Old McJoey Had a Farm, ee-i, ee-i, o - progress

Farm animal brooches so far... nearly all the features embroidered on

Good morning!

Yesterday was wetter than a fish's wet bits, the rain poured and then poured some more. Which was actually sort of good in a way as it kept me imprisoned in my little stitching sweat shop (actually freezing until we splashed out and put the fire on in the evening! trying to be good to the environment and our gas bills) and made good progress on the lil' critters.

Embroidering the features has to be my favourite part of making brooches and stuff, because it feels like I'm giving them their character.  That's just made me think, you sometimes see dolls and characters in illustration without a nose, occasionally without a mouth, but I don't think I've ever seen something without eyes.  Interesting.  I think somehow that would make the doll very very disturbing.

Maybe something like this?



Travel by Leaf Number 1 by Eva Funderburgh
http://www.etsy.com/shop/EvaFunderburgh



They're wonderful, aren't they? I love all of Eva Funderburgh's ceramic sculptures, she has such a compelling and imaginative menagerie of beasts that look a bit like a familiar animals, but so other-worldly that they are quite unsettling in a very satisfying way.

Have a creative and warm day everyone!

Joey xx



Oink Baa, Double Cluck, Double Cluck

Farm Animals Brooches - in progress

Hi there!

I hope you've had good bonfire night and/or Diwali if you've been celebrating!

If you're a connosieur of children's telly, you'll recognise that the title to this post is a little homage to the animated show, "Hannah's Helpline", as on the theme song they sing, "Moo baa, double quack, double quack" as that's the 'number' to phone Hannah's helpline for emotional, financial or legal support. For animals. Have a look! It's very cute.


I've been making some 'farm animal' brooches for my stall at the Craft Candy craft fair on 27 November; you can see at the top the progress I've made so far.  These brooches use the same patterns as the finger puppets I made for Making Gifts Magazine.

The finger puppets I made for Making Gifts magazine

You can make your own if you follow this link to get the FREE pattern! Finger Puppet Farm (you will first need to register (for free) here: http://www.emagmaker.co.uk/user/register
Any brooches which I don't sell at the fair will be in my Etsy shop quicker than you can dial "oink, baa, double cluck, double cluck'!

Have a great weekend everyone!

Joey xx

The Secret is Out!

the embroidery design on my bag in Quilt Scene 2010

Hi!

You may remember that I mentioned a little secret at the end of my last blog post. Well I'm pleased that I can now reveal it to you!  My orange embroidered stripey bag is being published in a US magazine called Quilt Scene 2010. It's an annual publication to celebrate the International Quilt Festival held in Houston, Texas every year.  The publishers, Interweave, are a brilliant crafts publishers of numerous books and magazines, including the fantastic Cloth Paper Scissors and Quilting Arts, both of which are packed with unusual projects, features on artists and crafters and new techniques for you to try out.

Anyway, Quilt Scene 2010 is now available for you to pre-order. If you click on this link: Quilt Scene 2010 you will be able to read the table of contents (my bag project is on page 56!) and it's very tempting! Selvage edge pincushions, a birch quilt, pumpkin table runner and loads more!

If you happen to buy Quilt Scene 2010, please let me know what you think to it, I'd love to find out!

Best wishes

Joey x

A different, but similar bag

Pretty Dresses



Special Dresses!

 My friend Claire has just asked me, "Why don't you blog about the stuff you're making?" Well, the reason (or excuse) is that I'm very disorganised! I think I keep up quite a good pretence most of the time that this isn't the case, but if you saw inside our home, you'd realise that it's all just a front.
Anyway, I'll try to turn over a new leaf RIGHT NOW, and show & tell you what I've been up to over the past couple of weeks.


work in progress... a lot of blank faces!

 I have a little stash of very lovely fabrics that I never seem to get around to using, and I've had in my mind for a while that I'd make some little bunny and kitty brooches with them all wearing little dresses in these lovely fabrics.  I wanted to make something different and special for the Craft Candy Christmas craft fair on 27 November (which is only six weeks away - ARRGHHH! I'M NOT PREPARED! I will be though, I will be...) at which I will be having a stall, so if you're in the South Yorkshire area you must come along to get a bit of Christmas shopping in, Craft Candy fairs are always brilliant displays of beautiful handmade arts and crafts.

I've made a collection of nine (one has already flown the nest though... She's not pictured here), each with a different dress fabric, which is also on the backs (of course! Otherwise it would be rude for a prim little bunny or kitty to have a bare behind).

the back of one of the brooches, showing back of 'dress' and the brooch pin

I've embroidered the collars on by hand (it isn't lace) with cast-on buttonhole stitch (although the pink bunny in the strawberry print dress has a green woven picot collar, because it looks a bit like the calyx on a strawberry).


cast-on buttonhole collars

woven picot collar

 The next thing I'll be working on will be a bag or two along the same lines as my embroidered concentric circles bags (orange one pictured below)... more news about them soon! Oh and a little secret...

The orange 'concentric circles' bag

Have a good Monday everyone!

Best wishes

Joey x

Blog Action Day: Precious Water

Hi! I thought it would be a good idea to break my 'blog-fast' by joining in with the annual 'Blog Action Day', where thousands of folks all over the world blog about one particular topic to raise awareness. This year it's about WATER.  Very mundane, you may think. If you live in a country where water is plentiful, you may take water for granted. Well let's not!
Here's a little video to watch:

Blog Action Day 2010: Water from Blog Action Day on Vimeo.

Here's some startling water facts from water.org:

• The water and sanitation crisis claims more lives through disease than any war claims through guns.
• An American taking a five-minute shower uses more water than a typical person in a developing country slum uses in a whole day.
• Every 20 seconds, a child dies from a water-related disease.
• More than 80% of sewage in developing countries is discharged untreated, polluting rivers, lakes and coastal areas.
• Diarrheoa is more prevalent in the developing world due, in large part, to the lack of safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene, as well as poorer overall health and nutritional status.
• 1.4 million children die as a result of diarrhea each year.

Find more water facts, and how you can help, on blogactionday.change.org

To celebrate water, I've created an Etsy treasury with water as the theme... click on the picture below to take a closer look at these lovely handmade and vintage items!

Have a great Friday!
Best wishes,
Joey xx

A-haunting we will go...

Hiya!

Gosh, look at this, sticking to my promise to post again today! What IS the world coming to??

It's not very often that I sit down and read a novel, I don't have the stamina for them. I tend to get very bored by novels very easily, but I do occasionally enjoy reading short stories, and especially SPOOKY short stories.

I'm a fan of M.R. James (the M.R. stands for Montague Rhodes) who is considered to be the finest ghost story writer of them all. The stories have contemporary settings when James wrote them (between 1904 to 1925) and many reflected his academic background and his expertise on medieval history, and it is this where most of his inspiration for his ghost stories comes from.

Some of my favourite stories of James' are "Oh Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad", in which a man discovers a very old whistle with inexplicable powers; "Number 13" which pertains to a hotel room number which doesn't exist... or does it? But perhaps "A View From a Hill" is to me the most horrific, mostly because of a very eerie pair of home-made binoculars.

Many of James' stories have been dramatised for television (some of which are available on YouTube), although I particularly like the audiobooks read by the wonderful David Collings (who also played Silver in the late 70s/early 80s paranormal drama 'Sapphire and Steel', and was the voice of Monkey in the fantastic series of the same name (sometimes called 'Monkey Magic' but I always called it just 'Monkey').

Anyway, I was recommended to read 'Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror' by my friend Claire's eight-year-old son, Elliot.  As you may guess, the name 'Uncle Montague' is a nod to James himself, so how could I resist?  And to read a ghost book aimed at children seemed like not too much of a strain on my very short attention span. However I wasn't prepared for what turned out to be a real treat!

Chris Priestley has crafted a wonderful collection of very uncanny stories, tied together within the unsettling setting of Uncle Montague's creepy house, and by the very creepy Uncle Montague himself who tells the stories to the book's protagonist, Edgar. The stories are satisfyingly short and to the point, but with enough substance to linger in your mind for some time later. I am a slow reader by nature, but towards the end of each story I was racing through the last paragraphs as the pace quickened and the tension gathered.

Every story is accompanied by two black-and-white line drawings by David Roberts.  I really like Roberts' style of spindly, spidery lines, shadowy cross-hatching and uncanny settings, which go so well with the tales.

If you want to read an intelligent and short collection of spooky stories, now that the nights are starting to draw in and the leaves are starting to fall, this is an ideal book, whatever your age.

I've already read the sequel, "Tales of Terror from the Black Ship" and just started "Tales of Terror from the Tunnel's Mouth"; both are full of imaginative twists and the same creepy atmosphere of "Uncle Montague" that I've come to expect. I'm definitely going to keep an eye out for more like this to satisfy my taste for dark, creepy tales.

Further reading: 

Uncle Montague's very own blog! Which is humourously called "Uncle Montague's Nether Regions." http://www.unclemontague.blogspot.com/

the author, Chris Priestley's blog: http://chrispriestley.blogspot.com/

Tales of Terror site (this is a beautifully-designed site with lots of creepy sounds things to look at, well worth a look!) http://www.talesofterror.co.uk/

Hope you have a lovely Sunday afternoon, everyone!

Best wishes

Joey x

We have a WINNER!



What a lovely sandcastle... but only one flag... :-(

Hi there! I hope you've all had a super-smashing summer! I must apologise, this is the first blog post for AGES!! What have I been doing all this time, you may wonder? Well, nothing much... though I have read two books - albeit children's books, that is quite an achievement for me! More on that later, but now I must announce (sorry this is a bit late!) the winner of my sandcastle flag competition!


It's CARLA! Congratulations, Carla! She made a lovely big sandcastle with not just one flag, but THREE!  Nice work, Carla!


Carla with her sandcastle with THREE FLAGS! That's more like it! :D
(I'm sorry about the resolution of this picture, it was taken with a camera on a mobile. It's still lovely though!)

Carla has won her choice of one of my Kitty Pip brooches! Carla, please tell me (via your Auntie Claire) which one you'd like, and I'll pop it in the post to you! :-)

I have a few Kitty Pip brooches not in my Etsy shop, so if you would like to buy one, please ask via the comment form below.

I promise to do another blog post very very soon! Maybe even tomorrow! I want to tell you about the SPOOKY SUPERNATURAL books I've been reading, and the SPOOKY SUPERNATURAL audio book I've been listening to whilst embroidering... oh and I'll tell you about that too!

Best wishes

Joey x