boneandlace

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A little work-in-progress for your Wednesday - some of that promised mushroom spam! Making myself take photos and post them now to stop myself from keeping on fiddling with them, at least till they've actually dried enough to do the pore/tooth details under the caps 😂 Done for a prompt of "Autumn Postcards," I particularly enjoyed the exercise of remembering the important ID markers for these adorable (and taaaasty) funghi while still trying to capture their (less useful for safe eating ID) charisma and silhouettes. Please never forage anything you're not 100% sure on! Speaking of autumn/fall and orange coloured things, remember that September 30th is the first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation in Canada, to reflect on the ("historic") trauma and genocide of the Indigenous people there, particularly prompted by the mass graves found in the last year at Residential Schools that were open into the 1990s, and many people will be marking it by wearing an orange shirt. But also please remember this genocide is actually ongoing, not historical, and not restricted to Canada - the US law that lead to the closure of their equivalent "schools" and the current (relatively) protected state of American Indian children is currently being challenged in Texas courts by the lawyers that brought you big oil, and Indigenous folk in Australia are facing multiple ongoing issues, including inhumane bail (and gaol) conditions and legislation controlling Indigenous kids, particularly in the NT, where the seasons are many but don't include anything resembling a northern hemisphere autumn. (Continued in comments, along with image descriptions) https://www.instagram.com/p/CUawf6MgRtU/?utm_medium=tumblr

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That deep, ancestral September memory. Doesn’t matter how far you go, it’ll never leave you. I’ve been drawing again folks! I’ve struggled to put pen to paper for the last two years, so I’ve not had much to share on here apart from the more practical of my arts, but recently I’ve participated in a few workshops/adventures that have got the fingers tingling again. Fingers crossed it sticks around for Inktober, but for now at least I’ve got a few new doodles saved up to share over the next few weeks, as well as some new things I’m hoping to get up on Redbubble and Kofi in time for any gift-giving Solstice holidays you like to observe. Today it was the prompt of cartoon strips that got me going. The first is a little Throwback Thursday to that time I lived in a country where we had multiple varieties of murder chicken! Any other Australians living/stuck overseas still occassionally wake up from PTSD-fuelled nightmares this month to remember that you’re actually safe and sound at least one continent away from the magpie of your childhood? It’s also one of the reasons I’m so fond of the European “safety” magpie. Yon northerners can call them Devil Birds all you like, I still think they’re beautiful and charming (and definitively FAR safer than any actual devil). The second is... a bit more niche. Still on vaguely related tangent though - brains slowly getting used to being in a new/different place, and living a long way from “home.” I learnt a new Gaelic word today, cìobair, for shephard. It’s quite an easy one to pronounce, as it has a very near homophone in English... which immediately summoned an entire scene in my head. What if Hogwarts really WAS in Scotland? There would be Scottish wizards. But, is the requisite precise pronunciation to nail a spell affected by accents, like voice activated technology? What if - just as a tiny wee thought experiment - MacGonagall, say, brusquely summoned a keeper to the Quidditch field when they slept in on match day but, uh, got the wrong one? I’ll see myself out. (A couple of extra notes, and image descriptions, in comments) https://www.instagram.com/p/CT4rOCLjxkC/?utm_medium=tumblr

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#Stitching for Day 25 of #SecretlyHistoryBound hosted by @designed_by_desiree - another look back at some of the stitches in my wedding veil/scarf/shawl. In particular, the motifs and stitch patterns I drew from traditional Shetland lace patterns. These include Alice Maud's pattern which appeared in the earliest knitting patterns collections of the 1840s fancy knitting boom, apparently named for a daughter of Queen Victoria, and Mrs Montague's pattern, a descendant of a diamond/lozenge pattern known from extant silk stockings belonging to the first Queen Elizabeth of England and attributed to a Mrs Montague. But there are also many others that have been directly inspired and shaped by the landscape and environment of the Shetland Islands, learnt by memory and passed on orally, with as many local variations and names as there are tides in the voes (harbours/inlets). One such is the razor shell pattern, named for a local clam species that grows all around the Scottish coast. The shellfish is also known as a spoot in Scots Leid or muirsgean in Gaelic. Even how the crafter identifies themself varies - most in Shetland would say they were makkin or maakin, or maybe feenashin if they worked in the adjacent cottage industry of putting together machine knit components and adding finishing touches, blocking etc. A knitter (or even weaver) in the highlands or Western Isles might instead think of their craft or practice by the Gaelic word fuaigheal. I'm really curious if you're a Scots speaker from another area and have a different dialect word for these crafts - there's often not a lot of good historical written record for many "domestic" or material practices and a lot has been overwritten by the English terms, so I'd love to hear any others you might have picked up through family or older local speakers! https://www.instagram.com/p/COWWcmLni32/?igshid=47uc91kldez3

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#Holes for Day 22 and #Friends for Day 23 of #SecretlyHistoryBound hosted by @designed_by_desiree - getting close to the end, I just need to try not to fall off the bandwagon for another few days (once I catch up the last couple). For holes, the visible mending embroidery I did to repair a coat cuff, which became a little wearable friend, and I've posted about before. Specifically for friend, I also present Smaug - my first knitting creation, a cuddly and sleepy dragon stole/scarf. He's more fantasybounding than historybounding (is that even a thing? Does it already have a name?), although he is modelled after the fox fur stoles that were the height of glamorous taste 100+ years ago. I got waylaid a while back in the middle of trying to write a pattern for dragon siblings for Smaug, because half of what I was doing was made up noodle origami so finding appropriate shorthand to describe what I was doing proved a challenge. It did mean I quickly became "mother of dragons" with multiple dragon heads being simultaneously knit, one to figure out what I was doing and write it down, the second to proofread (proofknit?) it, and subsequently covering all the surfaces in my house with dragons. I would still like to finish the pattern writing process one day, especially if there's interest in buying it? I can honestly never tell whether anybody else will be interested in something or if it's just me 😂 For friend I've also also included a military style almost-spencer jacket, which I got for $5 in a fleamarket a few years back and used to wear for gigs with my duo Red Grenadier (we did a lot of folksongs about running off to war/sea/associated problems, so it was a perfect fit). With my bandmate, my bestie, we played all sorts of places down the east coast of Australia, in the UK and Ireland, and even in Italy, but now we're stuck all the world apart for the foreseeable future and I miss xer - and singing with xer - terribly. Our voices did that thing which is hard to describe but just feels *right.* I haven't really had the confidence to wear this bold of a jacket when not on stage/by Elly's side, but I want to start trying to wear it for casual historybounding more. https://www.instagram.com/p/COEU-kiHdhL/?igshid=1g2pvkjckfyp9

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Day 18 of #SecretlyHistoryBound hosted by @designed_by_desiree - #Details. I knitted a silk yolk to wear for my wedding, and I'm particularly proud of this detail of a rose that I managed to weave into the front. It sort of also goes for Day 5, #StepbyStep - it's both complete and a work in progress, as I'm making it in stages. I knew when I started the dress I had limited time, but I still wanted a dress that met some specific requirements that I hadn't found in a dress before. So, I designed it in such a way that however much I got done would be wearable for our vows, and then I could pick it up and continue knitting afterwards until I had a finished dress I could rewear for years to come. I took inspiration from the traditional knitted yokes of Scandinavian and some Fair Isle jumpers, and from lace yokes and collars common in turn of the century fashions, and worked in a top-down yoke style, but with textural and lace elements rather than colourwork. The eventual plan is to make the entire dress after a similar fashion. While it may seem strange to continue after the fact, due to lockdown the wedding was a very small affair and we're planning on having a proper party in a few years time once it's safe to travel and gather in large groups again (and so we can celebrate with my own family in Australia), which means there's going to be at least two more wedding parties to wear it at! Besides of course the intentional design to make it wearable day-to-day - who has time for single purpose garments anyway? Image descriptions: First image, a closeup detail of a wide scooped collar of a dress, knitted in fine cream-coloured shiny thread on tiny size 14 needles and pinned to a simple slip of the same colour underneath. There is a rose bloom knitted in the same colour into the centre front and a lace edge to the collar, and it is lying on a mid blue background. Second image, the same collar but still on the needles before blocking, on a dark blue background. The knitting is curled up like romaine or kale lettuce. Third image, the whole collar is shown laid out for blocking on a dark towel, and is very smooth and shiny instead of crinkled like the previous image. https://www.instagram.com/p/CN0bYZ1nsg6/?igshid=2l1u2wwmc7y9

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A different kind of historybounding for Day 16 #Lockdownlife of #SecretlyHistoryBound hosted by @designed_by_desiree - while I'm very much in the Vintage Style, Not Vintage Values camp, I also reckon (just like the clothes), we're 100% allowed to pick and choose the good/useful bits of historical values/mentalities to keep using. There's a reason all of us are here, and that's because our ancestors were clever enough to not die. Set aside the "cleverness" that was at the expense of others, and some of the other stuff is actually pretty neat. It's also possibly the most secret historybounding you will ever do, as no one can ever know unless they come inside your house or you tell them the motivations that are otherwise sealed in your skull. For me, the biggest one is a waste not, want not mentality and reusing found/discarded objects rather than buying new things, especially to grow/make a subsistence with (partially it makes me feel better about my impact on the world, and also it makes me less stressed about the fact that I couldn't afford houseplants or as many fresh vegetables as I'd like otherwise). I spent a lot of last spring, in lockdown and at a loss/empty of any creative juice, planting veggie scraps and seeds I'd kept from meal prep in random containers just to see what would grow. It reminds me of places in Australia where all the furniture, sometimes even entire walls were built from old kerosene tins and the boxes they came in, taken apart and put back together again, and curtains, sheets and dresses made from sugar and flour bags. Today I sat in the sun replanting seeds from what worked last year (+ a few new gambles), topped up the dirt with compost (again, made from scraps in a preposterously tiny setup) and shredded cardboard (my way of using food-contaminated cardboard from takeaways etc. that can't go in the recycling). Beans and peas are in, some potentially overly optimistic cucumbers and eggplant (this is Scotland, but hey, last year's tomatoes lived on until January!), and a couple of late broccoli (again, they're normally a winter crop, but we're in Scotland so... it's basically everyone else's winter?). Potatoes going in tomorrow. https://www.instagram.com/p/CNvAOkJnw8g/?igshid=m108wqq9i6za

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For #SecretlyHistoryBound hosted by @designed_by_desiree - Day 11 #Love and Day 13 #Favourite rolled into one. This is one of my favourite things I've ever knitted - a combination of wedding shawl, infinity scarf, veil and lasso (love a good multipurpose garment!), using cobweb and lace yarn from two places close to my heart (the white from Jamieson & Smith in Shetland and the handyed rainbow from Touch Yarns in New Zealand), combining my favourite knitting techniques (colourwork, laceknitting and winging it), in a labour of love for my lockdown wedding (!) last year, a celebration of my relationship with the love of my life and of the other people I love who couldn't be there, who I thought about a lot when choosing the design elements and knitting it. I haven't posted about that here as I don't normally put my face up on this page (it's supposed to be about my handiwork after all), but I might put a picture of us wearing it in my stories later on if you'd like to see how this multifaceted garment worked. The designs are mostly traditional Shetland lace patterns (including some recorded as far back as the 16th century!), along with some traditional Estonian lace motifs, birds inspired by ravens in Migration Era and Viking Era metalwork, and fitted together as the whim took me with freestyled lace patterns to link all the parts together. What I did with the loose ends of coloured yarn was inspired by the use of thread behind the work in shadow embroidery/blackwork, except worked at the same time as the base fabric. The general design aesthetic/balance of line and space was heavily influenced by the years I spent working as a henna artist, drawing lacelike lines onto skin to celebrate similarly important occasions. I even accidentally included the Rebel Alliance badge when attempting to freestyle some flowers 😂 (last image). I loved making it, and I love wearing it (perfect for feeling dressed up for walks on the crisp sunny winter days after our wedding in the autumn). It was very meditative and contemplative to make, and I still find it comforting to look at the different parts of the patterns and think about what and who they represent to me. https://www.instagram.com/p/CNplrscnbOx/?igshid=hdyp25f7083z

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True to form... here I am rocking up just in time to #Procrastinate for Day 12 of #SecretlyHistoryBound hosted by @designed_by_desiree with my favourite form of procrastination (procraftination?) - knitting sample swatches blind out of old recipe collections. Thereby Beginning just a Hair late, skipping All That Glitters to cut straight to the Fabric that I've made myself, laid out here Step by Step. Maybe this is a bit of a Cheat to catch up, but I was feeling too Vulnerable to share earlier in the month. At any rate I've dug these out (they've taken Over everything in this flat, I always Under-estimate how many I've made 😅) and pulled them into Shape to finally share with you. I hope you Love them as much as I do (though I have something special to post for that rolled in with Favourite for tomorrow). I've spent a lot of the last year knitting from old pattern collections - they're often text only, with no descriptions or images of what the end result is meant to be, and very limited or no clear instructions for what relative size of needle and yarn/thread to use, so I got it in my head that it would be a great pandemic project to start documenting them, using a few different needle sizes with the same thread and testing different interpretations of the vaguer instructions for proper scientific thoroughness. And now I have a little problem! Just enough time to put something on the needles but feeling indecisive about such a large commitment as actually starting a scarf or a gansey? Start AND finish a wee sample in a couple of hours and learn something in the process! Want to make something lacy but also want to put off deciding on a style/patterning it/washing/cutting the fabric? Better knit some more lace samples just to be doubly sure that you've seen ALL the possible options so you can pick the right trim! (Seriously though, what if just the NEXT one would have been the most perfect lace for the job at hand and you didn't check it?) These are all from Eva M. Niles' 1884 collection "The Ladies' Guide to Elegant Lace Patterns, etc." I have quite a few more other little samples, but I couldn't fit them all close enough to photograph! https://www.instagram.com/p/CNk1_qwnP-g/?igshid=6i8cp1pjm0h7

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Maybe it's the spring weather, maybe it's just that I have a lot of stuff I should be doing, but somehow I'm posting two weeks in a row! At any rate, here's another work-in-progress Wednesday for you all. First an update on last week's WIP - it's no longer a WIP! The cuffs (complete with moth) are on and I finally have coat sleeves that cover my wrists. Exciting and warm, just in time for spring but this is Scotland so no harm done... I'll probably be wearing this coat for a good few months longer yet ❄ Secondly, the coat that some of you might have seen as part of the Foundations Revealed competition. But wait, wasn't that done two months ago? Well, yes, but to finish to the deadline I had to prioritise what I could get done, which meant leaving off a few key details that I really wanted but weren't essential. Just because the competition deadline has passed doesn't mean that I have to accept the compromise finishes as the final product though, and I really love how this coat turned out so far, so I'm going to keep improving on it in my own time (and now that I've had a couple of months' break and can face taking it apart again!). First thing is adding some false pocket flaps. There's already ginormous secret functional pockets hidden in the tails, but I love the shape of the false hip pocket flaps that lingered to circa 1795... so I'm adding them! I'm still undecided as to whether I should add decorative embroidered button holes to the pocket flaps as well; they're a bit earlier in style but they're so pretty. I whipped on a little extra fabric on behind while hemming them in case I do go for the buttonholes. Anyone have any thoughts on this? Care to help me with my indecision? Next addition will be some nice sturdy fabric covered buttons and buttonholes to the front and to hold the purple tails together, and decorative buttons to the small of the back and the sleeve cuffs. I've been saving my apocalyptic pennies for some time now so I'd have enough to use as button moulds, then flattening them to shape with pliers after a wash to remove lingering beer smells. I'll let you know how they turn out! https://www.instagram.com/p/CMhuyWEHY_w/?igshid=1db4x7orfsmi2

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I'd almost forgotten this was happening today, but what a serendipity! I got the cuff with my little moth friend sewn onto my regular coat in time for a walk today (still need to put the other one on 😅), and then I got this delightful picture of a moth to display here for participating in the 2021 Foundations Revealed Costuming Competition! The theme was Once Upon A Time, and my very beginner's entry was a riding coat inspired by the shapeshifting Devil as manifested in the story of The Little Black Fox. Good thing I had the upcycled moth project handy, as I still need to get organised and post some photos of my actual entry! In the meantime you can go see all the entries, including mine, on the @foundationsrevealed site (link through their bio), and admire the spectacular amount of creativity, love of books and sheer hard work that's gone into all those beautiful garments! Why haven't I got the link up in my bio? Well, it just so happens that I now have a Ko-fi account, and that link is up there as of today! So if you feel like supporting me to create more stuff (or simply help keep a roof over my head), you can leave a tip/donation in increments of £3. 💜 https://www.instagram.com/p/CMS6NmjHdBU/?igshid=sz5k1tt7t8s4

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Long time, no see, but here’s some stuff I’ve been doing while I’ve been gone... Hit me up if you’re interested in originals or commissions (you can’t have the tea cup though!). Prints and products are still available from Redbubble (http://www.redbubble.com/people/boneandlace) and Society6 (https://society6.com/boneandlace). Big love for supporting the arts!

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And this is how it ended up. Pretty happy with it!

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I’ve also been dabbling in watercolours over the holidays. Will definitely be doing more of that!

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Oh wow, it’s been a while since I’ve been in the blr’bs! Here’s a thing I did while I was away in the real world - a Torresian crow (Corvus orru) with full feather detail. It’s been a while since I’ve worked at such high sustained detail, and I’m pretty proud of ‘im, aah, ‘er ;)

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So I’m sure you’re all aware that the shopping season is in full swing... well, I’ve been spending a bunch of time getting some of my art polished up and uploaded just so you lovely folks can check it out in time for the holidays!

Better yet, for today only, you can use the promo code CYBERMON at Redbubble checkout for 35% off tees and 20% off everything else, or get 20% off and free shipping at Society6 just because they’re feeling generous.

You’ll find stuff that’s classy enough to give to your mother, but still cool enough that you’ll want to hang onto it, and still find something to suit your nerdiest friend! Big love for putting your money where your mouth is and supporting the arts. - Bone & Lace

P.S. Both websites only make products on demand after you’ve ordered something, so if you’re worried about all the excess crap that gets made and then thrown out as part of the Christmas mayhem, here’s one way to combat it!

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Inktober Day 31: Friends.

Black pigment ink fineliner on smooth 120gsm paper.

For my dear friend.

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Need something for the invertebrate zoologist in your life? Get them this! You can buy this and more of my art right here.

Go ahead and support an artist for Christmas... you know you want to...