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Long story, short message

15 Tuesday Mar 2016

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A book arrived in the mail this week, I had quite forgotten ordering it. Actually it was one of two, the first I remembered, but I had forgotten that since shipping would be as much for two books as one, I had sneaked the second into my order!

More about both books later, but the one which starts today’s adventure in the sewing blog world is called Artful Machine Embroidery by Bobbi Bullard. I don’t have an embroidery machine as such, so it might seem a curious choice, but having looked at some of the book on Google books I thought it had a good deal of content about general design, placement, colour etc., which would be useful for all sorts of garment creation, not just embroidery. Those things are the part of the creative process that I sometimes struggle with.

This is a really long and complicated story, but we are getting there, I promise!

I looked up Bobbi Bullard on Google, since I hadn’t seen her work before, and came across some pictures from another blog, Thunderpaws Threads. There were several pictures of garments made with Bobbi’s designs, and I spent some time reading, until I came upon the subject of this post. (See, I said we would get there eventually!). It’s the pattern at the end of the link above, from Hot Patterns, another indie pattern company I’ve not heard of before. It’s called a Blouse Back T, which is like a tee shirt in front, but with a panel set in just under the shoulders at the back, cut wider than expected, which can be made out of woven fabric, hence the ‘blouse back’.

This quite appeals to me. I’m not normally a wearer of tee shirts, not in their simplest incarnation anyway. I like a little more structure to my clothes, and also a vee neck rather than a round neck, which most tee shirts seem to have by default. I have often wondered about that, whether it is simply because a round neck is easier to put trim around, with a vee you always have the problem of how to get a really nice neat join at centre front.

It’s already added to my list of ‘someday projects’, which sadly keeps getting longer and longer. Or is that sad, I wonder? Would it be worse to have nothing that one wanted to do? It’s also a cassic example of how a little ‘blog wandering’ can lead to all sorts of possibilities. There is always something I haven’t seen before, something which sparks an idea.

Back to Blogging

28 Monday Oct 2013

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After some interruptions, daughter’s wedding, extra work etc., I am making a commitment, or renewing one, to blogging. And, in common with many other bloggers, I have decided to set myself a challenge, and record my progress.

I have been a subscriber to Threads magazine for many years, over 15 in fact, and have frequently been inspired by articles and features. Often, I have had every intention of using the technique or idea, but almost never actually got around to doing it. So, my challenge is to go back through my collection of magazines, and use an idea, a technique or a design from each one. I will document this on my blog.

I can remember buying my first issue of Threads, I had never seen the magazine before, or anything like it, and I was completely blown away. I bought a few issues from the newsagent, but soon decided to subscribe. This was in about 1997 or 1998, there was no internet, and even subscribing to an overseas magazine was a big issue. You had to go to the Post Office, buy an international money order, and send it off via snailmail. Later it became possible to enter credit card details on a form, but still send the form in the post. Then, of course, the internet arrived, and now renewing my subscription is as simple as entering details on a website.

The first magazine I bought was number 63, but since then I have bought a few back issues from before that. Actually, I have all the older issues on DVD, but for the purpose of this challenge I am restricting myself to only issues I have in hard copy. Even this leaves me with well over 100 copies.

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Kwik Sew pattern for seam roll and tailor’s ham

The first issue I have is number 34, from April/May 1991. Looking through it, I noticed an article on basic pressing equipment, and remembered that I long ago bought a pattern for making a tailor’s ham and a sleeve roll. That decided my project for this issue. I dug out some fabric, leftovers from my stash, and the pattern and set to work. I looked for sawdust, but the local pet shop only had shavings, which I settled for. They are not perfect, but since they were quite small and soft shavings they are not too bad. I also made quite a mess with them, but the vacuum cleaner fixed that. I’m not all that happy with the shape of the sleeve roll in particular, it’s not as smooth as I’d like, but I think it will still do the job.  I already had a sleeve board, which is many years old and still was in its original cover, so I gave it a new cover to match. Last part of the project will be to get a box to keep these in, along with my pressing cloths, and other yet to be acquired pressing tools.

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Finished articles, seam roll, tailor’s ham and sleeve board

All I need now is a title for my challenge, something cool and catchy like other bloggers have! Then on to dig out the next magazine and find myself another project.

750words – writing regularly

02 Monday Apr 2012

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I’ve started writing on 750words.com, doing at least 750 words everyday, the idea being to get into the habit and accept the discipline of writing regularly. I’d like to think that at least once a week what I write there could just come straight here and be a blog post, but it may not be that easy. Anyway, here is today’s effort. (This isn’t 750 words, I wrote more which wasn’t relevant.)

The view out of the window – they always say write about what you know!
My office window looks out onto a major highway, the only one going from Western Australia across to the rest of the country. I have no idea how many vehicles go past every day, but it’s a big number. Everything from cars to buses to huge trucks. Sometimes, actually quite often, it’s people on bikes, and I cannot imagine what makes them want to ride on the highway. I would be petrified, apart from all the exhaust fumes they must breathe in. There are several back roads they could take through here instead, and even a walk/bike track which would surely be much more pleasant.
Even though it’s a major highway, there as still plenty of trees in view. Some in front of the office on this side, and on the other side of the road there are only trees to be seen. The houses are hidden behind them, well back from the road. The trees are almost all native, some indigenous to this part of Australia and some not. Actually some of the trees over the road are going quite yellow, so I’m not sure what they are. I don’t ever recall having seen deciduous trees over there before, but maybe there are. Otherwise it’s mostly eucalypts, and small acacias underneath them. There is quite a range of colours, from grey-green through mid to dark greens, the slightly yellow green of the trees I don’t know, to bright green grass on our side where the drains run out. The rest of the grass is dead and brown as it always is at this time of year. The tree trunks range from brown, to grey to cream, some a brownish almost pink colour. The sky at the moment is quite grey and overcast, as if it might rain, but it’s not very likely to by the look of it. Been waiting for it to rain since yesterday morning, but hardly enough yet to drown a flea, let alone lay the dust.
I’m trying to come up with descriptions of things which haven’t been used to death. For example, grass as green as ? Emeralds, been done. Actually thinking about it, green as grass is perhaps more usual. What else is bright green, and could be used as a description? What would everybody, everywhere, recognise as green? Astroturf? Still a variant of grass. Kermit? Better perhaps. Perhaps that one’s too hard.
The sky? Ash grey? I don’t think you hear that one too often. Dove grey, leaden is overdone. Sounds, continuous swoosh of traffic going past, broken by the occasional heavier note of a truck, or the roar of a speeding motorbike. Sometimes a siren, at which everybody looks up to see what type of vehicle, and during summer heaves a sigh of relief if it’s not a fire truck. Again, heaves a sigh of relief, breathes again, how could that be better described. A touch of guilt at feeling thankful that it’s only an ambulance, and somebody else’s problem. Fire has the potential to be devastating in this environment, but an ambulance can mean a devastating event in somebody’s llife.

On Commonplace Books, and gathering things together

04 Sunday Mar 2012

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I’ve been doing some more looking around the net about commonplace books, and came across this article by Alan Jacobs. He discusses the correlation between commonplace books and today’s blogs, which is something that had already occurred to me, but also makes distinction between two different types of commonplace book. I hadn’t previously focussed on this difference.
I also feel as he does, that it is very easy to cut and paste heaps of text without really reading it. The acid test for this, I suppose, is to close the window with the original, then try and retype it in your own words, then go back to the original and see how close the two are. Only by reading carefully and remembering accurately can you get a good match, and I know I’d often fail that test.
It’s easy to copy and paste lots of stuff on the basis that it might be useful or relevant someday. My feeling is that very often it won’t, or by the time it might have been useful you will have forgotten where you put it, or it will be in a format which you no longer have the software for.
I find that the same applies to pieces of paper. Every so often a piece of paper will cross my desk which doesn’t require any specific immediate action. Somebody gave it to me or sent it to me for some unkown reason, and I left it there because I was unsure what to do with it. Every now and then I decide to tidy my desk, and I realise the piece of paper is still there, I’ve done nothing with it, and it’s not relevant any more. That’s when it goes in the bin, or the recycling.  Often the problem of what to do with a piece of paper is solved by this wait and see method.
Lately I’ve been trying to shorten the process, by looking at the paper when it first arrives and considering whether it comes into this category. If it does I discard it straight away rather than letting it take up space on my desk. So far I haven’t discarded anything which later turned out to be important, or at least if I have I don’t know about it yet.
Another blog I found on the subject was the commonplace book of Roberta Norwich, here. Roberta Norwich is not her real name I gather, but some kind of historian’s in-joke which I’m not in with. The name caught my eye not only because it was a commonplace book, but because I grew up in and around Norwich in England. When I read further through Roberta’s blog I discovered that she and I had gone to the same school, Wymondham College, also in Norfolk. This prompted me to spend some time looking around the College website, and reminiscing about my schooldays. The old place certainly has changed since the late 60s and early 70s when I was there, but I guess we all have. I’m now considering trying to get in touch with any old students who now live in WA and maybe arranging to meet up.
Roberta calls herself an opsimath, which I had to look up. It means ‘one who starts, or continues, to learn late in life’. Something we should all aspire to I believe, and I definitely intend to be one, although my chosen studies so far are nowhere near as academic as Roberta’s.
A somewhat rambling post this, I’m trying to think of a theme to tie it all together. How about this – it’s about commonplace books, which are a gathering together of often unrelated ideas, all relevant to the creator of the book for some reason.
I’ve also been doing research on Art Deco designs for inspiration for my project, and found some wonderful designs by Pierre Legrain. I’m indebted to Alhpachannel for this link to some images of his work, outstandingly beautiful. I’d love to be able to do something on these lines for my cover, but I fear it’s beyond me.

Drawing Class

31 Tuesday Jan 2012

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Well, yesterday I signed up for a drawing class at TAFE. It’s not pure drawing as such, the name of the unit is ‘Select and apply media and techniques to represent and communicate a concept’ or some such phrase. It actually sounds as if it’s just what I need, since I want to be able to draw my ideas for craft and sewing projects. First class is next Tuesday afternoon, and it it every week for the semester, until June.
Looking forward to it, it will be a challenge for sure, since I’ve never done art classes in any shape or form. I did do Art at high school for about three years, but looking back on it now I cannot for the life of me remember what we did, and I’m pretty confident that drawing didn’t figure in it at all. I do remember being extremely bored with Art classes, and getting out of them as soon as I could to do cookery instead, which I must say has stood me in much better stead over the years! I still regularly make some of the recipes from school, in particular lemon meringue pie which is in frequent demand at family occasions.
I went to the art supply shop after enrolling, although I don’t know what supplies are required, but just bought a small box of pencils and a visual diary. I was astounded by the prices of some materials, I knew they were expensive but not that much! Conjures up images of penniless artists struggling to find money for pastels and paint and canvas. A lot of famous ones did of course, and presumably the less famous ones these days still do, until they get discovered.
No picture from me this time, I need to get all the old ones off my old laptop and onto this one. Instead a blog I found with some lovely pictures from Melbourne – http://victoriaaphotography.wordpress.com

Blogging, the Great Automatic Grammatizator, and new skirts

10 Thursday Nov 2011

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Browsing the net, a link in a newsletter I subscribe to sent me to some skirts in an upmarket shop in New York. This reminded me that I shall need some skirts to wear for work in the coming summer. (For those of you doing a double take at this, I live in Australia.)

Here are the skirts if you’d like to look.

I started googling for ideas for skirts, and typed in ‘make your own skirt’. The first few results were interesting, but genuine. After only a page and a half though I started to get some really weird hits. After a bit I realised that these articles are what I’ve read about in terms of computer generated internet content and articles. I know that there is software which will compare the text of an article with what is already on the net, to see if the writer is just trying to re-use old content, either theirs or somebody else’s.Most popular and well known being Copyscape.  I’m guessing that these articles are written by some kind of programme which just changes some words, to try and make the piece original. The results are hilarious to say the least, or they are once you realise what is going on. Up to that point they are just plain perplexing, as in I’m thinking “What the ?!!!”

For example, see if you can figure out what this person is trying to say ‘it’s necessary that we peek following ourself.’. Do you think they mean we should look after ourselves?

As if to demonstrate the need for original content, it wasn’t long before I came up with the same article on more than one page. To make it worse, the sites weren’t even about making skirts, which was what I was looking for. They were for all sorts of other things, in some cases I don’t know what they were about. One was multi-level marketing, some were just inexplicable.

If you try searching just blogs, I think you get even better examples of computer generated content, as opposed to quality original writing. I’m not going to post any links here, for fear of offending someone, but try it for yourself. It reminds me of Roald Dahl’s story, The Great Automatic Grammatizator’, but I’d have to dig out the book and read it again to remember exactly how it goes. It was I think based on a guy who invented a machine for writing novels and such. The theory being that there are only limited numbers of combinations of words, and that literature could be written according to a mathematical formula. I’ve heard the same idea applied to music.

How did I get from deciding I need new skirts for work, to deciding to read a Roald Dahl story again? Go figure! And have fun looking for similar examples of writing.

OK, so I’m new at blogging!

03 Thursday Nov 2011

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Now I feel like an idiot! It seems the plug ins I was looking at (not sure of the spelling, should it be plugin or plug in?) are available if you have downloaded the WordPress software and are using that. Since my blog is still hosted by WordPress I can’t use them, or at least I can’t see how. If anybody can tell me different then I’d be happy to hear them.

Still, disappointed as I am, I need to remember the reason I am writing this blog. It’s part of working towards my goal of being a good freelance writer of magazine articles, so the content is the thing, not the gadgets.  Also, I figure that maybe search engine optimisation is something best done by a human, not necessarily by a machine. Some of the internet content you read consists only of words and short phrases which don’t really make sense, and now I’m wondering if they have been written by a machine.  Those are the kind of articles which nobody actually reads, although I have this vision of people who maybe are not fluent in English looking at them in complete bewilderment!

What I think I am going to look around for is a good note taking piece of software. I did use Webnotes for a while, but then when Firefox got upgraded it was no longer compatible, and so far I haven’t found a substitute. I want something I can just open and type a few words into when I’m inspired by an idea for a blog post. If the inspiration is a web page then I can use Scribefire, but if the idea just comes to me out of the blue I need somewhere to put it, and to be able to find it again. The electronic equivalent of a notebook and pencil. Who knows, maybe I should just use one of those anyway, I need one for when I’m not at my computer (haven’t yet got a tablet or a smart phone, and even if I did I wouldn’t necessarily always have it to hand). I’m sure there must be something around, watch this space!

The Nuts and Bolts of Blogging

30 Sunday Oct 2011

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My current reading is ‘Create your own Blog, 6 easy projects to start blogging like a pro’, by Tris Hussey. I’ve been able to congratulate myself rather, since I’ve already done several of the things he recommends. I’m using WordPress, and I’ve bought my domain name, although I’m not using it yet.
I’m surprised by how long he’s been doing it for, obviously he was in at the very beginning, and also by the amount of time he must spend at this kind of thing. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by the latter, however, since it’s his career and business.
There are a few other good points in the book. One is that people tend to follow blogs which have regular activity, and that perhaps rather than one longer post per week I should be looking at two or three shorter ones. Alright, I know I missed last week, but I was away from home, and didn’t have the opportunity to post easily. Perhaps when I get better at this and more in the habit it will be easy to just run off a couple of hundred words without too much effort, but at the moment it’s still rather hard work.
He also suggests using a specialist blog editor, rather than writing in Word and the cutting and pasting. I know from experience that doing that too often leads to lots of unnecessary invisible formatting which just clutters up the file, I imagine that a blog editor avoids that. Therefore I’ve downloaded ScribeFire, since I’m a dedicated Mozilla fan. So far it’s certainly easy to use, I shall spend some time getting used to it and tweaking a little to make it work how I want it to.
Next project is to check out Tris Hussey’s blog, and see what other good ideas he has. More follows!