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.

Craft Month Hiatus

You may have heard about a little storm we had round these parts yesterday. I got home from work to learn we had no power. (PECO's latest estimate is that it will be restored late Monday.)

When I got home, I started crafting JABC's Seymour the Otter felted pincushion. When the last of the daylight extinguished, I cozied up to the candles and tried to continue. Do not believe the myth that ladies of yore stitched by candlelight. They would have been blind by 20. I finally had to admit defeat and after the dude and I cobbled together a dinner (yogurt and bread and butter) we got into bed.

This morning, I finished the otter (well, not until Nicole took us in because you cannot hot glue without power).

And then I spent the day stitching a leather cuff. This is a Subversive Stitch pattern, and to be honest, I bought a second cuff so I can wear one on each wrist and fight crime. 

I shall persist in making crafts. Heat or no. Electricity or no. No bomb cyclone shall deter me!

Denmark

Our big trip this year was to Denmark. I would have moved there if my Danish were better. (I can say hej.) Although I will say everyone's English was fabulous. Even the guy working the register at the grocery store spoke English well enough to make a joke about the dude being British and me being American ("That's one way to keep an eye on the colonies.") (Seriously he could not have been any cuter.) Also, if they needed stewardship in higher education which they do not because they don't rely on the largesse of the super-rich to fund education. But I digress...

 So our fiber tour starts right in Philadelphia! At our gate were three incredible felted wool projects. They were in glass cubes, so I did my best to avoid glare in the photos. These are by Heidi Bleacher, and you can read more about her work in the airport here. (She will also replicate your wedding cake in felt!)

When we first arrived, we headed to Christiansborg Palace to see the public rooms. Then we made our way around to the back, recognizable to the Borgen fans, and I pretended I was the fake prime minister by posing with a bike that was parked there. (I'm a dork.)

(The Danes are dedicated to bicycling. There were at least five rows of bike racks out of that photo. There were cykelkælder at all the metros.)

Inside the public rooms, you can see the weavings that were done for Queen Margrethe's 50th birthday. (And I thought a trip to Tanzania was an amazing gift!)  The 17 tapestries illustrate Danish history from the Viking Age to "the future." They were designed by a Danish artist, but woven in France over 10 years by 60 weavers. (And I thought my stitching took a long time!) Anyway, they weren't mounted until her 60th birthday. (Phew. I thought I was bad giving people late gifts.)

I put the dude in to give you a sense of the scale.

Close up. I have so many pictures of these tapestries but I don't want you to end up like these two.

 We visited Frederiksborg Castle, which is amazing, filled with treasures. (Including a 400 year old organ that they play once a week, which coincided with our visit!) They had an exhibition of clothes that were knitted based on a design found somewhere in the castle. It was fascinating! I couldn't take pictures with my camera (stupid flash) so I used my phone and the pictures aren't great, but you can see how stunning this pieces are.

We also visited Kronborg Castle. This is the castle in which Shakespeare set Hamlet. I was so psyched to go here because during the summer they have actors staging Hamlet in the place where it was set! Oh, I was in heaven. But then it turned out they only did some of the famous speeches, on a timed schedule. It seemed somehow cheesy. And then during the "To Be" speech, Hamlet said an extra word. DUDE, IT IS IAMBIC PENTAMETER, YOU CANNOT THROW IN EXTRA WORDS. NOT ONE SYLLABLE.

But then I looked around. The castle is nearly empty. There are only a handful of rooms with period furniture and some paintings. (So, the opposite of Frederiksborg.)

And my mindset changed a bit. This was a set. And the cheesiness was part of the experience. It is totally camp. And then I decided it was pretty awesome. Our tour ended in two rooms displaying photos of actors who had played Hamlet at Kronborg, and all seemed right with the world. 

In a little bower off Queen Gertrude's room, they had this frame set up with crewel work. I think you could try it out. Nice touch. 

Our Airbnb in Copenhagen had this piece in the bathroom. I'm guessing the Google translation is missing some nuances, perhaps idioms.

"Here I have been sitting so many days/
And dreamed the happiness of the world/
Here I have deceived my mind behind/
And dump it all a piece."

I am going out on a limb to say that "dump" has the same double entendre as it would in English.

From Copenhagen we went to Ribe, Denmark's oldest city, but I didn't take any fiber-related photos there. From Ribe, we went up to Aarhus, Denmark's second largest city. The ARoS Art Museum  was fantastic! We liked it even better than Louisiana. As you can see from this photo, there is a giant fabric sculpture, er excuse me, textile installation, hanging right in the middle of the museum, Valkyrie Rán by Joana Vasconcelos. You can watch a video about it here. She has 50 people working in her studio. (No wonder I get so few projects done! Where are my minions?)

Anyway, I was quite taken with it.

So was the dude.

From Aarhus, we went up to Skagen where you can go to the very end of Denmark. There I am standing between the North Sea and the Straits of Denmark.

We went to the Skagen Museum. Skagen (pronounced like you are trying to say both vowels in skein,as in yarn) produced some amazing artists, known as the Skagen School. They say there is a quality to the light, particularly at dusk, but since we took a picture of the sunset at 10:10 pm, we weren't seeing the beach at dusk. However, we did see this felt installation.  (There was another one at the Denmark Design Museum, but I am finding no information about who did it. Both were in places where sound would be a problem, and I would not put it past the Danes to do something like this for acoustics.

On our train journey back to Copenhagen, I got a text from Delta that they were offering a weather waiver if we wanted to change our flight. The weather on the east coast of the US was supposed to be super bad last Friday, the day we were set to fly. My aunt works for Delta, so I texted her. She said, "Do it NOW." So we had an extra day in Copenhagen. We went to the aforementioned Danish Design Museum. There was a ton of Danish modern stuff, which the dude duly photographed. (Me looking at chairs, mostly.) But they had a room that included needlework.

And below the display, drawers and drawers of needlework. I only photographed the cross stitch, but there was lace and whitework as well.

(This piece from 1733.)

1784

That fabric is dyed black!

Memorial.

There was also a wonderful exhibit of  Erik Mortensen a Danish designer for the French fashion houses Balmain and Scherrer. The exhibit was called "I am Black Velvet," but you know how well black velvet photographs.

The absolute highlight of our trip was the Dine with Danes program. For a fee, the organization matches you up with some Danes. You go to their house and eat dinner and chat. We're pretty introverted, so we need this kind of extra help. The couple we were matched with were a little older (recently retired) but we had much in common otherwise. I can't say enough about this experience! We should do this everywhere!

And good news, people, I stitched!

Wreath Wed: Felt Flowers

In searching for wreaths to make, I found a lovely one on etsy. They had sprayed a grapevine wreath grey and added felt flowers. I had a grapevine wreath in my stash, as you do, and decided I surely had enough felt, wool, and old sweaters to be able to put something together, all I had to buy was the spray paint.

I made the flowers based on directions from betz white (link when I'm back on my computer) (loopy flower, rosette (instructions for paper, work for fabric). I had a little vision for the blue buds. The big takeaway from making those is, if you are using acrylic felt use hot glue and not tacky glue. (Tacky works fine on 100% wool and mostly wool.)

I know it's not the spring or summer wreath I needed but I adore it!

More Fabric Flowers

I hate to be ungracious. (Except I am.) I'm not the kind of woman who says, "this didn't come out well," so that everyone will tell me what I made is pretty. When I tell you it didn't come out well, there are great globs of glue on the front of the piece. It looks horrible in real life. I'm not fishing for compliments. If you can't see how bad it looks, there must be a problem with the photo. Whatever. Trust. Yesterday's flower looks like crap. If you really want, I'll send it to you so you can throw it away. But I'm keeping the rhinestone button.

Just for y'all, I am going to try that ruched ribbon flower again on Friday at the library. I will conquer this flower! (But there will still be another new craft on Friday.)

Last night's attempt at fabric flowers of a completely different sort went a whole lot better. These, I love. I want to fill a vase with them. I did get four done in an evening which is just a few shy of filling this little vase.

There were some problems with the directions which call for "assorted sizes" of felt circles. You know what would be great? If we could develop a system where we might be able to share with others a relative scale. Perhaps we could make a stick that had units on them, and when I made something I could tell you the units I used. Of course, we'd have to regularize this measuring device. That would mean the government would be involved. Forget it, it will never work. (If you are willing to use the government's measuring system, I cut my circles to 1", 1.5" and 2".) (You know who else acts like we have no capacity for measuring? Papercraft Magazine and the card designers. The directions always say something like, "adhere squares to card front" and you have to guesstimate what size the squares are from the finished size of the card. Really pisses me off.)

Bowled Over

Since all the felt was in a laundry basket that I kept tripping over, I thought I'd stick with that for my crafting. I flipped through Warm Fuzzies for more inspiration. I came up with a felted* bowl.

Even though I have a ton of felted balls, I needed to run out and get more. So I abandoned the project halfway through and finished it after my library meeting.

For some reason, Stella didn't like me working on it. She was growling at me while I stitched it up. So I showed it to her. She sniffed it like it was a long lost relative. She started licking it. I pulled it away and kept sewing the balls in place.

When it was done, and sitting on the table, she went back to licking it. So I moved it to the arm of the couch, way to the back. Stella got up on the loveseat, and stood on the arm of the couch, picked up the bowl, delicately in her little mouth, hopped off the couch and headed toward the chewing room. Fortunately the dude was able to impede her progress and rescue the bowl.

I think I might have to make a little toy for her out of this sweater because she loves something about it!

*Technically fulled wool. I'm using felt imprecisely. Come along for the wild ride.

Cuties

You may remember last November ("Try to remember that time in November..." I know, it's September, the much more romantic month, and all the other words are wrong too) when my college roommate's college-age daughter* joined us for dinner and a movie. Yesterday, she joined me for a day of crafting.** This time it's spring break and her athletic schedule (lacrosse) has her stuck on campus. I didn't know what the hell we were going to do, so I got out Betz White's Warm Fuzzies...okay that sounds so dirty...I got out Betz White's book Warm Fuzzies, marked a few patterns and let Claire choose. 

Cupcakes! Except we couldn't find the cute scraps in 5x10" pieces, so we made minis. 

Close up, morning light.

*Every time I write that phrase, I sprout six grey hairs.
**But first I made her help me bring in the groceries. Then we walked the dog. Because I wanted to help make her feel at home. Also, if you are new to the house, you have to walk the dog. She has issues. This helps.

Strawberry Pins Forever

Thank you for all your compliments on my good looks and my crafting talent. I feel so undeserving of your praise. Probably because my mother spent so much time being critical when I was growing up. Wait...let me get another glass of wine.

So anyhoodle. I was poking around the craft room yesterday looking for a kit or small stitching project that I could whip up so that those of you who are just trolling for cross-stitch content might stop and look for a second. And I came across the Just Another Button Company pincushion kit I bought. I've only bought one even though I think they are all adorable. I've actually restrained myself. I guess when I see that kit, I see a pile--a BIG pile--of money burning. Not any more*...

Sorry for the gruesome picture. The weather here today is shitastic.

I did get a little grumpy when I was making this; I won't lie. They said I should pin that calyx in place before I stitched it, but I'm so awesome, I thought I could hold it in place. (Really, I'm so lazy I couldn't go up a flight a stairs to get pins.) After pulling out my stitches for the third time, I went and got the pins. Utterly defeated! But, it looks pretty good, doesn't it?

*Is it wrong that unfinished it's burning money, but finished it's a pincushion?

Upcycling without Training Wheels

When our cashmere sweaters get too moth-eaten to wear--actually I'm not quite sure when that point is, because the dude wore a sweater with at least two visible holes in it yesterday. He wasn't out in public or anything...anyhow, at some point, we decide to retire the sweaters, and they end up in the craft room. I have ideas people. I have taken a felting class with Betz White. I am ready to upcycle all the wools! (Now what I need is more time.)

Anyway, I had these sleeves cut off their respective sweaters and I wanted to make a scarf.

Last November, I pinned them together and showed my niece during our crafting day. She looked at me with one of those preteen looks. As a result, I have no faith, no faith, in the finished product. I decided that the arms were too full and I should (1) stitch each arm to its mate for length and (2) stitch them so they were three inches wide. After fixing a moth hole on the pink sweater, I realized I should fix the holes before I made them so narrow the brush mat wouldn't fit. (To fix moth holes, you take a piece of yarn or sweater fabric and you needle felt it onto the hole. And to do that you need this mat* that looks like a scrub brush. Et voila!)

Anyway, I altered the pink sleeve, then the blue, then I was pinning the grey and .............. Do you get those moments when you are crafting? One that will cause you to use way too many periods in your ellipses? I lost all momentum. I did not know how I was going to go on with this Incredibly.Boring.Project. But I had to! You were waiting! I had promised! But the project...it.was.sooooooooooooo.boring. I complained about it on twitter...and Facebook...and then I got myself together and braided them. And sewed them up.

Then I walked around the house wearing a cashmere scarf for hours. Because it was almost 60' outside and what you need to do is wear a cashmere scarf around your house.

If you made it this far, thank you. I am going to try to choose projects that aren't so cranky-making in the future. But at least we can see why I put off making it all winter. Clearly, I knew I was going to need your help and real impetus to get through.

It's harder than it looks to photograph yourself.

What this kooky craft-a-day thing demonstrates is how much I need my loyal readers to get through it. Your comments propel me on to the next project and the next and the next and the next. And I thank you for all your help!

* Don't buy the one I've linked to. It has the better picture, but Amazon itself has the same one for half the price.

Santa, Day Five

I probably will regret this later, but I felt like I should keep up. This one was my mom's too. He has a very intricate bag of tricks that detaches for storage. It's really big and, frankly, in the lower picture, he looks like he's squatting to hoist it. Poor Santa. Where the fuck are the elves?! (I'm sorry. I've been celebrating the repeal of the 18th amendment with some Junior Johnson moonshine. ...Suddenly 40-something Springsteen fans everywhere go, "Oh, Junior Johnson running through the woods of Caroline.")

DIY Santa: One for the gnome-lovers. You do have to buy a pattern, but you can swing it.

Another Gift

This time it's a belated Christmas present:
betz white's tutorial on felted rosettes + new green mama's felted coffee cozy tutorial =

The colors are a little off--the cozy is a brighter green and the leaves are mint green but we took the picture in a Starbucks with an iPhone after 5:30 p.m. (We couldn't get the right angle when it was on a coffee cup, but it does cover most of a tall cup.)

Day O' Craft

Yesterday, we finally got it all together to give my niece her day of crafting for her birthday (January). If you hearken back to that original post, you will remember that I was using this gift as an opportunity to get he craft room in order. Well, I haven't succeeded. On the positive side, she did say, "This is the cleanest I've ever seen this room."

The dude and Lala started by slicing and brining cucumbers to make pickles. Then they moved on to bread making. During the first rise, we took her to a little dive near our house that she likes for their fried mozzarella sticks. Oh, to be so easily charmed! On the way home, we stopped at A.C. Moore to pick up roving to make the felt acorns.

Breadmaking was declared to be hard work. But when she ate her slice of bread, she even ate the crust. That's something else.

The pickles had onions in them which was a bit off-putting to her. When the dude said something about "the vegetables" she kind of freaked, worried that there'd be even more than cucumbers and onions. But she gave them the thumbs up and that's without the 4-6 week "mellowing" period.

She got a bit bored making felt balls, and frankly so did I.

I showed her how to use some of the roving to do needle-felting, because I am the kind of aunt who lives dangerously by giving a ten year old really sharp needles. She made amazing little pictures. I don't know what either of us are doing with our scenes, but they're pretty cute!

(Pie is one of the horses Yayo rides. Lala made this for her.)

About halfway through our felting session, she asked me, "Can we do this for Christmas next year?" So the day was an unqualified success!

And thanks much to the dude for doing this all on his birthday. (I'll show you his present tomorrow.)

This morning I ate the bread toasted with butter and homemade strawberry jam. Oh, mama. I've got the best husband in the world!