Monday, March 22, 2010

New stuff, some made, some bought

Every Monday night this term Adam has been taking himself off to pottery classes. Tonight, on the way home from the Discover Mahler concert we stopped off at his teacher's home to pick up his finished pieces.

Pottery mosaic

He has also made us a chesky so that we don't have to hide our esky in the tent when we're at reenactment events.

The chesky

It's a chest that's large enough for our rather large esky to fit inside. Which means it's kind of huge. So it's probably a Good Thing that we also got finally got this:

My new VW Multivan

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I had been planning on calling it The Blimp, Adam was putting in a vote for using The Zepplin instead, but as it turns out I'm leaning more towards calling it The Loungeroom (on wheels).

It even has a table - it's between the two seats there and can slide out and open up to a fairly decent sized top.

Loungeroom on wheels

Let's take a closer look at that back seat shall we? Not even a week old and look at all those paw prints! Clara is completely confused by my sudden insistence that she sit on the floor of the van, not to mention being very put out that she can't see out the windows from down there. I feel mean, but then I think of those great big black claws on the leather upholstery and cringe.

Paw prints

Those paw prints happened on the way to the dog park where Clara has been playing while I weave. I decided to try something a bit more interesting and threaded up a kivrim pattern and gave it a go. I think I ended up with the threading slightly wrong but decided it didn't really matter for the purposes of a test piece, I'll get it right next time hopefully.

First attempt at a kivrim pattern

Tablet weave kivrim pattern

I finished that piece and am now working on a simpler (and really rather boring) pattern which I'll probably use to trim one of the kids' tunics. Then I'm going to focus on getting some lengths done to sell at reenactment events, I need to choose patterns that look interesting but are relatively quick to weave. Hopefully the wool I've ordered from Bendigo Woollen Mills comes in time for me to use - I'm getting pretty fed up with the colours I have at the moment.

12 comments:

Boozy Tooth said...

There's some serious talent going on at Casa Mimbles! My favorite piece is Frog On A Leaf! So whimsical!

My daughter did a bunch of wonderful projects in pottery class. You've inspired me to feature them. Thanks!

suze2000 said...

Dude! There's a turtle tile! :) Nice work Adam.

Good to see you finally got a new car - I hope it's not to heinous to try to park and manoeuvre in traffic. I think you should give up about Clara though (come on, you know it's going to fail) and just put a blanket on those back seats. Or better yet, seat covers. It's likely that if Clara doesn't, the kids will destroy the seats in the long run anyway (I know they are getting older now, but kids are still kids, after all).

I like that weave. I also find it amusing to see your Viking craft photographed in front of a laptop. :)

Nap Mom said...

I like the sea turtle tile. You are all so creative - we don't really have any creative juices in my family.

Nice minivan... with our growing family we will definitely need one soon too.

Penny said...

Nice work! The new pattern looks great. And I'm with the previous commenter - get some seat covers ;) Like the new wheels though, it's going to be great for moving the family and stuff.

Lisa66 said...

I bought a doggy friendly seat cover to go on the back seats of our car - claws and leather certainly don't mix!! It's rubber backed with a heavy fabric on the other side. Easy to clean, easy to put on and off. It's specially designed for dog owners and works a treat!

mimbles said...

@Lisa - That sounds like the ideal solution, I'll have to see if I can track one down. I don't want seat covers on all the time.

@suze - You should see Tom's turtle painting! The car feels huge but it's quite nice to drive and it has very good visibility so parking is easy - provided the spots are big enough! We didn't take it into the city last night - took the little red Corolla instead (which Adam bought from my Dad).

Anonymous said...

Mim, I love The Loungeroom (on wheels) and Adam's pottery is fantastic.

cat said...

Great pottery and love your new car. Good thing I read "The Songlines" because at least I know what an Eski is.

Dina Roberts said...

I love the clay frog!!!

Your post makes me think of my niece. She's eight, and has been obsessed with minivans for the past few years. It's her dream to have one.

We had a regular van when I was growing up. That was fun.

Julie said...

I do like the wooden chest ... but find it a waste just to disguise an esky!

I was on Central Station last Saturday early, and there were bundles of people dressed up going to some sort of reenactment. Or they could have been on the old steam engines heading down to the 'Gong. But they were medieval of some sort ....

mimbles said...

@Julie - The chest will have other purposes when the esky doesn't need to be in it :-) It'll make great storage for all the bits and pieces of reenactment kit we currently have lying around in green shopping bags!

Killara girl said...

someone's a talented potter. love the van, pity it only has 7 seats....we're looking for one with minimum of 9...i wish there were more with this option.