Irish Folk Furniture

Irish Folk Furniture [clip] (2012) from Alan Eddie on Vimeo.

I was blown away by this wonderful film, Irish Folk Furniture, an animated documentary directed by Tony Donoghue and produced by Cathal Black under the IFB Frameworks animated short film scheme. All filmed within two miles of Donoghue's house with a €150 camera off of Ebay, it was chosen by the Sundance Film Festival from more than 8,000 films sent in for consideration. The film really captures the beauty and simplicity of Irish country life.

Speaks to Me

Recently I posted a photo from my Pinterest board titled 'Speaks to Me', which are images that resonate with me a little bit deeper than usual.  I'm endeavouring to blog about a few of them to think about what it is that I identify with in the images.

Today I am really feeling this image, which is a photograph of a pair of antique-looking ceramic hands holding Scrabble tiles spelling 'grateful', on a bed of fallen leaves.  Today I am feeling grateful, and also noticing how often we lack perspective in the things that we feel disappointed or annoyed with in our lives.  It never fails to amaze me how much easier it is to adjust our attitude than it is to get the world to change to suit our preference, it's like the worst kept secret ever and yet so many people never catch on, don't even try.

This photo appeals to me aesthetically as well as for what it has to say.  I don't have any information about it, the link just goes to a tumblr blog.  It is lovely, though, and I'm glad someone went to the trouble to take their pocket of Scrabble tiles out into the world with them.

Little Irish Churches

Recently I started making little churches to sell alongside my little Irish cottages on Etsy.  When people have a little tiny house it seems to trigger a desire to have a little tiny village and I received requests to make some other buildings.  I came up with a design for a little whitewashed stone church, wanting it to be contemporary to the little cottage and distinctly Irish looking at the same time.  I based it on the beautiful church at Gougane Barra in West Cork, known as St. Finbarr's Oratory, which was built in the 19th century on an ancient monastic site.

Another famous Irish church with this distinctive shape is St. Kevin's Church in Glendalough, Co. Wicklow.  This church also has a round tower belfry and a smaller chapel attached, and was built in the 12th century.  

This monastic oratory shape with its distinctive sharply pitched roof dates far back into Ireland's Christian history, to the dry stone churches such as Saint Macdara's dotey little chapel in Connemara and the primitive  looking Gallarus Oratory in Dingle, Co. Kerry.  You can read more about Ireland's monastic churches here. A reconstruction of such monastic oratories has been built in the Irish National Heritage Park in Co. Wexford, which is particulary pretty.  

My little paperclay Irish churches and cottages are available in my Etsy shop and each one is made to order, hand sculpted and painted.  Watch for new little buildings coming soon!

warming up cold light in winter photos

I have been struggling to take item photos lately, as the cold winter light robs my items of their true colours. I listed six new items, only to have those photos look terrible in comparison to item photos I took in the summer and autumn light! I was really disappointed, especially as most of the items were made of cozy wool felt and really suffered from the grey light.

However, I found a quick fix for the problem, and I thought I'd share it for other Etsy sellers who might struggle with the same issues. I am using Photoshop Elements 7, but this works in regular Photoshop, too.  It can be accomplished in GIMP, as well, doing it step by step.

This is the original photo, I have already corrected the darkness of the photo buy bringing up the brightness and contrast.  Slightly over-exposed  photos with lots of contrast look really good on Etsy, I find. However, you can see how the cold winter light leaves a grey cast on the photo, the creamy bainin wool looks grey and dingy.

The solution I found is to use one of the actions created for photoshop by The Pioneer Woman, the food and lifestyle blogger who also has a photography section.  These actions are amazing!  A lot of the arty actions change the colours too much to be suitable for Etsy, but many of the subtle light and sharpness actions are perfect for the job. I used the 'warmer' action on this photo, and the change was amazing!  Perfectly rendered warm, creamy wool, just as the item appears in real life.

I was so happy with the result!  Looking at my Etsy shop, the new items blended in with the rest of the shop so much better, and I was able to correct all of the photos from six listings in a quarter of an hour.  As I mentioned, I use Photoshop Elements, and there are versions for Elements on her blog as well.  If you use GIMP or similar, the same effect can be effected by creating a new layer and filling it with a medium caramel colour, and then setting that layer to 'soft light'.  You can adjust the transparency of the fill layer to get just the right amount of warmth to your photo.

Here's another example of using the 'warmer' action, side by side so you can see how much of a difference it makes...it is subtle, but really effective:

If you need any help installing the actions, this page is really helpful...it's tricky to install them, so set up a shorcut on your desktop to drop them into once you found the right file.  Actions are a lot of fun to use, you can get a lot of the same effects that professional photographers use, and there are many free ones online, and even some for sale that are well worth it.

I hope this was helpful to someone!  If anyone has advice for how to overcome this problem in other programs and editors, please leave a comment.  I think that good photos on Etsy make us all look more professional, it's the most important part of selling, I work hard at it!

Doily Bombing

All done!!, originally uploaded by woolly fabulous.

I ran across this photo on tumblr.com and was blown away! I've seen plenty of yarn bombing or knit graffiti before, but as a non-knitter it never really spoke to me...but this? Vintage doilies? Simply amazingly beautiful.

Apparently the sore arms (can you imagine?) behind this is Odile from the Etsy shop Wooly Fabulous, a shop I had already hearted for her gorgeous pincushions made with vintage doilies. With my lottery winnings, I will be flying her over to Ireland to doily bomb all my trees!

Forget-me-not

Went for a walk through the churchyard at St. Colman's Cathedral here in Cloyne, the forget-me-nots are amazing!  It's a real deserted cemetery, all wild and overgrown.  The flowers are probably from a pot left on a grave decades ago, self-seeding over and over...all sorts of beautiful flowers everywhere.

Last week we were in the churchyard in Churchtown South, which is completely overgrown with wild garlic!  Very beautiful if unusually fragrant.  It's a really stunning location, a ruined church set amongst farmer's fields with the sea in the distance.  Beautiful spots for a quiet walk.

Another year crossing that bridge...

On May 6, 2008, I was very very pregnant, and tired of waiting for my son to make his debut.  So my husband and I went for a long walk in Glenbower Wood, in Killeagh here in East Cork.  We walked along the river up and down the hill to get that baby on the move.  It worked, and by midnight I was in labour, and Henry was born the next day.

We have decided to bring Henry for that same walk every year to mark his birthday.  Happy 2nd Birthday Henry!  You are the most beautiful thing I have ever made.

Pickle-making Sunday

I made pickles today!  Three litre jars of bread-and-butter pickles.  Lidl had pickling cucumbers for sale so I brought home half a dozen. 

Last time I visited my Aunt Sandie, she gave me some vintage canning books.  She does tons of canning, and makes the best bread-and-butter pickles ever!  The jars here are the French type canning jar, with the steel hasp and rubber gasket, and old canning books have instructions for using them.

The recipe I used called for brown sugar instead of white, and also cinnamon and ginger, so the pickles have a dark sweet syrup.  They are really strong and aromatic.  Such a treat to have bread-and-butter pickles in Ireland!  And three big quart jars, I'm rich!