Round and round and round and round and round...

Yes, hello, I know I know... I haven't updated in ... oh... let's just not mention how long, shall we?

Anyhow... here's what I've been up to this week:

So what the hell is that thing?, you ask. Well, it's a Temari. Wikipedia can explain it much better than I can. This website, and this blog have been my guiding light in this odyssey of balls, yarn, cotton, thread and needles. In the event that you were wondering... the other side, which has not been photographed in order to give the illusion that I am actually somewhat competent at my new found obsession for wrapping things in thousands of layers of thread, is an absolute mess.

Creative Destruction - Part Two

Anybody whose been following this blog (and lets face it, there's probably only about three people who do) will remember my predilection for attacking books with Stanley knives. Well the good news is that at least one of these three has finally reached a state which can described as 'finished'.

The spine and inside are painted gold, which looks much better 'in person', the black fabric is somewhat furry and had I known the rate at which it would pick up fluff I never would have allowed it into my life. The red bit is actually bright red cotton fabric with a sheer layer of something black over the top of it (you can tell that I know ALL about fabric, can't you?) which gives it a weird 3d kind of look (again, only 'in person'). The darker inside painted bits are actually black. I'm not sure why my camera is being so creative with colours today. The black ribbon, of course, hides the sloppy bits where the bits of fabric join up. Please assume that it is a small book, not that I have a giant hand.

Please don't ask about what happened to the other two.

Officially awesome... and poor

Schmap is yet another online map website... but what makes this one so awesome is its photos, collected from flickr, one of which just might happen to have been taken by me... What's the lesson here? Tag all your flickr photos with where they were taken... you never know who's looking for what.

In other news, the Australian dollar has gone down the toilet. This is extremely unfortunate given that everything I want to buy is in America. You can help this sad and pathetic situation by BUYING SOMETHING FROM MY SHOP. In this time of economic uncertainty (well actually it's probably gone beyond uncertainty now and possibly a time of 'economic despair' would be more appropriate... but lets not try to get too depressing here) what you really really need is... a pair of cutlery earrings. Just think about how much further you'll be able to make the weekly grocery shopping last if you have to eat everything with a fork that's about an inch long!

Ahem... I never claimed to be any good at advertising. Or blogging on regular basis, for that matter.

Treasury!

So I thought I'd give creating a treasury on Etsy a shot... and here it is:

"At home in the second dimension"
A collection of improbable abodes.




You can go and visit it here, in order to view the items and check out the shops of the featured artists.

Detour!

This post is really nothing but a desperate attempt not to kill my blog. In the event that you hadn't noticed, if you check out the number of posts made each month, they're steadily declining. At the rate I was going, this thing would be over and done with by September... so I'm making a radical token effort to save this thing by posting ... shock horror... in order to at LEAST equal the number of posts I made last month. Since that number was exactly three, it's not exactly a difficult task. Unfortunately this is the bit where it becomes blatantly apparent that I actually have no content to blog about. Fortunately, there's a whole big wide internet out there full of interesting things to look at, so let me point you in the direction of a few my favourite things. And when I say things, I mean webcomics, so anybody who prides themself on not being the kind of person who reads webcomics, stop reading here. (Also, I should probably warn that these aren't necessarily 'family friendly' good and wholesome type sites... but at the same time they'd probably be out of their league at a serial killer convention).
Firstly, there's A Softer World, which can sometimes be quite dark and often a little uncomfortable... but incredibly appealing nevertheless. I guess a lot of it comes under 'things we don't tell other people that we think about'. This and this are are just two that I like.
Second, there's XKCD, which can be REALLY geeky and/or nerdy. I think for me it's appeal lies in the simplicity of the artwork coupled with the wit of the text. This is kind of 'yes, that is so obvious now that they've pointed it out! I can't believe I never saw the world like this before' stuff... or at least some of it is... some of it may be too geeky for me to understand.
Finally, The Perry Bible Fellowship ... which actually has nothing to do with religion. Yet again, another series of extremely witty, offbeat, 'isn't that kind of wrong?' type strips. I particularly love this one.
And I know I said finally... but then I remembered Dresden Codak. This one is a serial which has been going for a while now... and unfortunately probably won't get an update for a while given that it's creator recently shredded his hands in a bike accident. I particularly love the artwork in this one, not to mention wonderful wacky concepts like the Historical Preenactment Society.

Fence? What fence?!

Yes indeed, it is just safest to assume that everybody is stupid.

The Etsy Down Under Satire

In response to this and this, I present you with my version of what an 'Etsy goes to Australia' Storque article would probably look like:


"Coming into Sydney airport our landing was delayed while they rounded up all the kangaroos and shooed them off the runway, but not to worry because we got some excellent views of Ayers Rock as we were circling. As we stepped off the plane into the dusty dry desert some locals came over and explained to us in the native dialect that as a special treat they'd rounded up some emus for us to ride to the terminal. It was a bit bumpy, but we got there.

Once out of the airport and in our clapped out rusty old Holden ute that the bloke at the hire desk had assured us was the latest model they had we had the pleasure of driving along a bumpy windy dirt road underneath the gum trees. Yes folks, we truly had found ourselves on a whole new planet. Suddenly it occurred to us that there might be bush rangers out here in these wild parts. Thankfully the only other folks we saw that afternoon was a jolly old swagman and a man in khaki who shouted 'Crikey! Get a load of them Yanks!' as we drove past.

Our hotel, really just a multi-storey corrugated iron shed, afforded us a fantastic view of Sydney Harbour, including that great big coat hanger thing they call a bridge and that white building that looks like it's going to sail away (the woman down at reception told us what it was called, but we couldn't understand her Australian drawl... we think she said it was an opera house, but we didn't think that they had opera in Australia... Maybe it's a really big sheep shearing shed).

The next morning dawned bright and hot. The dust swirled a bit in the faint breeze. It was time to drive 'out back' as the natives so quaintly call it to visit our feature artist. Before we left we bought some of those big round hats with the little dangly corks that Australians wear so we'd fit in. The man in the shop overheard us talking and suggested that if we really wanted to fit in we should invest in some flip flops (quaintly called 'thongs' in Australia, apparently. But then, who knows what passes for lingerie here?), some short blue work shorts that the he called 'stubbies' and a singlet. We declined his generous offer to help outfit us in the national costume as we didn't really have the right kinds of tans to pull it off.

Bumping along the dirt roads once more we went in search of our feature crafter, Didgeridoo Dan's, place. Modern luxuries such as street signs and house numbers seemed to not have yet made it to Australia's 'out back' yet, so we had to pull over and ask scraggly looking sheep for directions. Eventually we found Dan's shack and he invited us in for a lovely lunch of kangaroo and witchetty grub stew. He then gave us the grand tour of his hovel and a demonstration of his musical talents. To be honest neither of us could really understand how the strange noises he managed to elicit from that wooden tube really count as 'music' ... but I guess it's an Australian thing. Then Dan gave us an in depth explanation of how he hollows his didgeridoos out of wood from trees that he chops down. Or at least that's what we think he was talking about, still not having had gotten the hang of the local dialect we really weren't able to understand very much of what he said. Thankfully we recorded the whole thing, hoping that once we were back at the Etsy Labs in civilisation someone would be able to decipher it."