Friday, November 28, 2008

Alley Roses


Last week I had a custom request from a buyer on Etsy, for a flower brooch in a different colour than I had available in my shop.
She didn't have one specific colour in mind and just wanted something not too flashy that would match her brown coat, but one she mentioned was ochre.
To get to that I finally frogged the colourful stripy jumper I showed in my post about free recycled yarn.

As I ended up with a whole palet of colours I decided to make small array for my customer too choose from. Not completely to my surprise, she chose the bright red one with the black bead. Now these photos are horrible but I had to take them inside by winterlight, before work, as I wanted to show the results quickly.
Today I had more time and wanted to see how my new dress dummy could be of help to nicely picture the leftover brooches. You don't see much of the dummy itself, but the nice thing is that I can place it by the window and turn it to catch as much possible light and still be myself in a good position to take the photo. And now I can finally drape that lovely jacket I found on a body, so you don't see the inside of it on the picture.
Also the scarf is a curb find.

I didn't make a lot of money on my order, but in the end it cost me next to nothing and hopefully the new pictures will help to sell the rest. I had fun responding to the request and I collected a new very happy buyer's review in my shop. Feel free to take a look if you want to see more crocheted 'alley roses'.

Sunday, November 16, 2008

A Dress Dummy!!


I'm not a dress maker, but being a textile crafter I do reconstruct clothing sometimes and I have knit/crocheted garments in the past. So a real dress dummy is something I've wanted for ages, but not something I'd spend money on.

In the past I already showed the items I had to make do with so far, a cardboard male shopwindow dummy and a half body lingerie dummy. But those were only good for displaying. But nevertheless at the time when the BF found them on Monday morning errands I was happy enough.

But some two weeks ago he had a bigger surprise for me. These days he sometimes goes for an extra late night excursion after our usual Sunday evening walk. Already asleep I never even heard him leaving. So what a thrill when he came downstairs the next morning and sort of casually said: Oh, found this for you last night... Ah, my eyes popped, my mouth fell open... Couldn't have been happier with expensive jewelry.

This dress dummy was thrown out because the foot is broken. I can fix it, but for the time being she fits right on top of the pair of legs (this is out of proportion of course, the whole thing has double hips now) from a shopwindow dummy I found last summer. That's funny because I know they used this as a sort of decorative stand (they fitted a flat piece of plastic on top) in a bar where we went a couple of times years ago and it was in the trash right in front of it. I also found one of her hands, painted in the same ugly way. Until all's fixed or repainted they're waiting in the messy corner in my workroom, so sorry for the messy picture. Soon I hope to be able to show some either curb found or hand made garments on both the dummy and the legs!

Sunday, November 09, 2008

Tulip Oscar

As I was sorting out my bulbs (see previous post) - unfortunately quite a lot were bad, so I was left with about half the amount, but still a lot - I found a piece of paper in the bucket that read: 500 bulbs, tulip Oscar. So now knowing what they are I dicided not to plant them in my lawn (Sher) as I will have to dig them up again, but I did put some alongside.
Then I quickly Googled tulip Oscar to find this gorgious deep bright red flower! Maybe a bit traditional, but I love it. I also found some information and it turns out to be one of the strongest tulips around, it takes bad weather and thrives in both sun and shade. Just perfect for an Amsterdam garden. Now hopefully the strength of this variety also means these old bulbs will still push up and flower. We'll see!

Monday, November 03, 2008

A Bucket Of Bulbs


It's bulb planting time, and some two weeks ago the trash offered me this very timely gift. And as you can see, when I say bucket I don't mean a yoghurt pot sized bucket (that's what my harvest from my tulips from last year fits in... see here). This is a 20 or more liter container and really filled from the bottom to the brim with... well, I'm not sure what type they are, but because of their size my guess is daffodils. They were waiting for me only a block away in the Wednesday trash and of course this report will be continued next spring when they will flower.

Now this amount is even too big for my small garden, but I plan to put them in the public patch behind the garden fence as well, and as I suspect they maybe older than this year's harvest and may not come up all, I'm not afraid to put them all over. Can't wait for spring now!