Well, there was plenty of inspiration to be taken from last week's theme of olives, however the time to transfer these inspirational thoughts into tangible creations has been somewhat lacking over the last few days! Nevertheless, I made some time to sketch a few things which will later be cut into screenprint stencils.

A lot of people who stop by the stall ask me about the methods I use to create the images that end up on the clothing. I prefer to make some basic quick sketches, then cut the images into acetate using a scalpel to get a more ragged or raw image, and one that can take a fair bit of rough handling! The other thing I love about this method is that you never quite know what you're going to end up with, as the scalpel often has a mind of it's own!

Anyway, our plans for the next couple of weeks have just been wildly altered by pure chance, and as luck would have it we're scooting off for a holiday in QLD before the little man turns two. Beach, here I come! So with these summery thoughts in mind, I'm going out to my mother-in-law's wonderful garden to take some pictures for this week's inspiration piece.

I love a good yarn...

As part of this new blogging experiment, I'm hoping to start each week with a little posting about another craftsperson in my local area whose work I admire, and use this as inspiration for any designing that occurs in that week. (Ambitious, as some days I really am a walking sweatshop, but it's ok to dream, isn't it?) So with this lofty plan in mind, I'd like to introduce Knitabulous, whom I found by searching for other local Etsyans :) (thanks to whoever introduced me to that term - I feel as though I'm part of some sort of Star Trek club now).

Anyway, the picture above is of "Extra Virgin" Australian Merino sock yarn, so, you guessed it, I'm thinking olives must be this week's theme. But those tones have also got me thinking about some of the reflective colours seen around the local rockpools late afternoon. See my links on the side to go to the Knitabulous Etsy page for more of this yarn in various gorgeous tones.

P.S. For those of you who have not been told their knitting is "painful to watch", you might be very interested in the Knitabulous Sock and Shawl Club - subscriptions are open now...