Needle Keeper

I found this cool idea on a website of somebody who had adapted a pair of old jeans and an old shirt into a holder to keep their knitting & crochet needles in.....so on Friday (public holiday) I set to work designing & making my own version out of upholstery fabric, ribbon & trimmings in my sewing cupboard! I'm SO happy with the results! :

Granny Mittens :)

These are my 'Granny Mittens'. I used a pattern adapted from a free Ravelry download pattern for the gloves as well as for the leaves :)

Miss Molly Aprons

I have been making aprons & sewing an array or other cool things over the past week...Here are a few of the kiddies aprons I finished off last week:

This is my fav. one! :

Here is the ceramic button I sewed onto the one above :)

Knew Knittings

I've been knitting in all my spare time...I finished my 3rd 2-tone scarf on the weekend & experimented with felting flowers to adorn it with...I have so many adornment ideas....just need to knit the items to go on them! :) ...I made it a little bit narrower on size 10 (metric) needles - knitted in moss stitch, which suits the wool beauifully...Here is a picture:

I've also been spending WAY too much time on Ravelry at http://www.ravelry.com/ sourcing patterns...exploring profiles and feeling a little ill quite frankly that I don't have the time to explore all the patterns immediately!!

Geoff and I attended an auction on Saturday..I took along my knitting basket. I knitted my first hat which ended up WAY too loose & Rasta-looking so I knitted another one with adjustments:

...then I set to work on expanding this idea & came up with a very sweet chunky striped hat with a little crochet flower on top & adorning the side.....I started out with 48 stitches on my size 10's in plain rib for 12 rows..moss stitch for a further 12 and began the colour change on the decrease...1purl 1plain all the way to the top...stiched the side together and FWHALA!

With the chunky 1-tone scarf

View from the top!

on its own :)

Live for the browsing

WHET

www.whet.co.za
Integration of new design with existing management system

WOSA
www.wosa.co.za
Design of new-look website & HTML code ready for PHP

VARIETY IS IN OUR NATURE
www.varietyisinournature.com
Also for WOSA, this is one of my favorite sites yet! Design & HTML for PHP

TOCARA SKIN & BODY SCIENCE:
www.tocara4.co.za
For the importers of Dr.Hauschka Skin Care to Southern Africa:
Design, integration & loading of info into the Interspire e-comm. solution

Easter Activities

It's just been Easter Weekend...Geoff and I decided to go to church on Friday but there didn't seem to be any cars in the parking lot (we can see it from our bedroom window - see photo) so we stayed in bed...and thus began 4 days of total relaxation!

I hadn't realised until Tuesday last week that Friday was going to be a holiday...and I didn't realise until Friday that Monday was also a holiday! I'm pleased to say I took the break & I am feeling really well rested for it :)

My Mom and Dad have been visiting & working at T'Neal and Dave's new place so we have seen quite a lot of them over the past few weeks.

On Saturday, when Geoff got home from work we hit the surf & I got 3 really nice waves at Inner Kom (!!) ...even managed to avoid getting smashed up on the rocks!

We did go to church on Easter Sunday...then fetched Mom & Dad's one sea kayak & paddled from Hout Bay - all along Chapman's Peak and around the corner until we could see Noordhoek! It was amazing to be looking up at Chapman's Peak drive rather than down at the water below! Here are some rather bad cell phone pictures to give an idea of the experience:



We had a lovely Easter dinner meal with Geoff's family...and then we sorted a lot of things in the flat out & managed to get rid of a whole lot of stuff. Its amazing how things accumulate!

The only other major thing going on is that I've been knitting up a storm -- Rose scarves are my latest creation! (see photo)... I will be selling them (& other knitted items -- if I can figure the patterns out!) this Winter as part of the Miss Molly range... The wool is super-luxurious & this scarf will lift & compliment just about any outfit! :)

...and so we're back into the work thing & I'm feeling a bit procrastinatory...but inspired for current & future creations! :)

shoes for sale

Dream Shoes I never wear...
Practically new...mainly been used to walk up and down the passage at 6am to get revenge on downstairs neighbours for making big noises late at night.
Black and White Nine West Leather shoes 8.5 American Size - 6.5 South African
I'm a work-in-the-city turned self-employed person so only my goldfish would see them! They need a new person to love them as much as I do...and be able to show them off in stride!!
http://tinyurl.com/dygksr

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SOLD
Another pair Dream Shoes I never wear...
Black pointy, really high Nine West Leather shoes 8.5 American Size - 6.5 South African...They have the prettiest little catch on the side for fastening & they are beautifully shaped on the foot...Were R850 new ...now practically new...also mainly been used to get revenge on downstairs neighbors -- nice sound when walking except if you're in the floor below :)
They need a new person to love them as much as I do...and wear them!
http://tinyurl.com/dnhvot

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Chocolate Brown Peep Toe Shoes - Green Cross

These genuine leather, chocolate brown, GREEN CROSS, peep-toe shoes are super duper comfy as well as really pretty on! I bought a pair and my mom (young & funky) bought the same pair but hers turned out to be too big as she has really narrow feet so now I have 2 pairs & one of them can find a new owner to love them. They are BRAND NEW...They look a bit 'granny' off but as soon as you put them on they are super funky and stylish! ...and if you have short toes, like me - you can finally wear peep-toe shoes that really peep your toes!!! http://tinyurl.com/cwp3q7

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Black / Red Crayon Leather Shoes

I'm selling a bunch of my shoes...just don't have space in married flat. Got to compromise somewhere! Leather hand-made shoes by Crayon -- a red pair and a black pair - R100 together....The last time I wore them was halloween. I LOVED them but I'm not city-living any more so its all slip slops & surfer-shoes for me!!
http://tinyurl.com/cme34z

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"talk to the hand"

My cousin, Kim, got married on Saturday to the loveliest guy - Raj. The wedding was a splash of exuberant celebrations which began with a Mehndi - or 'Henna' party at VillaLara - an incredible villa, right down at the bottom parking area at Sandy Bay. I borrowed a bright pink sari from Eva to wear to the occasion (I actually had a real live Indian lady compliment me on the way I'd tied it!!)

Miss Molly was asked to make Mehndi inspired cupcakes - I will post the pictures of these when I get them from T'Neal...they really turned out well :)

The tradition, evidently, is that the bride's hands and feet would be decorated with henna 2 days before her wedding (the dye shows up brightest after 2 days) and her family & friends would inspect her henna on the bridal couple's return from honneymoon to make sure that it was all as perfect as when she left - in other words: no dishes - no housework...just pure luxuary!

The image above was taken soon after the paste was applied - the image at the bottom was taken on day 2 after the Mehndi party. I had to walk around for at least 4 hours without disturbing the paste...quite difficult balancing indian curry buffet & my drink without disturbing the paste.

We came to the conclusion that this is where the phrase & expression "talk to the hand" must have come from. :)

Knit vs. Crochet

books.google.com & knitterings

I recently discovered http://books.google.com/

What GENIUS!!! A place where one can pre-view books & learn a little something along the way to finding out if its the right book to order. How I discovered this was through looking for easy crochet and knitting patterns. Yes. The knitting gene seems to have reared its head & taken hold of all my spare time.....

It all started with a ball of silken wool I bought in Thailand... and then the knitted bus I blogged about a while ago...and then I found the most incredible and silly modern-retro book on knitting at the bargain book shop for R40!! ...and then! I discovered 'The Wool Boutique' in Fish Hoek main road. Its all downhill from there! I have a really cool basket from Geoff's shop to keep my project materials in & I've been knitting up a STORM!! ...even knitted all the way to and back from the Karoo this past weekend!

My Ouma knitted so much in her life that she literally did not have fingerprints left. We got bed-socks and jerseys every Christmas and birthday. I miss her with all my heart. I can't help feeling close to her when I'm indulging in my knitting...

I was browsing around to try and find my knitting book (called 'Knitorama')

and found this lady posing for a pattern in a fully knitted outfit...

She looks like she cant wait to get out of that outfit!!
"please get the photograph taken so I can get out of this Cheshire Cat suit!!"

...and now to try and get hold of a copy of Hookorama!

Rachael Matthews (author) is a new hero!

Post News

My favorite news poster EVER was

'Armpit Sniffer Gets 14 Years'

Here's another classic:

imagenius

No - seriously! I am!! :)
Geoff is kind of addicted to IQ tests...he LOVES doing them...so *BLIP* went my gtalk box and this was the link: http://www.quizrocket.com/free-iq-test

Here is my result:

(I'm sure its just fluke & no- I'm not about to run off and join MENSA!!)

On a more serious note - and not to have this post be misconstrued as misleading -- I got the best little plastic gold fish from Imagenius the week before last to join my little neo-pet from Keli - my digital design mascots:

Looks like I caught it at a bad moment :)

Seuss it

I love Google...and I love Dr.Seuss!

A little while

Its been a while since I blogged -- probably because I have my lovely man back :)

I'm reading Shantaram..I'm 4 weeks and 700 pages in. Quite an epic. I find myself wondering when Karla will appear on the scene again. It seems there is no hope for our hero and the beautiful woman he has fallen in love with...its a great story though and reading it has found me walking around the flat, book in hand & in terrible danger of bumping into things.

Yes: that's what the bruises are from.

Do you walk into things all the time? My worst is those things on the door-post where the door lock shuts into..I have no idea what they are called. They stick out JUST enough to get me in my forearm almost every time I walk out of the studio. Our kitchen cupboard doors are really low at the bottom & I keep stubbing my toes on those...and I have bruises on my hips from walking into counter tops.

Woe is me. Not really.

Good news is that I got my washing machine out of my flat. It only just fits into the space allocated for it & I was so excited to get it in that I forgot to connect all the bits at the back before I moved it in. I have a mission ahead of me.

I keep on wondering if I should delete my last post.....keep wondering if it puts me in bad light......but hey - this is me and this is what I do...make up silly stuff about possibilities of what can be done out there in the world....at least I'm being honest about what I am up to.

Goth Scene?

When Geoff and I started dating, we had this situation where he and Robyn were mucking about on DatingBuzz - so I figured--well - if he can do it, so can I! ...and so we both did our online dating thing for a while. I will say here that I had much more success than he did and actually managed to make some friends! -- I was totally in love already so the poor dudes on the Buzz could only get friendship out of me -- totally unavailable emotionally to anyone but my true love - my Geoff! :)

So I was on my Google search page now-now and I looked to the right and saw this site called gothscene.com with a depressed looking teenager as the ad lurer-inner -- call me crazy -- call it WRONG, but I just felt sorry for those poor faces of the 19 year old Gothy kids on the site & I wanted to see what more of them looked like!!!!!....So I decided to browse through & the site is like all the other sites of its kind - a CON! ...I had to set up a profile and all sorts of stuff...needless to say, I have looked everywhere for the delete button (about 10 minutes after profile-setting-up) - but couldn't find it...at least they only have my junk-email email address! Mmmmwahaha!

...and so I decided that this situation is blog-worthy.

I think 'Goths' are called 'Emo's' now -- 'EMOTIONAL' - whatever next. Makes me feel old at my tender age of 29.

The little Goth bits of me are:

• I really like the episode of SouthPark when they all turn Goth...Stan loses his girlfriend and becomes all depressed and ends up joining the non-conformist Goth gang who all non-conform to drinking coffee and writing depressing poetry to prove their non-conformity...

• I've been to a Torture Garden evening in a church-club in Brixton (London) which was a really mind-blowingly different experience...
  
  
• My husband and I listen to a band called Therion quite a lot - its quite cool metally music themed around a (made-up?) ancient culture with rituals and stuff (awesome album cover too)...

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OOOH! I just remembered that I actually have a picture on Facebook of my little party at Brixton at the church thing...Check it out! :

100% latex dress, my friend -- 100% latex
(borrowed)

African Font

Font Q

For a long time I have been wishing I had the means to draw my own fonts / create my handwriting as a font....I have also wanted to give friends their handwriting in a font as a completely different and personalised gift - the main problem has been that font creation programs always seemed, to me, to be quite labour intensive way to go about things - I downloaded a free trial of a font program once & tried to create a font via digital drawing with a drawing tablet....and then with my mouse: both with unsatisfactory results & a waste of time.

Last week, through Smashing Apps' Twitter updates, I discovered YourFonts.com & within about 15 minutes I had my handwriting - as a font - installed on my computer!

The YourFonts.com site is super-easy to use:
There are steps on the right hand side which lead you through the process (which is clearly explained in the body of the page, with buttons to click that you just can't miss: no hunting around the page) -- one hardly has to think about it because it's all done for you! Easy as 1..2......font!

1 Print the Template
2 Complete the Template
3 Scan and Save the Template
4 Upload the Template
5 Preview Your Font (so quickly it's almost like magic! ...and you can put your own text in to see how it looks)
6 Download your font
7 Install and Use

The only place I got stuck at first was that I forgot to name my font, so the second time I did it, I ended up with a font of the same name 'YourFont' -- how blonde!! So remember to name your font on the upload page! There is also a copyright you can customise to attach to your font!

I re-drew & uploaded a few quickly drawn versions & found that if I tweak the alignments slightly in Photoshop - just move letters / characters to their base-lines if they're a bit up/under or rotate the letters slightly - the font looks more even, cleaner and nicer over-all in a body of text . I particularly had an issue with 'j' - especially after an 'a' - there was too much of a gap between the letters.

The best thing of all: It's FREE! ...and you don't need to sign up for anything if you don't want to!
Crossing fingers & holding thumbs (yes-simultaneously) that this service will stay free...

The site has clearly EXPLODED with popularity which is a clear indication that I am not the only person in need / want of this service - There were over 400 font generation tasks 'currently in the queue' after 1/2 hour of trying to get my upload in queue - repeatedly pressing the 'Upload Template' button & watching the queue decrease in hope that I'd be able to upload soon......And so I found myself in my first-ever 'digital queue'. The return of The Big Q? I sincerely hope not!

Possible Plagiarism

Would you believe, that one day after finding this beautiful image of the 'letter' hugging the girl, I got an email from Exclusive books Fanatics club possibly plagiarising this very image! It seems to me, WAY too much of a co-incidence that this image showed up today - right after the Smashing Apps Twitter post yesterday..

Call it PMS...call it fury at people [possibly] not sticking to design etiquette - It would be so much easier to just steal other people's work! That's not why we are employed as designers...almost any monkey can copy and paste without getting the right permissions. It's not no-man's land: it's OFF LIMITS!

So I wrote a letter (below) and will update this blog if I get any response.

My letter to Exclusive Books this morning:

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Hi

I am concerned about the possible plagiarism of the (rather blurry) image you have used on the top right hand side of this promotional advertisement (below).

As a designer, I am acutely aware of copyright restrictions & fiercely moral about the use of restricted copy & imagery, which is why I feel compelled to send this email.

At this point, I will appologise in advance if Exclusive Books / Fanatics / van Schaik legally bought the image from a stock site, but, only yesterday, I found this image on Smashing Apps at this link: http://www.smashingapps.com/2008/06/27/42-extremely-creative-advertisements-i-have-ever-seen.html which reveals that the image was used & was presumably commissioned by, and therefore belongs to the Australia Post.

One of the biggest problems facing the design world is the quest for originality - originality puts what one designer/company/individual is doing above another. Spending a few extra minutes sourcing original, un-plaigerised material will not only put designers/companies/individuals in greater respect, it will stop them from looking silly when the source of the plagiarized material is found online!

Let's keep South African design original and fresh!

Sincerely
Gina Ross

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Letters to pitch

I found this picture on Smashing Apps. I think it is from the Autralian post office...



















Hand written is always so much better! Geoff often leaves me little 'love' or 'appreciation' notes around the house..I read them over and over because it makes me feel like a goddess who is so loved.

I received a really special hand-written letter from my beautiful actress-friend, Jennifer Reinfrank aka: Jennifer Karen.

We worked together in one of the most potentially soul-destroying jobs I have ever had the displeasure of being employed to do: Street Pitching.

There are companies in London (such as make-over photography studios) that employ a 'direct marketing agency' to bring people in so that they can rip them off by making them buy expensive photographs of themself.... I'm not saying it's a total waste of time: these companies provide a very worth-while service to those who are in need of professional photographs of themselves (actors, omodels and such)... but the bill you may have to fit for falling in love with the pictures of yourself may be a little more than daunting & will probably prevent you from buying that new pair of sunglasses you've been wanting for the last year...or from going on that much-needed holiday! :)

I was too naive - didn't apply the common sense that what I was doing was actually illegal: Street trading is defined as the selling or offering for sale of any article in the street.Traders who use the public highway to sell goods or services must have a street trading licence to carry out trade from a designated site/pitch and display of goods in front of a shop. [www.ealing.gov.uk]

In the time I worked for two of these [illegal-operation-promoting] marketing companies - owned by a seedy gambling addict who led us to believe he spent most of his time in LA or Miami or thereabouts (!) - I saw a lot of girls & guys, men & women...people desperate to possess glameroso photos of themselves.
They'd smelled a rat all along...and then, at photo-buying point, they would look quite uncomfortable parting with their hard-earned (or Dad-given) cash. These people were trapped into a tight corner by the cute photography sales consultant's smooth tongue & easy compliments...as well as by their compulsive need to possess the shots...They would have no choice (for they had been snared) to pay the price of their vanity.

I only paid for one shoot's photos - The first one:
I was conned ( like all the people I had & would pitch ). Mine was under the false pretence of a free shoot & photos: they wanted me to experience the package so that I could do my sales pitch from experience - then they hit me with a choice - money for photos or no photos. I was enraged...but I admit: I liked the look of myself in the photos...& the photographic sales' person pitch was 'right on the money': my money - of which there was not a lot between the room I shared in a hostel with 7 other people, and the need for basic sustinance.

Pics from photoshoot 1:















The company I worked for changed studios and, when I had made friends with the studio staff & photographers, I participated on 'quiet day fun shoots' with the rest of the studio & sales staff. Here are some of the results:

Pics from photoshoot 2:









Pic from photoshoot 3 (left)

I was curious to see what could be done - to get a glimpse of how [if I was kwashi enough to be a model / actress / some kind of photographed star] I may have looked as a magazine-standard glamorous woman... Clearly I was not yet aware of the joys of what Photoshop can achieve. Curiosity is why many of these girls part with their cash so reluctantly yet abundantly: They get a view through the window of possibility... Cinderella looking in the mirror & recognising, for the first time, that she is not all rags & handy-andy... Maybe there is a glimmer of promise...of a dream-come-true...a prince (?)

I had lured a lot of business in...& suddenly the direct marketing business became really saturated, especially with pitching women... Direct Marketing Agents (such as myself) had no choice but to opt for rather dodgy methods of getting people's attention to make a simple living - literally: the man on the street.
"Hello, Mr.Yellow Tie..." might be an opening line on the corner of Great Portland and Oxford streets... or "Excuse me....Do you like getting pampered?" - cheeky smile catching the poor bloke off-guard before he gets pitched the 'your-wife/girlfriend-will-love-this...it's what every girl wants' story...these metrosexual (or at least metro-aware), often gorgeously shy men in suits & ties would realise that they were not actually being propositioned on a street corner in the middle of the day [they had felt strangely flattered], but that they had been accosted by someone trying to suck them dry of their hard-earned cash...the embarrassment of the previous assumption still ringing in their head & bringing wallet to hand.

Sometimes they were metro enough to want the package for themselves!

Isn't that just what the world seems be like:
People selling you stuff you actually really don't need.

The sad thing for me is that it was often those with the least that were the most vulnerable to my sales-pitch.

The "Pro's":

• I got onto club guest-lists [with all the boring, coked up rich-kids]
  
• I got to work out-doors [Even in Winter]
  
• I had the freedom to go to any town / street in England that I could get to within an hour or so [Sunny day - let's hit Brighton!]
• I got to work 'for myself' [with 80% of my hard-earned cash going into Mr.K's pocket]
• I got to have conversations with strangers & find out what they did for a living [which helped me shape ideas on what I wanted to do on my return to South Africa]

and in all the months I subjected myself to all of this, I:

• worried constantly if I would have enough money for rent / my travel ticket / food
• felt guilty when I had to twist my sales pitch to suit my pocket, when I could see that the person I was pitching shouldn't be buying my product [I even mistakenly pitched a homeless person wearing leather pants - felt so bad that I offered to buy him something at Burger King & he ordered the most expensive thing on the menu!!]
  
• felt sad for women who fell for the guy-pitcher's gigolo charms
  
• learned what it was like to be ignored - to become invisible in the eyes of the passing public - I cannot even explain what it is like to have my existence repeatedly not be acknowledged by a simple nod or 'no thank you' for most of a day. This causes a feeling of loneliness that can only be understood by those who have experienced it.
  [I urge you to at least acknowledge even beggars - people can deal with rejection if they still feel human]
  

learned:

• a lot about marketing bullshit
  
• that a positive attitude is something one needs to work at to survive
• to pull myself through a long, unsuccessful day / week - with a smile
  
• what women & some men are vulnerable to falling for
• that hair and make-up and glamor are not even skin deep (!)
  
• that in London, you can get away with pretty wacky personal styling without looking like a freak!