I Don't Like Spiders and Snakes, Part II....

Actually I do like this spider. Just so adorable! I think this is my favorite craft so far!
There was a bit of a "everything lingers on Pinterest longer than it should" moment. I looked at the directions to these spiders on Monday, and by Tuesday the website wasn't working. Then I tried it on my phone and it worked again. Fortunate because the template was helpful. Here's the link. Let me know if you make one.

I might make more of these myself!

Valentine's Week

The good news is I am making crafts. The bad news is that I am not reporting on them daily.
So here goes a long, picture heavy post to catch you up!

Valentine card. This card riffs on this one. I used the Petite Petals punch from Stampin' Up with Real Red, Rose Red, Cherry Cobbler, and Pink Pirouette papers. The centers are tiny pearls. Not sure which set the sentiment comes from. I see that the original creator die cut a heart to use as a template for laying out the flowers, but I just winged it. I know what shape a heart is. ;)

 This felt heart ornament is a riff on these. If you search for heart projects you will see a lot of very cute felt heart ornaments that I can only describe as regular, definitely cute but not whimsical or irregular. Kind of the opposite of this one. I'm not sure I 100% captured my vision, but I do like it.

It seems I am featuring the hutch in this week's photos. LOL.  Here we have a heart garland I made following this tutorial. She used super cute paper. Mine are a little less bright and fancy. Still cute.

Okay, these did not come out the way I imagined at all! I started with the pictures on this tutorial, and I did the painting mostly the way she suggests. I guess the handle was not half-heart-shaped enough. Also, I think I traced the outside of the handle, but I should have traced the inside. Then the heart on the mug body would have matched the handle better. They're not awful, just not what was in my head! (Get the oil-based Sharpie! It'll stand up to washing.)

Hello! This is Shepherd's Bush Be Mine Tag. These little kits work up so fast. I think it took me about two hours to do. I did briefly think about painting the sled white--I saw that in one of the Strawberry Sampler's newsletters--but I like the dark wood contrast. And pink and brown maybe out but they are fabulous together.

I saw these wrapped hearts here, and I thought they were so cute! And it's a craft that requires shapes and yarn and that's it. No glue. No sew. Just wrap and go. (You attach the hearts to the wreath form with wooden skewers.) But something just doesn't work here. It's so Gender Reveal Party. Welcome to the baby shower. Not Valentine's Day. I don't get it because I used the same colors they did. Maybe I just didn't realize how shower-y their colors were until I had done it myself? Oh, btw, that gold one uses crochet thread. While it is possible to do this with crochet thread, I'm not going to recommend it!

And the party. The Fake Party as the dude calls it, since I put all this stuff out and then don't have anyone over to eat it. This time we're having mix-ins with our date night movie accompanying popcorn. Except we ran out of popcorn. I bought a ton of mix-ins and no popcorn. (Heavy sigh.) Pretend the red bowl is overflowing with popcorn. This time, I created printables using Microsoft Word. Insert-->shape-->the heart is under "basic shapes." Then I filled it with the pastel colors of conversation hearts--white, green, peach, yellow, lavender--and used a san serif font in pink to replicate the Necco treats. One half of the toppings are savory--cheese, pretzels, nuts, spice mixes--and the others are sweet--Mike and Ike's, mini Reeses, honeyed almonds, and the Valentine's day M&M's. (Do you know how hard it was to save those?) The dude is going for the savory, but I pretty much live for the salty-sweet-crunchy combo.

Still with me? You are a trooper! Now that I am back on track, I'm going to try to swing by every day.

Manly Men Men Men

My almost-BIL (my cousin's husband) had a birthday this weekend. I made him the manliest bouquet you have ever seen--booze, cigars, and moustaches!

Another pinterest success! I got the original idea here. I found the printable moustaches here. Something was up with my printer, so they printed in plaid rather than in black. The best screw-up ever! I had the pot in the basement. I bought a styrofoam disk and moss at AC Moore to hold (and cover up) the bamboo skewers I got at the grocery store. I had a really nice guy help me at the local cigar store (no web presence, d'oh). I looked for a printable "happy birthday" but the one I really wanted said "happy birthday, babe" which would have been totally inappropriate. So I made it myself in word. Everything is attached to the skewers with Glue Dots glue lines. Just a note, they worked much better on the square bottles than on the round ones. Total cost: $45 but you can make different choices about the cigars--which is where most of that cost came from.

The birthday boy liked it.

The guy at the cigar store said, "that's a great gift and presentation."

Its' man approved!

Classy

I've been asked to teach a class at our local adult school. A craft class...only, I have no idea what to teach. They've asked me based on the work I did during craft month. The woman who is recruiting me attends library stitching. She's been trying to get me to teach for ages. The thing is, I mostly feel like what I did was gluing stuff...that anyone could do it if they just follow the directions. So, dear reader, can I ask,

Which of last months crafts you might want to learn in a class? 

I look forward to your answers in the comments or via email. Thanks! You're the best. :)

(As a former instructor, I know I can't lift the instructions from designers, and that I would have to change the projects slightly and create my own directions etc. So no worries there.)

Crafting with Kid

Sunday was our annual crafting day with my niece. This year she wanted to tie-dye shirts, make sorbet, make rolls, and experiment with wax. Three of those fell under the dude's purview: tie-dye, ice cream making, and bread baking. I made candles with Lala. And spent most of the day cleaning up. Remind me next year to make "my" crafts more appealing.

Here's the action shot of the tie-dye. She dyed two shirts and a pair of socks. We could't decide if she was an adult small or a child's large so we bought both and figured either her sister or mine would get the spare shirt. The socks, she loved. We could tell when she opened the side of her mouth and said, "cool." (Oh, she's a preteen. We're lucky she wants to do anything with us!)

I'm sorry there are no shots of the sorbet or the candles. You'll just have to trust. We made ice candles--you probably did this as a kid. You pour melted wax into a mold (frozen juice containers!) filled with ice and the ice resists the wax and makes holes. My ice cubes were huge, so I am hoping they worked out.

See these rolls. Best.Ever. I think we're going to make clover rolls every time we need bread. We brought them to Sunday dinner, and everyone was impressed.

We had to leave the tie-dye to cure for a few hours, so it was down to me to do the final step: I did three loads of laundry yesterday to wash out the excess dye. The socks came out great. She decided to try two techniques on them so they are different. (Yes, she's a big fan of Little Miss Matched.) The pink shirt looks fabulous (it's the one she's working on above) but doesn't photograph well. Unfortunately, the green shirt didn't come out as we had hoped. We tried to make a heart, and she basted in the heart shape, but we left out a step. D'oh. The shirts were also 50-50 instead of 100% cotton, and I'm sure that affected our results. The kit was supposed to dye 8 shirts, and we used all of the dye on these items. I think we'll have to try again. I know someone who'll be up for it!

Street Cred

Cross-Stitch With Street Cred
Allison Tunis takes arts and crafts to the edge, celebrating female sexuality in cross-stitch

I wish I were more articulate. I wish I could better represent cross-stitch--not the straw man description of "cross stitch" that gets used as a basis for deciding that some people are doing "really innovative things" with our craft. (This also goes for The Girl on the Wall, which I find admirable and interesting but probably not nearly as unique as we are being led to believe.) I'm tired of being pointed to the seat by the grannies because what I'm doing is somehow trite and twee. I'm just so fucking sick of the belief that cross stitch is all teddy bears and country geese, unless it's about naked women, ejaculating penises, and the word fuck. (I'm not on the side of the people who are all "eww, ejaculating penises" either. Is there a middle ground?)

Visit Tunis's etsy shop where you can find cross stitch face that is neither family nor celebrity and thus even more perplexing to me. You cannot, however, find the bright purple vibrator. Now that was what I was looking for.

Tunis is probably a fabulously interesting woman at the center of this. It's just that other people are deciding what gets said about her. It's not really about her.

Interestingly enough, people who are old timey readers of rctn will remember that creepy old guy who used to cross-stitch naked women. I'm pretty sure he used 68 different colors of "thread" too. And then you wonder what's the difference between naked chicks stitched by an art school trained woman and naked chicks stitched by an old man ("outsider art"). There is a difference--for instance, one gets you covered in the news and on blogs--but there's not, you know? Again and again someone reinvents the wheel and others point and say "brilliant!" "Outside the box!" "Innovative and unique!" "Speaks for itself!"

Grr. Nothing, people, nothing at all, "speaks for itself." Just strike that from your vocabulary. The implication is that there is only one way to interpret something. Interpretation, however, is mired in ideology. If you think everyone would have your interpretation it's simply because you can't see beyond your own ideology. So fuck you. Wow. That felt good.

Not Stitching

I haven't been cross-stitching. I've spent a few days working on my 101 Things in 1001 Days; you might want to follow along because there are several crafting projects on the list (see 40-69), one which will be showcased soon. I also finished a project that shouldn't have taken me nearly as long as it did. It's a little Mary Engelbreit-style wreath that I painted ages ago. All I had to do was apply a little hot glue. This was part of my last 101--creating enough wreaths so I had one for each month. I still have a few to go--two or three--not enough to warrant putting it on the new list, but I will have it as a priority because July is one of the missing months.

I will be back on the stitching bandwagon again soon. I need to start the dude's anniversary present. (We're one SNC short in this photo.)

Cool Exhibit Confuses Critics--Might be Feminist

Sesame, a gallery in Islington promotes "emerging artists," and presents "shows that reflect exciting new movements in contemporary art." This month they host "Wild Styles: Hot Craft," an exhibit that will feature people we know well, like Jenny Hart, and others working in "craft media."

I think Kate Westerholtz's cross-stitch is likeable, cute even, though I bet she doesn't want me to think so. (I prefer Homer Simpson's version, "I want to rock and roll all night, and part of every day.") But I'm a little tired of reviews like this one. "To prove it, Proud is curating Wild Styles: Hot Craft, an all-girl exhibition of craft stars who, arguably, represent the feminist backlash to the domestic-goddess ideal. " It's not your grandmother's cross stitch, so it must be feminist. My main thesis in response to this is "not quite." That's good and academic-like.

It's the same reply I have to this article which is more "it is your grandma's craft, but it's/I'm feminist because I say so." I've been thinking about writing a rejoinder--about showing how craft and feminism have always been linked, and indeed, always ambivalently--but it seems like it would be so complicated I'd need a whole book. I don't know if I have another book-length project in me. I think my brain has started to atrophy. And the actual research would kill me. But I did think of a title, which had the words "new" "domesticity" and "feminis*" in the title, but I've already forgotten it--I did check it on amazon, and it seems to be available. If I can't even keep a title in my head, how will I ever work out a whole argument?

I guess the world will just have to go on being confused about the craft movement and whether it is or isn't or might be feminist.

Holiday

Well, I've just been so peeved with blogger I took a bit of a minivacation. That, and I left the camera dock in Philly so I couldn't upload any of my photos. Here, you can you will be able to see the slightly too short case I made for my sister's new razr phone and the finishing I did on my aunt's and mother's gifts.

Sissy loved her ornaments, and she's using the cell phone case even though it's too short (should be a snap to make a longer one and reattach the decoration). She was really impressed with the ornaments. Really loved them. So now I know: don't bother with the things that take aeons to finish, just give them a finished gift. Mom and auntie were really impressed with their gifts too. I think I did really well this year, all except my father's mother. I carried something back from Slovenia to her, and she couldn't have cared less. Next year my parents are coming to PA for Christmas, so I won't have to see her at all. See how she likes that handpainted Slovenian box then!

I didn't get a lot of stitch stash this year. Just two pieces on my list: Heart's Content French Harvest and Be Merry and Bright. My father was appalled when he found out how much those kits cost. I started Merry and Bright, and the light in my mother's house is so bad I actually used her cheaters. Wow. I'm going to have to get me a pair of those. At least they were cute, all diggied up with olive rhinestones. Leave it to my mother...

My main stitching piece over the holiday was my friend's round robin. I decided to go with the free chart from camp that I am going to personalize. So far I have taken just about every stitch in that piece twice--I kept screwing up the color or placement. So it is taking way longer than I had hoped. Oh, it also calls for a discontinued WDW thread. Can anyone describe Julep?

Happy Thanksgiving

I'm a bit disappointed that, on the day before Thanksgiving, I bitched about my family who drove 6 1/2 hours to take care of me. I'm going to blame the pain. The worst thing about the pain is that I have to have my right foot done eventually. And it will all start again.

I am Thankful...
...for a family who drives 6.5 hours to change ice on my foot every 20 minutes
...for my cousin who is cooking the dinner and who on Monday took care of my vomit
...for the dude also taking care of vomit (just as he sat down to breakfast) and you know, for all the rest of it because there is a lot of it
...for my nieces who cheer me up*
...for my new boss who, besides being a great new boss, sent me a little care package
...for my podiatrist who does good work and plays chess
...for nurses who maintain an amazing sense of humor in face of a lot of shit, literal and figurative
...for the resident-on-call who told me that wanting to know when the pain would end wasn't a stupid question (I was just a stupid person asking a question)
...for the very fact of bunion surgery, which has improved in the last twenty years to the degree that I have a 98% chance of not having to have it again, on this foot.

I am also Thankful for things that haven't happened in the last week...
...for stitching that helps me maintain my sanity
...for my friends for much the same reason
...for therapists, again mental health thing, but they do this for so many more people who are dear to me
...for my cold little house, which is only cold if you're an old person not paying the heating bill
...for the food I'm about to eat, mmm, triple corn stuffing
...for my two feet!

* My niece, Lala, chose a mum made into a turkey with a pompom and chenille stems as my get well flower. But when she saw it, she said, "Mom, we could make one of these for auntie." Oh, her craftivity warms the cockles of my heart.

Happy day, be ever thankful!

Cross-stitch: Here or Gone?

"I believe that scrapbooking is not going to die out like, let's say, cross-stitch, because everybody continues to take photos," she said. "The industry's going to change and evolve along with technology. Scrapbooking will always be around."

Because Scrapbooking Never Fell out of Favor
Don’t you just love when the ill-informed get a forum? Scrapbooking was hugely popular in the Victorian period, but then all but died out between, oh, 1910 and 1990. Sure, some girls glued a few scraps in books when they were teens. They didn’t go overboard, like so many contemporary scrappers do. But history teaches those of us who bothered to learn any that all things cycle in and out of favor. Those scrapping retreat people are getting a little big for their britches.

You keep putting too much shit on your scrap pages and you’re going the way of Silk Ribbon Embroidery, baby.

What is with the reports of the demise of cross-stitch? The editorial in the recent Piecework got all worked up about teaching younger generations:

Regardless of its rich past, it's clear that needlework will have no future if younger generations aren't or don't become interested in learning the techniques. You may have learned your own needlework skills from your mother or a grandmother or aunt, but this practice of passing on skills to the next generation has become less and less common in recent years. Of course, many of you are tirelessly teaching others what you know, as well as stitching, knitting, quilting, and crocheting for your children and your grandchildren.

Knit? How did that get included? Are they not aware that this is a Stitch n' Bitch Nation? There are more SnBs in Los Angeles than a girl can get to in a week, and the inhabitants can't even wear knitted things. Knitting stores are popping up all over the place. And the magazines! Okay, most of the magazines are crap, but there are lots of them.

Why do we think learning from your grandmother/mother is the only option? Granny Stitchbitch can mix a martini but she can't cook, sew, knit, quilt, crochet, bake, or any of those other things you are "supposed" to learn from a grandmother. I think the Editors are looking in the usual places and not finding signs of life in the craft industry. But if you look at places like craftster and get crafty loads of young people are into making things with their hands. They're just not beholden to industry experts and industry generated patterns. They're do it yourself-ers. After all, it's not brain surgery; most of these things, you can teach yourself.

I think the Editors can untwist their panties. Craftiness is here to stay, boozy grandmas notwithstanding.