So maybe I'm a little bitter...

If you've been to my site you know that there are a few free goodies on there. I offer pdf's, image files and wholeheartedly encourage people to make their own loverly magical messes. I am an absolute advocate for mutual inspiration... you inspire me, I give something back. Breeding wonder and spreading the magic is what it's all about.

When I see people recreate crafts that I have made I generally find it flattering. Fat lot of good it would do to make things that simply gathered dust, I'm glad they hold some value for others. As an artist who hears the words "weird" and "creepy" a fair bit I'm well chuffed that some people are inspired by my strange little world.

That said, what I abhor, is outright theft.

It seems someone has stolen a page from my website. A WHOLE damned page. Not only did they steal the text, in it's entirety, word for word, but they also stole the images. Not only did they steal the text, and all the images, they linked to my images and stole my bandwidth. *sigh*

Now, if this person had simply put "...from knickertwists" I wouldn't have been irked at all. Instead, at the top of the offending blog, it reads "All of the photos posted are taken by me, unless I say otherwise." Ah, a thief and a liar.

Now, I can count the number of public domain images used on my site on my fingers. I have spent countless hours shooting and editing literally 100's upon 100's of photographs, graphics, and creating the entire content for my lowly site. Don't get the wrong idea... I'm not silly... I expect that images are going to be swiped, but for someone to steal a whole damned page? It's too much.

Thief, if you are reading this, I want you to know that you've pissed me off. It's not okay to take something that isn't yours... it's unethical, immature, lazy, demonstrates a complete lack of integrity and shows that you are devoid of imagination. Guess what? There's an actual person behind those words, and photographs you stole. Why don't you put your own damned heart into something?

My happy place.

If you imagined me an airy fairy slip of a girl in a flowy dress puttering in my garden and giggling with the fairies I'm afraid you'd be sorely disappointed upon meeting me.

Today I'm a plain chubby gal in jeans and hoodie, riding a red Troy mower, wearing ear muffs and singing Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights very badly at the top of my lungs.

2+ hours on the riding mower and look at that... beautifully chopped grass. You can't see it very well from the photo but there are lovely straight lines up and down our giant hill from my super mowing powers :)

I don't think I could be any happier than cutting the grass for hours on end on a gorgeous fall weather day. Who knew that would be my happy place?

Back to school!

The kiddo went back to school yesterday. The house was terribly quiet and although it's a nice change from the usual noise I'll admit it was a bit lonely without the boy. I really could hardly wait for that bus to come over the hill and bring the Big D back home :)

I've been working away on some swappy stuff and other projects. I can't really show a lot off, as it's not quite nice to look at just yet but here's a couple of things in the works...

A new pixie village still under construction.

A super creepy spirit board. I really love those old woodcut images. And speaking of creepy...

We had ourselves a bonfire on Sunday to celebrate the end of summer and it looks like we had a guest. What do you think?

Clearing out the old with shameless auction plugs

It's time to clear out some old stuff in the old witch cupboard. Right now there's a few things on ebay including some of these old gals...

Just look at that bum Ha! :) I made those eggs AGES ago and it's time they moved on. I've got them up on ebay starting at .99 a pop if you're interested. There's also two herb kits with our old labels on them up for grabs also starting at .99.

Knickertwist's ebay listings

Teeny Weeny Fairy Cottages

Just some wee things to share...

Absolutely inspired by Phizzychick's Gnome Homes.

Think Happy Thoughts...

While I work away on my messes I often pop in a movie to listen to while I work. This past week it was Amelie. Listening to the commentary was really interesting. Jeunet, the director, would point out where all the little inspirations came from... he had been collecting things he liked for years.

Here's Jeunet's short film "Foutaises (Things I Like, Things I Hate)" from 1989


Somewhere this past week, I heard someone say "Where your focus is, that is where your energy is directed". It's hard not to focus on the crappy stuff life hands us, the things that distract us from far better things. Negativity is a glutton that feeds on attention so I'm do my best to starve it.

Anyway, here's to placing focus on the good things, the little things that make us feel good and happy, moving on to grander things and collecting things you like :)

Jumping on the Moore Bandwagon

It's seems that everyone and her sister is on a Teesha Moore kick lately, myself included. It simply can't be helped!

Completely inspired by craftylittlemonkey's tutorial on craftster this is what I made yesterday...

I really love the texture of it and will defo be making some more of these.

In other news, we had a great time camping at Sharbot Lake Provincial Park. It's a beautiful park although the sites are a bit small and you can hear the truck traffic from the very near highway. We saw loads of frogs and toads and the fishing was great :)