a discussion of monsters, breasts, dresses and moral dilemmas

Mid last year, as you might well know, I curated and organised an exhibition encouraging artists to create self portrait dolls of how they view themselves inside. My doll is at your right, a 4 foot high little green monster built in a similar style to the muppets.

Recently I knitted a version of her as a present, and I've only jsut got the photo. I've got to stop giving the guys away before I photograph them. But anyway, I just wanted to share her with you. The only difference really is the little one has blue eyes and the big one has brown eyes. That wasn't intentional, the little one was totally created out of my stash and I only had blue eyes that size. The photo of the actual Totem doll was taken before she had feet (the publicity deadline came faster than I expected) but rest assured she has dreadfuly cute 3 toed feet, which is why the knitted version has feet too... and I love her little knitted belly!

It's like looking at one of those spot the difference cartoons in the paper really, isn't it!

One of the things I loved about the big doll was that (although you can't see it well because of the dress) she actually has boobs. This lady ain't flat chested, she has little boobs befitting her size and statue. I think boobs on grown up versions of things are important, especially when it's not a sexual thing. Here I put my hand up and say yes, I have knitted topless burlesque dolls with boobs, which was, amongst other things, exploring what you can do to make the subject of dolls more grown up, but leaping to the other side of the fence, I feel that most dolls are made flat chested and for the vast majority, the only time dolls are made with boobs is for when they're all pimped out, dressed in their underwear and generally slutted out. So one of the themes I'm working on at the moment is dolls with breasts. Of course, the last three dolls I've made were all flat chested. But one was for a child and the other two were portrait dolls. I think there's something a little odd about giving someone a portrait doll of themselves with lovingly handcrafted breasts.

Ovbiously I'm still working through this one... I'll get back to you when I've figured it out.

In other, unrelated news, check this out! it's a dress designed and HAND KNITTED by Knitwear Designer Jemma Sykes.

I love the texture of the loops, as well as the beautiful shape it's taken. The text tells us that it's called The Elizabeth, and it's created from 100% organic wool dyed a soft pink. I wish it said just how much wool it took.

You can find it here.

Ladies and gentlemen, is there nothing a knitter can't do?

What a jolly morning

I was hanging out with a friend of mine the other day and she was wearing a tshirt she'd created herself through RedBubble. It's free to sign up and you can load photos and artwork up on it, it's a 2d etsy. Anyway, so this morning I decided to make a couple of tshirts on it.

The first one was one I made years ago with fabric paint, but it's old and breaking now, plus it's too short for me, so I remade it, professionaly:


I've always hearted zombies.

Next I made a Sacred Heart shirt. I've wanted one of these for ages but never seen them anywhere. So about half an hour in photoshop and I uploaded:

I made one with the big image on it, and a second one with a smaller Sacred Heart. I'm really happy with these, because I haven't done a lot of vector work in PhotoShop before and it was nowhere near as hard as I used to think it was.

When I was younger, I used to make heaps of tshirts for myself, and I also used to decorate my knickers. My two favourites are a black pair with silver glitter fabric paint that says GODLET and a black pair with green drippy writing that said ZOMBIE GIRL. Now you know that about me, you're better prepared to understand the next three tshirts. This one started it all:
It's a paraphrase from Calvin and Hobbes, and reads “What’s the use of wearing your lucky rocketship underpants if no one gets to see em?”

I always wanted lucky rocketship underpants, but I thought the question was a good one. But here, today my friends, I have found the solution!

Next, I wanted to remake my ZOMBIE GIRL knickers (which were worn to death, and beyond (fittingly enough) and are no longer with us) but I figured that a tshirt with ZOMBIE GIRL written on it would be kind of boring. Imagination to the rescue!


And then I figured I'd go have a look at the stencil art I've collected over the years and I found this:I also made a GODLET tshirt, although it's totally different to the knickers design, I still like it. And someone's favoured it already, which is nice
And I remade another old tshirt I had years ago, I'm not sure how it'll go down with the Youth of today, but I still think it's funny.
The amount of people, even back then, I had to explain who Jello was used to depress me.
But who knows. Maybe it's old enough to be retro now a days.

So I'm really happy with my mornings work!

Now for the commercial. All of these shirts are only $30 each, they come in a wide variety of colours and sizes, they're awesomely high quality and best of all, RedBubble is free to sign up! If you are interested in buying any of the shirts, you can click on the photos and it'll take you straight there. Plus, you'd have my gratitude. And who can't do with another rockin tshirt?

discoveries of a hauntingly beautiful kind

I love wandering around the net, seeing what people out there are making. For those of you who don't know, I'm a photographer and a digital artist as well as a crafty lady. I have a presence on Redbubble, a worldwide community of photography that can be purchased as cards, prints, tshirts and more. A 2d etsy, if you like. Today while wandering around there I came across Laurenrabbit, an incredible photographer from the States. She does all of her black and white photography straight - no digital at all. Any editing is in camera or in the darkroom. I love this sort of photography, and I wish I had a darkroom to do it in!
This image comes straight from her blog, and I think it's beautiful. I love the sepia tone she gives many of her images, as well as the dark, gritty, dirty feel to both subject matter and photograph. She's certainly one of the most interesting photographers I've seen in a long time, and it makes me happy that there are such creative people in the world.



Other things I've fond in the past 24 hours is A Slip Of A Girl, who runs a beautiful blog about vintage undergarments, mostly of the feminine kind. I found her because she posted about my burlesque dolls, which I thought was lovely.



Through that blog, I have discovered White Lies Design, an incredibly talented lady named Joan who has created numerous knitting patterns in a vintage style.

And if you don't want to knit your own beautiful underthings, you could always purchase them from Under The Root, who creates vintage inspired underwear for both men and women inspired by circus and burlesque.

I love the net. And I love adventuring around it. I love the community it fosters, allowing like minded people to connect who might never find each other any other way. One of the best inventions in the world. After knitting needles and cake.

Good New Year News

Oh, ok, so maybe I'm dorky, but I'm always thrilled when someone buys something of mine. It makes me feel warm and special and happy. And I'm telling you this because someone just bought my baby Yeti off Etsy!

Ta taa!

When I first started on Etsy, I had two sales pretty quickly and then it got very quiet, for quite a saddening length of time. I don't really pimp it around much, there's links here and on my website but that's about it. I know some people promote the hell out of their etsy's, but I don't have the time. The saying Jack of all trades, master of none is pretty accurate, I'm so busy doing everything I do that I don't have heaps of time to follow through with as much background work on them as I'd like.

Recently I decided that what goes around comes around and since I had a bit of spare money, I went on a little buying spree. I bought a number of things of etsy, mostly from fellow Dust members (Down Under Street Team, the Australian sellers club) and bought a number of things from ebay and stores, sharing the love (and my little bonus) around. I did it for two reasons. One was that when I have, I like to share, so that others can share in my good fortunes, and also I figured that on a karmic level, no one would be buying my items if I wasn't buying anyone elses.

And it's paid off! In a week I've had two etsy sales. Firstly the top hat and now the baby yeti!

Love you, Karma!

But all flippancy aside, it's always lovely when people buy your work. So thank you to my lovely and discerning buyers :)

In other news, I'm currently adding a TOTEM page to the Omnific Assembly website. Oh my god there were so many dolls in that show! And thus I'm going to have to put about 50 or so photos on the website to show them all! I think my brain is bleeding, just a little...

Tutorial - How to publicize your event or exhibition

I'm not just a crafty artist, as so many people in this day and age I do many, many things. So one of my plans for these tutorials was always to teach people other stuff that is related to craft and creating but isn't just sewing, knitting and eating (although these are three of my favourite activities!) If I've figured it out or been taught, I want to pass the knowledge on to others. Continuing the cycle, as it were.

So here is the first of my not-quite-crafting tutorials. It's how to publicize an event or art exhibition you might be organising. I actually wrote this a while ago for a friend on the melb_artists community on LJ, but it's such a good reference I figured I'd put it here too.

It was written to help her publicize her exhibition (something I've had heaps of practice at) but it is just as useful for a craft event, music concert or anything you're organising and need people to know about...

So, you have an event coming, and that’s all fine, but there's a bunch of things you need to do to let people know it’s going on.

Press release
Firstly if you haven't already you need to write a press release. It needs to be snappy and not rambling, it needs to have short clever sentences that the media can pick out at will. The media are sort of lazy and don't want to have to read something and then write about it, they just want to be able to copy and paste however much fits into the space they have.

The best size for a press release is one A4 page. And only about 2/3s of that is for your show. The rest of the page is for the title of the show, contact details and show details (times, dates, address) You should also set out your press release nicely, use paragraphs and spacing, make it easy to read and not chock full of info. It's good to get your information out there, but if journalists are faced with a novel, it's less likely they're going to read it.

Flier
You need someone with graphics skills to put together a flier, with the details of the show. REMEMBER TO PUT:

• Name
• what sort of event it is
• dates
• times
• venue
• and entry fee if there is one.

I can’t stress this enough. These are all the important details that someone needs if they want to turn up. Make it easy for them :) then if there's room, maybe a little blurb about the show. Get these printed and have them also in electronic form.

Publicity photo
You need to pick about 2 really good artworks and photograph them for publicity shots. It would be good if you can stick an artist in one of them too. A good publicity shot has some interest in it, and preferably a person. You need to have a good, clear shot of their face and especially their eyes. This isn't art, its publicity. They wont use it if they cant see eyes.

For other events, publicity photographs should have people in them - actors for the play, the event organiser or a band shot for music events, stall holders smiling behind a stall for a market, and so on.

Media contact point
You need to choose someone to be the media contact point. They need to be able to speak clearly about the project. They need to know about the project, the ins and outs, how it came about etc. They also need an email address and a phone. This info needs to go on the press release. And they need to be ready to go out to the media and speak about the project. This might include being interviewed on radio or telly.

If you can, also put all the info, press release and photos, up on a website somewhere, so the press can go get more info if they want. Remember to include this website address on the press release too.

Ok, so now you have all your publicity materials, you need to go out and find places to put it. That's actually pretty simple.

Major newspapers - pick up copies of these, find their email addresses and send them an email that has the press release, small web versions of the photos and the flier and the web address where big versions of the images are and all the details. Remember to include the media contact person and their details in the email. Preferable send it from the media persons email address, this avoids confusion

minor newspapers - Most communities or council areas have local papers. If one of your artists lives in those areas, get them to contact these local papers. After all, these papers are local stories about local people.

Freebie newspapers - Pick up copies of every one of your local street press you can find and contact their arts editors/ reviewers/ journalists

Radio - community radio love stories like these. Also contact the bigger stations, it doesn't cost you anything after all. Do a search online for their websites and then email the producers of the arts and morning programs.

Television again community stations love local stuff, and the good thing is they continue to play it. Jude had his first play back in 2000 filmed by our local channel, Channel 31, and he still has people tell him - hey, i was watching the telly the other night and i saw this play you were in... Very strange, but cool. They're still running his play and his name 8 years on. I was interviewed for an exhibition back in 2005, and they still run that too. Community tv stations are an excellent resource.

Do contact other, bigger channels too, they might pick it up if there's something that catches their interest, but don't be disappointed if you never hear back from them.

Now, the public
Getting the media behind your exhibition is all well and good, but don't expect heaps from either the media or those who see it in there, if you get it there. Grass roots is the way these things really take off.

So email a copy of the flier to all the artists involved with a little blurb, and ask them to send it to all their friends. Send it to all your friends. Ask them to pass it on. Post it places like LJ, facebook, myspace, your blog, everywhere you can think.

But hard copies are important too. Get the printed fliers (and maybe A4 or A3 posters too, if you have the budget) and start handing them out. Take them to cafes, ask if you can put a couple down. Take them to unis, put them in the cafes. Get the word on the street, and THAT'S where you'll get your audience from. I would say that from my exhibition opening crowds, about 70% are people who know the artists and have been approached directly from them, maybe 20% are from Internet postings and cafe fliering and maybe 10% saw it in the paper etc and came along.

But remember, EVERYWHERE is worth telling/posting/fliering. A good friend of mine has this saying - you already have no, you might as well try for yes. In this situation, everyone already doesn't know about your exhibition and isn't coming. You might as well give them the opportunity to know about it. They still might not come, but then you've lost nothing. And hell, some of them might come. But they'll only come if they know about it.

And you are now well on your way to having a well publicised and well organised event!

Tutorial - Awesomely Luxurious Doll Hair

How do you make good dolls hair? It's something that I've been experimenting with for a while, trying different things and the other day I re-discovered an awesome way to do it. Weirdly enough it was something I first used in about year 7 to make a judges wig from carpet strands. But now, with a little more thought, it works beautifully for dolls hair.

To your left is a doll I made for my niece for Christmas. She's a big fan of pink, so that was the theme of the doll. She's a smaller version of the portrait dolls I've been sewing recently, and she came out really well I thought. Plus, my neice loved her. There's nothing better than a personal present that goes down really well. Makes the heart sing.

So without further ado, here is a tutorial for Awesomely Luxurious Doll Hair!


You'll need:
Yarn in various colours*
sewing needle
thread
scissors

*I've found that the hair looks better if you use more than one colour, or shade of the chosen colour. For this doll I wanted pink hair, so I used all my shades of pink - 2 pale pinks, a bright pink, a dark pink and a fluffy light pink yarn too. It makes a more interesting visual than a single plain colour.

Step one: Measure one strand of yarn across the bottom of the dolls head near the neck (we'll call this the WIG STRAND). You want the WIG STRAND to be long enough to trail down both sides of the head longer than you picture the finished hair. Tie a knot in the WIG STRAND at either side of the head so you'll know where to tie the hair on.

Step two: Cut a number of HAIR STRANDS of yarn of different colours double the length you want the doll's hair to be, and start tying them in between the two knots on the WIG STRAND. A single knot is sufficiant as you'll be stitching them tightly in a minute.

Step three: once there's a good number of yarn HAIR STRANDS tied to the WIG STRAND (see above photo), stretch the WIG STRAND back across the dolls head. Stitch the WIG STRAND to the doll's head, making sure that you stitch through each knot to ensure they don't unravel in the future.
Step four: Continue making and stitching WIG STRANDS until the dolls head is as covered as you want it to be.

Step five: When you come to stitching the final WIG STRAND on the head, place it with the strands falling over the face rather than falling across the previous hair and stitch it on.
Then smooth the hair away from the face. This ensures that the knots and the WIG STRAND cannot be seen from the front of the doll.

Step six: give your doll a hair cut, cutting the strands to the length you want. To ensure you don't end up with a weird looking straight line, gather the hair into a horizontal line and cut across the ends. Then when you let it go, the hair will fall and look better than a straight line

And that's it. Your doll's coiffure is done! Long, thick luxurious hair that any doll would be proud of.


You can put this hair up in a pony tail, but it is quite thick (it can look a little like a ponytail of dreadlocks) so if you want your doll to have her hair up, you could try making the WIG STRANDS spiral around the head instead of straight across it, and leave the middle of the head bald. You wont be able to see it when the hair is up, and that will eliminate some of the bulk

Go forth and hair my children!

2009 and a confession

Happy new year to you all! I hope you all have a wonderful year, filled with love and joy and laughter and friendship, good food and wonderful experiences.

I'm all stocked about 2009. I have a feeling it's going to be great! I've got about a million plans for what I want to do with this year, I feel like a kid in a candy store pointing at all the jars saying "I like that, and that, and that, and that, and that..."

As soon as I narrow them down, I'll let you know about it! In the mean time, welcome to 2009!

And now to the Confession. I went and did it. I started knitting a clothing item. And for a loved one. I have a feeling I've opened the floodgates now!

The only clothing I've ever knitted is a vest based on one of the creatures from Where The Wild Things Are. I worked on the film for 5 months and when it ended, I found myself housesitting for a friend and having a week off, my head was still filled with the Wild Things, so I knitted myself a vest of my favourite one, Carol. You can see a couple of screenshots of a test shoot which features Carol here.

Anyway, it took me all week solidly knitting and I vowed that, even though I loved Carol and the vest, that knitting clothing was too much for me. At the left is the vest, obviously :) Forgive the photo quality, it was a shot from my phone a few years ago. It was a pretty easy knit, two large rectangles of brown and tan stripes with some ribbing down the bottom, one with some short rows in it to make the split, and two rectangles of furry yarn with a rounded corner for the hood. It made me happy that I found it so easy to figure out patterns for stuff.

But so I vowed off knitting clothing, I am an impatient woman, and I like stuff to be over fast, and a week was too long. So knitting and sewing small things like dolls makes me happy, you get to see the results pretty quickly and can be off onto the next one.

But now, after a couple of years knitting (the vest was about the first thing I knitted in my adult life, which was around 2006 I think) I have broken that vow. I'm currently a day into knitting a beanie for Jude. Being a tall man (with a matching head :), he can never find beanies that fit him, so I offered to knit him one. He's been keen on me knitting a jumper for him for a while now, but I figured a beanie was a better idea, dipping my toes in the water rather than jumping in the deep end.

So we discussed beanies and he wants a sort of 90s grunge one. Pretty simple, it's jsut a big floppy beanie, almost like the kind people wear with dreads. My idea was some ribbing, then increase for a while, then just plain knitting for a while, then close back in.

This is it so far, after a day of knitting. The almost cabled effect was due to a new kind of increase, for me at least. During the Turkish Ladies Knitting workshops, one of the ladies showed me the Yarn Over style of increase, and I was hooked. I love the look of it. So this cabling effect (which I didn't expect but am very pleased with) is a Yarn Over one stitch to the left of each previous YO. I started by doing a YO every 4 stitches but as it's an increase it quickly became every 5, then every 6 ect. Now that I've done enough increases (and that I've run out of room on the circular needles) I'm no longer increasing, but to continue the pattern I'm doing a purl stitch to the left of each previous one. When I start decreasing, I'll decrease to the left of each previous decrease, and I'm hoping that'll continue the spiralling pattern in. It's an advenutre!

The best bit about this beanie, which may turn out to be the worst thing, is that I'm now all keen to start knitting cardigans, jumpers and other types of clothing... It's a really exciting avenue that's opened up, but I'm worried it'll drive me crazy with the amount of time it'll take!

Maybe this is what will teach me pacience...

some beautiful things

firstly, merry christmas! I hope you had a lovely one filled with everything you like :)

As part of my Christmas, I participated in The Toy Society's Christmas Drop (What a lot of capitals)

The idea, for those of you who haven't seen it yet, is to make a doll and then leave it somewhere for someone to find with a tag that says TAKE ME HOME, I'M YOURS and some contact info for the Toy Society.

This was my doll (and the post on the blog):




The doll I made was the first in a series I'm currently doing, and by that I mean that I sewed her and thought - oh, she's great, I'll make more of her. The basic pattern is what I'm using to make the portrait dolls (one of which can be seen here)

The wonderful thing was that not only was the doll found, but the lady who found her emailed in. You can read her email here. That makes me so happy :)

In other news, my top hat sold on etsy. How ace is that? It's been a long time since she's been used, and now she'll be winging her way to America where the lovely Stephanie will love her and keep her and feed her well. Stephanie has the same problem I have, which is a 23 inch head. This makes for not a lot of hats that fit. She's been looking for a top hat for a while but they've all been too small. Until now!

Yay for the interconnectedness of etsy, the web and the community.

You shouldn't expect meaning from those paid to fake it

There's a review online for the show This Is Set In The Future at AussieTheatre.com. It seems a little conflicted, glowing at the start and not so keen at the end, which is a little weird, but still its a good review...

This is set in the future a traditional Christmas tale of blood, cum and karma, complete with a Pseudo Santa resplendent in a tight frock contemplating an even tighter noose. The publicity did say it was more festy than festive…

Glyn Roberts’s not-so-cheery tale explores the not-too-distant future where we could live forever. Will folk get up to acts of selfless good and create heartfelt joy? Not with Robert Reid directing.

As always, director Reid (theatre in decay) hides his hope behind a large wall of cynicism. He despairs in his program notes that Melbourne theatre has “gotten ever so samey”. Melbourne’s independent theatre would be a duller place without Reid and I’m not alone in my gladness that he is determined to produce original work.

With Sayraphim Lothian’s spot-on design and a cast of competitive alphas (Scott Gooding, Rachel Baring, Hayley Butcher, Joshua Cameron and writer Glyn Roberts), Reid guides the delightfully-dark script into a place where even the Christmas-cracker jokes would need a PGR rating.

There’s not much left in this future world beyond “fuck or punch”. It sets out to shock and this is where I think it just missed the mark. There were some moments where it could have gone somewhere very nasty and interesting, or somewhere even more outrageously, hilariously obscene - but I felt that the brakes were applied and what could have been jaw-dropping black was simply taken back to joke. They were good jokes, but didn’t have the expected effect.

It might have just been final night excitement, but the cast were enjoying the fun a little bit too much. The impact of having the crap beaten out of you is dulled if the actors make it clear that it’s meant to be funny. There’s no shock in “incest is the new gay” if it’s being said to create a nervous audience titter. The comic book style of performance was perfect for the script, but we needed to see more of the fascinating characters, rather than the terrific actors, because the telling of their story was lost. We were watching to see what the performers would do next, rather than what would happen next.

Reid declares that we shouldn’t “expect meaning from people paid to fake it”. It was clear that everyone involved in This is set in the future understood every nuance of meaning, but they could have shared their meaning just a little bit more with the audience.

Craft mirrors

My grandmother was very artistic. She could take any image at all and copy it perfectly. She used to lament because she couldn't draw out of her imagination, but truly could copy anything perfectly. It was a staggering talent and one I always admired and secretly wished I had.

But it suddenly occurred to me a few months ago that I have her talent, just in 3d form. I can take a photo of anything and copy it in knitting. I've made Ludo from Labyrinth, GIR from Invader Zim, most of the creatures from Where The Wild Thing Are, Daleks and K9 from Dr Who, even an SLR and an anotomicall correct heart. It's like a puzzle, to figure out how to knit them, but I love it.

My amazing and terribly talented friend, SaraMae Page, sent 6 of these (right) dolls to me as part of Totem. They're beautiful little peg dolls and are collectively called Domestic Gist.

Truth be told, I wanted to keep them all. But instead they starred in Totem and then were sent back home to Mrs Page.

I wanted to make her something special as a present, and I couldn't think of anything better than knitting her a version of her Domestic Gist peg dolls.

The 'type' effect on the dress was created by using a normal yarn in a sepia/gold colour for the paper and a thin black crochet cotton together. She leans a little because of her dress, but I don't mind that.

One of the things I love about a stash is that I can rummage around in the 6 clear plastic boxes of yarn (organised by colour) and knit this entire doll from it. Even the pearls came from a stash - I find a lot of broken jewelery on the ground which I collect up and take home.

The stuff I find mostly falls into three categories:
broken jewelery
buttons
and playing cards.

It's a strange but ever growing collection of Found Objects which all reside in glass jars on my shelf. I dive into it about once a week to deck out dolls or add them to artworks.

Speaking of dolls and Totem, I made another portrait doll to give to my exceptionally hard working and devoted producer, Simone Collins. Simone was really pleased when I gave it to her. The doll is wearing a shirt based on one of my favourites of Simone's shirts she used to wear when I was working with her. One of the things I love best about the doll is it has Simone's earrings. Simone wears flesh tunnels through her ears, but the prettiest ones I've ever seen, they're black with sparkly diamonds around the circle. Portrait dolls are all about showcasing a few particular visual traits of the person you're portraying, so I knew that Simone's earrings would be really important to this doll. Luckily I found little circular black beads with diamantes around their edges in my local bead shop. Not perfect, but close enough to suggest Simone's jewelery. She even commented that the doll had her earrings! So that was nice.

I love when presents are so perfect for the recipients. Makes me so warm inside!