spectating participant

but I’ve been looking into some digital scrapbooking stuff and am trying to download some freebie items to get started with and see if I like it. Then, will prolly work on making my own stuff as I’m much happier with affordable hobbies. But, these are some serious downloads and I need some honest-to-goodness high speed connection thats free too. I can’t recall what the library offers, but I’ll give them a try tomorrow since Alex is going to Mardi Gras party there anyways.

As if this is what I needed to be doing right now, surely there is some sewing I could be doing. Why oh why did I click that link… sigh.

I get bogged down when I start browsing my crafting sites - there is just too much awesome stuff out there to look at and want to do. I jump from wanting to do one project to another before even starting. For years, I’ve been more content with just looking at projects than doing them — its about time to get over that and actually make some more stuff. I had so much fun with the secret santa swap I did and am working on a cloth diaper shower gift at the moment - but I just want to sew, sew, sew and not just read, read, read.

I’ve been working on increasing my sewing and have really umped into sewing for babies and children. What I need now is a really good neutral color scheme, or a collection of more than one. What I hate is pink/blue and the default yellow/green. Blah.

I’d love to have one, two, or three primary color schemes that I can constantly build upon that are gender neutral — haha. That sounds so easy, but it seems to always come out much harder than it should. Oh, and a primary color scheme isn’t about primary colors either. Brown seems rather popular these days, but it’s often softened with pairings with pink and blue to genderize it.

Oh to have an entire clothing line from 0 - 2T of completely gender neutral clothing — is that even possible or are people so driven to put that “Boy! Girl!” label on their child that they wouldn’t have use for an entire line of neutral clothing.

I know higher end stores often have children clothes that go beyond pink and blue, but they still often have very distinguishable boy/girl attributes. What to do to go completely beyond that…

I can’t believe I’m actually saying this, but my fabric stash has become insufficient. It amazes me that years of fabric acquisitions has lead to a less than acceptable stash of fabric. I guess the brakes I put on fabric buying a few years ago really worked, but now I need more fabric!

I’ve been busy working on a secret santa gift the past couple days. Today I made the following two craft items:

- Cloth Tissue Holder: This was a pretty straight forward craft. I altered it a bit to add the finished edge I wanted and will post a pic as soon as I get some taken and uploaded.

- Cloth Snap Box: I made this out of some fun flannel that I had laying around. Instead of stitching and turning, I just put some decorative thread in my overlock machine and serged around the edges. I finally got to use my snap press machine to add plastic snaps and it seems like a nice enough toy/box for a little boy.

On Friday, I made four other gifts for the exchange:

- Cloth Grocery Sack: This was a bit different than a cloth shopping bag — instead of the paper-bag shape, this is modeled off a plastic bag and whips up right quick. This sewed up really fast and I might make a couple more just to keep in the car for when I leave my bag of cloth bags at home or for when I just need one bag.

- Bean Frog: This was made mostly just for fun, I wanted to add some sort of fun whimsical items and this pattern was super easy. I used some leftover toile from a previous curtain project and paired it with some wild, metallic gold dot fabric. It seems that this project really inspired Chris somehow and he spent part of today working on some machine tool plushies. While sewing this up, I tried a new suggestion I just learned — draw the pattern on the fabric and sew along the line drawn, then cut it out. This worked really well and I’ll probably try that again on other smaller items.

- Hot Cocoa Mix: I mixed up a batch of this hot cocoa mix and poured it into two caning jars. One is for us to try and the other is for my secret santa gift. She said that she likes dark chocolate so I hope she’ll enjoy this. I was hoping that we’d get to test it out before mailing this out, but it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen. I’m just gonna have to trust Alton Brown for now.

- Socks Turned Hand Warmers: I need to get a tutorial up on how to make these. This was my third pair and I changed several of the steps, making it much faster this time around.

All in all, it seems like it’ll be a nice little gift and now I’ve practiced several of the items that I’ll probably be making for some other people for Christmas too.

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it’s sad when you’re working on lots of projects but don’t feel like taking documentary types of photos because your space is such a mess. Alex is still working on her book report bag project and I’m having to peel away little corners of space to finish her costume — mine is already done.

As for my costume, I’ve decided that it is way too boring for a burner Halloween party. So, if the table gets cleared off and Alex’s costume completed, I’ll be scrambling to make another costume for Saturday’s party and will wear the first one all day on Halloween instead.

I’ve finally found a complaint for google’s picasaweb — no hit counters on the images - gak! I’ve been posting links to my craft room renovation and wanted to know how many times it’s been looked at — flickr seems so much more on the ball with the community/social aspect of picture sharing, I’m amazed that google didn’t realize that this would be something people would want. sigh.

argh, I’m so mad that I’ve lost all this potential data — had I known that, I would have posted all my craft room pics on flickr instead. I’ll probably go ahead and move those pictures over, but that doesn’t get back the data points I’ve lost on the links to picasaweb.. bad google, bad bad google.

Knitters Nest
1431 Liberty Road
Eldersburg, MD 21784
(410) 549-0709

Knitters Nest, located in Eldersburg, Maryland, is a new (summer 2007) yarn store in Carroll County. There is a great selection of basic and specialty yarns for all types fiber enthusiasts. The environment is very inviting and cozy and the owner, Deborah, is very attentive and helpful. You’ll be able to find all the materials you need for a new project or stock up on some new yarns that you’ve been wanting to try like bamboo.

Knitters Nest offers classes and open knitting and spinning times each month. Tea is offered every Tuesday from 11am-2pm, you’re welcome to come chat with other crafters and work on your own project and instructors are on hand to help answer questions. There is a monthly knitting circle on the third Thursday of the month from 7pm-9pm and a monthly Spinning circle on the second Sunday from 1pm-4pm.

Alex and I attended a Tuesday Tea and was welcomed warmly by all of the other ladies. I was happy to see they we’re so receptive to a non-knitting/crochet crafter and it was great sharing my project (fiber hair falls) with them. The classes looked very interesting, especially the class on making felted clogs, and I look forward to taking one in the near future. I picked up some new 100% wool yarns (the wool selection at Joanns was pretty sad) that I plan to make into a new set of hair falls.

I’d recommend visiting whether you’re in the area or want to make a special trip. Make a day of it and visit the beading store, Two Busy Beads, conveniently located next door or visit the Second Floor Scapbook store at 32 &26.

We’re in active moving mode at this point, very active! Time has run out ad everything had gotta go. I made three trips there and back today and yesterday. I’m tired. But, despite the exhaustion I’ve been getting the craft room together:

We’re almost done with painting the craft room, yay!. The walls are painted and the first coat of floor paint is on.

I spent some time hand chiseling the lines in the floor this morning to prepare for painting. Since I used the router to carve lines for a faux hardwood floor, I had to extend the lines to the wall to make it look a little more realistic (the router can’t go all the way to edge). I only did this in the craft room/dining room doorway, doing the whole room would be too time intensive and covered with furniture anyways.

With the floor ready to paint, Alex and I got to work. The first coat went on very quick and we just have to wait 8 hours before we can put the next coat on. I didn’t realize that I picked a floor paint color that looked like a vat of chocolate pudding. In fact, if it weren’t for the smell, Alex and I would have been wielding spoons instead of paint brushes.

The walls ended up being much darker than I wanted. Lighting plays a big part on the color and at night it seems really bold. Sunlight washes is out pretty well to the color I was hoping for (like in the flash photo above) but unfortunately, that room only gets sunlight for a couple hours in the morning in the summer. It’ll brighten up a lot when winter gets here and the northern shade tree has lost it’s leaves.

The floor seems like a pretty good color overall. Now I need to get some version of white for the trim and the windows. The plan was to leave the stripped windows at bare wood, but they don’t look that great and I’m not up for spending anymore energy on them to make them look better.

Right now the dining room floor is also calling out to me. It needs some sort of a protective layer but with all the moving going on and it being the main foot traffic area, I may be out of luck for doing anything other than spot treatment at this point. I shouldn’t have procrastinated so long and picked a option and got to work, sometimes my indecisiveness drives me nuts.

When I decided to leave the craft room floor as plywood, I googled painted floors. One option I found was this great faux hardwood floor look where you route lines on the floor to make it look like the real thing:

• 
  Plank flooring for any budget
• Floors and Coverings: My son’s room has faux wood planks grooved from plywood

As time was running out on getting the craft room done, I just gave up on this idea. But for some reason, yesterday motivation struck and Alex and I set to work. It didn’t take long using the router and I’m happy with the results:

Next up is painting the walls and floor.

The new house is going to have a dedicated craft room, I’m so excited. Of course, it’s got hideous wallpaper and 50s carpet, but a craft space just the same.

Since I’m a hobby whore, I’ve got lots of crafts that must fit in the space. I need to include room for paper crafting, sewing, costuming, fiber arts, glass bead making and more. For now, I’m collecting links for inspirational ideas:

Country Living: Make a Craft Room: Photo Gallery of craft room ideas along with some suggestions.

Angie’s Itsy-Bitsy Sewing Room: Photo album sewing one seamstress working space. However, I must say that I’ve seen smaller: Closet or Sewing Room.

My Craft Room: Great photos and description of a paper artist.

My New Craft Room: Photo gallery of another crafter’s space. Perhaps an optimistic inspiration since I don’t have anywhere near that amount of space available.

My Scrapbook Nook/Craft Room: Another photo gallery for a paper artist. Chica has some awesome labeling going on, love all the labels. The shelves are packed full but appear to be very usable. I really wish there was a photo of the entire space, not just a full wall photo. I really want to know if it is just the side of a room or what. This is probably more in line with what I’ll end up with, perhaps it feels a bit cluttery, but seems like the best way to sort the crazy volume of stuff.

Dragonhome’s Craft Rooms, a history: Seems that this artist has had several different space for her crafts. Newest Room, Older Room, Oldest Room. Each page includes photos and written description of craft storage items and space.

Craft Storage: Written commentary on craft storage solutions with some low-quality photos. Interesting comments on using a bedroom as craft space.

Another My Craft Room: Photos of the use of wardrobes for storing craft supplies, however, no photos of the actual workspace.

My Sewing Room: Extensive photo gallery of this artists sewing and painting space. Majority of the pictures are of her supplies (if she ever wants to ebay-away everything, she’s all set), but there are overall space photos scattered throughout the gallery.

My Stampin Space: Photo gallery of a stamping artists space. She has done a good job using kitchen cabinets and counters to define her workspace. I think I’ll keep my ears open to anyone demolishing their kitchens and see if I can score some useful fixtures.

Sewing Room: Photo gallery of a quilters work space. I like the use of the bakers rack for materials and the customized ironing board that fits on the bakers rack shelf — I’m considering a similar approach for an ironing surface.

Laundry and Craft Room: Before and after pictures, with commentary, of a multifunction space. I applaud any and all attempts to avoid uni-taskers, whether it is a room or kitchen gadget. Of course, I want a craft room for craft — but it should be able to manage multiple different types of crafts.

Flickr/Craftroom: Of course flickr would have a collection of craft room photos. There are lots of creative usage and placement ideas there. Check out sewingroom too. There is also a tag for workspaces, but that is a bit more broad than just craft/sewing rooms.

Craft Room Reorganization: A craft room with schematics, love it! Photos and some commentary on taming the crafting beast.

Craft Room Makeover: I’ve certainly been at a breaking point trying to figure out if my space is a craft area or a dumping ground. This artist tackles this question with his space.

My Craft Stuff: I wasn’t going to include this one and then I saw the star stencils on the wall. Just a couple of pictures of crafting supplies tucked into the corner of a room.

The Studio: Looks like a craft room fantasy - this will never happen in my space.

Craft and Sewing Rooms Archive at Design Talk: Great collection of posts, comments, and photos of sewing and craft rooms.

Craft Room Listings: Someone else has compiled a list of craft rooms.

Craft Room Organization Links: Bunch of links, haven’t clicked through to see if they are useful or not.

Books:

Where Women Create: Awesome book showing the craft spaces of some women artists - good for suggestions, but I can’t help thinking that a carriage house dedicated to art/craft space is a bit out of reach (maybe!). I’ll hopefully write up the review soon.

Thats all for now, I need to get moving on to something else (like organizing my sewing space and packing to move!).

I’m so excited! I’ve be wanting to do something at art-o-matic since my very first visit. when i heard registrations were opening soon I started racking my brain to come up with something. well, nothing came to mind, but startied talking about it and jamie wanted to do something too and didn’t know what — so were melding our artsy-wanna-do-something and going to do it.

I can’t wait to make stuff, install it and just have a great time. I’m glad this is going to happen — now, to start brainstorming the ideas. best part, jamie and I both agree that we’re doing this for fun, not for perfection or anything else — just getting our artsy butts into gear and making anything, something, art!

Wanna know more about art-o-matic — www.artomatic.org

Dark whispers suggesting imperfection, hurried gestures coercing disenchantment, bruised egos drawing silence. Sitting with the misty haze of damp, wet clouds waiting to fold over and fog out the rest of the day – hush, not another word – hush, not another minute – hush, not another. Disconnect between emotion and rationalization of circumstance, holding back, yet teetering too close to the edge. Pushing boundaries and feeling a give, something being pulled, tension mounting, strands exploding with jerks and sways and temporary security for one more day.

Pulling it all together should be easier, should be simpler, should be second nature – should be? Over extended expectations swirling the water, hiding things shiny, things broken, things unexplored. Tension creaking, cracking, tumbling through the air. What choices can be made, what alterations can be made, what options can be made.

Wait, hush, wait, speak, wait, hush, wait and wait and wait for…

I updated the burn barrel article I wrote, here is an image from it. I made it for [Spring PDF|Playa del Fuego] and am still very proud of it.

I needed an [art] project for the spring [Playa del Fuego]. I thought that a [burn barrel] would be a good start. I’ve been seeing more people bringing their own burn barrels and ever since [Kathleen|Kathleen Ellis] made hers, I’ve been dying to make mine. And so, began the quest for my very own.

First, I need materials:

• 1 steel 55-gallon drum
• 1 plasma torch

Finding a barrel can be tricky. Ask around on local email lists, [burner] list, or [freecycle]. Also, check around your local industrial areas, sometimes they’ll set them out by the road to be taken away by those who want them. Keep in mind that you’ll gonna be putting a whole lot of flames on the inside and out, so pay attention to what it had in it. I lucked out and found one down by the workshop I could use. However, if you’ve got an extra $50-60, buy a brand new one, you’ll thank me when it comes time for cutting and it’ll last longer.

A friend up the street had a plasma torch I could borrow. An amazing thing, a plasma torch is. It just uses a little air and electricity (well, a lot of electricity) and cuts right through the metal. It takes a little while to get used to the way it handles, but it didn’t take long to complete the design–

oh yeah, design. Well, I made several and decided against them when I got over to Bill’s house. And then, once I got the plasma torch going, I realized that it was pointless planning too much detail and better to just go with the [air]flow. I wanted stars (what a surprise) and nature and the design just worked out in the end.

Process: use the plasma torch to cut your design. My barrel was covered in a fine layer of rust, so the cuts were not perfectly smooth. In the few areas that were rust free, the plasma torch slid through them effortlessly–a new barrel would make intricate designs easier. Pay careful attention to what you’re cutting, you don’t want to accidently cut the wrong part and end up with a giant hole. Make sure there is enough vents toward the bottom so that the fire gets enough oxygen. And, I learned that they provide convenient access to lighting the fire too.

Final suggestion: practice using the torch on scrap metal before cutting your barrel. also, understand your design and how the lines work, you really don’t want to cut across the wrong line and lose the entire thing.

Images show the barrel that was used, some of the finer detail lit with fire, and the two main designs with and without fire.

I have a new project in mind: LEDs and plexiglass tubes. Thats all I’m saying for now,

I finally made something! My honey needed a costume for NYC Decom. He was going to rent a cowboy costume, but the price and time to do that didn’t work out. So this evening, we went to the fabric store, bought 1.5 yards of electric blue fur and 1 yard of neon green felt.
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Yes, one more thing on my to-do list.

I love the Diva in the 5th Element. I’d love to make something just like that costume, but I have no clue where to begin. But at least I’ll start thinking about it now. Here is the site that I’m going to start with:

http://freespace.virgin.net/john.coppinger/filmwork.htm

Since I’ve been so taken with Revolutionary Girl Utena, I think I’ll make a costume from that series for Otakon. Now, I simply have to decide on which character I want to be and find some good ideas for the costume. So far:

Plain Uniform

Fancy Uniform

Hopefully it won’t be too boring or over done. But since it’s the only real anime series I’ve watched, it seems a fitting choice.

Look it up. Make it.

Has anyone noticed the dance at the fertility celebration held on easter in this movie? I want to make her dress–sleeves actually. I’ve gone throug the movie with pause and slow motion on enough times that I think I hae a good enough indication of what I need. That is going to be alot of fabric.

Since were going to have a slight change in the number of adults living in this house, we need to change our closet organization. So Rob and I have to move our closet upstairs.
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Okay, I shouldn’t be allowed to start another bellydance project before finishing the first one, but oh well. Saw a performance at Alchemy last week with some awesome costumes that I want to make. Will be making one for my friend Kathleen as well. Right now, it’s just plan since I need to get to work on the Geisha costumes first.

As things will happen on channel, I will be making a traditional Geisha outfits for my friend Phil and myself. These should be ready for Spring PDF in May. I’m starting on them now because it sometimes takes me a while to get things finished.
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Magnets everywhere. I found online directions and bought the glass marbles, magnets, and silicone sealer. It took me 4 stores to get those 3 items, I suggest anyone just plan on finding the silicone at the hardware store and save a few trips. Although, I read that another popular adhesive in craft stores is the same thing. I’ll have to go look up which one they were talking about. My seven-year-old daughter helped make all of them. She could actually make these all by herself if she wanted to.

photos added 02.17.2003
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Sara and I are going to a bellydancing workshop offered by Philadelphia Tribal Bellydance. I looked at some of the photos on their website and some on the vendor sites they listed. I’m going to make a skirt, pantaloons, choli (top), and hip scarf.

May 22, 2003 - We never made it to the workshop, but are doing a blacklight performace at PDF.
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