Community differences

A lesson relearned this weekend is that the crafting community is sorta nicer than the video game community. Crafters will generally be positive and offer constructive criticism, while video game fans are likely to tell you that your video game is the worst game ever and also, you are ugly.

One guy thought I was hot though, so it's all good ;)

Embroidery attempts

So, embroidery is another thing I am trying. I have long intended to teach myself... it... oh god my grammar... anyway, so of course I already have a big stash of embroidery thread and have had it for years. In my defense, I acquired most of it probably almost 20 years ago, so I could make friendship bracelets and cross-stitch at Girl Guide camp, and I used some of it when I did hair-wrapping back when I was 19... oh god, I'm a hoarder. I swear it's restricted to craft supplies, and they are all in tidy boxes or, uh, bags. I think. Um, where was I? (The embroidery floss still looks great after 15-20 years in a plastic bag! it's in a nice kit box now though)

So, I figured I should make some sort of sampler. Here are some stitch practice things.



Satin stitch is always what I sort of wanted to do, like painting with thread, but I never bothered trying to do it properly. This time I did and it's coming out a bit better.



I thought that for subject matter, I could try to embroider my own doodles. They're kind of patterny and I thought they'd be cool done in just black on white. I thought it would be original. I have this perfectionism-related problem doing anything I think has been "done before". I feel like it's some kind of art failure on my part and that someone would also accuse me of theft and unoriginality.



I started embroidering this:


A little while later I was browsing around some embroidery blogs and found this post on Mary Corbet's Needle and Thread (which is a cool site, lots of tutorial videos): Blackwork Fish

She doodled a patterny fish and embroidered it in blackwork... It's stunningly intricate and beautiful.
I now feel guilty of psychic unoriginality :(
maybe I should embroider it in just BLUE on white... that's totally different, right? And it keeps the feel of the pen doodle :)

Sewing

When my crafty sister started doing some quilting last winter, I was reminded of how interested I'd been in it back in college. I even "made" a "quilt" for a pattern and surface class (it was a knotted quilt, and the binding was attached with, uh, masking tape). I had pieced the whole thing by hand, which at the time I thought was admirable but now I have no patience. Anyway, I copied her again and took a "my first quilt" class. It turned out pretty nice!



I bought myself a sewing machine and made a few more things. I like bags. I have to learn to put in zippers though.





For years I had intended to make myself some cushion covers. I finally got around to making one.



Bonus picture of my cat enjoying the quilt.

Adventures in cute

My sister Andrea taught me to needle-felt last year. I made a few woolen balls for the cats to play with and a couple of "pom-poms" for baby hats but left it at that. After finding Softies Central I wanted to make more cute things, so I ordered a book on making needle-felted adorable animals.

Once the book arrived I flipped through it and proceeded to ignore basically everything it said and all the projects inside and made this cat. It was unexpectedly popular on my Facebook page so it gets its own post!

Ceramics revisited

After I finished college, I realized that I wasn't really cut out for life as a professional artist at the time. I had no entrepreneurial spirit or confidence and didn't want to teach. I rerouted myself into the computer graphics field and am now quite happy helping to make art for video games. I miss making pots, though. Any time I go to a craft show I go glare at the typical pots and tell myself I could do better, or at least not make such boring stuff.

Anyway, after failing to find a home here that would allow for any sort of studio space, I looked around and signed up at the Irvine Fine Arts center for a pottery class. I was impressed with the facility, the teacher and the level of work being done by a lot of the people there... but the studio hours were terrible. Open studio time was only on weekdays before 5 pm, Saturdays from 9:30 to 3:30, and nothing Sundays. So... for me, basically only Saturday. It is highly difficult to try to make production pottery with one day a week in which to do it. I'd go in, throw a bunch of pots, wrap them up carefully in plastic, and return a week later to find them either too moist (so I had to sit around and wait for them to harden before I could attach handles or whatnot without squashing them) or too dry (ruined...). And, though the studio hours were probably aimed at O.C. housewives who have nothing to do before 5 pm on weekdays, somehow it was pretty busy on Saturdays so half the time I'd show up and literally not find any space on a work table or at a wheel and I'd just have to go home. I couldn't handle that so I didn't sign up again.

I'm still sad about that. I'm sure there are places in L.A. where I could rent space or something but I don't have the level of motivation that would inspire me to be able to drive at least an hour back and forth on a weeknight to make some pots. I would just be too tired. My current plan is to somehow get rich then buy a house with a studio :P

While I was at the Irvine Fine Arts center I decided to focus on mugs because I had never made more than a couple in art school and never felt like they were successful. A good mug is not a simple thing, but it has to look simple. To me, it has to be comfortable and friendly and look like it wants to be held. It has to fit well in the hand. It can't be too narrow or too wide The handle can't be too thin or too small. It has to relate to the shape of the mug and it can't hurt your fingers. Anyway, here are some of the mugs I made during my little study of form. (Gas-fired stoneware isn't my usual thing, but I had to use studio clay and glazes)

don't worry, I ground the little kiln shelf bits there off the foot after taking this picture

Knitting roundup

I think I learned some basic knitting at summer camp when I was a wee Girl Guide. I know I knitted a few cat toys when I first got my Lucy-cat in college, but didn't move beyond that until my sister Andrea started knitting cooler stuff and I thought I should copy her or something. I am a very slow knitter, and I now live in southern California where I have no need for warm  hats or scarves, so I don't do much knitting. I can whip up a nice baby hat now and then though.

Jewelry roundup

After my post-college decision to learn computer graphics, I didn't really do anything crafty, aside from an intro to jewelry class I took at a Toronto college. For a few years I guess I restricted myself to trying to learn to draw/use Photoshop/use Maya.

Once I was comfortably employed in game development, at some point I decided that my wardrobe needed to start including accessories, and I went to the mall to look for jewelry. Everything was crap and I hated it. I decided I'd just make my own because I had a stash of hoarded beads from my youth. And so I did.

I haven't made much jewelry in a year or two, aside from a few pairs of earrings. I seem to lack inspiration, I want to move beyond wirework, and I'm quite happy to buy other people's handmade jewelry from Etsy (while I would probably not buy someone else's cushion or handsewn bag, figuring I should make those myself). Still I might go to the local bead show next weekend because most of my beads are too small and I want chunkier jewelry ;)