We arrived early on a Saturday, my main cohorts, Hayden (our neighbour, friend and road trip partner #1 on the right), Jean (the love of my life and journey-mate for the very present present) and I.

The “boys” and their cameras.

I always take spare hoops because invariably someone else wants to play too.  Spontaneous, informal lessons follow.  And Jean practices poi.

Aren’t the colours so pretty?

Our friend, Brent, was amongst the hooping converts.  Haha, you must watch the short clip of his first attempts.    Priceless!

Music:  Die Antwoord, “Beat Boy”.

Jean does his “Ok, I’ll pose with my girlfriend and look sweet and loving thing.”  He did try. 

Isn’t our world wonderful?

The technology of toys… awesome!

Even though I’ve exercised unusual restraint in choosing which to share with you, still this post is a glut of skies ~ as viewed from our front door.  None of these photos has been manipulated in any way.  Enjoy! 

Blaze.

Panorama ~

~ pink-streaked  Spring sky.

Clouds of gold, of gods ~ a biblical sky.

Gold & silver linings.

Blue sky enough to make a sailor a pair of pants.

V for me.

Swoosh!

Red sky at night, our delight.

Summer sun sets southerly.

God-rays, different days.

A soft, cuddly, teased cotton wool sunset.

Cold, curly clouds.

More gold.

Pick a colour, any colour.

Shades of grey.

Blur of blue.

Cloud creatures.
Watch out, small cloud!  Big cloud monster coming in from the left!

Run, run, small cloud!  Nom, nom!

Crouching cloud.  Or hand-held mushroom cloud.  Or something like that.

Rearing cloud.

Really, it’s hard to know when to stop, haha…  Some more from the back door ~

Cloud birds.

Horned cloud.

There is just so much sky ~ which is lucky for me since sky is one of my favourite things. 
Totally not random:

In the meantime, my perfect post must be this:  music-movement treasure!

The best thing (one of) about good friends is the way in which they enrich your life with their experience and perspective in their particular ways.  I arrived home on Friday from work to find our DJ friend, Paul Chaves (Chavez) visiting.  We haven’t seen him for weeks and he came with music and music videos and videos and nachos snacks.  Yay!  So I have to share my joy:  music and prettiness for you to enjoy too.

First, a Fat By Slim track ~  I love that his feel-good, happy personality translates to happy, good-to-listen-and-move-to tunes ~ PLUS PLUS it’s a hooping video ~ awesome!

Fatboy Slim – That Old Pair of Jeans

And I love, love, love this track and video – the rhythms, colours, concept, dancing, humour ~ extra awesome!

Basement Jaxx – Take Me Back To Your House

And for pure fun, bassy beats and big smiles…

Mr Oizo – Flat Beat

Amongst some others, these have have been on a repeat playlist since.  Hope you enjoy too.    XXX

Here it is:  the puffiest, most well-padded djembe drum bag ever!  It is custom-made to fit Andrea’s drum with shaped panels.  I used waterproof backpack fabric for the outside (in olive green since she wanted an earthy colour).  The interior lining is a soft but strong, smooth shower-proof fabric.  The padding is double-layered:  thick batting on the outside and carpeting on the inside.  If this were not enough I decided to make an extra, loose cushion to fit between the lid and the skin for extra protection with X-ray sheet between the two layers of padding which should help deflect pointed objects.  I appliqued the shape of Africa on the cushion in an embroidered suede fabric with satin stitch – just because, for decoration and because, of course, I love Africa.  The bag has a pocket for wallet, cellphone, etc on the front, because Andrea asked and because I can.

I wanted to be very sure that the bag be strong because the drum is quite heavy and so went to some trouble to reinforce any load-bearing areas.  The backpack straps are inserted into a seam between two parts of the back panel and double stitched by machine and then again by hand with nylon thread.  At this stage I broke 3 machine needles in about the same number of minutes due to the thickness.  The black tape over the seam is cosmetic only.  Then I hand stitched the handles again through the thickness of all the layers after  joining the outside layers to the inside.

The webbing parts of the backpack straps are attached to the double-padded parts through all the layers, machine-stitched with nylon thread and, at the bottom, are inserted into the side panel seams via a triangular shaped reinforcing.  These straps are adjustable.  I added an adjustable chest strap to stabilise the bag.  This strap has a buckle clip to close it and elastic sewn in for tautness.

To make it easier to lift when not carrying the bag on one’s back and to reduce strain on the backpack straps I added a handle on each side.  I used a piece of 15mm polycop pipe for each handle, covered in carpet and backpack fabric for comfort.  The nylon webbing goes through the pipe and is attached through the thickness of all the layers with nylon thread.

The lid closes with a nylon zip with double zip runners and is attached to the bag with nylon webbing at the back.  To protect the drum skin from the zip I added a padded lip to the lid.

It was an at-times difficult project that involved some brain-puzzlement and occasional swearing but well worth the challenge to my maker skills.  I’m ecstatic with the results!    Isn’t is awesome?

In my experience it’s like this:  Spring shows in bursts of Jasmine blossoms in my garden in particular and generous green growth in general.  As Summer warms our Southern hemisphere of the Earth, I watch and wait for the progression of flowering of various plant genera in my garden and throughout our town:  patches and drifts of time-based colour, starting with the startling orange-reds of our indigenous Coral trees (Erythrina).  Autumn is time for indigenous plants like blue Barleria (bush violets) and fiery orange Tecoma Capensis (Cape honeysuckle) in the veld (I love!); and in the forests,  Plectranthus,  beneath green trees, big bushes bearing feathery blue-purple flowering spikes; and the ground-cover species, closer to the earth, more of the same, smaller, in white.  Winter is the time for tall seeding veld grasses turning ever creamer, paler and fuzzier, blurring and softening the edges – oh, so soft and pretty.

Behind our house and outside our bathroon window is a narrow dirt alley garden with an impressive Delicious Monster in the corner.  Each Summer I watch as small seedlings from the previous year’s spectacle of Morning Glory (Convolvulaceae) shoot up and wind and climb and twine up the wall, entangling themselves in a gloriously profuse mess of furry tendrils, heart-shaped leaves and the most incredible display of blues and purples amongst the lush, jungle greens.

Isn’t the colour range within one blossom astoundingly beautiful?

And now I think I might need to find some long sleeves, and maybe even re-visit my sock drawer, oh and maybe another beer (seasonally non-specific ).

fun with hyperloops!

It was a very special little girl’s birthday yesterday – daughter of our long-time friend and neighbour, Hayden.  Emily turned 6 and this is the gift I made for her.

It started with me thinking that Emily needs an activity pack of some sort.  Her father is absolutely wonderful and makes more effort than any dad I know to make their time together special:  outings, beach, zoo, etc.  But I was thinking of something hands-on to keep her busy during the quiet inbetween times.

So I thought:  she needs a clipboard (so that she can draw anywhere, at home, in the car, etc.), things with which to make marks (pencils, pens), cutting things (pair of scissors), things to cut (coloured & patterned papers), sticking things (clear tape, glue stick), stickers, a sketchbook, colouring-in pages and something to contain all these things.  (Of course she already has some of these things as well as stencils, crayons and so on.)  Then I thought, wouldn’t it be cool if this whole pack was a contained unit.

And so I put aside a sewing job (a custom djembe drum bag) and I began pulling out some materials.   I found a plastic covered clipboard that had lost it’s clip, some dolphin-print fabric my mom had sent in a bag of fabric scraps, clear plastic leftover from the Stuffed With Love plushies, turquoise shower-proof fabric from my box of practice poi-making materials, some blue zips in my zip box, velcro and webbing, both of which I always seem to have, and red polar fleece which I’ve been using to create flaming scarves.  And so I could start.

I didn’t have a very clear idea in the beginning but I knew it would be some sort of folder with a hard back cover for pressing on and zipped pockets like pencil bags stitched into the facing page.  I measured up the dolphin fabric according to the folder (folded around one side with seam allowances top, bottom and the other side):  2 pieces (front and back).  Then I started with the pockets (what would become page 3).  The short zips got fabric sewn onto each end to bring them to the same width as the folder.  Using fabric strips I bound the long edges of the short and long zips  (you could use bias binding).   I then top-stitched the zips in turn to pieces of folder-width clear fabric.  As I hadn’t planned in advance and was making it all up on the fly, after the third zip I realised there was only place for 3 pockets.  I realised I could not attach these to the inside of the front cover because I still needed to make a place for papers and besides I had another long zip over and obviously 3 pockets were too few.  So I decided on including another page within the folder (page 2/3).  I’d keep the drawing things facing the drawing surface.  On the back of this page, with shower-proof fabric backing for ease of sliding, I sewed a clear plastic pocket for papers, a sketchbook etc.  I used an X-ray sheet cut to size and inserted between the fabric layers for just the right amount of stiffness for the page.

Now I needed a place for pens and stickers.  These pockets I sewed on the back of the front cover, positioning the pens in the middle so they wouldn’t take up the same thickness-space as the pencils on the following page so making the folder too bulky.  Below was space for a sticker pouch.  I cut the sticker packs up into smaller units to fit in.  Luckily the space was perfect.  This left a space at the top of the page and I found one more small blue zip.  Instead of clear plastic I decided to sew a small fabric pocket for “secret” stuff.  I have no idea what kind of “secret” stuff but every little girl needs a tiny bit of mystery and privacy and a place to put little bits and pieces.  This page (front cover on the other side) is padded with a soft carpeting which I am using as one of the layers of padding in the djembe drum bag.  This gives it structure while at the same time being puffy.

Now since this book/folder/activity pack is specifically and especially Emily’s, of course she needs her name on the front, don’t you agree?  I admit I was not keen to applique individual letters so I found a legible font and adjusted the kerning between each pair of letters until they touched.  I then flipped the word image horizontally (so I could mark it on the back of the polar fleece), printed it, handed it to Jean to cut out then pinned it to the polar fleece (back), marking around the edges with a permanent marker (be prepared for black fingers if you try this at home), cut the joined-together letters out and stitched them down with red cotton.  Then I stitched between the letters with dark blue cotton, about 4 or 5 times back and forth.  This divided them into individual, legible letters.  Clever, hey?

Now I could start putting it all together.  First I had to sew the velcro tab to close the folder.  I made a rectangular strip, padded with batting for puffiness and tactile satisfaction when closing and opening the folder and attached the soft side of the velcro.  This is important as (assuming a right-handed child) this strip will be to the right of the drawing surface when the folder is open.  The scratchy strip is attached to the front cover.  I stitched the outside edges of the back cover (right sides facing) and inserted the clipboard, stitched the outside edges of the middle page (right sides facing) and inserted the X-ray sheet, and stitched the outside edges of the front cover (right sides facing) and inserted the carpet-padding.  Then I turned the inside (spine) edges of the of each page in and top-stitched down.  After breaking 3 machine needles in the space of as many minutes sewing the front page to the middle page (due to the thickness) I resorted to hand stitching them together.  Now I had to stitch the pages to a spine (a strip of nylon webbing).  This I had to do by hand too.  I didn’t have any strong nylon thread so I pulled 3 strands from a piece of soft nylon cord and used that.

Lastly I sourced, adapted and printed some colouring-in pages from the internet:  dolphins (to complement the fabric theme and because Emily loves the sea), groovy girls doing things like surfing, camping, skate-boarding and playing soccer (activities Emily and her dad enjoy together), some African animals, butterflies, her name, the number 6, etc.  I glued one of these pages to the front cover of the sketchbook.  Now the best bit:  putting all the bits into their appropriate pockets and pouches.  Yay!!! all done:  a complete activity pack – oh so pretty and organised, just like Emily! 

( link to Unwrapping pics)