday.
Now of course it's Monday and I am frittering my morning away with vacuuming, cat wrangling, lugging boxes to the car and not answering emails.
I really must stop writing these posts as lists of things done and not done (and you know how I hate lists) but I suppose it is just indicative of my days at the moment. Anyway I better get going, there is a delivery of cushion inserts due at the studio and then I am off up country to deliver 100kg+ of angora yarn to my lovely knitters. And if I'm lucky, as a treat, an op shop or two.

sock saturday!

We've been waiting ages for these beauties (my fault, waiting because I couldn't decide which colours to order) and the first box arrived yesterday afternoon. Mucho excitemento at the Cottage! So here are the first three designs, reindeers, argyle and over the knee diamond, made from beautiful wool, cashmere, angora and a bit of strengthening nylon.

The reindeer are so soft and snuggly and I am planning an evening in them with my Mongolian felt slippers very soon. It should have been last night but instead I had to motor to the arse end of Fisherman's Bend to pick up 110kg of angora yarn that Toll Couriers failed to deliver (they delivered 2 boxes yesterday afternoon), actually let's get this right, they LOST the boxes. Yep, their words 'we have lost the shipment', so then at 7.30 last night when they 'found' the boxes they then told me that they 'could not guarantee delivery'. WTF?! 

Apparently courier businesses don't actually have to deliver what they are paid to deliver. 

Curious.

I am thinking of starting a delivery business called 'Fast and Lose' (play on words). We will take the package and the delivery charge and then just misplace the package, when people complain we can just say that we 'can't guarantee delivery'. Simple. We should make a killing.

Well I didn't get much achieved this week. A bit of dyeing, a few wheat bags stitched up and 3 wholesale orders picked up. Next week I must get into the studio, no excuses, and  get a humongous pile of work done. First I must deliver the boxes of angora to my knitters, go visit the girls at Frankie and Swiss, get the cushion insert delivery carted up to the studio, order some fabric, pick up purse frames (we've almost sold out of our new 'tapestry' print purses) and then settle in for a sewing fest. Oh, I need to make clocks too, there are 4 empty nails on the clock wall in the shop and no stock in the cupboard!

Oh dear! Look at the time! I better dash!

I'm shopgirl today, first time in three weeks, I'll probably be out of practice, be gentle on me!

bumbling about

Where has my day gone?
Ok, I slept in a tad, pressed and tagged gloves, met up with Sally from Lulu who came to pick up some glove stock, went to Brunswick to see the Group Work show at Mr Kitly, dropped in to Mediterranean Wholesalers  for fresh ricotta to make a cassata cake for the Marriage Festival party on the weekend, had three appointments moved around on me, booked in other appointments to experiment with some new printing ideas, drank tea, stared at my new handmade boots, sneezed a bit, tickled Jethro........ and now it is 3.30 and I have achieved very little in reality.
I have little to report except we a new batch if glove colours in. I'm aiming for 60 colours this year. I need a little project to keep me motivated! Of course we are nowhere near the 60 yet.
Now I need to go do some photos of those damn gloves before the light fades.

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!