Travel and Education

...are exciting but in different ways. Hoorah for going back to university! Hoorah for dissertations (?) Hoorah for negotiated projects! Hoo Hoo Hoorah!

New York was utterly magnificient. There are so many wonderful places to see and shop and eat (well, eat at, not eat the place themselves LOL11!) that I couldn't tell you about all of them. But I had a great time and here are some photos.








All quite art-/tourist-based I'm afraid, but because if something's cool you don't stop and take a picture of it, do you? Well I don't. People may shout.

Anyway, it was GRrrrreaaaat (alright Tony, calm down) and I would recommend going to anyone, including people who live there. We went to a psychobilly night (awesome), and saw Does It Offend You, Yeah? live in New Jersey (brilliant), and bought expensive things (painful) and ate incredible food (bloaty).

As for university, I have been given nearly all my modules and I think it might be ok. Maybe. Just a bit hectic (as you can tell) but this year I'm trying to combine textiles and ceramics in a magical combo, hopefully, and see how that comes out.

I have been knitting like a mad thing and soon I will post up the pattern for a slouchy hat I customised and made different and STUFF; everyone keeps asking me to knit them one but I kind of want them to do it themselves. Which is fair and in keeping with the culture of craft- democratic making-bollocks. Woo!

HolidaAy (Madonna)

Due to being on holiday in New York for the past ten days, I have been unable to update this blog. And tomorrow I am going back to university. Expect a lengthy rambling and tourist-based post tomorrow or Sunday.

I had a great time and saw so many things that are almost indescribable. I will try and post photos up here of some of the best things, but I would recommend going there for ANYONE but especially those interested in art/design/culture type stuff; the museums take up most of the holiday alone, and the really super-tourist things are overrun with foolish...er...tourists which isn't too pleasant.

Back to the daily grind (yeh, getting up at 10, 2 hour lunch breaks, going home at 4 and going out on the razz at 9, what angst) soon but a whole week of 'readjustment and induction' i.e. nothing, first.

Yum, Fabric

Sew Mama Sew is cute. I ordered tiny tiiiiny amount of fabric from there (only 1/4 yard of each because I'm poor, and also because I didn't want to get loads and it be ugly) and it arrived much sooner than I expected.

Ooh, it's all outside and in a tree. Arty.



How wonderful and psychedelically 1950s are those? They're all on the website, some in the sale, and I may buy some larger quantities (aha, when the dollar goes back up again against the pound. Got my travellers' cheques today and it goes down. Great. I want half price stuff goddamn!) The paisley and peace signs are to make something for my boyfriend (tie? that'd be cool) but my favourite is the crazy 1960s houses...or the tiny plants...or all of them. I intend to use them to make some sort of QUILT because quilting is way cool. I found Oh Fransson from the CRAFT blog and she is cool. I used to think quilting was a bit naff but I am a changed woman I tell you. I want to have a go at her Crazy 9 Piece quilt (love that shit) with my new fabrics and old fabrics and...ok calm down. I will do it when I am at university because bugger me does the Midlands get cold.

Damn you Ikea. Damn you. Damn your cheap craply-made furniture, and your cheap wicker baskets, and your stupid Eiffel Tower prints, and your adorable children's section, and your cheap cheap cheap and cool fabrics. Damn you! I'm shaking my fist (which, by the way, is quite hard to do whilst you are typing.) I got these three from there when we visiting to buy university stuff for my sister. Like, she totally NEEDS a film-strip photo frame. That's like, a requisite or something when you go to uni. Yeh.

I got itchy and had to make something with the new fabrics so I made a ball (except it's kind of squonky) from the tutorial on The Purl Bee. I thought I may make some much smaller ones, as this turned out quite big for the pattern (well done on the spatial awareness, haha) and string them together in a necklace. OOOoh yes.

In other news, I haven't been very well which SUCKS because I am going to New York in 3 days. Eek. And I had my hair cut; it's pretty cool. When I say that, I mean very cool. But you knew that.

Future Project

Recently, I have been very busy trying to sort out what I will be doing in NEW YORK omigiamsoexciteditsunbelievable so I haven't had much time for making. However, I managed to track down the latest copy of CRAFT (08) in a Borders bookshop in Birstall, a place in Yorkshire. I was very excited about it and the issue is mostly about weaving, which I really want to do now. Have a look on the Craft blog - http://blog.craftzine.com - for more details and projects and things.

I also started posting some of my projects to the Craft Flickr group which you can join/find if you're on Flickr; search for Groups > CRAFT (wow, complicated). I went to a 'craft fair' this weekend at the National Mining Museum in Yorkshire, and I say 'craft fair' in inverted commas because it was terrifyingly bad. There were two saving graces that I thought were fairly ok from a technical point of view, but not really my bag.

The first was a lady called Chris Furness on her site www.echosofnature.co.uk, with the company name incorrectly grammaticised (I'm not really sure why, but I am a pedant for grammar and it infuriates me when I see things like that). Personally, it's a bit too twee and girly-girl for me (her bag is on the left) but I think she makes them all by hand and felts everything herself which is a good sign.



The second was a company called Big Paw Gifts, which I found upsetting because it was presents for animals and I'm not really a fan of bollocks like that, clocks shaped like dogs and little wooden plaques saying 'Only my cat understands me', because does that not reek of some weird sexual/psychological perversion to anyone else? I find people who are obsessed with their pets, i.e. let them drool all over their faces and buy them fur-lined blankets, strange and fairly disturbing. But maybe that's because I'm not a massive animal fan and I like steak too much.

Anyway, this company stocks toys by a lady called Marianne Springham, odd scrap-type dogs with button eyes and funny names (above), and personally I think they are definitely the best product, by far. The rest of the stuff at the fair was just worryingly bad. There are a lot of people who make cards. A lot. I mean, yeh, you get to about 40 and you start collecting cards 'just in case', but do you really want a card that looks like a four-year-old has made it, but lacking the naive charm and light touch that only a excitable toddler and glitter glue can manage? Really?

I find it very discouraging when I see things like that. It just goes to show what people think 'craft' is in England, or at least a large proportion of our society. It's strange that 'craft' and 'craftsmen' can be so linguistically close, and yet in people's minds they mean such disparate things; craft is cards, knitted baby hats, garish colours and fake flowers stuck to shells, whilst craftsmen are those who train for years, develop skills and produce work of excellent and beautiful quality. When you compare our dislike, or disillusionment maybe, of craft to that of America - for example, the Maker Faire advertised on the Craft blog, or the number of small independent shops who run alongside the local community, or individuals who promote anti-consumerism - it's disappointing that our country, which is so diverse and hate-to-use-the-word-but-rich in its craft skills and traditions, like weaving, sewing, and blanket-making, isn't embracing the craft 'revolution' in the same way.

Somebody asked me if there was really a place and career to be made out of traditional skills like knitting and sewing anymore, after I talked to them about what I was going to do after leaving university. In answer to that question, in my mind I have never had a doubt that people will always need traditional skills. The very idea that he had pointed it out was alien to me. The main crux of the argument is that fashions and trends will change, and that's good and exciting because it's interesting to see what people think up next - but there will always be a need for people who can make the clothes, cut out the patterns, knit and stitch the pieces, weave, embroider, fuse, saw, solder, turn, throw...there will always be a place for those that set the trends, rather than follow.

Project: Scrap Cards

Here's a little project to make these nice mini-cards out of fabric scraps, using machine embroidery and bits and bobs. This is very photo-intensive so be warned.

You will need:
A4 piece of card, coloured if you wish
Scraps of fabric
Sewing machine and matching/contrasting thread
Metal ruler, pencil, scalpel/craft knife, cutting board, scissors

Woops, wrong way round. Start by cutting a 9cm wide strip that's the same width as the short side of the A4.
Make two scored lines in the piece, the first 9cm from the left edge, then another 9cm in from that. You should have a 'tab' on the right which is approximately 3cm.
Fold your card with the tab on the outside (see photo below) and if the tab doesn't quite fit over the card when folded, trim the main part of the card to fit. It should look like the one below when folded.
This is how the card without fabric or anything should look. Now to cut out the window!
Mark an 8cm square on the inside of the card, on the panel next to the tab (as in the photo). Use pencil and do it liiiightly.
Cut out the window using a sharp scalpel and ruler on your cutting mat. Now set that aside. Lovely.
Choose your fabric. I used some powerful 1970s curtain fabric and this strange quilted type thing. Pick two fabrics to start with.
Using your cut out window as a template, draw round this and cut out a square in each fabric slightly larger than the window so you can glue it down on the base of the card.
Do this for both fabrics and you will have something like this.
Now, stitch the two fabrics together, one on top of the other, using a straight stitch, around the edge of the square with a 0.5cm seam allowance. You will be cutting through the top fabric to reveal the layer beneath so decide which one you would like to see more of. It's like a fun boy game. Aha.
Do some stitching experimentation on your square, using the different stitch settings your machine has, creating areas and blocks on the fabric for later.
Choose one or two areas which you want to cut out. Go round these areas with a small, tight zig-zag stitch to prevent edges from fraying.
After that, cut out the top fabric layer using sharp scissors (be careful not to cut through both layers) to reveal the magic beneath. WoooOooOooOOOooo. Looks quite cool.
Add on some other bits and bobs if you fancy. I am currently enjoying ric-rac but this may fade soon.
When you've completed your fabric square, line up the fabric under the window in your card to make sure it's straight. If you need to trim the square to fit in, go ahead.
Using Pritt stick or other glue which works (superglue is shit), glue the fabric down to the other square panel of the card.
Check that the window fits over and put glue around the window side which faces the fabric. Glue down securely.

You have finished your card! Place on table and expect admirers.

PS The only two things that got me through that bastard post were 1) BBC Radio 6, you genius people! and 2) chocolate cake.