Ground cherry

They sell physalis in cute little plastic baskets. They worked great as a base for a bottle carrier ennobled with red leather.

 





 













 

A square or not a square

Some of the plastic net material potatoes are sold in is quite stiff so that I figured that it would do well as a base for needlework. It seemed to provide perfect anchors for cross-stitching and I thought it to be good material for needlepoint training of children. However, when I tried it myself, I realized that the holes are not perfect squares but rather trapeze-like. That messes up your orientation within the planned pattern considerably. I got off the track all the time. Nevertheless, with the right application such as Kelim or Florentine needlework it works just fine.

Bath sponge, the second

You know the joke: The worst nightmare of the birthday kid is a present you have made yourself. 

I am sure there are lots of gifts one would be overjoyed to receive especially when handmade. The challenge is to figure out when this is the case. I am well aware that my particular hobby does not meet wide acceptance but I do know of a few people who like the work. It was thus my great pleasure to give the Bath Sponge Bag to Anne, my Scottish Dancing Companion and craftswoman herself. She is one of my sources for one-way nets and also the donor of the leather pieces which made their way into my foot stool. Thank you, Anne, also for the photograph!

Special topics in calamity physics

Being an avid reader there are few books which keep my attention (about every fifth even after pre-scrutinization of the cover information at the local library). Marisha Pessl (Penguin Books, 2006) did it big style. Not only did she keep me shackled to hundreds of pages, small print, spiked with quotations (science-style referencing complete with page numbers) of the life of a teenager (an unusual one, I give you that, but still – I am from the dinosaur generation), she also placed a constant (inward) grin on my face (I have not entirely figured out how that works). She managed to have me fully content reading on about the routine day of a high-schooler (quite an achievement, if you know, what I mean) so that I found it completely superfluous when the story suddenly (after 2 cm paper worth of introduction) became a crime novel (unthinkable, since most what I read in my off-time are thrillers (sorry, cannot stomach Virginia big W. and Rilke after a full day at work)), and was almost angry, when on top of everything political issues were brought in. However, Marisha managed the perfect ending which left me sort of flabbergasted (although I did not appreciate the final finish of the end – well, one cannot have it all). This is a book I can relate to (like I can to the “Big Bang Theory” (the soap; and the theory, come to think of it, but this is not relevant here)) and would wish to study for its craftsmanship (if I were not so eager for the next new book on the library shelf). There are a number of Pessl-quotations I am happy to go along with and which I should have written down for further use like (I will mess it up now having the memory of a sieve): “I have been raised a sceptic not believing in anything until the evidence lines up like presents under a Christmas tree.” Or so.

Oh, and yes, here is more on potato net couture.

Net couture

Olive, the doll, made it possible:  here is the latest on potato bag couture. 

Amazingly, the dress looks much prettier in the photograph than in real (or on me…). 

In terms of the craftsmanship I am also not totally satisfied. I fastened the swing parts of the skirt with blue bottle caps and they pull on the light material messing up the flow. But other than that...