So here it is, in my hot little hands. Or would be if it wasn’t 4°C outside and I just had to spend twenty minutes outside the post office waiting for a bus to get home. Without gloves. But even with frozen fingertips it is a beautiful book, and so amazing to see my pieces in print (beautifully photographed by foto di matti).  And the other contributors? WOW.

It’s out! Jo Waterhouse‘s book Indie Craft features artists and crafters who do something slightly different with handwork. There are some amazing artists in there and I must admit I’m squeeing in delight to be included in this august company. Check out the publishers site to see more of what’s in the book, or just look at this list of the crafters to see that you really. want. this. book.

Featuring work from:

Diem Chau
Angela Chick
Craft Guerrilla
Phil Davison
Erin Dollar
Marloes Duyker
Jenny Hart
Kate Jenkins
Knit the City
Knitta Please
Kup Kup Land
Jacinta Lodge
Joetta Maue
Eva Monleón
Moxie
Sarah Neuburger
Tania Patritti
Emily Peacock
Shauna Richardson
Amy Rue
Naomi Ryder
William Schaff
Severija
Matte Stephens
Vivienne Strauss
Tada’s Revolution
Patricia Waller
Kate Westerholt
Howie Woo

I love Wonder Cabinets. I love the original Victorian ones, full of fossils and bones and other curiosities. The things that kind of freak you out with the horrid fascination of someones toenail collection or dried umbilical cord. Why, just, why would you store that?

Now Berlin is getting one of its own – but this is of a more handmade nature. Curated by Leah Buckareff of Cold Snap Bindery and hosted by La Bastellerie, you can come admire, goggle at and even buy the curiosities on display.

I’mJane Nicholas’s amazing book

Now because it isn’t a design of my own, I’m offering it for sale, but all proceeds will be put straight into Kiva, a micro lending organisation helping individuals around the world achieve great things by giving them a starting boost into self-sufficiency. I’ve been lending through them for a few years now (here’s my lending page ) and encourage everyone to do it. There’s even a Stitchalicious group for lenders I’d you’d like to take part in that.

So that’s my part in the Wunderkabinett, for now at least. Pop by the website if you can’t come and see it in person – Leah will be showcasing all that is going in there.

This spider was a fun little thing I did while playing around with knots. As you’ve probably noticed, I’ve been on a big knot thing recently – so large that I’m wondering if macrame is going to be appearing in my near future.

In this case I mainly wanted another excuse to do some Ghiordes Knots (because god knows it’s not like I haven’t already been putting them in everything I’ve stitched for the last year or so) and I had a vague curiousity about what would happen if I used two differently coloured threads in a Bullion Knot. And what happens? STRIPEY SPIDER LEGS HAPPEN. That rocks. A couple of french knots in red and some friends with a button machine and lo-and-behold a spider button was born.

This was seriously simple stitching stuff (again with alliteration!): Ghiordes knots (also  called Turkey knots) with one green and one black strand of floss in the needle stitched in a small oval, two bullion knots per leg also with one strand each of green and black and some bright red french knots for the eyes. That’s it. Now it graces my knife holder in the kitchen along with some other badges I picked up a few years ago – how can you not love the claim that “super-ness is no coincidence”?

Now I’m playing a little bit of catch up here – this piece (and the one which’ll go up in the next few days) have been blogged about before on my old blog and on flickr. Apologies to all who’ve already seen it, but I really want this blog to be the home of my embroidery activites and so I’m going to put up these few pieces from my recent exhibition.

Like the heart, this was inspired by kitschy flash tattoos. I didn’t keep the same style going through all pieces though, as I was interested in trying different techniques and looks on the same inspiration source.

Hi, I’m Jacinta and I embroider.

This piece is another of the stumpwork tattoo-inspired embroideries I did  a while ago. You can see more on my Flickr page.

This is the first piece: a flaming heart.