New Old Craft

When we were going through my maternal grandmother's house a couple years ago, getting it ready to sell, one thing we found were these long dowels with a kind of crochet hook on one end and a flattened part at the other end with a hole in it.
We all wished we would have asked Grandma what the heck those were.
Last week, I got two separate craft catalogs in the mail (Mary Maxim, and Annie's Attic), and to my surprise, they both featured this "NEW" craft that clearly uses the same hook thingy.
"now you can knit with a crochet hook!"
Very intriguing.
Not wanting to wait for a package in the mail, I tried locally, I stopped at Michael's and called JoAnn's, no and no. So Monday, I stopped at Hobby Lobby, and I almost missed it, because they are tiny!
I was expecting this kit to be regular book/magazine sized, because the knooks that we found at Grandma's were more the length of a regular knitting needle, these little babies are barely five inches. So the book is actually just a pamphlet.
The instructions seem pretty good, and they have some great videos on their website to help you get going. I've only had a chance to practice a little bit this week, but it's my new obsession to learn!

Hey! I just remembered Project Runway All Stars starts tonight! I can practice knooking while I'm watching. Yay.

A Fishy Tale

Of course, it's a fishy tail. ;p
I found clip art of a sun fish of some type, and modified it into my own little fishy. Not much is stitched so far, just the spots on the eye and the, well, spot, and the parts of the tail. Each stripe will get some embroidery on it as well, and it will all get stitched together, with probably some details in the water as well.
I've really been liking using bright colors, imagining colors where they don't normally go, I started that idea with colored pencils and water color a few years ago, and am now bringing it into felt. But I think in the water it would be very cool to try using an almost exact color thread in different embroidery techniques or shapes. Then it would be almost hidden.
I'm thinking of these full sized felt pieces as Felt Painting. I'm not sure if that's the best term or not, but it's a work in progress term for a work in progress work.

On my desk

Thought it was time again to share what's on my desk at work.
I have a nice desk job, where I get to leave right at 5, and not worry about work until I'm back in the morning. (and lucky to be close enough to go home for lunch) I'm very thankful to have a nice desk job, even tho sure, I do sometimes complain about something or another. But hey, who else gets Arbor Day off as a holiday?
Anyway. We also get the standard two 15 minute breaks each day. So I use my time creatively. If it's a full work week, that's a whole two and a half hours of creative work I can get done.
I've mostly been making lots of little felt pieces; pins, magnets, key chains, and different kinds of hair thingies. But I was inspired to try a huge felt piece. I'm thinking to use one felt sheet as the background, the ones I get are just a few smidges bigger than an 8 x 10 sheet of paper, so I'm thinking when it's done, I can crop it to fit a regular picture frame.
So what is it?

Fabric Calendars

I'm sure you've heard of Spoonflower, where you can design your own fabric. I've got lots of ideas, but haven't tried it yet.
Right now, there's a contest for a 2012 tea towel calendar. I can just picture some of these covered in sequins and hanging in a kitchen.
There's lots of cool ones, go vote!

Meeple Bag

In getting ready to teach my favorite board game, Carcassonne, at Nuke Con last week, I decided that I needed a new bag to draw out the tiles.

I have one bag that came with one of the expansions, but this bag was for the new 10th anniversary edition that I had to have. I could use the current bag as a guide for size. 

First, thinking of material, I thought of Spoonflower, and maybe I could make some meeple cloth. If I had time I could, so maybe will put that idea on hold for another time.

So I decided to use the bleach splatter method, and got some nice black material. When I told The BFF that I'd really only be a couple minutes in JoAnn's, this time I really meant it. Straight to the remnant bins, there's always plain black remnants in the bin. 

I spent one whole evening cutting little meeples out of freezer paper, and another spraying the bleach. Does anyone else have a problem with the smell of the bleach? I should have used a face mask!

Anyway, I think it turned out pretty good. It's always interesting to see how bleached out something will get, and I was pretty happy with the coloring I got with this material. Good thing it was a big remnant, I'll make something else with it.

Meeple bag front

Meeple bag back

Meeple bag with guests visiting

The Bead That I Need

Turns out the beads that I needed were purple metal and reconstituted turquoise. I do love turquoise, it's natural and not all gemmy. Plus, it's my birthstone.
I should learn more about it, though, because there are different types, like from different regions, I think.
I'm also not sure exactly what reconstituted means in regards to turquoise, but I'm thinking it's probably like taking apart and then putting back together.
So I would think that reconstituted is a good stone, waste not want not and all that, right?
I guess overall, I need to learn more about stones. Maybe I should get a rock tumbler...

Finding The Need For The Bead

"Sometimes you find the bead for the need and sometimes you find the need for the bead."
This is a thought that I first had many years ago, when I was asked how to decide what beads to buy. There was a huge bead show, where they rent out a conference room in a hotel, and vendors buy space to sell their wares. I was planning on going with my saved up bead money. This was long enough ago that I couldn't find a large selection of interesting and diverse beads easily in person. There's always catalogs. Those wonderful ten pound catalogs. But there was less bead selection out there in the craft stores than there is today.
So I was excited for the upcoming bead show, and excited to be able to spend this saved up money (this was also a time when extra money was kinda scarcer for me), and I shared my excitement with my co-workers.
One co-worker who is an artistic soul and a crafty chick, but hadn't worked with beads before decided to check out the bead show, and I happened to bump into her while I was there. Which wasn't hard considering I was there for probably three hours. I showed her what I had picked out so far, and she spun around the room, a bit overwhelmed. "How do you ever decide what to get?"

That day I bought some of the beads that made up these earrings that I made last night. That day almost ten years ago. And a couple weeks ago I found the other beads in a local craft store. Both times, the beads just "called" to me. That I needed to use them. Sometime. And when I brought home the new beads, I spent an evening digging through all the beads I have (ok, only the ones that are actually organized, I'm sure there are more beads hiding here and there), and in the last container at the bottom of the stack, I found the beads from years ago, and realized they had to go together. And now I know what I bought them for.

Photos with the new toy

Trying out the wonderful light box set I got from my folks.
Of course, my first tries are with meeples!

Experiment.2

The Bag

Close up of bag

To rectify not having photos of the bag, I got out my camera this afternoon and snapped a few.
In this close up, you can see there were many colors. Too many, too random. But it's cute.
Someone gave me huge bags, like garbage size, but in the same nice light grocery bag plastic, in pink.
I wish I would have saved all that pink until I thought about how to use it. I've never seen any other pink bags.
And the orange were from bags given out right around Halloween, I'll have to keep my eyes peeled for those.
One thing I remember about making this bag, as I said I made it for Earth Day a couple years ago, and I was so excited to make it. We had a big Earth Day celebration at church, and we were thinking about the things we could each do ahead of time. On that Sunday, we each were supposed to write down the things that we were going to do or have done. I wrote down that I made the bag, but then I was too shy to show people afterward. I had it with me, but I just got a case of the shys, don't know why.
Sometimes I have trouble tooting my own horn. I'm sure we all have that sometimes.
So I'll toot about it now!

Plarn

Plarn I made a couple years ago

 So I'm looking around this sad little neglected blog of mine to find info of when I made a plarn shopping bag a couple years ago, for Earth Day (Happy Earth Day, BTW). And it appears that I not only didn't post anything about it, I barely took any pictures. Silly me. ;p
Sometimes I'm pretty good about taking photos and notes on projects, and sometimes not.
I found my early crocheting notebook, with patterns that I was writing down as I went along, but nothing on the plarn bag. Bummer. I don't even know what hook I used. But I do remember one thing: I used mostly good bags, but a few bad ones.
Good bags, in this particular instance, are the nice squishy grocery bags that are strong, but pretty thin. The 'bad' bags, were the heavier plastic, either soft heavy almost like a garbage bag, or crunchy heavy, mostly from book stores. I guess to carry books, they need to be heavier. Go figure.
I was looking for something to re-inspire me crochet-wise. I've made bunches of scrubbies, but got a little bored with no challenging project. And then I saw this blog on my trip 'round the interwebs, and got that inspiration I was looking for! I guess the spring time brings out the eco-friendly part of me.
So I dug all the plastic bags off the back porch. Despite having nice reusable bags that I use most of the time, we do definitely collect bags! I decided to sort through and not make a variegated plarn like last time. Digging through the various kinds and colors we have, I decided to also go home town with this project, so I'm starting with Super Saver yellow, and then I'll work on Russ's white with black and red. I've got a three inch ball so far, and I will accept donations only of the yellow.
I've been wanting to rearrange things on the blog for a while, and update from the old design. The background photo is of a watercolor I did in high school, one of my favorites.

Two Thousand Eleven

Well, here it is a new year again.
Wow!
'Bout time for some updating 'round here. Yup.
For one, Bloglines is no longer, so there's no longer a nice long list of artsy/craftsy blogs over there, but I imagine most folks these days use a reader, so maybe you didn't notice. I'm gonna update the background and header and all that stuff soon, so I'll get a nice crafty list going again.
The best part of the new year is I'm typing right now on my new birthday/Christmas gift from the BFF, a MacBook! So picture me sitting in some coffee shop, typing away. Now remove that image, I don't really 'do' coffee shops. But there are plenty of places I will take my new toy.
With something new, even as great as it is, there are changes, and I haven't yet figured the best way to get my photos from the main computer to here easily. Thus, no photo for this post. boo.
But here's a few mental pictures for you, of the things I'm working on or thinking of. You know, scheming about. lol
Paper crafting Zombies at work with my gift to myself, a calendar with a new paper craft Zombie for each month. Just finished January, "The Business Man" yesterday. Good break time activity. Got me thinking more about paper crafting. Wondering what it would take to make my own patterns??
Got an ad the other day in the mail, with four reproductions of famous art work, on nice paper, a little bigger than 8 x 10, and I'm thinking of some interesting ways to enhance them. The Artist Extreeme has claimed one that he wants to paint a Flying Spaghetti Monster into, and I've claimed the Monet for bead embroidery. Now what exactly do I want to do with the Mona Lisa?? Tons of ideas. Maybe cut the mouth open to make a kind of puppet, or cut out the eyes to make it a mask. The Artist Extreeme thought to maybe paint a smiley face over the actual face. Could also hook up some tiny motion sensitive lights, and put it in a frame, to freak people out. That might be fun.
And thinking about starting the Artist's Way again. And heard Lynda Barry being interviewed, so I was inspired to get her two new books. Maybe I can sort of combine the Lynda Barry ideas into the Artist's Way ideas.
And off to choir!

First PMC

This is my first attempt at PMC (precious metal clay). I knew my first try wouldn't be perfect, but I made it just for me, and I love wearing even with it's flaws.
I made the outside shape freehand, the hole with a straw, and for the main decoration, I pressed a wooden Meeple (playing piece originally from the game Carcassonne) into the clay. I kinda wanted to cut around the Meeple shape, for a cut-out, and I think I will try that at a later time, but with my first try, not knowing quite how the clay felt and handled, I was more comfortable just pressing it in.
Plus, I'm interested in (eventually) learning how to put colored enamel on the silver clay, so I thought at some point, I could experiment with this pendant and enamel.
The necklace is just a hemp cord that I have to tie off each time I wear it, but I couldn't find the kind of necklace that I really wanted.