Owl in Spotlight new puppets

Greetings my friends!

I've had my head down and butt up sewing my Cinderella fingers to the bone for the upcoming show for Halloween. But I wanted to share a scene with you!

This is our heroine, Dort, stumbling across a scene from the Salem Witch Trials.

These guys are some of my current favourites. I love the flames and the pastor's bible.

Of course, often my favourites are whichever I've a) just made or b) my eye has just fallen on.

You can see a few more of the felt guys at our Flickr account.

I'm having a ball making them. Firstly I do a bit of research and find a spooky or halloween scene that I want to build, and then I set about creating it. It's been a really interesting process, unlike all other shows we've worked on, this time I'm making a bunch of guys and then I thrust them at Robert Reid (the other half of Terrible Comfort) and then he gets to weave them all together into a script. Usually the script comes first. It's be really exciting to see how it works from the images first this time!

Big fan of this show... We've had Peter Houghton in to pre-record all the voices and really, listening to him tell the story was a wonderful experience, just like having your dad tell you a bit of a spooky bedtime story.

I love my life.

POstal goodness

The other day I recieved something wonderful in the mail.

I'd been talking to a friend of mine's mother, who knits her grandson all sorts of clothes, and I jokingly said to her "Oh, you should knit me some socks while you're at it!" She laughed, I laughed, and the story was forgotten.

Until the other day, when I recieved this in the mail:



How beautiful are they? They're actually purple and orange, the camera couldn't capture the colour properly. HOw wonderful is she, to have gone away and knitted me socks?

I was so touched. So I'm going to make her some jam in return.

In random news, my article on how to organise an exhibition is now up at Artstuff (artstuff.net.au) If you haven't seen it already you can view it here.

And the lovely lady behind DELicious Designz featured my marionette a couple of months ago (I only just found it) so thank you! You can see the post here and check out some of her wonderful jewellery at the same time...

Echo's Lost is bowling along nicely, I have about half the works on my desk as we speak. I know I say this every time, but it's going to be such a beautiful exhibition! You can see all the details on the Fringe website here. Drop by and check it out, it goes for the whole 3 weeks of Fringe...

Crafty types going out exploring

So we were learning about animation the other day, and teaching it to kids. I got so excited by the idea I went home and made one myself.

Presenting:
The craft of eating grapes


It was really quite simple, I set up the camera on a tripod and pointed it at the floor, I cut out a few simple shapes from felt (which I knew would stick together nicely and not slide all over the place, go team felt!) and placed them down, took a photo, moved it a little, took another photo and so on. There are 19 frames in this, plus the frame at either end with the credits, which I did by importing the photo into PhotoShop and simply adding text.

Took me about an hour and a half all up.

Then I put it together in a free animation software. Easy! And the entire project only added a little more glitter to the disco floor.

I was surprised and pleased at how easy it actually was. Try it, try it with your kids, go forth and animate! (now that's the most I've ever sounded like Dr Frankenstein)

so naughty, and yet totally work safe!

Oh, oh, OH, I love new projects. I love the excitement that builds as I contemplate the things I'll make a do for a new project. I love the exciting 'new'ness of a new project, because I'm so used to the older projects I'm currently working on. I love everything about a new, good exciting project. And I always want to drop everything else and leap into the new one. Which is always dangerous, because older things need to be finished too.

But so I have a new project in the making. Can you tell? :) I can't tell you ANYTHING about it, not a thing, because it's way too new yet, but I DO have to show you an image I'm working on for it, because I think it's beautiful, and way too good to keep to myself. Plus, it's not the finished product, so it's a BIT like not spoiling the surprise, but still, it's a bit naughty. Can I jsut say, how much fun are photo booths?


Oh my god, I am so in love with this image...

New art

So it's finally finished. A while back I was commissioned to make two artworks on the theme of HEART. Due to a huge bundle of red tape, I'm still awaiting payment for one of them.

Payment is often a difficult thing. People don't seem to understand that art takes time and materials, and these things cost money. Some buyers demand the art NOW and don't seem to care when the money will come to you. In the mean time, there's still rent and bills to pay and food and more materials to buy. I can't imagine another industry where an invoice can be 6 months outstanding and still no movement on it, while the client already has the work.

But so anyway, complaining aside, I've finished the second HEART artwork, the one that still hasn't been paid for, and it's at the framers now. I'm going to deliver it on Friday to the client, it's always a bit of a danger handing over the work before the money has appeared but it's been such a long drawn out process that I just want it finished (ok, so maybe I hadn't finished complaining about it quite yet :)

But please welcome to the stage: Big Ol' Black Steam Train, a framed embroidery piece with antique lace and silk.


The heart image itself was pretty easy to source, I google imaged HEART and found a big anatomical drawing of it, printed it out and there was my image. If you go onto etsy and type in HEART, you'll see really only two images over and over, and this is one of them. Funnily enough, when I was researching heart designs in Feb, I notices that a number of etsy sellers made sure to say that the heart they're selling has been hand drawn by them and is unique, when it's clearly not.

And that's a fascinating thing about the internet. Plagerism is as easy to spot as a google search is to do. And that's where most people will have gone to get their image/essay/article whatever. They forget that if they can do a search to find information, that everyone else connected to the internet can too. In student essays, people forget that the teacher has probably set this essay before and students have already done the copy-and-paste method of essay writing and handed it in before. I have to admit, when I was at uni and the internet was only for freaks, weirdos and geeks, and even they didn't understand how to use it properly, I went online and stole bits of writing from all over and wove it together as an essay, I was lucky, this was a long time ago, when computers had tiny monitors that were black and orange, and my photography lecturer didn't spot the cheatery. As I recall it was only one essay too, because then I figured out the best way to learn was actually do it myself. Which is something parents and teachers tell you for years but you have to wait for your own blinding flash. Why is it so hard to accept other people's wisdom dammit? It'd make stuff so much easier...

Anyway. So I'm also working the props for the play, and I figured I'd do a casual My Creative Space for you. I live in a tiny 2 roomed cottage and I've only jsut gotten my desk here. So before that, it's all about what you can do on the floor. So to your right is My Creative Space. In the photo is my grandmother's huge range of embroidery thread I inherited, all carefully wrapped in seperate colours. My grandmother recylced everything she could, so most of the threads are wrapped around old Christmas Cards she cut to size. There's also a design for embroidery on the paper, mt little black sewing box, a small upright wall with windows (awaiting wall paper), some feathers, a Radical Cross Stitch pattern for a bike that also lives in the embroidery box and, of course, the essential snacks. It's back aching work, working on the floor, but sometimes you jsut gotta work where you can.

now, it's Art Selling Girl!

Everyone has a superhero name, and mine changes weekly. This week it's Art Selling Girl.

One of my works sold from my Gallery Obscura show! One Shot, at your right, sold unframed. Yay! I love, love LOVE selling work for a number of reasons. One, the money is always nice. Two, it's always uplifting that someone likes your work enough to buy it, take it home and put it on their wall, and Three, the more stuff that sells the less art I have to take home, which is great. One of the things about being an artist is that you end up with a hell of a lot of art. It's good, because art is a wonderful thing to be surrounded by, but god damn it takes up a lot of space!

I also sold an artwork on etsy, since I've been moving I'm having a sort of art garage sale on etsy, I've put up old works I don't really need anymore but would hate to throw out. I did toss a bunch of artworks too, but some I know will find someone out there to love them. So one of those has gone too. One less in the storage container, which is great.

Gallery Obscura is also having a VIP night and they want me to to a talk on digital art work. I don't know a lot about digital stuff, so I have to now do a bunch of research. But that's fine, I'm ok with knowing more about the artforms I use, as you've probably guessed! But it appears that although digital stuff is usual for the advertising and computer game world, it's not anywhere near as wide spread in the art world. So it'll be an interesting adventure to learn about it.

Art Selling Girl... aaaaaaaaaWWAAAAAYYYY!!!!!

How things all connect together. And how things are lovely

I went to Brown Owls last night, it's such a wonderful thing. Sitting in a room filled with people who are jsut as interested in craft as you are. The lady next to me was granny squaring her away towards a beautiful white, gray and dark gray scarf. The lady next to her (the noise in the room meant I missed their names) was sewing little magnets to cute pear covered kitchen curtains so she can fold it up during the day. It was nominally an embroidery night, so I took the peacocks I bought the other day from Kristen Doran. After 2 hours, they're coming along.

Last night's meeting was filmed by Anna Brownfield, who is making a documentary called "Making it HANDMADE" and I ended up talking to her at the end of the night for quite some time about craft history in Australia and about her film making adventure. She was really interesting and I'm so glad I got to chat to someone jsut as interested in craft history as I am!

There was also a number of sort of raffle prizes given out at Brown Owls, So at the right is a huge piece of blue and white material i won (won! me! I've never won a raffle in my life, how lovely is it that my first was from Brown Owls!) which is big enough for a skirt, so that's what it's going to become. There were also printed embroidery patterns from (I think) Sublime Stitching, so I bought a simple one to do.

Anna was telling me about a knitter she'd found who used to knit huge bedspreads, but not with knitting needles but with PIANO WIRE.

Read that again, just in case you missed it. She wanted very, very fine knitting, and she couldn't get needles thin enough, so she knitted it on piano wire.

Mind boggling. I'm too impacient to knit big things with real needles, let along with such small needles! Imagine the stitch gauge she would have gotten with those!

This morning I'm back to making props for the Fringe show. It's with small puppets, so everything has to be small. I need to knit a balaclava for a character who's about the size of a GI Joe or Ken doll. I had in mind some crochet cotten I've got, maybe 2 ply or so. I tried rummaging up my smallest needles (and then using kebab stitcks.) but it still looked like fishnet. Toothpicks wern't an option because a) they're too short, the knitting would fall straight off the end, b) they're often cheap wood so they split and splinter easily and c) we don't have any. So instead I went to the Cupboard of Fun and grabbed out some wire. I did this once before, I was knitting a martini glass in the round and I wanted to be able to reduce the size of the circular part of the needle as the glass got smaller towards the stem. So I bought some thin plastic tubing used in jewelery and inserted wire into each end for the points. As the glass grew, I'd take the wire point out of the tube, snip a bit off and put the point back in. It worked, not elegantly, but it worked. The problem with using wire is that when it's cut, most of the time there remains a sharp lip in the middle of the wire where the cutters met. That can catch, stab through or even cut through the yarn. It's not a great solution but it's the best one I have at the moment.

So that's the balaclava, knitted on wire. It's now finished and looks great. I'm now making the two main characters a couch, out of polystryne, stuffing and material.

And this is really what I want to use this blog to show, that props and art dept of film, tv and movies is really just about craft.
And anyone can do it.

shucks

The guys over at Fandomania have found via craftster and showcased my K9 tissue box holder along with three other Dr who related tissue box covers at Fandomestic: Time Lord-Approved Tissue Boxes. Thank you guys!

Pop on over and check out the other ones listed, there's some beautiful work going on there...

Where Sayraphim dabbles with prototypes and finally finishes a rug

Usually I get an idea of what I'm going to make I've got it clearly in my head and I set out to make it. Days or weeks later it's done and it's always pretty close to what I imagined. I'm incredibly lucky in that skill, that I can produce pretty much exactly what I imagined, first time around. And I'll get a surge of satisfaction and then turn to the next thing.

Until now.

I'm designing a show for Fringe and the director has a specific idea in mind for a toy for the show. So I hand stitched one (damn my machine still being packed up for the move) and showed it to him. He liked it, but it wasn't quite right. So we discussed it and we changed the design and I made another one. When I showed him that, he said it was getting closer, and suggested a couple more changes. So I went back in for a third one. The third one, still handsewn, hit the mark. YAY!

There is another doll in the show, and that one was done in my traditional method, imagine, create and Done. But this idea of prototyping, I don't think I approve. Having to go back into the design time after time is very frustrating and to be honest, I'm too damn impatient to keep doing it over.

So I learned something about me. How nice.

In other news, we went over to a freezing warehouse conversion to record all the voices for the show. Since I wasn't needed for the recording itself, I took my crochet. Something else I learned - when going somewhere when it's that damn cold, always take your own rug. I was toasty warm(ish) while finishing off the crochet. So it's done now, with 3 rows of maroon around the edge to frame it. But the end, it was taking half a ball of wool per row. But it's warm and was happily received and I'm really proud to have made it. Weird that I'm too impatient to knit clothing because it takes too long but I happily sat down to crochet a double bed sized rug.

To be complicated is to be human. I guess.

Exhibition coming up!

I'm in an exhibition in 3 weeks! The gallery hasn't named it, so it's jsut the artists' name. So come along to the

Deborah Hally, Sayraphim Lothian, Tebani Slade exhibition

at Gallery Obscura,1st Floor, 284 Carlisle St, East St Kilda

You can see Deborah's work here on RedBubble, her still is beautiful! I can't wait to see it in real life. I can't find a net presence for Tebani, but if I do I'll post it.

Opening night is Sunday, July 5, 2009 from 4 til 6. Come along!

I'm pretty excited, seeing my work that large (over a metre on the longest side) is pretty amazing. I've always wanted it that big, but had yet to find a reason... Until now!

Updated photo

It's not finished, so that's why there's a couple of ends hanging off it still, but I'm impressed on how big it's getting, so I figured I'd share it with you. I've run out of wool (again) so I'm waiting until I can get back to the store. I've lost count how many balls are in it, but by now, it takes about 1/2 a ball or more per circut/row.

Post inspired by the amazing Gemmipop's finished Granny Rug, which you can admire at the Meet Me At Mikes blog here.

Rock on with the granny craftin!

I won an award!

How cool is that? I won the Photography award at the Pivot exhibition at Red Earth Gallery for The Afterlife Ball.

I didn't get to the opening, but received it in the mail last night. I'm so happy! Here is the award winning image!

That's so cool :)

And now, back to your regular scheduling...

OOooooo... I hate it when that happens

It was bound to happen eventually. It always does. But that doesn't stop me every time wishing that it didn't.

No Idle Hands finished. I hate when good books do that. I remember in high school having a favourite series of 3 books by David(cough)gemmel. The Diamond Throne series. When he bought out the second series to it, I read the first book in a night. With the second book I paced myself. That lasted a couple of days. The third and final book I slowed right down, because I didn't want it to end. I got about 3/4 of the way though it, reading slower and slower until I... stopped. I wanted it to never end so badly that I just couldn't read any further.

I realised at the time it was kind of silly, but at the same time, I still did it. So in a way, the book never ended.

It's like my cat. When I was growing up, I had a cat called Amelia Jane (after the Enid Blyton character) and she got older and I left home, leaving Amelia with my mum. Then, for some reason that I've never been fully appraised of, my mum swapped my cat for a caged bird with a friend of hers. Although I know the bird died, I never had another update on my cat, due to a falling out between mum and the friend. So for all I know, Amelia is still alive out there. Thus I have an immortal Schroedinger cat. Amelia Jane lives on, because no-one can prove any different.

Where was I? Oh yeah, I hate when good books end. Idle Hands was written in the 80s, and I found myself wondering - what then? What happened after that?

It was a good book, there were holes in the information, or offhand references to things that weren't explained which I found frustrating, but overall I loved it. I found out that during the Boston Tea Party rebellion that people refused to keep buying British cloth and clothing and instead felt it was their patriotic duty to hand knit and sew clothing of their own. Rebelling through craft! There were also a number of snippets of interviews from older ladies as to why they crafted and how they came to, which I found interesting. I'm a big fan of the personal histories of craft. There was heaps of information about America during the two world wars, and how people knitted for the soldiers as well as the injured and the war affected. It also chronicled the rise and fall and rise and fall of the popularity of knitting, which is a cycle that still occurs today. We're certainly riding a crest of it at the moment. All in all it was a fascinating and well written study and I'd highly recommend it.

So after finishing that, I was at a bit of a loss as to what to read next. I've ordered a bunch of books off amazon, but none of them have arrived yet. So I finished Years of Adventure the 50 year history of the CWA, which has been kicking around for a while. Since I got Idle Hands actually. Again it's a frustrating book because it mentions tonnes of things that it doesn't explain. For instance:
In September 1940, the Country Women's Association Home Help Scheme was inaugurated...(p28) It goes on a little about where the funding came from, and how in 1970 they closed it down as local governments were now running a Home Help Scheme. But it doesn't specify in any way what that scheme did. I assume that it was ladies going out to help people who were having difficulty running their homes. But I would have loved details. What types of things they did, where they did it, why they were needed ect. But none of that is mentioned. There's also the fact that in the State Exhibition in 1951, "three loan exhibits, one from the United States Library of Information, and two from England, greatly delighted all who were privileged to see them. The American one showed examples of several most attractive American crafts, one of the English exhibits was bought out to the C.W.A of Australia, and the other one from England came from members of the Surrey Women's Institute. (P15)
It doesn't say WHAT the exhibits were, just that everyone loved them.

The book is filled with names and dates but only sketchy information, and really, it reads like an old lady reminiscing to her friends about things that they all did when they were young, which to be fair, I guess this book is. But I was looking for a book that described what the CWA is, what it does now, why people join, I was looking for an outsiders guide to the CWA, which this book just simply isn't.

I recently met a member of the CWA, and I asked her all the questions that the book doesn't really answer, for example, why she's a member. She told me that they have lunches and dinners, they have speeches and lectures from people, they do charity work and learn about other countries. Only one of these things is really covered in the book, which is the charity work.

Anyway, enough of that. There were some charming stories in it, and it was an interesting read at times, and I like history and craft, so it was ok, but not really what I was looking for.

The other book I was reading this morning was the first chapter in Patchwork Basics with Australian Patchwork and Quilting Magazine, which is a history chapter. I like the idea of a beginners book that gives you a little history before diving into the art form itself. The chapter, History of American Patchwork, by Jan Baker, is interesting and informative, but again suffers from either pre-supposed knowledge or simply the sin of omission. Whichever it is, it often refers to things without explanation or an accompanying photo. Now I can google the missing information, but I don't think that needing a computer by your side makes for a successful book. Either explain fully what the hell you're talking about or omit it entirely! Especially for a total beginner book, the expectation that they already have a bunch of quilting history knowledge is just plain silly.

So that's the end of the book update for the moment.

The crocheting is rocketing along. I'm addicted to it. I've been crocheting pretty much non-stop since Monday night and Brown Owls. Here it is at the moment:

I've found I can now crochet without looking, so I can read and crochet, hence the large amount of reading this morning. I also took it to a theatre show last night and crocheted before the show started and during intermission. Oh my god, this thing has taken over my life. And I love it!

The other thing I finished today is a birthday present for a friend of mine. I gave him a knitted cocktail a few years ago (see Patty Mae's Domestic Punch, the title was a nod to the wife of Australia's 12th PM, Menzies) but it hasn't stood the test of time (and several interstate moves) so well. So I've made him another one, this time his favourite non-alcoholic drink. Hot chocolate with marshmallows and grated chocolate floating on top:
It was a quick knitted rectangle for the mug and then crochet for the handle, mug bottom, hot chocolate and the marshmallows. And I was smugly pleased it stands up by itself.

I am so addicted to this crochet thing. I can't believe it took me this many years to get around to trying it!

Oh, and I forgot to tell you!

I went to see the Kodak Salon at the CCP the other day, and they used one of my photos in the brochure! It's only available online (unfortuntaly) but you can see it here.

The other thing is that Becclebee has started a craft blog of her very own. It's called Marjory Jane and you can visit it here.

Go Becclebee!

Much goodness!

I realised that I didn't share with you the finished pictures of the Dragon Family! So here they are in my studio before delivery Of course, there was a dragon costume for the biggest one, but since it wasn't my work I figured I wouldn't photograph it for posterity.

Here is the Mid Dragon on set, being held by one of the two puppeteers. It gives you a good idea how the hands look when there are people in it.

And here is the Lil Dragon on the bed on set. Aparently the Lil Dragon was a huge hit with the younger guys on set, and the directors daughter, who is all of age 4 or 5, was dreadfully upset when she couldn't take it home :)

That's so sweet!

In other good news, the Mummy sold on etsy. How nice is that? I was reading The Gentle Arts by Jennifer Isaacs as part of the general research into the history of craft that I'm currently doing, and she mentioned Pin Money. She didn't really explain it well, so off to Google I trotted...

Pin Money: Catharine Howard, wife of Henry VIII., introduced pins into England from France. As they were expensive at first, a separate sum for this luxury was granted to the ladies by their husbands. Hence the expression "pin-money." from What Names Mean
and
Pin money is now regarded as a term for small amounts of money, usually saved by a woman. from their forums

I think that's a fascinating term. In the book, one of the women she interviewed said her mother used to take in sewing for 'pin money'. And it occured to me that many crafty type people are still carrying on that tradition, even though they might not know it. It'd be great to be able to earn a full wage from art and my etsy store, but really mine is only pin money. But I'm ok with that. It's nice to be continuing an ages past tradition.

I bought two more books today. One is Years of Adventure by the Country Women's Association, chronicalling 50 years of the CWA from 1928-1978. My grandmother was a CWA member, sometimes the president and sometimes the treasurer of her chapter, and I'm looking forward to learning more about it. I actually want to go to the Royal Melbourne Show this year to go and look at the crafts and the competitions.

The other book is Colonial Crafts of Victoria by Arts Victoria. Most of the photos are B&W but still it's a good history book of local crafts so I'm looking forward to diving into that. I've also bought No Idle Hands: The Social History of American Knitting by Ann Macdonald via Amazon. Amazon books are usually more expensive due to shipping and monetary conversions, but I found one of the second hand sellers who ship internationally, so the whole thing is costing me $32 AU. I'm so stoked!

I'm not sure what I'm researching here. Usually when I'm doing research, I have a clear idea where to start and where to go. At the moment I find I'm interested in:
the history of craft
the individuals who made the items
the place craft had in ordinary lives
and the social history of craft.

I'm not sure where it's all leading, but it's certainly an interesting journey...

Artisty

So this is just a quicky, showing an image I created the other day for an competition I'm entering.


It's called The Afterlife Ball.

I had a dream that, instead of the clouds of heaven, the fires of hell and the grayness of purgatory, the afterlife was a ball, with women in beautiful dresses and men in suits whirling around a sumptuous red and gold ballroom, like I imagine the Titanic would have had.

And that inspired me to make this work... Well, that and the fact I found a competition that called for a pivotal moment that fit this. As always, I like to have a reason to create something, rather than jsut creating it for it's own sake. I find I don't have time to make things just because...

Phew! What a lot of things to cram into such a short time

Oh, there has been much art, much business and a internet connection MIA. Damn technology!

On the weekend, I worked on a short shoot of a showreel of a film written by local guys. Well, Jude and a friend of his. It was great to work on a professional shoot but stacked full of mates. It's set in an office, but one where weird and strange things go on. We shot it in the office where my studio is housed, and it was fun running around dressing the set with subtle and not so subtle weirdness. No photos to show, the day was too jam packed with action, but I had a ball. It was one of the best organised and smoothest run film shoots I've ever worked on, plus like I said, about half of the actors and crew were people I knew, so it was a good day. But like every shoot, it went for 11 hours and I stood up the whole time, bar the half hour for (homecooked!) lunch.

Next, I saw this callout the other day:

Exhibition at City Library.

April 2 - April 28
Blank Canvas
An exhibition by...You!

City Library invites you to 'make your mark' on our gallery wall. Draw, sketch, or write (poems, stories, observations on life etc) and hand your completed creation back to the Information desk to be 'hung' in the gallery. Please ask at the Information desk for A3 paper and art materials.

'Closing' Night Thursday 23 April, 6pm - 7pm
The Gallery @ City Library

(from Fizit's Livejournal)

I was really interested in that as an idea. I was right in the middle of reading Knit Art, by Ferne Geller Cone, a book from the 70s exhorting the joys of freeform knitting as artworks. I was fascinated by it, and itching to try it. So Blank Canvas came along jsut at the right time!

I've recently come into quite a pile of wool and half finished projects, so I grabbed a bag of interestingly textured balls of wool and started knitting.

This is the end product. It's called Abstract Experiment, and it is exactly that. Fascinating process to go through, knitted all in garter stitch, utalising the short row technique. It also incorporates a number of small pre-knitted pieces I found in the bag. I am the first to acknowledge that it's not the prettiest thing I've ever made, but it wasn't created with an asthetic in mind. It was knitted to try a technique out.


It's not a tumor! I was really happy with it.

The other piece I made for the show was something I'd been thinking about for a while, but like everything, I was waiting until the good idea had somewhere to go. I prefer to make things for a specific goal, rather than just randomly knit things.

I present to you KNITTYSCAPE

I love it :) I like all the tails of the yarn just hanging, and it's hung via the needles it was knitted on. This again is just garter stitch, this time utalising Instarta. I didn't have time to steam it flat, but I figured it added a little to the 'just finished' asthetic it has going on.

And just to finish off the news, here is the latest photo of the Mid sized Dragon:


I love the happy expression on his face. But can I just say, OH MY GOD I HATE sewing slippery crushed panne velvet! Ohhh, it makes for much, much frustration. It wasn't my idea, I'd much rather be using fake fur (which hides seams and little hiccups beautifully) or anything that isn't slippery, but I'm matching a costume that's already been made, so I have to go with their design choices. But again, I reiterate, BOO!!!

electrical faults aside, we got a family going on!

Yesterday I spent in the studio still working on the dragons. I bought a glue gun a week ago from a high end craft store that shall remain nameless as my previous glue gun, bought sensibly from a hardware store, had been suddenly called to Majorca to attend a family situation. Or at least, that's what the note it let told me.

So I had to buy another one, and since I was nowhere near a hardware store, I bought one from a craft store. A little nervously, I have to admit.

It's been really crappy. It's hard to work with, doesnt heat up well, which is pretty important in a hot glue gun, you'd have to agree, and generally has been a pain in the arse.

Yesterday, about halfway through the day, I plugged it in and turned it on with a sigh. About five minutes later, there was a flash, a pop and a wisp of smoke, and thus the glue gun went to heaven on little angel wings. (AHAHAH... what a great image! Now I'm considering fishing it out of the bin and doing exactly that to it :)

Because I'm a curious sort of girl, when it had cooled down, I unscrewed it to see what had gone on. It was exactly what I figured had happened. ..

Glue and circuitry boards should not mix... Notice the charring around the spiral of wire? That was all through the gun.

It also knocked out the power points in my studio and although the manager of the building and I spent the next 20 minutes going around to various fuse boxes, we couldnt find the one that had blown.

I'm now running anything electrical through a extension cord from the kitchen. Sighs. I was once told that you know you're having an adventure when you'd rather be home in bed.

So I continued the best I could without a glue gun, sewing skin for bodies and heads, stitching in the arms ect. I also decided that the little guy I had created was too small, so I started on making another, bigger Lil Dragon.

But eventually I got to a point where I ran out of silver thread, then ran out of red thread and decided it was best to go home.
Foreground is the half made Lil Dragon, being hugged by the Mid Dragon (sans facial features, because you need a hot glue gun for that) and at the back you can see the original Big dragon head that came as part of the costume. Of course, it doesnt fit the Big Dragon's head (the dragon head is much wider than a human or polystyrene one) so I have to make one of those too.

Those jobs that always seem simple but then spiral out bigger and bigger? I shall hearby refer to those as galaxy jobs and I think it's fair to say that they always make me sigh

Good things come in threes

So I've been commissioned to design and make a dragon puppet in three sizes - bigger than a teenager, 60cms and small stuffed toy.

After much discussion we decided that we'd go with a costume for the big dragon, a muppet-like puppet for the mid dragon and about 30cms for the stuffed toy.

There's a meme out there of photographing your studio space. So I figured today'd be an excellent opportunity for that. My studio is in a building about 3 suburbs from where I live, so when I'm knitting or making little things, I do it at home. My bedroom is filled with material stashed in every nook and cranny, and crates of wool stashed around the house. But for big things, I trot off to the studio...

On the right you can see the dragon costume. It came without hands, feet or a face, so I have to build those. The big gray shape on the left is the mid dragon's body. On the table at the back is a Grim Reaper, one of two dolls left in my care from Totem... One of them are being picked up today, the other I've still not heard from the artist. Under the table at the back are two tool boxes of varying sizes, and the box under the table on the right is actually a knitting machine that I bought last year and still haven't had time to get out and attempt something.


The dragon needed to be cute. They wanted it with a face like a My Little Pony. Since I didn't have a good grasp on the ins and outs of how a MLP is built, I went and bought one. The drawing was done before I had acquired the rosy equine.

Here is the Mid Dragon and the little one. Note the holes in the Mid Dragon's chest, that's for it's arms. They were all keen on little T Rex type arms.


Family shot! The one on the left is the Mid Dragon. It's hard to tell from this angle, but the Big Dragon is indeed bigger than the Mid one. Which makes sense really.

Gosh

It appears that Where The Wild Things Are is generating huge amounts of interest all over the web. And so my last post is turning up all over the place (including on the excellent Puppeteers Unite site and the awesome popculture showcase Super Punch) and many people are popping over here to visit. Hello to you! Come, sit yourself down and have some cake.

I've been getting a number of questions about which is my favourite Wild Thing. It's a simple contest, and Carol has always won hands down. With his stripes he's easily the most distinguishable of the monsters, and after all, although he doesn't appear on the cover, Carol is the Wild Thing that appears in the two most famous images from the book, including bowing to King Max (I don't have to link to these images. You know which ones they are!) I was thrilled, therefore, to discover that my favourite Wild Thing was the principal one in the film.

After they finished filming the movie, we cleaned, washed, dried and packed every suit into huge wooden crates to send them back to the studios in America. (I asked what the studio was planning to do with them, and someone referred me to the end scene in the Indiana Jones Raiders of the Lost Arc, where they wheel the boxed up arc into a huge warehouse filled with similar crates) and we went home for the final time. I had a few weeks off before my next job, so because my head was still so full of monster images, and because I use art to process the things that happen in my life, I sat around and knitted a number of the guys. Carol was the first, naturally! and I knitted him for one of the standbys who was a close friend of mine (you can't keep everything you knit, where would you store them all? Better to knit for other people say I!) I proceeded to knit the other guys too, but Carol is my favourite and I'd love to have the time to knit him again, this time for myself (ok, well sometimes that Other People rule has to be broken :) But when the merchandising comes out for the film, I have to say that I'm probably going to be buying something of Carol and something of Max.

Cause we've all got a little Max inside...

In other news, Chrisy from Sophism Press has included Victor the Strongman as part of her most recent showcase, focusing on The Circus. How kind! There's a bunch of fabulous items in the showcase, so head on over and soak up some of the glitter and sawdust...