tres exotique

I said ages ago I was going to blog about the crafty things I bought on my Big Europe (and Africa) Trip a year and a half ago. There wasn't a whole lot of stuff, because at the time I didn't knit quite to obsessively as now, and I didn't sew at all.

Nonetheless, in the Liberty after Christmas sales I knew I was onto something when I saw women carrying STACKS of pre-cut pieces of Liberty print fabrics. I just about died at the price (even at half price, the cost of a pre-cut metre seemed abhorrent). Couldn't understand why women were walking out with twelve, fourteen pieces. I contented myself with a single piece of the Ianthe print. It's a pretty iconic art nouveau Liberty print - they also emboss it on journal covers and photo albums, and recently I saw a girl in Perth wearing the most amazing sundress with the Ianthe print blown up so a single repeat took up the whole length of the skirt. Recently when I unfolded and measured the piece I discovered it's actually about a metre and a half long. Generous metre.

The spools are Moroccan silk, for embroidering special-occasion djellabah (kaftans). I was suspicious as to whether they were actually silk, but the fact that a burn test didn't smell bad, and that they are wrapped around spools of bamboo (indicating they've likely come from China) would seem to point to real silk. Thing is, they were 80c a spool, Australian. So, 60c American? (Probably four or five times that if you aren't accompanied by a guide who genuinely seemed to have some kind of mafia connections - only time ever that we paid local prices). They're unplied, and made up of so many fine filaments I honestly can't work out how you'd embroider with them. And they're sold in every single colour. I was told the metreage to a double-spool, but I can't remember it. Something very long, anyway.


Don't mind my washed-out face a bit. That's just the flash. Look at the store/ stall! Makes Gutterman thread look a bit limited, doesn't it? And there were three more just like it nearby.

If anyone has great ideas on what to make with my fabric and/ or my thread, do speak up.

i have a nakey cushion on my couch/ rambling about pottery

isn't it hilarious? it looks like a paint-by-number with an area left out. however, 'hilarious' is not really the look i'm going for overall. i've been pondering cushion covers for a bit, knit and sewn. i remembered liking some mitred square rugs i'd seen floating about, but a google search threw up an old favourite i'd forgotton about.


excuse the tragic photo quality - blame Interweave, not me. for that's where the pattern's from.
a block of three squares by three squares would fit my cushion insert perfectly, plus use up some of this.


that's all my DK and aran oddballs and stash, with the exception of a single skein of black. i think i may have a colour theme going, huh? take especial note of the two rather garish handdyes, that i made myself.
also take especial note of that you can see of my couscous bowl. i bought that bowl in morocco, and because of its fragile nature i carried on my lap in a bus across the desert for ten days, then took it as hand luggage on two international flights. if my house were burning down, the couscous bowl would be one of the first things i grabbed. i love it to pieces. it cost what felt like alot to my student self (some $70 Australian... about 420 dirham, I guess), but i haven't seen such vibrant, detailed, accurate handpainting on porcelain since, for any price. and the place i bought it from had piles of these bowls, from the ground to knee height, maybe ten or twenty piles, and i never found two with the same design. honestly.
i think maryam could make a bomb exporting the higher quality pottery pieces to fancy homewares store.

oh look, indulge me. here's a picture of the factory (factory? crafthouse? i'm not sure what to call it) where my bowl came from.


these are the unfired pieces. I think the purple goes blue when fired. I can't remember what colour black goes. maybe it stays black. the yellow stays yellow.