London - Where we ate and what we did - part 1

We thought we should do a round up of the other London gems we enjoyed visiting over and over again during our 8 month stay in London last year. Places to grab an excellent coffee, book shops, art supplies stores, cafes, museums, galleries, odds and ends plus more. So this is part 1 of our to do list* next time we're in Old London Town focusing on places to eat, drink and be entertained. Part 2 will be a loose round up of the art and embroidery supply places we found and designer-y based finds and other places of note.

- London Fields Park: Not as large as Hyde Park but definitely not small either. There are huge chestnut trees that are home to a few sometimes friendly squirrels - for those curious folk that find them as cute as my boyfriend does - as well as enough space to fit hundreds of picnic goers on any given sunny day (actually didn't have to be all that sunny for it to be full some weekends). One end lies next to the entrance to Broadway Market whilst the other corner houses a lido (I never felt hot enough during my stay to try out it out which is a bit of a shame as it's meant to be wonderful).

- Broadway Market & it's saturday street market: maybe accounting for how popular the next-door London Fields park is on a weekend is this great little street lined with cosy pubs (Cat and Mutton and The Dove), excellent cafes serving some of the best coffee you can find in London (l'eau à la bouche, Climpson and Sons), book stores selling great design, art books and magazines (Artwords Bookshop) and tons of other great shops that you'll soon discover. On Saturdays one of the best street markets takes over Broadway Market selling a huge variety of food from different cuisines, baked goods, fresh fruit and vegetable, fishmongers, butchers and delis as well as stalls selling vintage goods, clothing and assorted miscellanea. Our favourite stalls that we constantly returned to were the pie shop (our pick is the chilli beef), the stall in the middle selling marinated olives/stuffed peppers and dips, the fruit and veg stall near the end that became our fresh plum supplier and the vietnamese food stand also at the Cambridge Heath end. If you go there try their bbq pork roll with caramelised pork skewer. There's usually a line but please don't let that turn you off. Service is pretty quick and after trying a few other vietnamese pork rolls in London (we like to think we know a good one) this was by far our favourite.

- Hai Ha on Mare Street (if you live locally or are after Vietnamese and in the area this is our pick of the numerous Vietnamese eateries that line Mare Street. We recommend their mixed vermicelli noodle with pork & spring rolls and the crispy pork belly noodle soup (which isn't vietnamese but I tried it on a whim and it was amazing).

- V&A, Natural History Museum, British Museum, Tate Modern: How awesome is free admission to amazing galleries and collections? We spent many a day drooling over amazing ceramics, minerals, antiquities and masterpieces and still only scratched the surface of the permanent free collections on offer.

- Ping Pong: Their all day/night yum cha-ish dumplings are nice if a bit expensive compared to what we're used to in Chinatown but I had to add Ping Pong for their yummo cocktails. Yum cha with asian inspired cocktails is a pretty spectacular combination and i'm hoping someplace similar in Sydney pops up soon (Melbourne already has Golden Monkey)

- The Book Club & The Hackney Pearl, Railroad Cafe, Wilton Way Cafe, Nude Espresso: besides the cafes on Broadway Market already mentioned these cafes were regular coffee stops for us. Railroad Cafe and The Hackney Pearl are a little out of the way but offer quirky settings and great coffee for the former and a pretty mean Corn Fritter for the latter. Oh and the Hackney Pearl don't lie when they say they serve the best Bloody Marys in town (other cocktail to try is the Gem Garden) Wilton Way Cafe is also home to the London Fields Radio

- Hackney Picturehouse: this opened a few weeks before we left and was literally only down the street from our apartment. It is one of our huge regrets that we weren;t able to enjoy the Picturehouse. We watched Ides of March there and it was honestly the best theatre we've ever been in. Full stadium seating with chairs that all recline...sigh. Also for cult classics and themed nights the Prince Charles cinema in Leicester Square is amazing. They show an ever changing line up of old favourites, themed series as well as new releases. We went there for a screening of Empire Records that featured drinking games, a dress up contest and sing-alongs.

- Drink Shop Do: Part cafe, shop and gallery. Drink Shop Do is craft and board game friendly. A lovely place for a spot of tea and sandwiches or cocktails at night when the cafe switches it's daytime charm into a nice and relaxed bar/lounge.

- Columbia Road flower market: It gets pretty busy here on a Sunday but it's an enjoyable crush. I enjoyed listening to the stall holders advertising their flowers just as much as the flowers themselves. On one of the side streets we spent a nice break from the crush listening to buskers splaying jazz and with a few cafe's lining the road and shops selling home wares and art there's plenty to do if you don't feel like joining the flower buying tide. Most of the shops on Columbia Road though are closed on non-market days so it's best to check ahead.

*in no particular order

1 - 4 Broadway Market Saturday street market
1: Vietnamese food stall at the Cambridge Heath end
2: Outside l'eau à la bouche cafe
4: Violet Cakes

Land Of Nod

One of our favourite pieces from last year was the embroidered winter catalogue cover we created for the Land of Nod. We tried something a little different with the treatment for the embroidery and also a new type of fabric. We had a great time sourcing new types of cottons and linens to embroider with and we were very excited when the client requested a denim like linen twill from the swatches we emailed through. It was a real treat to embroider on and really contrasted well with the colours in the design.

Below are a few process images that we can finally share but for the final cover head over to The Land of Nod's blog (there are a couple bonus images there too including the selection of fabric swatches we collected for the piece).

Pages from my sketch book - ideas for the type treatment

Digital colour rough - this is the step where we set the colour palette and this file becomes our colour reference when we begin sewing

We mix the colours in as we sew, for this piece I had anywhere between 2 to 4 colours going at the one time

...and the completed embroidery!

"Summer" and hello again

Hello! Sorry for the silence around here lately. We've got a lot to catch up on since coming back home. We got through the whirlwind of Christmas and New Years only to get swallowed up by preparations for our sister's wedding last week. It was a beautiful day and all our crossing of fingers seemed to work and the rain went away just in time. A last minute venue change to Vaucluse House also turned out to be a blessing in disguise. All in all it couldn't have gone more smoothly. Surprising since my sister and her fiance were still running around the night before sorting out last minute details and preparations!

Over the summer break we only managed one beach trip (boo) but we did escape up to the Blue Mountains again. From the photos below you can tell I had a lot of fun borrowing my boyfriend's iPhone and macro lens. The scale is hard to translate in these photos as they look just like photos of normal sized flowers but most of these were actually less than 1cm wide.

Wishing you a very Merry Christmas and New Years!

This year has been a crazy adventure with a lot to be thankful for, luckily the downs were brief and the highs were high! We hope this year has been amazing for you as well and that 2012 is bigger and better! Thanks so much for reading our blog!!

Be Excellent To Each Other + new Sweater Letters (Family Set)

These are some pics of 2 private commissions we recently completed. One a quote from Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure (we love Keanu so this was a fun one!) and the last a family set of Sweater Letters. As always we love to hear from anyone interested in a personalised embroidery. Email us your quote/initials/favourite colours or even an epic battle you'd like to see illustrated and let's have some fun!

WIRED Magazine 12 11

Hello, we're back! We touched down in Sydney a couple of weeks ago and have since then gorged ourselves on summer fruits and catch ups with friends and family. We're in between studio spaces and rentals but have managed to set up desk spaces at least. It's funny how having even a bit of space to yourself helps you feel settled.

It's been a while since we posted regularly so we have a few projects to share that we'll post about steadily. Firstly we can finally share an embroidery we created for WIRED magazine's December issue which we completed around June. It's for the features introduction page and includes the numbers 12 and 11. For iPad users this embroidery is animated too as a nice little bonus. The piece took about 185 hours to complete. A huge task as the whole surface was covered with needlework and while we were embroidering we were also capturing photographic stills to build the animation.

There were a few changes to the final embroidered piece, colours were changed and tweaked. Once it was completed we realised that the 12 and 11 got a bit too lost in the pattern so we swapped in a few more red tiles into the mix. Normally we would have unpicked the tiles and sewn in the new colour but as we had animated the piece as it progressed this option wasn't feasible. Instead we digitally tweaked the colours frame by frame.

We were lucky our apartment was high up or else neighbours might well have wondered why our windows were boarded up. The makeshift studio we set up at one end of my bedroom needed to be completely blacked out for the photography. A bit of a shame we worked on the piece right in the middle of the London summer, we hardly got a chance to enjoy the sunshine.

The Lovers, the Dreamers and Me - a Jim Henson tribute show at Gallery Nucleus

Here's a peek at a couple new embroidered pieces we've created for a Jim Henson tribute show at Gallery Nucleus titled The Lovers, the Dreamers, and me. The Cookie Monster makes an appearance for the show which opens on the 10th of December and any guesses for which Sesame St characters inspired these special edition Sweater Letters? More details here and on the Gallery blog there's a little write up on our artworks as well as some of the other wonderful artists who are taking part in the show.

Back to Oz

We're counting down until we bid London farewell and head back to sunny Sydney. I'll miss this wonderful city and I hope it won't be too long before I can come back again. An endless summer sounds pretty awesome, 6 months in Sydney and 6 months this side of the globe sounds like an ideal arrangement. If only!

Before we fly out we're holding a special clearance in our BigCartel and Etsy stores. 30% of our handsewn embroideries and a 3 for 1 special on our risograph prints (BigCartel). For the 30% discount on Etsy please use this code BACK2OZ.

Makers, Dreamers: We also have a brand new poster available of our Makers, Dreamers embroidery. "We are the music makers and we are the dreamers of dreams" is a quote taken from Ode by Arthur O'Shaughnessy via the film Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory.

The original embroidered artwork was on display at AMV BBDO and now a limited edition of 100 A2 sized giclee printed posters are available. (please note that the posters are smaller than the original A1 sized hand embroidered poster)

A2 posters (including 12mm border) hand numbered and signed. Printed on Hahnemueller Photorag paper using archival inks

Posters will be mailed rolled.

From WIlton Way to the World's End (and a little bit beyond)

Sorry for the lack of posts lately. We've had a crazy few weeks that have included a local street party and Dog show a road trip round Scotland (from Edinburgh to the Isle of Skye, Isle of Harris & Lewis, Inverness and back) to meeting the Queen. I won't make this a wordy post since the photos will probably be more interesting. Just an explanation on the post title, i've always loved Neil Gaiman's reference to the World's End pub in his Sandman comics and was very excited to see we were staying just down the road from an identically named pub in Endigburgh. We were staying just off the Royal Mile on the Canongate and the story goes that,

"Gates along with the old city wall enclosed the city and citizens from the Canongate and beyond would have to pay to gain entry. Poorer residents within the city couldn't leave as they couldn't afford to pay to re-enter and so stayed within the walled city their whole lives. The area inside the Netherbow gate became known as the World's end because for many residents this was where their world ended" (from http://www.edinburgh-royalmile.com/)

1, 2: Victoria Bark dog show at Wilton Way.
3: Glencoe, looking over Rannoch Moor
4: Isle of Skye, on the way to the 'Fairies' Glen'
5: Isle of Skye
6: Isle of Lewis
7: Isle of Lewis: we took a road by accident through some pretty isolated countryside. This house with its red door was a welcome sight.
8: Highland cows at Culloden.

Tea with the Queen

This thursday Maricor and I will be on our way to Buckingham Palace for an evening reception with the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh. We're honoured by the invitation, excited and more than a little nervous! We're notoriously shy so we'll have to make sure we don't retreat to a safety corner and properly enjoy the night and meet the other guests.

We've also had the usual wardrobe dilemma, which has been compounded by the fact we didn't bring any formal wear for our visit to the UK. Eeek.. oh well it's given us a good excuse for a bit of shopping!