o i just got a rinky dinky shminky pinky package from la belgique father/mother christmas and i is dancing around the xmas tree with glee!

steph! you is the tops - what a lot of brilliant toys to play with and a tin too - i am delicately grateful :) - it is such a fun thing to get a package like this. ok ok enough already

salvaged leather bracelet

this leather was salvaged off a dump, its really beautiful like mahogany and hard like wood too, if you wet it in warm water it will dry harden to any shape you form it around and keep that shape. so this is for a small wrist as i re wet it to make a tighter turn so that it can open to slip over the knuckles as its not fixed by anything but its holding its shape. ottoman coin which had already been hammered around something curved is riveted onto the top fold of the leather.

macrame baskets

now i've seen a few of these on etsy and theres one girl - new tribe textiles in particular who makes killer baskets and does some lovely original stuff with macrame. the only thing is i'm not very fond of the nylon thread, ok its indestructible and the ends can be burnt and there is some lovely colours too, but it don't feel so good on my eye, so i decided to make one from hemp that i waxed afterwards, the wax needs a bit of work...

and i need to finish the string, there is a stone and a wooden bead inside and it is about 5cm long. its also got half an antique indian bead on the bottom

sappho's lost letters

i made something with some old bits of cloth i found and really liked working with it, there is something about the texture of old cloth - the design is somewhat reminiscent of ancient greek jewelry methinks hence the title

well wishing everyone who might come by a happy winter solstice and feast, remember to leave some food for the long months ahead... its bloody freezing here after torrential rain so i promised steph a pic of the flooded plain between us and the sea - bit crappy though, the white bits in the blurred background is them floods

stone therapy

every few days i don't have a good day, its like my brains all over the place, won't focus and gets more desperate as the day evolves, so i either resort to tv [nothing to blog about there, except how good csi las vegas is getting] or to drilling stones with a frenzy, a lot more than in this photo but i like the colour of these

the chickens got in as a metaphor for my state of mind - on these days, but actually they are dead cute silkies, and very chill having a saw dust bath on the last sunny day eons ago

last couple of weeks

ive been very lucky cos i have a friend in belgium who has sent me a wonderful stash of stuff :) steph you are a trooper, and i am super grateful that i have so many new toys to play with. i should do them more justice but i've been having computer to blogger problems of late and its a bit disheartening having a freeze every time you upload a pic.

also been working on a pouch for the protection of people working with their hands:

i want to make a series of these, based on shamanistic pouches, indian medicine bags etc, the hand is an old vintage silver 'tama' a greek equivalent of a milagro, and is placed on icons of appropriate saints for various healing and protecting purposes. the leather is salvaged from an old suitcase i found and stripped of whatever was strippable. and the strap is felted wool, that another friend gave me a lesson on a coupla weeks back, now that was a laugh, thanks gabi

collaborating

Etymology
From Ancient Greek θέμα (théma).

Noun
thema (genitive thematis); n, third declension
1 - theme, topic
2 - the alignment of celestial bodies at a person's birth

the idea of this is a type of collaboration, the pouch is made to hold something that is to be cherished, in the case of this particular pouch the theme is - the child in us - i have not made the contents of the pouch yet, the person interested has to tell me 3 things/thoughts/feelings on the subject and i will make the contents accordingly - these contents will be unknown until they receive the pouch.
*
these bags that i found on etsy through steph are just beautiful

something else from the past

over at my friend gabi's the other day, i found this bag i'd made for her years ago, the design is a greek shepherds bag and i made quite a few of them, was thinking of making some more in the future - i love how this one has aged, although the leather was already vintage to a degree as it was from one of the last operational tanneries on the island - i got them to thin a stock of belt leather they had just before they converted the tannery into a warehouse, was also thinking of making these in a combination felt and leather variety.

its very difficult to photo leather - well ironically digital is just difficult for me and i take crappy photos with it. but i love that sunken bridal stitching if i say so myself. i think i deleted most of the tannery pictures off flickr when i stopped my paid account so heres a couple more

blast from the past

i was going through an old hard drive and came across some old digi shots of the studio when john and i were in full production. its an odd thing seeing that because time creates a distance from the finished pieces but a record of work in progress instantly takes you back - well me at least - in the same way that a notebook does.

one things for sure i'm still identifying with all the paraphernalia i keep collecting, though there are some pieces here i remember fondly.