West Coast Crafty

I’ve been kind of swamped with tying up loose ends for work, so haven’t had a chance to post much over here this week — still no baby, but I’ll announce whenever there is exciting news! I also have high hopes of posting this little craft-room-organizing tutorial I’ve been meandering around with but haven’t finished up the last few photos. So while I’m in limbo I thought I’d mention this fantastic offer I just heard about via buy olympia:

This is our call to action. At buyolympia.com, we believe strongly in making yourself heard. To help you get your message out, we’re giving away 10,000 posters to encourage people to vote. The posters include a space that lets you personalize them; write your message and let the world see it.

So if you visit their site and order the gorgeous Nikki McClure poster, it’s totally free, and shipping is free to US addresses — they are giving away 10,000 posters, a limit of 25 to each person.

I love this idea and the poster imagery is absolutely beautiful. Yay Nikki McClure and buy olympia!

Three weeks til we vote in our primary here… I can’t wait.

Just wanted to announce a super cool upcoming art-music fundraiser, the Buckman Bash, benefiting Buckman Elementary School here in Southeast Portland. I’m especially excited that my husband Andrew will be hosting the show… which will include performances by James Mercer of the Shins and Stephen Malkmus of the Jicks and a killer art auction featuring work from Storm Tharp, Joe Thurston, and a dozen other artists — plus there’s a gallery of student work!

I first heard about Buckman and their amazing art curriculum through my friend Cathy Pitters, whose son Levi is in fifth grade there. Cathy has volunteered tirelessly for the school the whole time Levi has been a student there, and she’s gotten the girls of PDX Super Crafty involved in the Art Show + Sell over the last few years as well. I’ll be a bit too preoccupied this April to be much of a presence there, so I’ve donated a signed copy of Bead Simple and a piece of my jewelry to the silent auction at the school. This is the first year of the Buckman Bash, and our friend Juli Wittenmeier is organizing the evening’s festivities, with lots of cool surprises (did I mention the dessert bar yet?). I’ll be helping Andrew out with the PowerPoint during his hosting duties — so please come say hi if you make it to the show, I’ll be the nine-months-pregnant girl with the laptop!

You can buy tickets online or at either Jackpot Records location (downtown or Hawthorne). All the proceeds for both the Bash and the Art Show + Sell go directly to the art programs!

p.s. Speaking of Cathy, she has just started a new craft blog, Stitch and Destroy — be sure to check it out!

I just heard from Faythe that she’s launching a new fundraiser for her film project, Handmade Nation: a raffle to win fantastic prize packages every month, starting with this bundle of cool stuff for March.

Just stop by her blog to buy $2 raffle tickets and you’re automatically entered to win the whole set, including a copy of I Heart Felt (Taunton, February 2008), a Handmade Nation T-shirt (you pick the size), a Handmade Nation pocket mirror, 3 Sublime Stitching iron-on transfers, and handspun yarn from yarnpunk. The drawing is March 26 and you can enter as many times as you like to improve your odds.

There is lots going on with the Handmade Nation film and book, too. Faythe says, “Cris has been hard at work in the editing room and things are coming along, this is the non-exciting part to share with you, but we are chipping away at our footage to bring you a great documentary about the community.

“In other news, Handmade Nation the book is in the design edit phase which is really super exciting — getting to see mock layouts and actually see the pages as they will look is really satisfying!”

I am very honored to have an essay in the book… it will be out in November from Princeton Architectural Press, and hopefully we’ll get to see a cover peek and hear more updates soon. Congratulations, Faythe!

I just posted about a few things that caught my eye this week over at the Adorn blog:

-ReproDepot is having a great sale on all their Marimekko fabrics through January 15 — don’t miss it!

-And Khadija has organized a Sew Giving baby blanket drive: she’s gathering and hand-delivering handmade baby blankets to expectant mothers in West Africa next month. Here’s Diane’s contribution-in-progress!

Just check out the Adorn post for more on these and a couple of other cool crafty things.

I recently got a note from Ellen, who is working on a very cool project:

I’m a high school student in San Francisco organizing a scarf drive in the city. You know, folks knit scarves, donate them, we get them to folks in need. (In this case, they’re being donated to the Bay Area Rescue Mission.) It’s my first try doing it — all the info is at myspace.com/warmandfuzzySF.

I have to admit that knitting is about my sixth craft and though I love it, I’m not especially good at it — but I will be starting my (garter stitch!) scarf for the drive during the Blazers game tonight. Here’s the first scarf I ever made, seven years ago, which was a Christmas present for my brother David:

If you’d like to make and donate a scarf to Warm and Fuzzy SF too, the drive is going on through Valentine’s Day — just drop your scarf off at — or mail it to — one of these lovely establishments:

Imagiknit
3897 18th St (at Sanchez)

Greenwich Yarn
2073 Greenwich St (at Webster)

Atelier Yarns
1945 Divisadero St (between Pine and California)

Mendels/Far-Out Fabrics
1556 Haight St (between Clayton and Ashbury)

The Gables
5636 Geary Blvd (at 21st Ave)
(415) 751-8152

Wishbone
601 Irving St (at 7th Ave)

Thanks, Ellen!

If you missed Not Martha’s fantastic guest blog series at Design*Sponge, her entire collection of interviews with crafty businesswomen is up — two weeks’ worth of daily posts!

I was so honored to be included, thank you so much, Megan. Everyone she talked to had such great advice and insights, and here’s the list with links so you can check them out whenever you have a chance, if you haven’t already… there are interviews with Daria of Glamscience, Cinnamon of Poise.cc, Amy of Kingpod, Alicia Paulson of Posie, Paola of MirrorMirror, Kristen of Schmancy, and Suzy of the Frock Shop.

Speaking of small business, I also spotted this fantastic post by Jennifer Perkins passing on some stellar advice today, and a very helpful list of craft business (specifically jewelry-making) articles and resources from Katie Hacker.

On another note, interviewee and all-around crafty superstar Amy Karol is having a book event at Bolt here in Portland on Thursday night! I can’t wait to get my copy of Bend-The-Rules Sewing signed and see all the book projects in person. Have you checked out the flickr group of more than 1300 reader-made pieces lately? It’s amazing!

If you go:

Bend-The-Rules Sewing book event with Amy Karol
Thursday, November 8 from 7-9 pm
Bolt, 2136 NE Alberta St, Portland

Last, I hope you’ll forgive a quick stint on the soapbox: today is the last day to turn in your ballots here in Oregon, by 8 pm or they won’t be counted. Please vote if you haven’t already! This election only has two ballot measures (plus some assorted local measures by city or county), but in my opinion they are so important. So if you like to get your political advice from a craft blog, here are my recommendations: Yes on 50 (children’s health care) and most of all, Yes on 49 (Oregon land use).

The reason I feel so passionately about these measures has a lot to do with how much I love Oregon, which is my home — I feel so lucky to live here. But it has even more to do with my native state, North Carolina. The fight over Measure 50 has been a contentious, expensive campaign, largely funded by the tobacco industry and RJ Reynolds in particular. The spending on Measures 49 and 50 has added up to $22 per vote in the last months, most of that cash coming directly from RJR, Phillip Morris and other tobacco companies. I grew up in a state where that industry and their money are king and to say I do not agree with their politics is putting it mildly. Please consider raising the tax on cigarettes simply to match Washington’s and help fund our children’s health care.

As for Measure 49, which protects and regulates how land can be developed, I cannot state the case strongly enough to vote yes. I grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina, which was a small, lovely city in the 1970s and early 80s, surrounded by a loose network of smaller towns and farms. It’s now a huge sprawling intertwined series of mini and maxi-cities, one on top of the other, largely because the growth, development, and annexing there has been rapid and under-regulated. My grandmother’s house and garden and the small family-owned farms that surrounded it in once-rural Durham County are now industrial warehouses and business parks; the open land around Raleigh in every direction has become subdivisions, subdivisions, and more subdivisions.

And did I mention the severe and unrelenting water shortage the entire area is now facing due to over-development and the drought that has descended? Atlanta, which has made similar choices over the last twenty years, has the same problems. I love North Carolina and I will always be glad that I grew up there, but it has changed so much that it’s hardly recognizable.

I love Oregon: the food grown here is stellar, the wine industry is incredible, business is booming, the state is beautiful, and Portland’s transit and clean air are spectacular. It didn’t happen accidentally; let’s keep it this way.

I went to the last one of these and it was amazing! If you haven’t gone to a big free-for-all swap like this one, do yourself a favor and mark your calendar now.

When: Sunday, October 7th, 12-4 pm

Where: The 100th Monkey Studio, 110 SE 16th Ave (SE 16th and Ankeny), Portland

Admission: Bring any craft supplies you want to swap, and a $5.00 donation for 100th Monkey’s Art Scholarship Fund.

What happens: You’ll drop off your stuff at the entrance, and then head inside. We’ll give you an empty bag, and you can take any materials you can use from the swap tables.

We do have some guidelines on what to bring. Here they are:

- This swap is for yarns, beads, buttons, papers, rubber stamps, fabrics, sewing notions, art/craft books, paints, drawing materials, and anything else that relates directly to making art or crafts.

- Please don’t bring discarded items that could be “reclaimed” into other projects. We’re big fans of reclaimed materials, but they aren’t the best items for this kind of swap. (But you might consider donating them to SCRAP instead.)

- Fabrics must be at least 1/2 yard. Please do not bring smaller scraps, or finished or half-finished garments.

ps: I seem to be locked out of flickr at the moment, but once I’m back in I have some pretty photo posts ready to go… Viva Sampler!

Etsy has just premiered its new online magazine, The Storque, this month! They’re posting an ever-changing mix of features like This Handmade Life, How-To, and Craftivism, and spotlighting the crafty goings-on that they’re most excited about.

I’m interviewing Rebecca Pearcy of Queen Bee Creations for an upcoming Storque article, which I’m really looking forward to. By the way, Queen Bee has a new feature: some amazing one-of-a-kind bags posted in a special monthly flickr set. If you see one you like, just call them up and order it over the phone. Plus, you can get free standard shipping on any Queen Bee or Chickpea purchase online (just enter FREEQUEENBEE at checkout) and 20% off all purchases made in the studio through September 20…

In other crafty news, Faythe Levine has just posted a new extended clip from her film, Handmade Nation, featuring even more crafters and business owners. I love the film excerpt and I’m so eager to see the full-length movie — Faythe has done an incredible job. Don’t forget to stop by the HN Etsy shop to see all the cool handmade stuff for sale and support the film project, too.

Our wireless is apparently back after a week of on-and-off (mostly off) glitchiness, thank goodness… it’s a hundred degrees out and I just don’t think I could head over to a coffee shop to check my email like I have for the last few days. My inborn Southern ability to tolerate this kind of blazing heat has completely slipped away after ten years. It’s so nice to finally upload some pictures and post again (at least for the moment!), and I’m working on my long-overdue getcrafty column too.

Today I saw a flyer for Shared Route and I’m so intrigued: a biodiesel-powered shuttle between Portland and Seattle, how cool! I am definitely hoping to head up to see the new McLeod show, and Kayte is coming to visit in a few days by way of Seattle, too, so maybe one of us can post a real-life review soon. It sounds awesome, and pretty cheap too — I love the train but it can be spendy (not to mention late).

here are the shuttle details:

and here are the McLeod details too!

I swear I’ll have some crafty stuff to post soon — most of my projects are in progress but I should be seeing the light at the end of the tunnel one of these days, I’m looking forward to it…

Update from Anna:

One of the sellers in the etsy_lj group on Livejournal is donating all of the proceeds from her shop to the Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund. She suggested listing items and tagging them with “hokiefund.”

Her shop is here.

thanks, Anna!!

Like so many of us, I’ve just felt utterly sad and wrung out since hearing the awful news about the shootings in Virginia. My heart goes out to everyone mourning friends and family, and to the students who went through that terrifying ordeal. I can’t even imagine.

My heart is too heavy to write about crafty stuff so instead I’ll just post this information from the head of the Virginia Tech Foundation that was passed on to me yesterday, in case anyone is interested:

“Many have asked how they may send financial memorials… any memorial gifts, payable to the “Virginia Tech Foundation,” designated specifically for the “Virginia Tech Family Fund,” should be mailed to University Development, 902 Prices Fork Road (0336), Blacksburg, VA 24061.”

If you’d like to, maybe you can make something by hand, and sell it as a fundraiser for the memorial fund in honor of the students and professors who were killed. If I hear of a way to directly donate crafty gifts or cards, I’ll post it, so please let me know if you have heard about anything like that. I would really appreciate it.