Crafty Diversions: August 2008

Saturday, August 23, 2008

Blog Changes

Dear Friends,

I am in the process of moving and changing the blog and tweaking other aspects of my site. I will be switching over to WordPress soon, so if you are reading this via a feed subscription, please change it to http://craftydiversions.wordpress.com/

Thanks!!

Saturday, August 16, 2008

Sozenji Craft Fair

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to participate in small craft fair held as a fundraiser at a Japanese Buddhist temple. According to the organizer, this was the first time they opened it up to vendors not part of the temple. I'm used to, and like small craft fairs because I rarely have that much inventory for a large one. Plus, the preparations for large craft fairs are tremendous. I was prepared for small, but not for teeny-tiny. There were only 3.5 vendors. The 0.5 vendor was a guy who was waaaay underpricing pottery but he wasn't even there...his friend sold it for him. This was also the smallest Buddhist temple I have ever been to or seen.

All the people there -- vendors and attendees alike -- were all very nice, but the people in attendance were not crafty-artsy type shoppers and weren't really buying. Basically, the majority of them probably don't go to craft and art fairs at all. They were mostly there to enjoy the Taiko performances. Futhermore, I don't think some of them were prepared to pay fair value for quality handmade items (partly probably not really realizing the hours of work that goes into one project too, because the reality is that in the global economy, most people are used to overseas cheap factory labor.) Anyway, at least I made some money, albeit dismal.

The highlight of the fair was the drumming and Chia, who came out to hang out with me. She had never sat behind a booth at a fair. I invited her to put some of her knitting on my table. Chia managed to sell a mohair shawl that she knit to a slightly eccentric Chinese woman.

For this fair (or rather, small gathering), I painted and upcycled another thrift-find angora sweater into a couple of new Hippie Chicks. I really cute and cool Taiko drummer named Susie bought 2 of the fatter chicks. In fact, the ones she bought were the ones I submitted to Sweater Surgery.

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Sweater Surgery Book Contributions

Ok, I know I'm lame, but I'm finally getting around to posting my contributions to the Sweater Surgery book. (Disclaimer: I purposefully blurred out the instructional text because of copyright issues. Besides, that way, you can go buy the book. :-) Or, if you're interested, I'd be willing to teach any one of these projects at your shop or party. I also teach knitting and dyeing.)

The instructions are just for the Twiggy Headband (page 63)...it's the rainbow colored one. The other two headbands are featured in the book's Gallery section on page 131 and do not include instructions.

Nine-to-Five was also flashed in a quick 1-second clip on DIY Network's "Uncommon Threads." Originally, my friends and I were also supposed to demo this project, but the producers realized that they didn't have enough time, so we just worked on Shelly.

Everyone loves the Hippie Chicks! I came up with the idea when I was experimenting with dyeing a recycled angora sweater. I love the way the publisher styled Opal and Sunshine. Recently, I sold both of them to a very cute and enthusiastic Taiko drummer named Susie.

Violet Flower was such a labor-intensive project. Well all of the featured projects are, but this one takes the cake with the size ratio. This is made from a recycled, upcycled sweater sleeve that I felted. Then I dip-dyed it (not as easy as it seems because you have to hold it to get saturation and try to control the colors to make sure that it seemed more fluid), hand-stitched the purse and the lining and did the embroidery edges. Each petal is also individually laid out and sewn. The center of the flower also is the closure.

Shelly has an extra cameo on page 14, and has her own Gallery photo on page 127. I had posted about Shelly before and my experiences on Uncommon Threads in September 2006 (Geez, has it been that long?)

These two hats (page 130) are featured in the Gallery section as well and do not have any accompanying instructions. Gwlana was originally intended to be an artsy-ish woven bowl, but then Zona commented that it could be cute as a kid's hat -- and I agree! Cosmopolitan is made from cut pieces of a felted wool sweater. I used the texture of the sweater fabric to create interest in the hat.