You know you are addicted when…

How do you know that yes, you really are addicted to fabric?

Easy! When watching the first episode of The Mentalist on TV, you suddenly exclaim, in a very excited voice: “Oh my god! It’s Liberty fabric! I’m sure she’s wearing a Liberty blouse!!”. If there are people in the room who are not very close to you and used to your weird interests and habits, I think your reputation might suffer a little… ^^; Luckily for me I was alone with my husband.

I googled it a little after, to find that I’m not the only one who noticed. It’s nice to know you’re not alone. ^^ And you, have you ever spotted that a particular fabric was used in a movie?

I’m sorry that I’m not blogging more lately. I’m very actively looking for a job and that takes most of my time and energy. Plus my husband started his new job last week, and we need a little time to adjust to the new schedule. But I’m still here!

Nice jewelry

Today I want to share a lovely blog with you: Pic & Plume. I discovered it through Violette, and I instantly fell in love with the aesthetics and the beautiful jewelry she creates. Her creations are very delicate and kind of dreamy. I especially love her pocket watches.

She’s opening her online shop today (9p.m. Paris time) and is offering one lucky person the chance to win one of her items in exchange of a little advertisement. You can find the details on her blog. I’m gladly joining in, because I think her creations deserve to be talked about. So go check her blog now! ^_^

Is it really 2010 already?

I just realized I forgot something very important. It’s a shame I haven’t told you yet:

HAPPY NEW YEAR !!

I wish everyone who comes here an excellent year! I hope it will be filled with joy and happy memories. And since we’re talking about crafts here, that it will be filled with new projects and new experiments.

This new year started for us with many challenges. We left Japan at the end of last year, to come back to France. This is the reason why I haven’t written anything here for such a long time. After the Dollshow (which went quite well, I’m really happy I did this event, you can read a report on Songes de poupées here) we had to prepare everything for the move, and only had a few weeks to do so. You can guess the frantic mess it was at home. We said goodbye to Japan (quite heartbreaking) and arrived in France in December. I had no Internet connection until now, which is why this blog was sadly left behind… But I’m now back, with my own Internet connection! ^_^ And appart from all the personal challenges (finding a new job, a new home, a new life) I have lots of craft projects in mind for this new year. Among them: learn how to knit and crochet for real. Now that I’m back in France I can ask for the help of my mother and my cousin, and I intend to fully take advantage of this! Hope to share all of this with you during the year. ^_^

Projects

今、ドールショウのためのパターンを作っています。こちらはmomokoのショートパンツのサンプルです↓

ドールショウのために、しなければならない多くの仕事があります。がんばります!

On November 1st I’ll be taking part to what is possibly the biggest doll event in Tokyo. I’ll be there as a seller. At first I reserved a booth to sell for other people, some foreigners that I know from the dolly world who would like to sell there but couldn’t come themselves. And then I thought that since I would be there anyway, I could try to sell for myself also! It was kind of a “now or never” moment, and I didn’t want to have regrets…

For the moment it’s rather scary and stressful, since I’m behing on my schedule. I have no idea if I’m going to make it on time or not, and what I’ll have to sell on the booth. And I’m not talking about whether it will sell or not! Especially since the other brands I will sell are very well known and high quality. :s As a consequence I don’t sleep much currently, and that’s partly why I didn’t post so much. I’m posting more often now, but I’m not sure how long it will last… ^^; Please bear with me until November 2nd. The picture above is one of the patterns I’m working on: short pants.

Spotted: Kawaii felt no komonotachi

In the early stages of this blog, I was talking about felt stuffies and how you can make really cute things with felt (and sometimes useful stuff too!). This book is a perfect example of adorable felt stuff. They have actually quite a number of books here about felt or felted wool stuffies, but I don’t find so many that really appeal to me. But things in this one are sooooo cute! There is a reason why there is the word “kawaii” (= cute) in the title. I almost brought it home with me the moment I looked inside. I didn’t because of you-have-to-be-reasonable reasons, but I’m still considering it.

The cover is a good indication of the styles of the items. No realistic animals, but cute big eyed ones. It’s been quite a long time since it was released (sorry I’m late!) so I do not remember everything, but I think there were many animals and also some cute little characters (fairytale inspired?). There were also some pouches and small bags. You can see one of the fringe bags on the cover. I don’t personnaly like the fringe, but it can be an inspiration for other bags. Also some flowers that you can see on the cover. I just went to check the Amazon page, and you can see a few pictures of the inside of the book there.

I thing this book can be really useful if you like to work with felt to create cute non-realistic things. It can serve as pattern but also as inspiration. The patterns are given of course. If my memory doesn’t trick me I think some of them have to be enlarged but most are the right size. ISBN n°978-4418092192.

Drawings

Today I got myself a treat: a very small notebook, with no lines on the pages (which I don’t find that often here), that I can carry with me everywhere and draw on. I used to draw a lot when I was younger. Today it’s mainly clothes designs. I want to draw more, I wasn’t that good but I was better that nowadays. Here are the two pages I did tonight.

(for the Flickr group, it’s a nice idea!)

(the place where I was eating)

There is really room for improvement (I didn’t have the courage to draw myself in the clothes because I knew it would look bad, and some of the distances in the room are really bad), but it’s a beginning! Let’s hope I keep on drawing, if possible at least once a day.