How To Clean The Craft Room

No dust!

A purty box to hold double-pointed knitting needles.

More tools of the craft.

Buttons and Lucky Charms, in clean jars!

The Happy Chair is where I dream up ways to make a mess.

I pulled this unused chair out of another room; it's the comfiest.

Shelves with actual Space!

I can't claim to have ADD, because anyone who knits lace shawls is by definition able to stick to the task at hand for a long slow time. But everyone has her distraction threshold, and mine is reached whenever I come across a pile of vintage needlecraft magazines. Since my craft room (which is small but all mine —Lucky Me! — and full of natural light) was overflowing with these, I found it very hard to buckle down and get organized. But I'd finally had enough of not being able to find anything! And it's Spring, so I really wanted to get rid of the five years worth of furballs which had accumulated under the shelves, and any lingering Bad Winter vibes. So yesterday I tied my hair off my face, took a deep breath and copious slugs of coffee, then went to town! I pulled every single item out of the room, then scrubbed the floor and washed the walls. The dust gave me a massive headache, so I took 2 Aleve and went back to work. Six bags of trash, four boxes of books, and three sheep's worth of undesirable yarn later, I started moving things back in. What made it back through the door had to be A) Purty, B) Useful, and C) Actually Wanted. Now this space feels much more energetic. Hooray for Spring Cleaning!

Chihuahua Hankie

Since she's providing the lamb chops and asparagus on Sunday, the person I embroidered this for gets an extra special hostess gift. Her three favorite things are the color pink, hankies, and my chihuahua Bridget. I think this covers that. I bought the linen fabric, then hemmed it, then added a simple crochet edging, then embroidered it. Whew! The image is from Sublime Stitching, which offers great embroidery patterns that always look clean, neat, and fun. (Instead of the messy do-it-myself designs I usually go with.) I love being crafty, but I have a secret residual shame about it, since I'm just a tad too old to be on the vanguard of this current Neo Craft Revolution generation. For me, crafts will always be associated with polyester lace, "silk" flowers, and mice in aprons. All too well I remember the horror I felt whenever a favorite Antique Mall became a Crap, oops-I-mean, Craft Mall. But now craftiness is chic and there's so much real intriguing talent out there! However, I do apologize for the recent turn of this blog to any old-fashioned junk hounds who abhor the sight of the hand-made. I am going to start showcasing my Lucky Finds again soon!

More Fun Things To Do With Catfood Cardboard

See how versatile Catfood Cardboard can be? I bet you never knew! I'd have to charge thousands of dollars for this Tool Kit on etsy to make a penny of my time back, but it was fun to make. The darling cotton dandelion print served as inspiration for the embroidery. I just can't resist darling fabric. I even bought some Liberty of London for Target kiddie clothes just to get my hands on those gorgeous floral cotton prints — the next move will be to rip them up and sew a kimono out of the pieces. I now have three big addictions: knitting, sewing, and listening to M. C. Beaton's Hamish Macbeth mysteries on the iPod shuffle while doing either of the other.

Cigarette Card Embroidery

Images to Embroider

Catfood Cardboard

At night now I'm dreaming about embroidery and textiles instead of knitting lace. A sure sign I'm in for a long craze. Now when I see some cool old vintage whatever I think, "I wonder what that would look like embroidered?" Wouldn't the old German Cigarette Cards shown on top be the bomb in stitches? I'm going to try someday, after I finish my current Secret Embroidery Project (hint: paperback covers are involved), which is turning out great. Embroidery goes a lot more quickly than knitting, so I have plenty of time for other crafty pursuits too, such as the Catfood Cardboard Craft Organizers of the last post. Here's how to make one: get yourself some 24 cans boxes of Fancy Feast, any flavor. (My cats prefer Grilled Seafood Feast Variety). Three 7.5 inch x 5 inch pieces of cardboard per box, and you'll need 4 for a 2 folio organizer. For each folio, cut a 13 inch (width) x 17 inch (height) piece of fabric, and for the pocket, a 13 x 10 inch piece. Fold the smaller piece in half so it measures 13 x 5 inches, press and stay stitch it 1/4 inch from edge along sides and bottom of right side of larger fabric piece, then fold this larger piece in half (height-wise), right sides together. Now sew a 5/8 inch seam along bottom. Turn right side out and press: dimensions now 13 x 7.75 inches. Insert two catfood cardboards, then press side edges under and sew together. Then sew your second similar folio to first down center. Add felt and other embellishments before you sew that first seam, and don't stitch into the cardboard, duh. Easy!

Catfood Cardboard, Part III

Front Cover, with Ugly Belt

Graphed Moleskine, Stork Scissors, Stylus and Pin Felt

Silk Ribbon and Carbon Transfer Paper

More Needle Felt and Transfer Patterns

Here's my latest Catfood Cardboard Craft Organizer. I found the elastic ribbon belt that holds it together at the Salvation Army, cut it to size and sewed the suede and clasp back on by hand. That seemed like a good idea while I was doing it, but it's actually Très Uglé, and I must find another closure. A vintage belt buckle? Aside from the belt, this is both useful and cute, although while making it I gouged the function key of my Mac laptop when the Exacto knife rolled off the table onto it. Craftiness has a price! (Tutorial of sorts here.)

Sew Darn Ugly

This has snaps, but that doesn't make it cute!

This has pockets, but they're not cute either.

Even tie-dyed felt can't make this cute, darn it!

It always amazes me how different an actual creation can be from a conception. This needle book was inspired by one I saw in the book Sew Darn Cute, but since I am congentially incapable of following directions, I had to come up with my own version. And it's not pretty. I suppose I could spend more time and make it cuter, add embroidery and such, but I think I'll just write it off as Prototypical Monster and go back to the (pink) cutting board. I'm not scared, because when I first started knitting I made one fugly thing after another. All that practice and horror eventually allowed me to make lace, which is by definition beautiful. So even though I've been sewing since childhood, I evidently need to put in the time to get really good at it again! Because I will upcycle my Catfood Cardboard into something uniquely amazing, or bust.

Spring Flowers

3 pink scissors, 2 pink workbaskets, and 1 pink cutting mat!

Daisies and blue skies will be here soon.

Crazy spattered wool felt ties these 3 fabrics together.

The yellow fabric is new, but the others are vintage.

Pink roses, with stains.

My new venture into embroidery has brought my passion for sewing in general back with a smash. Time to oil up the machine and get going! I have at least one full ton of old fabric, even after destash, but today I went to the fabric store and bought some more. Because a few half yards worth, just for fun, is a fast and cheap way to make myself deeply happy. And I will use it. I'm planning to make lots of booklets like the needle booklet in the last post, only with wool felt and two pages of pockets. Stay tuned for a tutorial: this will be a great way to use up all the Fancy Feast cat food cardboard I've been saving for something!

The Pink Workbasket

Every girl needs a Pink Workbasket!

I felt like a dork winding all these bobbins, but now all my floss fits on cup hooks!

The interior is lined with pockets for every purpose. Yeah, staple guns!

These pink scissors from Sublime Stitching were my unconscious color motivation.

Needle book made of cat food cardboard and scrap fabric.

Inside the book. Because you can never be too cute or too vintage.

When I was making this workbasket, I didn't realize my inspiration was the cutest pair of scissors I've ever seen (4th photo, click to enlarge), from Sublime Stitching. Credit where due. Pink is just a natural for embroidery! I considered decoupaging the inside lid of this basket with vintage ephemera, but that would cover up some of the color, so nix, nix. I love this with Pink Passion! What fun to turn Junk into Funktion!

Vintage Beauty

What started as a sampler is now becoming a make-up bag.

Can you see the fingernails?

Color!

Embroidery was the first craft I ever learned, way back a zillion years ago as a tween. I grew up in the 70s, when it was de rigueur to embroider all over your jeans, and boy howdy did I! Wish I'd kept them, they were a total period piece, lots of rainbows and mushrooms and owls and tree huggy slogans. I wore them to see the movie Billy Jack and knew I'd fit right into The Freedom School! Ouch. The pain of earnest youth recalled. Anyway, I haven't embroidered much since. But — bought the book Embroidered Effects by the amazing needle whiz Jenny Hart of Sublime Stitching, and was inspired to try it out again. As with knitting, I can't seem to work up any enthusiasm for other people's patterns, but armed with carbon paper and a skinny knitting needle I transferred my own design onto a piece of cotton canvas squirreled away in the Junk Dungeon. Then I went to a craft store and almost lost my mind in the embroidery floss department. So many amazing colors! What a rush. I stitched up the 30s dolly last night, to test my stitches. Like riding a bike! Since I made my MIL give me back the tin you see holding my newest stash, this will turn into a makeup bag for her.

Damn That Groundhog, Anyway

I'm sorry for the eye pain the new blog colors may be causing any of you, but I need to see green right now. Because I Hate Winter. Every winter makes me wonder about why any of us end up where we are: for me, that's at the top of a hill that is a pain in the nasty mess to navigate in bad weather. Why didn't I end up in a Paris Apartment with a door man, a haute wardrobe, and a canary, the place I dreamed of in 7th grade French class? Too many turnings and reality checks led to a wardrobe of flannel shirts here on the outskirts of civilization. Above are some Kraft Kits I think may not even be worth the 20¢ cost of listing them on etsy. Super, duper ugly, but you never know what people will buy. I'll probably keep them, because they come with good canvas and an embroidery needle, and I really want to start embroidering again.

Basket Full of Craftiness

I love to make things, even more than I love to hoard things. Knit, embroider, sew, paste, write, there's just not enough sitting-down time in a day to get it all done. Here's a glimpse into my overflowing workbasket, as signified by the first two photos of chalkware baskets in my workroom. (Gorilla Glue is the best way I've found to restore broken wire hangers on the back of these lovely pieces of junk.) Then we have the faux bois Tree Hugger shawlette, my third and final (for a while) Citron. The cloud-like mixing of cashmere and Kidsilk Haze is scrumptious to wear. Then a pair of Crazy Zag armwarmers I made one at a time using one of my hat charts. I intentionally made them different colors, but I did not intentionally make them different sizes, that was the gauge mysteriously changing. From now on I knit a pair of anything strictly 2-at-a-Time-on-1-Magic-Loop, as we see implemented in the next photo of a pair of toe-up socks. (This type of sock yarn feels like cheating, it puts in the pattern automatically.) Then we have a giant pile of Elvincraft Mohair/Shetland in Winter Festival, all the way from snowed-in Scotland, which I plan to make a hooded cloak with. Next: some lovely Strong Arm sock yarn from Dyeabolical in a color simply named "1596", but which I prefer to call "Aurora Borealis." (I just bought a pair of green shoes that are demanding some special socks). Lastly we have my shameful butchering of more gorgeous yarn from Dyeabolical in Pumpkin. I hit a snag I couldn't decipher when winding, and so lost patience — cut the rest into crewel-length strands. I'm actually excited to try my hand at embroidering with wool. You can never have too many ways to use up yarn!

Workbasket Full of Buttons

My brother found this giant pile of The Workbasket at a book fair recently, and graciously bought the whole lot for me. Now I have the promise of countless hours of happy perusing through hideous 70s craftiness to bolster my spirits. The only thing better than free junk is uncovering a box full of buttons you forgot you even had.