Check out this amazing crochet. I really, really need to learn to crochet properly. I recently took a stringbag class with a great instructor and I learned so much (thanks Andrea!) and I loved it! But do I get home and work on it? Hah! I get frustrated without an instructor at the ready to rescue me.

Since there are so many luscious crocheting projects out there I think I'll have to make more of an effort. Maybe at our craft night tonight I'll sit with Cece (AKA crochet master) and interrupt her knitting with my crocheting needs.

Let's check out some work by a crafty snarker who actually finishes projects. Tada! The door:

Or at least part of it. This is just part of one side. Check out the link on the side "What Exactly is a Door Project?" for more information about this project.

Wish all of you in blogland could join us for craft night. Nancy

The Dark Side of Crafting

When you scan through the myriad of wonderful crafting sites out there you can't help but feel unworthy of all that brilliance; all those beautiful, perfect, oh-so-cute crafts that talented crafters whip up with no effort whatsoever. Well, at least I feel terribly inadequate. Especially since the Hedgehog incident. Lollychops posted instructions for the most adorable hedgehogs. Her instructions were clear and I followed them faithfully. Twice. Neither looked anything like hers. I couldn't get the face right and the "spines" would never line up no matter how much pinning and re-pinning I did. One side would have nice even spineing and the other side would have about twice as many in a random array. Argghhh!

Then I discovered this site: http://craftfail.com/. I feel so much better. Other people are making spam soap and off-kilter baby caps...You often only see an artist's best work and that's why Craft Fail so refreshing. Crafters are fessing up to their worst nightmares. It's not only me! Craft Fail also leads you to other sites, all brutally honest about the the woe side of crafting:

What Not to Craft (oh my!)
What Not to Crochet (check out the kid's shawl)
Kraptastic Krafts
Cake Wrecks (when professional cakes go horribly, hilariously wrong)

Once again, I'm at work so no craft pics. I'll leave with a lovely image of Oregon

In the Spirit of Spring

This is a pretty cool craft, even if you don't do things like Easter:

http://www.marthastewart.com/article/silk-tie-easter-eggs

Still Crafting

Hey gang. It's been awhile. I have plans to post some reviews of the books that live in my craft room; some are actual crafting books and some are off-beat and inspirational books on random topics. I can't help myself, when I see books titled "Sex in the Garden" I just have to get a copy. It has great line drawings, quirky formatting and diverting text. I can spend hours with these kinds of books.

I've also been working away on cute little bunnies made from this free pattern from Danger Crafts. These bunnies are quick to make; look for a picture of one in "Craft of the Week". Rebecca Danger has all sorts of other great stuffed, knitted toys on her blog. You can purchase many of her patterns on Etsy.

All my pictures of crafty things are on the laptop at home. I'll leave you with this picture of the Oregon Coast. Enjoy. Nancy

Here there be Dragons!

Uncle Ferrous Clusterfrack's Backwoods Fine Arts Seminar series.
Howdy all! Today's lesson will be on the slowest way to complete someone else's metal sculpture while still ruining their artistic vision for the piece. Joke, joke...well maybe not. Well over a year ago I began to finish a large yard-art metal sculpture project that had been the final work of a dear friend, Chuck Jacobs. Chuck, who was a professional woodworker, had tried the 'dragon' piece as his first foray into metal sculpture. Chuck passed away before he could complete the beast, and his widow Betsey wanted the piece finished as a memorial.
Here is the dragon in Chuck's shop shortly after I began to work on it. The globe is about three feet in diameter, and the dragon is three feet or so as well. I started out working on scales as my intro to the project.
Scales, scales, scales. They start out as three foot pieces of mild steel strap which I have cut from sheets at a local shop. I then cut the strap to length, clip the ends to rough shape, finish shaping on a bench grinder, tweak the scale to fit its place on the dragon, bend in the tip curve, and finally weld it on; phew, about five to six minutes per. I generally make about a dozen rough scales in a batch, then fit and attach them. Then repeat...

I got a fair amount of work done on the beast in this first phase, then Chuck and Betsey's house and shop were sold and I took the dragon(and my own hairy self) to crafty Nancy's place. It had been a pretty nice place until I ghettoized with moto-shades, piles of lumber, derelict sailboats, and the odd dead car or two and now a big ol' crazy sculpture thingy. Well, the move was not conducive to progress on the project and it languished until about six weeks ago.

The arrival of the sun was a boon to this outdoor welding enthusiast. I have been able to make good progress on scaling, and on the lower legs and claws.

The claws were time consuming but great fun to zap up, what with all that scary lumpy jaggeldy dragon-hide goodness. It's the end of March and I have a few more hours on scale duty, then it's off to the races with the wings. The final bit will be a slight modification of the globe base. The dragon should be snarling away at the Selma Community Center by mid-spring.
Yippee, and out; sez kelly.

Spinning class

Not spinning as in that newfangled bicycle-that-doesn't-go-anywhere spinning, no, boys and girls, I'm talking about the real deal, the age-old spinning of yarn. Spinning one's own yarn, to be exact. Since I'm a knitter, I thought it would be a good idea to see what the whole yarn-making process involves, in order to better appreciate why yarn is so gosh darn expensive.

Soooooo, one cold February day last year, Luke and I went to a local mohair goat farm and helped shear some goats (that's right, right to the source). In return for our help, I received a whole oodle (six large garbage bags full) of raw fleece (yep, raw fleece--unwashed, smelling like goat, and full of poop and straw bits) and rough instructions on how to process into yarn. I also received a free drop spindle, which I thought was nice at the time, but now realize that it was the donor's idea of a sick joke (you'll see why later). She also let me borrow some hand carders.

I set to washing, and washing, and washing, over and over, each fleece. This stuff takes some HOT water to get all the smelly stuff and dirt and poop out, and you have to wash and rinse each batch about three times. Then I put it through the spin cycle in the washer and let it dry next to the wood stove. I just finished washing the last of the fleece this year. Not that it's that hard, it just sucks that much. Your whole house smells like goat afterward.

I started carding the first batch right after it was washed. This was the nicest fleece that I had--a cute little charcoal-colored yearling with super soft fur. Carding is hard work, especially with itty-bitty hand carders. Imagine an extra large dog brush, about six inches by eight inches. Then imagine brushing a goat with it, only the goat's in a trash bag and you have to take a handful at a time and brush it. Then I tried spinning it on the drop spindle.

Then I realized I was in hell, or at least purgatory, and had willingly taken on something of Sisyphean proportions. Keep in mind, I had six trash bags of this stuff and I'm not a very patient person anyway.

About this time, one of my husband's relatives was the nicest person in the world and let me borrow her spinning wheel. I thought, "Hell yeah! I'll have this done in no time!" Well, there was still the carding to do, then summer came, and work...

So, six months later, someone lent me a drum carder and I started carding again, woo hoo! I got about two-thirds of my whole fleece stockpile carded, when I had to give both carders back, so I figured I'd start spinning on the wheel.

It actually went pretty fast. I finished the first fleece in two sittings, then dyed half of it. So, over a year and countless hours of labor later, The Result:

Super uneven, chunky, something. I don't want to call it yarn. Super-bulky doesn't even begin to cover it. I'll call it OMFG bulky weight. And being a thrifty, somewhat inconsistent knitter, I tried knitting this stuff with #10 needles.
HA HA HA! Look at the tightness of those stitches!
I could knit bullet proof vests with this stuff!





Here's the yearling spun into yarn.
Not as ungodly-thick as the first try, but still pretty uneven. Hopefully I'll be able to knit something somewhat decent with this. But anyway, my point here is, I have mad respect for all those people who spun their own yarn and knit their own clothes out of their spun yarn for all those years, and for those who still do.

The Bear Hotel

I would like to clarify the post below. First of all, sorry for the disorganization of the pictures and the print –we are having technical difficulties. I would like to explain what our field trip really was for the few readers that don’t know us, southern Oregon, Brady or the Bear Hotel. Brady Adams is the President of Evergreen Bank. The bank puts on a lot of events and supports local artists. The Nutcrackers line the sidewalks of downtown Grants Pass during the holidays. I believe all the animals in the “what the hell” photo below are used in the Christmas Village the bank puts out every year for the kids. Who the heck knows why there are leather fish…they were displayed somewhere in Grants Pass. All this stuff is stored out of season in the Bear Hotel.

The Bear Hotel is HUGE. Besides storage for all the holiday statuary there are “booths” set up in the back for artists to work on their projects. At this time the artists are commissioned to paint for a door project. Each artist is given a door and a space to work. I’m not really clear on the other details of the project, maybe Paul B can shed some more light on it- he is one of the lucky artists that gets to work there.

And finally, the reason it is called the Bear Hotel. Once upon a time in Europe, someone had the idea to give artists a similar blank piece of sculpture and let them run wild. It started with cows. There were many versions of this project done in US cities; the one I’m most familiar with is Cow Parade NYC that took place in 2000. The general idea is that artists create pieces all using the same mold and then taking off from there. The pieces then are auctioned off for charity. This proved to be wildly popular and some cities used different animals besides cows. Seattle had pigs and Grants Pass had bears. So, all the bears they didn’t auction off in GP were sent to live at the Bear Hotel. All the bears in the pics below were from that project.