Please do pop over to the Crafting for Courage blog to find out all about a very special event that begins tomorrow, all of the proceeds will go to Save the Children to aid their work in the devastated areas of northeastern Japan. There are some very special items available, here are just a few…get clicking!

Ignore the title, this post has nothing to do with nonsense or balderdash, I just like the sound of the word. This post has everything to do with The Poppies, a virtual awards ceremony to celebrate the handmade community, over at Poppytalk. Click here to nominate your favourites. I have voted in some of the categories but I am not finished yet, it is so hard to choose! Here are my nominations so far, do add your voice to mine if you agree.

Margie Oomen of Resurrection Fern
Nicole Licht of Astulabee
Jessica Marquez of Miniature Rhino
Belinda Kemp of Gretchenmist
Julia Pott
Lizzie Stewart

and the nominations continue:

Mathyld of Encore Petite
Diane of Hibou Caillou Chou
Maya of Designs Maya Made
Maria of Psarokokalo
Regina of Every Eskimo
Melissa of Acts of Kindness

There is just enough time left to nominate if you haven’t already, quick, quick!

Here is a peek at a bit of embroidery work, I have some others along similar lines in (slow) progress, I thought they might be nice for Valentine gifts but I’m not sure if they will make it into the shop in time.

I can’t stop looking at Elisabeth Dunker’s blog Fine little Day. I think it is the light.

The first day of advent, I must rush to the loft and get down Ishi’s Advent House. As is the norm this year, we are woefully unprepared to mark the beginning of the festive season. The 1st of December is a special date for me for another reason, it marks my 1 year Etsy-versary, can it really be a whole year since I listed the first items in the Lou Lou & Oscar shop? Another shop is celebrating its one year milestone today as well, what an incredible year it has been for Margie and Resurrection Fern. Happy Anniversary Margie! In case you didn’t know, Margie was the first person to make a purchase from Lou Lou & Oscar, a Catty Catty, really who could ask for a more generous and appreciative customer. I didn’t know it that day but Margie would become such an important presence in my life, supporter, confidante and most wonderful of all, a very good friend. I am going to stop now before I get all teary!

There is someone else I must mention today, really a huge source of inspiration, incredibly generous and an all round good egg, did I forget to mention that she also makes some of the most beautiful pieces of art it is possible to find, ok, now you know who this is! Thank you Nicole, Miss Astulabee, I don’t think Margie would have found me on day one without your sweet blog shout out about LL&O.

Nicole was also responsible for bringing another amazing person into my life, lovely Mathyld, aka Encore Petite, it is true to say we bonded over our love of all things Astulabee, happily the first meeting of the Astulabee Appreciation Society (European Branch, don’t you love our acronym!-Ha) went swimmingly, pictures will arrive here at some point soon.

So, a happy day to celebrate the wide web of connections and alliances this year has brought. Hello to all of the lovely people I have *met* since LL&O began. Now I am a little teary! There will be quite a few changes coming up in the next few months, our family circumstances are changing, I need to become more *professional* and self-aware, fresh starts all around. Urgh, price rises too, I hate to do it but if I stand any chance of keeping LL&O viable I have to. I know that pricing is an issue many of us struggle with, undervaluing our time and our work. As a UK based maker it is hard to be competitive in North America, I will do my best. I hope that our change in circumstances will allow me to try out other ideas and avenues to keep LL&O running smoothly, this is so exciting and a little nerve wracking, more about this nearer the time. Oh, secret squirrel!

I’m sorry not to have any big celebration or giveaway planned for today, when my new plans come to fruition I will make up for my lack of planning then. I do have a special little interview coming up later though. Be sure to check back to see who is joining us. I will be taking a break from LL&O over the next few weeks to prepare for christmas, spend some proper time with my boy , catch up with long overdue email and get those images of Paris up. And yes, that is another work by Lizzy Stewart at the top of the post, I am so obsessed! Happy December my friends.

You must all have heard about the amazing craft market lovely Mathyld has organized. If you will be in Paris on Sundays the 6th or 13th of December get yourself along to Supervente. There are so many wonderful artists taking part including Encore Petite, Resurrection Fern, Hibou Caillou Chou. Check out the flyer above for some more names. Oh, did I forget to mention that I will be there too, well, my work will be! Supervente will be my first craft fair, I am nervous and excited all at the same time. You can check out some of the offerings in advance via the link above, Supervente also has its own Flickr group here. I would love to do all of my Christmas shopping at the event, here are a few of my picks from the show.

I was lucky enough to see some of the work in person when I visited Mathyld last week, photographs really can’t do it justice, stacks of beautifully made animal silhouette cushion covers like the one above, rows of pretty owlettes, necklaces, brooches, all manner of gorgeous things. If I had a pair of ruby slippers I would click my heels together and wish myself in Paris. Of course I am building up to blogging about my visit to the French capital, I have a weeks worth of hoops to make and then I am taking a little time off to prepare for Christmas, visit my lovely K and her new baby (who isn’t actually out in the world yet!) and, yes, get all of the Paris images off the camera and into the computer. Phew! There will be a few changes at Lou Lou & Oscar in the new year, including price rises, this makes me so sad, but I need to start charging more realistic prices and taking the exchange rate into account (come on dollar rise against the pound!). I feel that LL&O needs a little freshen up for 2010, new photos, a more coherent feel, the depth that comes with a little extra experience. My most recent work has streamed itself into two ‘collections’: Natural History and The Stars Down to Earth (thank you Mr.Adorno!). More about this tiny development soon I hope. Paris was so inspiring, I can’t wait to share it with you. I am going to leave you with a couple of images to whet your appetite, sources of inspiration for the Natural History collection.

Ok, so I am a few days late, happy September, I am so glad that you are here. The new month (& season) gives me the perfect excuse to feature some beautiful images captured by Margie Oomen you can see more over at her blog Resurrection Fern. If you are in need of some nourishment for your soul hop on over to Margie’s now, you can enter some amazing giveaways while you are there too. Let’s all imagine being in that Canadian forest…sigh!

One of the lovely things about extending my birthday week is that it gives me the perfect opportunity to share the handmade gifts I received with you. I am a lucky and extremely happy birthday girl!

First off is a gift I bought for myself (every birthday I choose a couple of meaningful items to mark the turn of another year). I ordered this a while ago, you may remember it from the Forget-Me Not show at Gallery Hanahou in February. How felicitous that it actually arrived the day after my birthday, just in time to appear in this post. You may have noticed that there is a very special someone missing from my birthday/spring extravaganza, where is Miss Nicole of Astulabee, surely you aren’t still honouring that admiration truce from way back? Everyone knows how important Nicole is to me, I adore her as an artist and as a person (who wouldn’t? Such beauty, intelligence and all round good-egg-ness!). I would have pestered for a little something but the lady has been so busy with the American Craft Council show and hot on its heels this amazing project, I didn’t want to add to the mix. Oh but be assured I will be badgering soon, very soon (sorry Nicole!).

The piece is called My Love For You Is A Roller Coaster and I love it more than I can say. As you can see from the detail above the stitch work is so very fine and delicate and yet so powerful at the same time. I was truly astounded when I took it out of its protective wrapping, thank you Nicole for being such a genius!

Who is that foxy fellow with the sly and cheeky countenance? Why it is Mr Arctic Dodger of course, I have been warned that he is little bit tricksy, he has behaved impeccably so far and keeps me company from his window sill vantage point. I see him silhouetted against the night sky and sometimes I swear he is waving at me. Dodger is a gift from the unbelievably amazing Margie of Resurrection Fern, he is so beautifully designed and realized, right down to his removable wool jumper. If you look carefully you can see Dodger’s companion Etienne the Merfish, who travelled with my foxy friend to keep a scaly eye on him! I was moved to tears by Margie’s beautiful gift, and though we have never met in person, I have some little pieces of Margie’s magical presence around me. Thank you so much Margie.

Hooray, someone must have read my birthday wishlist post! I received the loveliest bag of birthday goodies from my dear friend Karin, including these gems from Etsy. I have been drooling over the reading wolves print from Oh My Cavalier for ages and am so happy that it is mine, all mine!

So very precious. I am in love with these tiny little twig hairclips from The Sparrow’s Nest. They were packaged so beautifully in a hand stamped box filled with fairy-sized paper leaves. Perfect.

And, yes, yes, yes, do you remember the darling miniature plastic fawns from The Thin Veil, just crying out to sit on top of some pretty cupcakes? Well, I have some. They are so photogenic, I am going to have some fun with these. Thank you so much Karin and Evie for giving me the most wonderful gifts and thanks also to Mr Probert for flying the best presents of all over to me!

Do you recognize that exquisite style? No one illustrates vintage garments as beautifully as Diane. I knew that this had to be my birthday dress as soon as I saw it. My pictures don’t do it justice. You really need to feel the weight of this dress, examine the beautiful beadwork and explore the enchanted subaqueous garden Diane has created. I am becoming a bit of a collector of pieces from Hibou Caillou Chou, this is seriously desirable art work and you can wear it too! Diane is another wonderful person that I have *met* through Etsy and blogging, I am so happy and proud to be a part of such an amazing community. You are one of the coolest Diane!

I hope that you are feeling inspired by all of this handmade goodness? There is plenty more coming up this week. Don’t forget to pop back later for a very special announcement. Hmm, curious!

**Etsy is down at the moment for site maintenance so I can’t access the shop links, I will return and edit the post later with the appropriate contact information**
Done!

I have been thinking of a way into this interview, determined to try and give voice to my feelings about Margie and her work. Obviously there is Margie’s inspirational blog, Resurrection Fern, the extraordinary and devastatingly beautiful work, the plain fact that Margie is one of the most remarkable, intelligent, compassionate and beautiful people you could ever hope to meet, funny too, the instigator of many a Cheshire Cat grin! For me, Margie is also a spellbinding storyteller, the natural objects that she works with and documents are imbued with such a powerful ‘living’ force that they have a back story, a present and a future narrative, a sort of continuum I suppose. Margie helps these objects project their magic to us, to tell their story and remind us that we have a duty of care and stewardship towards them, we cannot ‘own’ them but we can listen to their stories and take notice of the ways in which we are all a part of a much larger narrative.

Margie puts so much out into the world, she is the keeper of the spider web that holds so many people together. We are all a part of an extended narrative, a dialogue, that I find so wonderfully enriching, enervating and supportive. You may remember Project Rain (hello Rane & kiddos!) and Geninne’s wonderful card that depicted the lovely women involved as drops; Margie was the biggest drop. Margie is the biggest droplet but also the skin that holds the larger droplet together in so many ways. Inside a water drop, the water molecules are strongly attracted to each other. This attraction is called cohesion. Cohesion tugs at the molecules on the surface, pulling them in from the sides and downward. This surface tension, caused by intermolecular attractive forces, serves as a skin to hold the drop intact. I may have my infant physics a little muddled and I’m sure Margie can correct me! Really I should just let Margie’s own words and pictures continue the story now.

Tell us a little about yourself, the media you work with and your creative process.

“I am a family doctor in a small town with a population of about 4 thousand people almost all of whom are my patients. I care for people from birth to the very elderly. My oldest patient is over one hundred years of age. I do house calls and palliative care. I am a rare breed of doctor in Canada. Before I went into medicine I did a degree in Biochemistry and a doctorate in Synthetic Organic Chemistry of natural products. I think my love of botany started there.”

” I am a mostly self-taught craftsperson. I taught myself to knit, crochet, sew, embroider and I am in the process of learning to silkscreen and print.”

” I have been making things ever since I can remember but only in the past year have been sharing with people on Flickr and I started my blog just over a year ago with the encouragement and help of my friend Elsita Mora. I lack computer skills but have learned so much since starting my blog. When I run into trouble I always ask my youngest daughter for help.”

“I work Monday to Friday but manage a little creative time in the evenings after supper and also in the wee hours of the morning when nothing is stirring except my three kitties. I usually do this outside on the porch in the warmer months and near the woodstove in the kitchen in the winter. My favorite room in the house is the kitchen so many of my indoor pictures are taken there. All my children are very creative and I have tried to teach them everything I know about making things so when I am creating one of them is usually there as well, making along with me or working on their own projects. That way we get to spend time together and talk about different things. It is like an extension of dinner conversation.”

“Lately it seems that the technique of crochet has really been my focus. I love the freedom it gives the artist or craftsperson. I never follow a pattern. I always make it up as I go along and sometimes remember to write down what I did so that I can share it with others. I love how you can stop and start where ever you want. I love the sculptural aspect of it as you can tell from my work.”

“The one thing I don’t really like about it is that I have to look at what I am working on. The other little pet peeve is that because I am working with fine fiber and a tiny hook I need to wear reading glasses when I work. It is probably pretty obvious that I love working with natural fibers and things like stones and wood. Almost all my crochet hooks come from the thrift stores as well as most of my fiber. Some of it is very old, quite apparent when you see the price of the spool if it is still attached. The colors are softer and sometimes a little yellowed with age. I love that. ”

From where do you draw your inspiration: music, books, people, nature etc?

“I love the natural world, find my inspiration from it and love to spend as much time as possible enjoying it. I am so thankful that I live in a place in the world where I am able to do this. One of my favorite quotes is Frank Lloyd Wright: Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you.”

“I am a collector of things natural and vintage. Only recently have I thought about where this all started and it actually was something I learned from my father. My father, a mathematician and electrical engineer, instilled in me a very curious mind and the love of collecting natural objects such as stones, as well as vintage treasures.”

“My husband Ray loves the natural world more than anyone I know and our canoe trips and hikes are a huge source of inspiration. He has a great gift in looking at a landscape or natural area and being able to see the history behind or beneath it. It is one of the things I love most about him.”

If you could talk briefly about the background to one of your pieces which would you choose and why? Tell us the story behind the piece.

” I think I will choose the patchwork stone that found its way to a page in the magazine Country Living, not because it is my most famous stone but because it is a symbol for what I hoped to accomplish through my art. I wanted to make patchwork stone coverings using fabric, crochet and hand stitching. I decided to use almost exclusively Liberty Tana lawn fabric cut into small circles. I love Liberty!!! I was going to use vintage fabrics but I wanted the cover to be very snug and I didn’t think it would stand up to the tension.”

“My thought behind the design was to leave some areas blank, thus the title Missing Pieces, because I know that I will continue to make new friends and connections through my blog, handwork and photography and I always want to leave some space in my life and work for them. Since I made this stone, you Lisa and Lou Lou & Oscar, have filled up one of the spaces in such an amazing way as have so many other wonderful friends that I have met through this creative community.”

What does spring mean to you creatively?.

“In the words of my favorite poet E.E. Cummings

i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any–lifted from the no
of all nothing–human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

“That is what spring means to me. It opens the eyes of my insight and the ears of my inspiration to the natural world and the source of almost all my inspiration. The forest in the spring is my favorite place in the entire world to sit and dream.”

You can visit Margie in these places:

Flickr
Resurrection Fern Blog
Resurrection Fern Shop

Thank you so very much Margie for giving me the most wonderful birthday present in this interview and for being there as the most extraordinary friend. You enrich our lives and I’m sure everyone would love to join me in giving you a huge, squeezy bear hug. Can you feel our gentle paws?

Wishing you all a very merry unbirthday, unless of course it is your actual birthday! I am off to the airport to meet my wonderful friend Karin and my beautiful goddaughter Evie. What a marvelous birthday present, my dear ones are here to celebrate with me. There are some very dear ones who will be far away, I am sending oceans of love to you and extra big slices of strawberry cake. Please do join me later, probably very much later for us on GMT but still at a respectable hour for all you kittens that are farther flung, to spend some time in the company of my special birthday interviewee. Oh, so exciting!

There is an amazing plush party going on deep in a Canadian Forest, do pop over and join the fun at Resurrection Fern today, what little critter would you bring to this splendid shindig?

Original painting -Springtime – Blue Jack Rabbit from Louchelab.

Spring Equinox Flats from HydraHeart

Hope Springs Eternal from Resurrection Fern.

Spring is officially here! We have been treated to nearly two weeks of the most glorious sunshine, there are violets, lilies of the valley and daffodils in the hedgerows. Our japonica is blooming the deepest of pinks and I am back from my little break feeling dynamic and ready to bombard my sweet kittens with beautiful imagery. Thank you all so much for your kindness while I have been away, I have a small ‘time based’ thank you note planned. Pop back later in the week if you are curious about that one! To celebrate my birthday on Tuesday I will have not one but three interviews with amazing artists this week, such a treat for me, I hope that you will join us for some birthday cake and conversation.

Ok, so I’m not back until Monday but I had to pop in to tell you that you must drop by Resurrection Fern today as the incomparable Margie has put together the most beautiful and inspiring post, including a pussy willow tutorial. Can today get any better?