Pin Cushion!

Tools of the Trade

I wanted to up load some pictures of some work I've been "pushing out" lately. Also, having delved back into NSCAD craft history readings supplemented by some great resources at the Hamilton Public Library, I've been reinvigorated by the Arts and Crafts creed, that my tools too should be beautiful, so I wanted to post a little something I made to help me make beautiful things. I saw a lovely antique embroidered pin cushion in a shoppe in our growing "antique district" on Ottawa St. Hamilton and it inspired me to create one for my self that was equally inspiring.

Ok well the skill level ....fluctuates when it comes to me and embroidery. I'm not a strict artist even in my more familiar disciplines but the "Van Dyke" pattern used to create leaves is AWESOME (and what a cool name for an old embroidery technique)....perhaps more fun than effective at my skill level but all in all the cushion was definitely a good DIY project that makes all subsequent DIY projects an even greater joy.

I've also learnt to hide my ends in my tatting. Tatting is an old form of lace making that any one could do with very simple tools. Essentially you use a small "shuttle" and your fingers to tie small knots and picots (loops) and make joined loops of these knots to make patterns like these in  the second image.

Since I took this little picture yesterday I duplicated the "daisy" pattern a few times to start making a what I hope will be a collar. It isn't my favorite motif. I prefer more improvised patterns of smaller units, however it is a fast and easy motif for creating larger amounts of lace with fewer maneuvers. Tatting doesn't create the impressive and detailed lace that bobbin lace does but what it offers is a simple repeating technique, the way knitting is simply a variation of small twists and knots, so is tatting. 

there is also something enjoyable about taking up something long lost that few can do. Someday I will post some Etsy entrepreneurs with great skill in the technique as an example of what this simple repeating skill can truly achieve.

To Do:

I found this pattern for free on Collette while searching for simple vintage underwear patterns to try out. I Find under wear and bras in general to be overpriced, poorly made and poorly fitted, and it stuck with me when a dear friend had had enough and began a search for the perfect bra pattern for her own shape. While that is a more complex sewing project than I'm willing to try when I've only just got my sewing machine out of "storage" at my folk's house I'm totally dying to attempt these bloomers.

Simple and perfect.

True blue love.

Under the guise of research honing my aesthetic as an artist and as a general lover of beautiful things I have the urge to share these beautiful things from anthropology.

Back In Steel town now, trading in the sea breeze for the light general aroma of industry. I accomplished most of my goals while in Halifax including the acquisition of some lovely souvenirs...I'll post some pictures of those soon. With all the whirlwind of leaving one home and coming here to the other I have not posted in some time. I shall most certainly try to post every week at least - however I am of the general belief that life being lived is a thousand times more potent that life reflected through cyberspace. On the other hand life being written or read about is most defiantly life lived. ....or life photographed because I really like my new camera.


Here are some photographs taken of the landscape I lived in for most of my life,


I swelled with the ocean, am set in the the rocks and my thoughts have tangled and clung to those rocks like over-tall scots pines in three feet of top soil.


this is home.

Shes so Crafty......

While I may be in halifax right now I'm anticipating my return to hamilton already. This is for one very exiting reason.....last night , while showing my mother a few local blogs to give her a sense of Hamliton's crafty side, I went to an easy favorite - the lovely white elephant blog Love it a Lot - to find that a yarn shop might *fingers crossed* be opening up on James street. My heart leaped instantly at the sheer joy of being able to walk down the street to pick up high quality yarn. I've been saying to every little old lady who would listen to me for past year since I moved to Hamilton that I want a yarn shop to open up. In the mean time I've been bussing in to the Knit Cafe on Queen st. Toronto to get my fix and ask all the questions that need answers.  I do really love them there ( the little bins they keep stuffed with knitted items as examples under each shelf of yarn are really awesome ) and I did do my research preferring their limited tasteful selection over the chaos of Romni.....but I'd be very glad to go local.
I get the impression that this may be off in the future but time does fly and I'll be glad when this particular future arrives.


I'm wishing all the best to Birch and Sycamore in the Moss Stitch endeavor. great name....
perhaps this means a stitch and bitch may form? the possibility is exiting enough and I'm hoping that it will spur some crafting in me since being home in Halifax gives me the chance to return with my sewing machine and some notes from dye classes taken at NSCAD......


... I wish I was as organized then as I try to be now. Unlike the meticulous Jennie Green who always new the exact measurements and weights! She's taking part in the Lunenburg Fire Hall residency and is shown here spinning flax.

Photo Credits for these pictures goes to Kat Frick Miller who makes these handy milk crate paper weights as well as little sewn "broken" hearts that decorate the coats and bags of almost every halifax art fan wandering around town. One of my favorite of her screen-printed motifs is a raccoon drinking gin. She also paints pictures of the Queen and fancy tea cups.

Home again, home again......

Here I am again in Halifax in one of the guest rooms of the house I grew up in. Which  just happens to be close to the Ardmore Tea room where you can get the best and biggest milk shake ever. Yum. 

Thinking, over the past week, about visiting home got me very exited to write about the amazing community events and crafters of Halifax who seem to be able to do anything at all despite city guidelines and little funding. The D.I.Y movement culminates in cities like this where you have no need to "network" to find people to help you with an idea - chances are you'll meet who ever you need to get in touch with over coffee because they go to the same place that you do anyway. While not in existence now the Burrito Bike ($4 delicious burritos delivered to you by friendly cyclists until 2 a.m. on saturday nights) was hard to tear myself away from when I decided to move to Hamilton.

Things I am so exited to be doing while here are:

Have a sandwich at the Good Food Emporium

Visit Turnstile pottery Co-op to find the perfect tiny mug By Bethany Buttersworth.

get blown away by the ocean breeze

Share a "hobo" jug worth of Propeller beer

and - if I have time - have a pint of oatmeal stout, the best stout in the world, at the Henry House....which is worth the extra trek now that the Granite and Ginger's are no longer.

Also to buy a new camera so that I can document all the amazing things and people while I'm here!

for now I'll leave you with this image of the Zine Library collection......a great idea that started in a living room to give the eager public access to an amazing array of alternative literature.....This then blossomed over the years into The Robert Street Social Center - taking over an entire house now devoted solely to the community. It is home to the Anchor Zine Archive, Ink Storm screen printing co-op, a successful residency program and an affordable and wonderfully equipped venue that welcomes all manor of events.

One can hardly express enough love for ventures such as this one.

Are you there internet, its me Anna.

I have made a great leap to the new final frontier - the one we created....the one that allows us to break though new frontiers without leaving our living rooms - and here I am in my living room in Hamilton Ontario. I have been living here for almost a year now after moving from my home town of Halifax Nova Scotia on the smallest of adventures to find that Ontario has huge skys, brick brick and more lovely brick and really big squirrels.....which I love because they are not at all afraid to run about in the city. I must have thought that this whimsy (greatly illustrated at the hands of my NUMEROUS ontario born peers living as artists in N.S.) was a greatly embellished form of stylized motif and I was hugely exited to find that the clouds are in fact that fluffy looking and so high up as opposed to grey and pressing down on you the way that coastal skys love to do - giving your soul something to fight against. I was also please to find birds of every color. This I was anticipating however and very exited about.

Yesterday I saw a Hairy woodpecker in a park on my walk to work, when I got home I had to discern from my memories the shape of its beak and sleakness of its feather since it has a brother - the downey woodpecker - which is essentially the same bird but fluffier.

but after much deliberation, this is defiantly the little guy I saw.