West Coast Crafty

This weekend has plenty of crafty stuff going on here in Portland — first up, the second annual vintage sale at one of my favorite stores, Office, starts today and goes through Sunday.

Just stop by during store hours for your chance to browse the finds — I have always coveted a vintage typewriter and maybe this will be my chance! They’ll also have file boxes, metal lunchboxes, and lots of other midcentury treasures.

Then on Saturday, Lindsey Ross of Urban Craft Uprising is hosting the grand opening of her new craft store, Yarnia.

The concept is amazing: choose exactly the fibers, colors, and amount that you want and Lindsey will custom-spin you the yarn of your dreams, right onto a spindle, and charge you by the pound. Now that I can walk to an ultra-customized yarn store, I’m just not sure that Portland can get much better!

If you go:

Office PDX vintage sale
2204 NE Alberta Street in Portland
888 355 SHOP
Friday 11-6, Saturday 11-5, Sunday 11-4

Yarnia grand opening
4183 SE Division Street in Portland
503.488.0022
Saturday 10-6

Maggie mentioned today that the post office is coming out with a set of stamps honoring Charles and Ray Eames this summer! I think they are absolutely gorgeous — I can’t wait to see them in person.

Eames Demetrios (of the Eames Office) says, “These stamps were designed by the remarkable Derry Noyes, who designs many of the stamps for the US Post Office. There is a wonderful familial connection there, as Derry is the daughter of Eli Noyes, who was an extremely close friend of Charles and Ray’s and the director of design at IBM.”

Eames, who is the author of An Eames Primer, also runs the DAS FilmFest and I watched his charming animated movie, “A Gathering of Elephants,” today for the first time. I won’t spoil it with too much description but it made me miss Los Angeles so much! It’s just the coolest thing — a herd of molded plywood elephants?! — and beautifully done.

Living in our midcentury house has made me more excited than ever about modern design, and seeing these gorgeous things has been a real treat today. Thanks so much to Charles and Ray Eames’ grandson, Eames Demetrios, for sharing this information with me, and for permission to use this image!

Andrew and I unpacked a lot more stuff this weekend (including 40 or 50 boxes of books-!) and I had fun making some little arrangements of collectibles here and there. It’s been three years since we lived somewhere with enough space to have my favorite things out instead of mostly boxed up and I was pretty excited to unpack them and arrange them in little mixes! All the details are in the flickr descrips, just click on them to see what’s what if you’re interested.

In the kitchen:

In the dining room:

In the pink princess bathroom:

And on my dresser:

I have a ton of stuff to do today but after I cross enough work things off my list, I plan to attack the craft room again. I had a little light bulb moment, and I’m going to try to pretty up the blah cardboard boxes that fit into an Expedit so nicely. Let’s see if it works!

Thanks so much for the nice comments and emails about my new craft room! I’m so excited to have more work space, but almost more so to get the big stuff I don’t use everyday stashed in the basement, and out of my way — so I’m not navigating around bolts of fabric or bins of lip balm supplies to get to my sewing machine (which was an everyday menace in our old place). Since the room is so big, it’s actually going to be dual-purpose and the shelves and work tables will be for crafting, while the area closer to the door will be dedicated to other stuff (more on this later when I get things set up and can show photos).

I’m slowly but surely plugging away at reorganizing and putting things away, and after a couple of years of looking on eBay and scouring Portland craigslist I spotted a vintage card catalog section this week. I’m so excited! I have always wanted one and the ones I found online were usually pick-up only or $100 shipping from the East Coast or Midwest. And this one was just twenty minutes away!

I am going to relabel it soon once I figure out exactly what will be in each drawer (Tricia’s card catalog-turned-craft-wonderland has always been super inspiring) but in the meantime I really liked this random little alphabetical trainwreck:

I’m so pleased that Faythe Levine has turned her craft documentary, Handmade Nation, into a brand-new book project. She’s co-authoring with Cortney Heimerl and their book will be published by Princeton Architectural Press in November 2008, with fonts specially created by the lovely Kate Bingaman-Burt. Handmade Nation will profile twenty-five crafters around the country (a full list is here) and five writers will contribute essays on craft culture: Betsy Greer, Callie Janoff, Garth Johnson, Dennis Stevens, and me!

I’m so happy to be part of the project — I will be writing on the evolution of craft fairs, which I think is a fascinating topic. When I started out selling my own stuff eight years ago, I never would have dreamed that craft sales could include bells and whistles like DIY tables, interactive events, raffles and prizes, kid-friendly activities, or motorized cupcakes. I loved the church bazaars I went to as a kid, don’t get me wrong, but I think there’s something very cool about what’s going on now.

On a similar topic, I just wanted to mention something that’s been on my mind since the Willamette Week article came out and a few comments have popped up over there. Though the piece had a fairly specific alt/new craft focus, I personally love vintage and traditional crafts, and have nothing but respect and admiration for the older generations of handmade work. I have no bias whatsoever towards scrapbooking (I made my first one this year for my mom’s 60th birthday, in fact) or any other craft. I’m not as drawn to some as the ones that I’m really crazy for, but don’t we all have favorites?

Both my grandmothers were incredibly crafty and I really treasure the handmade pieces I inherited from them. I wish I had been old enough to learn more from them before they passed away, but I like to think they would enjoy what I’m doing now, too. And personally, I think soccer moms are pretty cool — my own mom is one, for goodness’ sake!

I guess what I’m hoping to get across is that I love craft in all its forms. There is something so incredible about creating a birthday gift for my nephew or my best friend where no money changes hands and the object is destined for someone I adore, but I also feel so much satisfaction teaching a craft class, making a pair of earrings to fill a website order, or binding a quilt for a magazine article. I feel incredibly lucky to be able to earn my living doing what I love, and I never take that for granted — as a feminist, a crafter, or a woman writing the rent check.

Thanks for reading, by the way! And I really appreciate the lovely comments and sweet e-mails too.

I really love Meg Mateo Ilasco’s creative business bible, Craft Inc., and I’ve been poring over my copy — it covers everything from pricing to PR, and copyright to craft fairs. She interviewed designers in all walks of craft, like Jill Bliss, Lotta Jansdotter and Denyse Schmidt, and includes their advice, triumphs and war stories in special sections throughout. The well-organized chapters walk you through the very beginning stages to the ins and outs of sustaining a thriving, viable business, with plenty of specific examples to help you make decisions along the way.

And tonight, the book launch party is going on at 111 Minna in San Francisco, with some pretty incredible prizes to win!

I wish I were in town for it, it sounds fantastic! I’d love to hear about it if you have a chance to go.

For those of us in other places, tune into the Martha Stewart Show tomorrow (warning: sound) to see Charles Phoenix guest-star! I can’t wait to see his amazing vintage Halloween slides and ephemera. If you have not had the pleasure of seeing Charles’s work yet, you have a treat on the horizon. I have to thank Cathy for introducing me to the wonder of Charles Phoenix and his incredible take on all things vintage and kitschy.

My new article on Gocco printing is up on venuszine.com! I got to interview Mark Pawson of Print More Postcards and Cathy Pitters of Bossa Nova Baby and feature some of their amazing Gocco artwork. The piece was originally going to run in the fall issue of Venus, but got bumped to the website since there was so much content this time — but my article on letterpress, featuring the beautiful work of Carye Bye of Red Bat Press and Maria Vettese of Port2Port Press, is in the current print edition.

gocco-printed postcards by Mark Pawson from the Print More Postcards series

dogwood-flower gocco-printed and stitched vintage sweater by Cathy Pitters; photo by Greg Pitters

The Venus DIY section is paper-themed this issue, which I think is such a cool idea. I really love Gocco, so writing about it and spotlighting some of my favorite artists was a lot of fun! I’m also excited that I have a new Gocco project in the upcoming issue of CRAFT: (05) so more on that later…

I had such a great visit to the Bay Area last week — it was so much fun. Besides Meredith’s wedding, which was beautiful, I had a chance to meet up with Christina, Nancy, Natalie and Tricia to criss-cross the city on a beautiful summer afternoon looking for crafty treasures.

Natalie pulled up my blog on her iPhone, which was really fun to see! I love how cute the miniature version is…

First, we headed out to shop for vintage buttons. Instead of mentioning specifics, I’m going to quote Nancy here: “Since it seems to be an unspoken rule in the Bay Area crafty community, I cannot disclose the exact location of these wonders. But if you are really button-hungry, you can probably find it with a little internet search” (which is precisely what we did!).

I have such a soft spot for brightly colored plastic buttons, so that was most of my haul:

Then we all stopped by SF Etsy/Sampler headquarters, in a beautiful open warehouse space downtown. The windows are huge and gorgeous — they said they haven’t turned on the lights once since they moved in.

Lynn and Jennifer were hard at work on the upcoming Sampler:

And these bins are just about 40% of the cool handmade samples — not even half of the contents.

Have you heard about the Sampler reuse contest? Just do something cool and inventive with your Sampler box (there are plenty of inspiring pictures in a flickr set here), and send an email with photos to Team Sampler (details here) by September 8. The winner gets a free month of Sampler… hooray!

I still can’t believe that yet another visit to San Francisco has passed without me actually going to see Mission Dolores! I guess I’ll just need to plan another trip soon — maybe for Bazaar Bizarre?

We found our china hutch on our first visit to Hawthorne Vintage, and ever since then I’ve been a huge fan of the shop — there are dozens of vendors selling there, and each space has amazing furniture, collectibles and trinkets to look through. But my favorite is Galen Murphy’s incredible Vera Neumann collection. I have always loved her gorgeous prints and thanks to Galen, I’ve picked up some new treasures this month!

Kayte and I visited the shop during her visit, and then yesterday Cathy of California, Cathy (of Bossa Nova Baby/Crafty Wonderland/PDX Super Crafty, to keep things straight!) and Diane headed over with me for an encore.

Galen has a display case full of Vera scarves, and I found these three I couldn’t live without…

He also has tons of her sheets, tablecloths, and linens in his space.

I love the red flower especially.

And this set reminds me of Amy Karol’s Modern Table Runner from Bend-The-Rules Sewing.

I also found some pretty flowered pillowcases and matching flat sheets, and I’m going to make a comforter cover with one of them. Pictures to come soon, hopefully!

If you go:

Hawthorne Vintage (Galen’s space is straight back, in the second room)
1515 SE 48th Avenue
Portland, OR 97215
(503) 230-2620