2010: My Year in Crafts
2010 was the year I ventured far from my yarn-crafting comfort zone, which is not to imply I was uncomfortable doing it. Inspired by my cousin’s jewelry making, I learned how to make earrings. Armed with a bag of implements I bought off Craigslist and knowledge gained from a workshop at the Summit of Awesome, I started screen printing. And I finally, finally, progressed from thinking about sewing to actually learning how to do it. In fact, as I write this there are four newly completed zipper pouches in front of me. They aren’t perfect, but I know what I want to do differently...
Read MoreUpcycled Clock Parts ➥ Earrings
This weekend was all about digging in at home for some quiet time as we try to exorcise the stress of the last few weeks. I slept in, finished a book I’ve been reading for ages, started a crochet project, and spent the entirety of Saturday afternoon making earrings. We had a clock we couldn’t fix, see, and instead of just throwing it out we busted it open and dug around for parts. I loved the hands most of all, so grabbed a couple other parts along with them and started fiddling around. They looked too sparse with only the clock parts, so I started adding chains, and then some...
Read MoreFrom Make & Meaning: Diving in After a Dry Spell
This post was originally published on the now-retired Make and Meaning blog on November 30th, 2009. When I left my job in the yarn industry about a year ago, I was pretty much a crafting mess. My hobby had been lost to work, the thought of yarn sparked in me nothing but ambivalence, and it felt like the only thing I had left in me as a crafter was my identity as one. At the same time, I was looking ahead to a year during which I pretty much wasn’t going to have to work. So I concocted some pretty big non-yarn-related creative plans. I wanted to learn how to quilt – in fact,...
Read MoreHousekeeping!
So many little things collecting in my brain, and I haven’t set any of them down here. Time to remedy that! *Rolls in my trusted bulleted list.* After a decade wondering what it would be like, I was on the radio. Not live radio, but radio all the same. In a studio, with a schmancy microphone. Sheryl MacKay interviewed me about Mighty Ugly for British Columbia CBC’s arts and culture show North by Northwest last weekend. It’s the first segment in the May 8th podcast, which you can download here, or here’s a direct link to the mp3. After six weeks wondering what it...
Read MoreBack to Our Regularly Scheduled Making Stuff
Okay, okay, the Olympics are over.* To prove to you I did stuff other than walk around town talking to strangers and screaming my head off about sports, behold: I made some stuff, too. And only some most of it is Games-related. First up, I embroidered. Yes I did. A friend of ours is due to have a baby in a month or so, and she asked her friends to contribute a quilt square. The theme: pirates. I used a pattern from SummerSweetStudio. Greg also made a square. He was far more ambitious in his rendering of a mariner’s compass. Pretty impressive from someone who swears he hates sewing,...
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I write here about creativity, business, crafts, publishing and books.
