New temari

Perhaps new is a misrepresentation... This first temari is one that I unpicked the bands on not once but twice so this here is the final version. Still not 100% happy with it but I wanted to put it away so I could focus on other things.

This one is my 'disco' turtle temari. It is what I came up with from the TK stitch along. The pattern was discussed during an online hookup that I missed so I was really stitching blind, there was no final project image shown at the commencement of the project. I remember now how much I dislike stitching this way, call me a spoil sport but I'm not a big fan of mystery stitching... I am a road map person I need to know the destination and I'm happy to learn the land marks as I go. Of course having said that... I did learn some interesting pointers about not making assumptions and working from verbal (written) instructions alone is an important skill to acquire... I guess the reason I don't like it is because I'm just not too good at it. I've got a few green colours I'm going to add as a startbust onto open areas on the sides.

I am wondering what to do with my really huge C10 ball for the TC flower challenge. It is wrapped in mid green with treasure braid petite marking lines. I think I am going to outline the shapes before stitching the flower but I'm not sure what would look best. I might just go with woven pentagons to keep the framework simple in the hope that my stitching on each pole will pop. I also need to examine how to subdivide the pentagons to increase the number of centers so I can stitch multiple flowers in each section. I am either going to stitch the flowers in #8 perle cotton or KYO. So many choices!!!

Tonight for dinner I made basil pesto from the herb patch basil. It was delicious... or at least I think it was... Mr W said is was gross but I'm not sure if that was due to him having a 9 year old palate or due to me having a raging head cold which means I have few working taste buds.

I didn't use a proper measured recipe for it, I've made pesto before, so I just threw in garlic, pine nuts, romano cheese, EV olive oil a little salt and of course lots of basil. I guess I should have added pepper but I don't like it so my hubby can grind some on top if he wants to.
Tomorrow we are having a big clean up of the yard, sick or not, there is a Category 3 cyclone (named Bianca) heading down our coast line and it is expected to hit land at either Perth or Bunbury (about 2 hours south) so everything that could possibly get picked up and/or tossed about is getting secured down and moved away from window areas around our home. I really hate cyclones. We are lucky that it is rare to get them this far south, but this one is predicted to hit Perth directly... hopefully it will get downgraded to a Cat2 or Cat1 by the time it gets here. Fingers crossed!!! So here I go looking for the silver lining... ok... got it... I'll spend some time on Sunday stitching temari because the storm should hit about 10am and we wont be able to leave the house.

Stitching projects online

The international temari community is slowly returning from hibernation. Everyone seems so busy in the months leading up to Christmas that many can't commit to new projects etc near the holidays. 2011 is beginning with a new project on TC and TK.

Let's talk about the TC one first. An election was called for new projects for the group to work on for the start of 2011. The clear winner was a Flower sampler (one for each month - fits perfectly on a C10!) with 28% of the votes. I think I voted for Multi-centers marking, Thread Challenge and Character temari - geisha, samurai, emperor, empress etc.

I've almost finished wrapping my ball for the flower sampler and it is a whopping 50cm circumference, I've used a muted green for the surface wrap. The next job is exploring the flowers to use, there are a few schools of thought on this, some people are using the flowers of the month (seasonal or birthday) and others have suggested using the state flowers (such as of USA). Now I'm an Australian so using the state flowers from America (beautiful as they are) doesn't seem too patriotic so I started to investigate some of our native flowers.



Images from http://goaustralia.about.com/od/discoveraustralia/ig/Floral-Emblems-Australia/

 The top flower is the Australian Golden Wattle and is our national flower.
The second row has the Australian Capital Territory flower the royal bluebell and the Waratah from New South Wales.
The third row shows the Sturt's desert rose of the Northern Territory and Cooktown orchid from Queensland.

The fourth row features Sturt's desert pea floral emblem of South Australia and Tasmanian blue gum,
The last row features the Common heath from Victoria and the red and green kangaroo paw which is Western Australia's floral emblem.


So the result of that is maybe I need another idea because there aren't enough flowers to fill a C10 and I wouldn't want to stitch any of these twice anyway even if I could work out how to stitch them. I decided if I wanted to stitch Australian flowers I'd need to look beyond the floral emblems so back to the internet I went.

Of the 100's of images available of Australian Native flowers these are the only ones I liked the look of.



Images from http://www.anbg.gov.au/gallery/colour.html

 And some of these flowers I really only liked the common name such as the top right image which is called Eggs & Bacon Pea... how classic! I think my most favourite of these images is the top left one which is the NSW Christmas bush. I am sure I could translate this flower onto a temari... given enough time!

So I need to ponder this a bit more.... Or I might go another way and just do flowers I like no matter where they come from.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Next is the project from TK. It is a S8 spindle based stitch along which is being presented by text, no diagrams. I did well with the first 2 steps but the wheels fell off at step 3, I can't follow the directions at all, and I think the problem is I can't imagine stitching a hexagon over 8 lines. I read the instructions several times over the morning, again after I'd eaten a healthy lunch and once more after a few squares of chocolate but they still don't make sense to me. I know the answer is obvious... I usually get tripped up by the most obvious things, so I guess I'll just wait until a progress photo is uploaded in a few days. In the mean time I'm going to finish wrapping my big green ball for the TC project.

Ooops, I missed a week.

Sorry there have been no posts since last week. I got a bit distracted by physio and some strange 'fever and chills combination' that lasted several days and made it impossible to make temari (or do anything else for that matter). All better again now... yay for good health!

Shaking off last week... and so here we are with a new week and a new project. On Sunday I helped my Mum make some cushion covers for her friend's daughter. Mum was having trouble getting the bits all folded in the right places and thankfully I could remember how to make the covers from my high school sewing classes.

My temari project for this week involves making some little temari ball sets for the neighbours to hang on their Christmas trees. I am making 3 temari for every neighbour... lucky I live in a short street... there are only 8 houses. I've got 5 stitched so far and the other 16 are wrapped and ready to go.

These temari are a lot smaller than the ones I usually make. These bases are made with foam cores, I only used thread wrap for the small size and for the other two sizes I used some very thin machine knitting yarn under the thread layer.
The circumferences are 8.5cm, 11cm and 14.5cm. Obviously I can't use perle 5 for these so I am using Gutterman Rayon Sulky #30 for small, Gutterman Top Stitch for medium and Thread Art Cotton Perle #8, for the marking thread I'm using Rainbow Gallery Treasure Braid Petite for the smaller sizes and Nordic Gold for the large size. Luckily I did some experiments with several threads when I began making yubinuki so I have a few sizes of thin thread.

I am making 3 different designs, S8 on the small temari have a Maki Kagari design with a simple herringbone on the obi, S10 for the medium using a Hoshi Kagari (Star) in different colours on each pole with a stepped herringbone obi and S12 Uwagake Chidori Kagari on the large balls with a double herringbone on the obi. I cant decide if I want to place these on individual hangers or make a larger ornament  by stringing them together with a bit of tassel on the bottom. I guess I need to percolate on the idea a bit  more.

I'm taking a break from my recent yubinuki bead project and when these temari are done I've got some fabric notebooks to make for my Mum and Miho.

Hope you can settle down and enjoy some stitching through the week.

I'd rather be... stitching temari

... than stuck at this traffic light! This was my thought this morning.  I think someone programs the light changes to deliberately make you stop at every intersection... maybe that person is in cahoots with the oil companies... do I smell a conspiracy to make us use more fuel? This morning I travelled about 23km in about 15 minutes along the highway (no traffic lights) and then it took 20 minutes to travel just an extra 8km along the surface roads. I stopped at 11 sets of traffic lights because every one of them was red... two sets had no traffic coming at the crossroad either. Nevermind it was all worth it because I had a physiotherapy appointment today, and I do feel much better, my brain can process thoughts again and I can even look over my shoulder to reverse the car. Yippee! I've got another appointment booked for Wednesday which should take considerably less time to get to as I'll be going from home instead of via Lesmurdie.

Before the physio I went to school to take another class of girls for temari making. This was my last teaching commitment for 2010 so now I guess I am on holidays!!???? Er actually... No rest for the wicked (and I must be particularly so) I've got 2 JTA temari to make, 2 birthday cakes to bake (I am so lucky to be making my nephew's 1st birthday and niece's 3rd birthday cakes), then I will get stuck into all the Christmas baking. My assigned course is dessert (another conspiracy I suspect) and everyone has given me a long list of requests. I daren't make anything new because I know it will be added (nothing every gets left off) to the request list for next year when I mysteriously get chosen to make desserts.

Today I am made photo boards to help the girls finish off their design. Click here to see them.

I also finished off a yubinuki bead to go on a necklace. This one is green and navy and is quite cute but still no good for entering into Chloe Patricia's share your thimbles for this month... not to worry though because I am half way through one that will qualify. This one is made with Orizuru No9 silk in green and navy on a base made of bias tape, cardboard, cotton thread and yarn. There are 11 sections and each colour is stitched in the opposite direction.

The new thimble bead is also 11 sections but I am experimenting with 3 colours. 2 sections of red, plus 1 section each of gold and silver. I'll share a pic when I've finished it.

Linda's Basketweave ball finished

I stitched up the rest of this ball tonight after dinner. The original ball is stitched in Yellows and Blue/White on a mid blue ball. My ball is a bit different... I seem to have a red and orange this going at the moment. The basket part was pictured in this post. I figured that stitching yellow would be too much and due to the base colour being white... I wanted to avoid white too. So I pulled a bunch of blue tones and a pale grey.

I also wanted to encircle the kiku with the green instead of breaking up the kiku with it. I left off the french knots. So here are the final pics.

I quite like how it turned out. I will make this one again on a larger ball, so I have more space at the pole to make the french knots. 

 Now I have 4 UFO's to complete. There's the last colour variation of my JD series from last week, a S6 spindle design, a S12 braided kiku and the project I was working on from Cosmo 6. Then I need to get going on my ball I promised to make with Jane and I'd also like to try out a ball that Rod has worked on recently... They are both on my to do list.  Oh I forgot I am also part way through Joan's weaving stitch along on TT..

Ask and ye shall receive

Last year I got terribly stuck on a Cosmo pattern. It bugged me for months. After many tries at working the ball from a picture (no pattern), several tantrums and a few balls being thrown across the room I reluctantly decided to ASK for help. I am a firm believer in the importance of mentoring. But I always have trouble asking for help. Ironic isn't it?

This week Shirley (one of the ladies in our expanding Temari making group here in Perth) was having trouble with TemariKai  Pattern 99LW10 so she asked me if I could work it out with her.  Well I looked at the sheet she had printed out and saw the diagrams showed pole views and an equator image. Then I scanned through the pattern wording and promptly led myself down the wrong garden path. Somehow when I went back to the diagram I had forgotten it showed pole views and that's where the problems started. I scanned over but missed entirely two crucial phrases 'Stitch triangles A-B-C-A on the extra marking lines', and 'The base of the triangles will cross the South Pole.' Yep I had myself thinking of it as an obi (stitching in the area around the equator) design with kikus stitched at each pole. Half a dozen rip-outs, several hours and two headache tablets later... it occurred to me that asking for help was the next logical step.

This is one of the most awesome parts of being a member of the Yahoo groups. There is a whole world of folk willing to share their expertise and different viewpoint just a few clicks away... and they all do it for no more reward than a hearty email thank you.

So while I tucked myself up in bed... several kind people on the other side of the world took time out of their busy lives to help me out by answering my query. 
Linda (the pattern author) emailed me twice - even though she was on holiday.
Barb illuminated me to the fact that the flower shape appeared only on the north pole and the basket crossed over the south pole.
Debi sent me a wonderful diagram showing a side view of the pattern and a detailed set of notes (even though she has never made this ball before).
Ginny confirmed there was no underground stitching in the basket area.
Charla dug through emails in an old email account to find correspondence between herself and Linda where there was a side view photo of the design.
and Kristy emailed to see how I was going with the design and if I'd managed to work it all out.
 

Wow!!! When I woke this morning all the answers were sitting in my inbox. By lunch time I had stitched the basket section of the design.  I did mess up a bit of the weaving in two places (should have gone under but went over instead) but I think so far it has turned out pretty good. Here is what it looks like so far...

Thank you again to everyone that helped out. I am really lucky to have made so many temari buddies all over who are so willing to share. If you're not already a member of one of the Yahoo Temari groups, I highly recommend you join up.

Braided Kiku Challenge Ball

I have completed the ball for TC's current challenge. I used cream, light and medium pink, lavender and deep purple. There are two sequences from light to dark stitched on both poles. The obi is made of many rows of purple Nordic Gold then secured with silver. Here it is.

I really like how it formed a stacked flower effect.  At the beginning I thought of trying to stitch an obi of interlocked diamonds so I planned on just one sequence, but as the pole design emerged I thought it needed a more simple obi. This meant I should have done two rows in each colour as there would be too much room at the equator.  Solution? Run the exact sequence again.

I found this stitch interesting .  Tension is definitely something to keep an eye on. I wonder how it would look starting further out from the pole? I like the lattice look created.  Most other braids I have seen are more tightly stitched (maybe it is because they are stitched with double thread or maybe they are just nudged up more closely than mine) but I like the openness of the weave.

This ball is the last one from my recent experiments with dryer lint. I found it at the bottom of a bunch of stitched balls... yippie! Ok it was purple but at least I didn't have to make a base.

Year 10 Japanese Class - Session 2

Monday 15th was my second visit (and sadly last) to teach temari at school.  Now it's back to actually learning the Japanese language.  Wow! Didn't our classes just fly by??? 

Here is another shout out to all the students reading this blog. You know who you are!! I thought the classes were great fun.  We made great progress.  I am sending along a set of videos for Sensei to help you complete the design.  But there are some photos below to remind you.

Thank you for showing your interest in these temari making classes... I know we all learned something new.

Getting out of the rut - Unusual Colours

I've been in a colour rut.  Many of my temari are stitched in either blue or red (red always seems so traditionally Japanese to me).  I tend to binge on making temari bases and can make up to 20 in a day, but I can never leave them in their undies (just at the yarn layer) I am always compelled to wrap the thread layer. Hmmm... so this could be why I end up in a colour rut. 

Back in July 09 I made a huge number of Red, White and Forrest Green coloured bases and have been using them steadily ever since.  I had the last two green balls sitting in my stash for ages but I couldn't think of what to do with them.  Forrest green is a tough one to stitch so what to use?? I decided that if I was ever to get out of this rut I had to challenge myself to using colours that I either disliked or wouldn't normally put together.  I came up with a palette of similar mid tones in blue, green, yellow and orange.  I then looked at my to do list and picked a pattern I liked (that would be fun and easy to make after the HHG challenge).  I found my pattern inspiration on page 16 of the 12 more months of temari book.  This is what I came up with. The image from the book is inset bottom left.

It is a loose interpretation from the picture, there is no pattern written up for this one.  It is basically just wrapped bands with a small amount of Herringbone stitch to secure the green layer crossovers.  It has a simple blue band obi at the equator.  I really like how it turned out (it was not so tightly packed at the pole as the picture)  I would like to make this one again in a different set of colours.

That used up one of the dastardly green bases but what to do with the other?? Well... I am finally taking a (twice postponed) group of high school girls for a temari lesson next week and I decided to re familiarize myself with the designs I am using.  So here is how they turned out.  I did each pattern on opposite ends of the same ball.

This pole shows a design found in many books and I have made this time and again in so many colours. My favourite version is found in the first pages of Cosmo 1 and features purple tones.

I think this pattern is actually featured in almost every book I own.  I know Barb used this type of pattern in blue and white on a different division (Arrowheads I think) in her book and it looks great on many divisions.

So all in all I am quite happy to have broken out of the rut and be moving towards new colour horizons.

I have decided that for future wrapping binges I will not wrap more than two bases in the same colour.  This should help to keep my colour choices open.

My latest temari set finished

I have been working on this temari set for months trying to get it PERFECT for submission to my temari mentor.  Usually I make temari just for me and rarely fix mistakes because I like to see how my ball making has progressed (of course when making temari for other people I do want them to be perfect too).

Now I have finished these and sent them to my mentor I want to share them with you.  Top left is a S4 Masu Kagari (Square Stitch), Top right is a S6 Mitsubane Kikkou Kagari (Triwing Stitch),  Bottom left is a S8 Jyouge Douji Kagari (Concurrent North South Stitch) and Bottom right is S12 Uwagake Chidori Kagari (Kiku Herringbone Stitch).

I think this is the last time I will be stitching with this colour palette for a little while, I have been using these colours so much since July I really need a change.

I am beginning my study on C8 now and to facilitate this I have pulled out all my Japanese Temari books (ok not all of them just the Cosmo 1-7 series and a few others).  I seem to have lost my list of dream temari to make so I am going back to the drawing board so to speak and selecting balls I want to make.

Thread Challenge Ball #1

Over at Temari Challenge we have been working on a thread challenge.  The task was set to choose several threads that we hadn't used before for temari making from the Rainbow Gallery ranges.  A poll was taken for colour themes and thread types and when the results were in the winners were announced.  We ended up using Very Velvet Petite, Nordic Gold, Mandarin Floss (made with 100% bamboo), and Patina (a lovely Perle 5 sized twisted rayon).  The colour selection was pink, purple and blue tones.  I chose a design from the Purple Olympus book as my inspiration but made a few changes here and there.

The base is white cotton thread with a flat Silver metallic embroidery thread wound randomly over the top layer.  The marking is S8 in Silver nordic gold.  Then there are 3 rows of Very Velvet Petite in Blue and 2 rows of Nordic Gold in Sapphire; 3 rows of Very Velvet Petite in Pink and 2 rows of Keinick #16 Braid in Pink; 3 rows Patina in Purple and 2 rows Nordic Gold in Purple.  At the Octagon created at the poles I stitched a small spiderweb stitch in Mandarin Floss Light Blue then flattened out the floss to stitch a star burst to radiate from the circle to the edge of the octagon.  At the obi I wrapped 8 wraps of the Mandarin Floss and then secured it with a single herringbone stitch around with Nordic Gold in Sapphire.


I actually didn't intend to have a white base - I planned on a beige or creamy one but this ball was already wrapped, I didn't really have the motivation to create one from scratch and the other balls I had wrapped were bright red or forrest green.  All in all I think it turned out fine.  I love rayon to stitch with (the Japanese thread in our store is rayon though slightly finer thread than the Patina) it always slides through your fingers and feels lovely to work with.  The Velvet was surprising to work with, I thought it would kink and play up but it was well behaved and adds an interesting dimension to the temari not to mention a lovely feel.  Ok the kreinick was not part of the challenge and neither was the silver threads or the sapphire one but I think we were allowed to add some other threads to complete the challenge.  The only thread I didn't enjoy using was the floss.  I don't know what it is about floss but I just can't get the gist of it.  It goes flat when I want it plump and plumps up when I want it flat... of course I know that is probably more the fault of the stitcher than the thread.  I will continue to try to work out the floss issues because there are so many lovely temari patterns (that I just adore) made with floss.

Current Temari Projects

S4 Masu Kagari (Square Stitch)
So I am revisiting the S4 square stitch temari - I have only done a few when I first began making temari and have either wrapped over, given away or otherwise vapourised them so I need to begin from scratch. I only have one face done so far - this pattern really tests the roundness of the mari and reminds me that I should at least try not to drop them so often on the tiled floor as nothing flattens out a mari like being dropped from the kitchen table onto tiles. The picture above is a progress shot with just one and a half squares completed.

S6 Mitsubane-kikkou Kagari (Triwing or Trefoil Stitch)
I have also tried out the S6 tri-wing with hexagon (I have never made them with the hexagon in the middle before) I think it turned out ok. I quite liked it actually and filled the negative space with a 1/4 and 3/4 starburst running around the equator.  As you can see from the photo above I am still using up some of the remaining red, white and green balls from the 27 I prepared in July so I have limited my colour scheme to include greens, white and black.

S8 Jyouge Douji Kagari (Merry go Round Stitch)
I also made a S8 JD-esque temari from the front cover of a little Ondori booklet that Michelle (check out her blog Little Rabbit Miniatures) and I both have. I like it but I can see where I screwed up the stitching so we'll call this one a 'learning ball'. It was fun to stitch because every second guideline was stitched from pole to equator and the others were stitched equator to pole.  In the pic above you may see where I have forgotten to keep the needle over the thread as I exit the ball in one of the early rounds so I have two threads that lie side by side... it is a pity and I probably should have ripped it out but it was a fun practice and I learned something too.

S12 Uwagake Chidori Kagari (Kiku Herringbone Stitch)
To know this pattern is to love it. I have made a lot of this one, but I do tend to make a ton of this and then none for a few months.  Ok this one is no where near completed but I figured that I'd add it too.  This is the ball I was playing with when we were at the Waldorf School Fair.  I am not sure where I want to go with this one so I haven't added more yet.  When I finish the masu (square) temari I will come back to this one.

Preparing for ... Christmas in July

Well being July what better time to look forward to Christmas? Last week I posted about the 27 balls I had wrapped in Christmas colours and here are a few of the photos.

As you can see I am working in Green, Red, White, Gold and Silver.

When I have completed these balls I plan to make more in 'Non-traditional' colours like Purple, Blue.

The photo of 3 temari show my latest efforts. The top left temari is the ball I was working when I wrote the last post. The bottom one I made whilst trying to keep my fingers from freezing watching my Son's soccer training and the right ball was made today. Although my boys say "Oh no! Not temari again..." stitching this one inspired my Son's little buddy to make a teeny temari today which we attached to a mobile dangle for his backpack.

It is pouring again outside so it looks good for stitching more temari tomorrow.....