Aunty Shabby

A rather pregnant pause

 After declaring I would post more often, I once again regressed and lapsed into a state of blog inaction. Is that a term? It should be. Anyway, lots of excuses - busy end of the year, mother-in-law from overseas staying with us, and oh, did I mention I was pregnant? Yes, Aunty Shabby will soon be Mummy Shabby. I know being pregnant shouldn't be an excuse for inactivity as such, but when you are feeling like crap for several months, not eating and worrying that your baby might be malnourished as a result, blogging is the least of your worries (all first time mothers can probably relate to some of this)!

I am now more than halfway in my pregnancy, the baby is fine so far and I am feeling much better, so I plan to get back on with things, including this blog and my business. (And NO - that image is not me!!) Which is what, in a sort of circuitous way, prompted me to blog today. 

After going to my prego pilates class this morning, I decide to check out the 20% off sale at Spotlight. As you do. I had started a baby blanket for my baby (to be) and again, as you do, discovered I didn't have enough wool to make it as big as I had wanted. Of course they didn't have any of the wool I wanted left - but I did find some other stuff- when I observed a group of ladies enthusiastically exclaiming at all the different wools. I could tell they were new to the whole knitting/wool thing and when one of them was selecting an acrylic wool next to a much nicer wool I was getting, I couldn't stop myself from pointing out that the wool I had was the same meterage, but real wool, cheaper and much, much nicer. I have never been a big fan of acrylic. Luckily, she seemed appreciative of this unsolicited advice, and we, together with her friends, chatted for a few minutes about the joys of wool, knitting and crochet. One of them then admired the scarf I was wearing - Ghost gum, see this post from July 2008 - describing it as "designery". What a compliment! I told her I had made it and was trying to get my act together to sell them under my label, Aunty Shabby. To which she then replied, "I will GOOGLE it". You can then imagine my horror at her finding a woefully neglected blog, and to date, still no website! I cautioned her to hold off on her search, and so of course was immediately shamed into action! 

I have actually been working on a few things, but can't upload any new pics, as my digital camera acquired a large piece of dust on a recent trip to Sydney - another reason not to go there (oooh, mean) - which is showing up as a big black dot and needs to be removed at some considerable expense. It may be cheaper to just buy a new one. 

Am also helping my sister, greenolive out at the Modish Creators Market at Malvern this Saturday, so am getting back on the crafty circuit! More to follow...

Are softies the new knitting??!!

It seems you can't pick up a magazine these days without seeing something about softies, heralding them as the next big thing! In the past few months I have seen them in no less than 3 mags - Australian Vogue (see my previous post about this), Australian Woman's Weekly (see greenolive's post) and now, a recent issue of Real Living (an Australian lifestyle kinda mag, for you non-Aussies). And these are just the ones I know about!

Is this some sort of conspiracy I wondered? Another beat-up, just like the alleged "pub knitters" that supposedly began the knitting revival in Australia in the late nineties and early noughties??! (If you don't know what I am talking about, grab a copy of Sharon Aris' "It's my party and I'll knit if I want to". It's an entertaining and quick read and is quite enlightening in terms of the whole knitting "thing".)

I confess I have seen more softies in stores lately and I have even seen the "how to" books at Borders (I browsed BUT DID NOT BUY), but are they really going mainstream?! It wasn't until a girl at work told me that someone had given her sister a toy she had made herself at a recent baby shower, that I really believed it. "A softie?" I asked? "Huh?" she replied. "You know," she went on, "those strange, kinda ugly toys you see in shops, with like, funny eyes and stuff. Like that." Yep, a softie. It seems the name may not yet be "household" but the face is!

Baby blanket blues

I have made baby blankets before. The cutesy patterned flannel kind that you sew ribbon around the edges. The garishly coloured crochet afghan kind. But when I found myself telling a friend a few months ago, after hearing the news that his girlfriend was pregnant, that I would make them a baby blanket, I had a slight panic attack. This time, a baby-patterned flannel or fleecy number just wouldn't do. I wanted something kick-ass and quintessentially Aunty Shabby (still figuring out exactly that that is), but still with a baby vibe and practical. As we didn't know if it was a boy or girl, something unisex colourwise, but not insipid, like that nasty baby-puke yellow or those vile mint greens (sorry if you like those colours - I am NOT a pastels kinda girl). I thought I would knit a blanket - my sister, greenolive, always seems to have success with these, so I figured it couldn't be too hard.

The silver-ish wool I loved ( yes, of course I bought what they had anyway) and the two colours I ended up using

First things first - the wool. After knitting a jumper (or sweater if you live in the Northern Hemisphere) for my husband on 4mm needles - and this was before we were married, which apparently is a very bad and unlucky thing to do if you are superstitious about these things - I vowed never to use smaller than a 4.5mm size needle on anything bigger than a scarf again! This meant that I couldn't get any of that ridiculous 2 or 4 ply stuff which is basically all baby wool usually is! I also hate the traditional baby wool colours (see comments above). Hmmmm... I did like some of those new bamboo wools though and after a trip to Clegs, discovered a beautiful silverish-pinky-blue variegated shade which looked perfect. Trouble is they only had a few balls left - of course my sister had already beaten me to it, as usual, and had bought up most of the store! I eventually settled on a combination of bright acid orange/pink and a green/yellow 100% bamboo wools - my blanket would be very funky and citrusey!

Two of the initial garter stitch squares

Next the stitch. This is where the blues part of the story comes in. After once gloating that I didn't have much trouble settling on the right stitch for a particular project/wool, I have now run into a snag, so to speak. My initial idea of knitting different coloured squares in a simple garter stitch and then joining them together didn't work. My tension is usually pretty good, resulting in an even, firm stitch, but knitting this rather slippery wool with size 4 (I caved, although they recommended 3.25mm) bamboo needles (they seemed appropriate), this wool produced a rather wonky looking square. The tension was all over the place and the selvages were nasty. Unimpressed. After 3 squares I knew it wasn't going to get any better. A blanket made up of 16 of these suckers would suck. What to do?

Nana-ish crochet square

I turned to crochet, wondering if an intricate olde-worlde square motif would work. After reacquainting myself with a Jo Sharp pattern I had liked (I have half-made a poncho with this), it took me almost an hour to produce one measly square. It looked OK I thought, but maybe a bit too nana-ish. Mr S thought so too. Still no good. Even though a blanket made up of these might look sweet, no doubt one of them would have a nana (or similar elderly female relative or friend) very adept at this kind of baby blanket making and theirs would probably look way better than mine. That simply would not do. My blanket had to look edgy and cool. Modern but still baby-like. The kind of blanket that people would spy in your pram and stop you in the street to ask you where you got it from. Maybe I needed to consult one of those new baby pattern books? Or some kind of expert? Cue greenolive.

Current version

After her advice, I am now trying crochet again, but in one piece, alternating treble stitch stripes of orange/pink then green/yellow. She suggested I miss a chain between stitches on the first row (then do one chain in between each stitch on rows), as it is quicker to knit and uses less wool. Crochet also seems to highlight to lovely sheen and colour of the wool better than knitting. The result though is quite "holey'" and after only 3 rows (I am slow and it is at least a metre wide; I am aiming for 1m x 1m), I'm not sure I am loving it. I am using a size 4 crochet hook and I think my tension might be a bit loose.

Let me know what you think. I will endeavour to post more pics once I have progressed further...

So who is this Aunty Shabby??!!

   

I am lots of things. A polite way of saying it may be that I am a complicated and highly evolved creative being. Another way may be that I am a high maintenance woman who, amongst other things, likes to knit and sew!

Aunty Shabby may seem an odd name or choice for a blog but Shabby (it was meant to be ironic) has been a nickname for years and with the birth of my first nephew almost 10 years ago now, I became Aunty Shabby. Nearly everyone calls me Shabby. A former boss, a partner at a law firm, used to call me Shabby. My father calls me Shabby. I won't tell you what I call him. I have also been known to answer to Shabster, Shabs or Shabarella. Friends often introduce me as "Shabby", which at times can have funny consequences; someone once misheard and asked later, "Who is this Shaggy girl?" That then spawned its own legend, and in some circles I am known as "Miss Shaggy". (This is also my celebrity pseudonym, but that is a whole other story.)

Anyway, after a lifetime of cutting out pictures from my sister's - yes, greenolive - usually discarded fashion and chicks magazines to cover my school books and folders (now called collage), making dodgy dresses for my androgynous dog teddy called "Willie" (as in Wilhelmina), crocheting an enormous blanket over a 20 year period, made from cast-offs, leftovers and cheap acrylic wool (which my cat now sleeps on) and generally making a pest of myself when my sister was trying to do her art homework or projects (yes, again greenolive), I realised I might be onto something. I wasn't the artist or the athlete of the family (the intellectual perhaps? well, I was a lawyer...) but it seems I got enough of the creative gene to enjoy making things, eventually turning to making handbags as an outlet for my work stress and general feelings of malaise in about 2000. Handbags then became general sewing (clothes for myself and cushions), then knitting and again, crochet! These initial spurts of creativity and energy were enough to sustain me for a few years, but after a while I wondered if this had the potential to be more than just a hobby.

I would get comments and question about my handbags or scarves, making a few gifts or random one-off orders here and there. A shop was even interested and stocked some of my children's bags. However, several attempts to get it off the ground, were just that, attempts. It wasn't blossoming into the mega empire I had envisioned! Why???!! It all seemed too hard. I was working full time, so didn't have the time to dedicate to it. What if no one liked my stuff? And where would I sell it? And wouldn't it be expensive to set up? So I continued on as before, making stuff for myself and random things for others, when in about mid 2007, something changed. My sister and I started discussing getting a craft business going. We had done this before but this time she seemed to really mean it. And so did I. A random, but clearly serendipitous, order for a scarf from a make-up artist (the international make-up director for Stila, as it happens) who was giving us both make-overs one Saturday at MECCA Cosmetica was the final impetus. (I have actually kept his payment in the envelope he gave it to me in as some sort of good luck charm or reminder of what I want to do! Did I mention that I am at times bizarrely superstitious and sentimental?)

Whilst we didn't end up setting up something together and have taken our own paths, I think we are both now committed to trying this and seeing what happens. My sister has wasted no time (and you can read her blog to track her progress) and seems to relish the contact and feedback to her work and ideas. I am constantly amazed at her dedication and her prolific knitting. I have taken the more "slow and steady wins the race" approach. This means that is still early days, with a website and hopefully ETSY shop still to come. Whilst I am still employed primarily in another field (but now only 4 days a week), I have found I need an outlet to provide me with some balance and am enjoying the creative process and possibilities of finally establishing my own "Aunty Shabby" business. Mega empire here we come!!

A purple scarf for a dragon lady

BEFORE...the scarf started life as a beautiful ball of wool

Well, that's not quite true. It is a purple scarf. For my mother-in-law. Who actually isn't a dragon lady! It's funny how people assume that or like to perpetuate the stereotype. My chiropractor is particularly naughty. If I ever mention my mother or Mr S's mother in conversation (and yes, we do manage to talk, in between him cracking my back and generally inflicting pain), he gives this evil laugh and is like, "Ah, the dragon lady!" Over the years, I have attempted to dissuade him of this view, telling him that in fact, I genuinely like my mother-in-law and my husband likewise, but he will not have a bar of it.

DURING...the finger or hand-knitting technique

I am actually quite lucky really - not long after we met for the first time (Mr S and I had already been together for several years), my then to be mother-in-law apparently said (or so he says) that she already loved me and thought of me like a daughter. Aww, I hear you say. She also lives overseas, so I think that helps! And whilst my mother has been known to be a bit scary at times, she is not real dragon lady material. She lives interstate, so that helps too!

Anyway, the scarf. I love this technique. It is pretty simple and quick to do, but produces such a great effect. It can be worn like a scarf, or pulled out loose, like a shawl, without ruining the shape. It is warm without being too heavy and looks great day or night. I also love this hand-dyed wool and purple is her favourite colour. Good job all 'round I say!

AFTER...worn like a scarf

AFTER...worn more loosely, like a shawl

The scarf is currently winging its way overseas, so let's hope it gets there in time for Christmas and that she loves it!

Why you shouldn't knit whilst watching tv... or, how to knit a ranch house

Knitting a ranch house...

I admit to being someone who doesn't always find it easy to relax. If I sit down to watch tv for any length of time, I feel guilty, like I am wasting my time or that I could be doing something else at the same time. Hence the knitting. Problem is, I normally watch tv or dvds at night and hate watching tv with all the lights on, as I hate bright lights, especially at night (no, I am not a vampire, it gives me eye strain and sometimes migraines). Whilst I am a highly evolved human being, I do need some light to see my knitting and negotiations with my husband to swap the lights or put on a lamp instead can end in tears.

If I do manage to get my way, or suffer the lights, I am usually then too engrossed in what I am watching to properly concentrate on my knitting and a 2 hr movie, which should be a fantastic knitting opportunity, yields a couple of rows at best! And forget trying to knit whilst watching foreign, sub-titled movies! I tried this again recently and literally did almost knit a ranch house (and if you don't know what this means, despite the pic, get thee to a video store, rent "Breakfast at Tiffany's" and then come back to my blog when you have a bit more culture.) I found myself trying to knit into the same stitch more than once (it was a garter stitch scarf) and stopping mid row or mid stitch to read the sub-titles far too often!

Funny thing is my sister, green olive, doesn't seem to share this fate! She is perhaps the most prolific knitter I know, and seems to be able to knit anywhere. I think she must knit in her sleep! I'm sure she dreams of wool! I must ask her secret - perhaps she just listens to the dialogue or maybe she can knit without looking, a bit like touch typing which I can't do either! I have a taped tv show to watch tonight, so am going to give it another go, as I have a scarf for my mother-in-law to finish. It has to be posted overseas for Christmas so no excuses! It is made from a lovely purple, hand-dyed wool, so will post photos and tell you all about it next time...

PS: Photo taken of one of a set of "Breakfast at Tiffany's" lobby cards I bought in 1992 for $200, which back then was a lot of money.