toe wool.

"for soft corn in web of toes, place small amount of lamb's wool between toes just forward of corns. for soft corns on inner side of toe, wrap lamb's wool around the unaffected toe - this separates toes and prevents pressure on painful area. for corns on top of toes, wrap lamb's wool over the corn and around the toe."

my mother brought me this from my grandparents place. it was unopened and unused, so i am going to practice spinning yarn with it. don't worry, i won't make you wear it on your neck or anything. connotations can really get in the way of retail enjoyment.

a few things.

well, it is official, in just under a month, city of craft and the workroom will be teaming up for another trunk show. this time, though, we are taking the impending holidays, the shaky economy and the urge to hand-make things into account by offering up a pure rummage trunk show. it is a chance for a small sampling of toronto's most artful hoards to open up their stashes and collections for reuse by the greater populous. pictured above is the modest first preview of the things i will have up for grabs. it's just a little collection of beads and sequins. although i keep seeing myself festooning something crazy with them, it hasn't happened in years. i bet someone else out there will make use of these things more quickly. maybe you?

paper work.

a small update to show you, dear readers, the fate of my grandfather's heaps of mixed paper.

in the absolute madness of our home (do not let the carefully framed recent images on this blog fool you), i have found one more corner to bring my kind of order into. i loved the way my grampa's paper looked all stacked up so much that i decided to find a way to keep them as is and out in the open.

of course, this little 'project' only really makes sense if you happen to come into a great mass of uniformly sized mixed papers, but i thought i would share it. i like that it is also a large amount of usable material (the bane of my apartment) arranged in such a way as to be decorative - in my opinion, anyway.

leah came over last night and said "there's more wood in the paper than the log." i guess this makes my arrangement profound as well. paper + log + doily + fire = choose your own meaning.

other paper work of note:

1. an interview with me went live today on vancouver's got craft? blog. i am so flattered to have been asked to be profiled.

2. karen and i have agreed to do a 'pure rummage' sale at the workroom on sunday, october 18. this is all i can let you know now, but i can assure you that it will be a healthy feeding frenzy of vintage goodies and supplies.

3. city of craft has a blog now. as empty as it may be at the moment, it may be worth following for future purposes.

paper cuts.

i spent a few hours yesterday going through my grandparents' things with my mother. the nonagenarians have finally made the leap to a swanky care facility after my grandmother broke her hip. they are outstandingly happy there but their room is much smaller than the apartment they just vacated and there is much stuff to go through.

my grampa had been an accountant since he finished his military service in world war two. he only retired a few years ago so the accumulated paper hoards were considerable. much of these ledger papers and report forms have been obsolete for years if not decades. but, as hoardings go, his were very neat and organized.

it really is an impressive amount of stuff. this, with all the stamps and staplers and rulers i could ever want, amounted to a formidable amount of stuff to bring home. i knew aitor would choke when he saw it all. we mostly plan to use this huge collection of old papers for book and art projects. i wouldn't be surprised, though, if leah ends up with some for her work. she's been back on canadian ground for all of two days; it's time for clutter to start sticking itself to her.

but honestly, all the family deaths and downsizings i have been dealing with over this past year have left our home totally overstuffed with things. in some cases, i have inherited superior versions of things i already had; in other cases, i have been saddled with family heirlooms that must be kept at the expense of my less sentimental possessions (my grandmother was a talented artist who painted and sculpted large things); and in still other cases i was just forced to take collections of bit and bobs because...well...somebody had to.

i think this is all coming to a head and will have to result in a major ejection of stuff. i have some unofficial plans in the works to offer selections up to the world (by way of toronto). some of the things i plan to put back into circulation are suitcases, paper ephemera, vintage buttons (both pinback and otherwise), tea sets, grooming supplies, linens, housewares, books and craft supplies.

stay tuned for details...

are any of you looking to stock up these days?

home.

our place never looks this tidy except when the bulk of our stuff has been hidden for subletting purposes.

we got in late last night and stayed up well into the wee hours unpacking, sorting, cleaning and finding places for the thrift, craft and art scores we made on this last trip. hopefully, i will be able to keep up with updates here as things find their places.

i am really excited about this feedsack/flour sack quilt we got in wisconsin for $10. it's pretty tattered but that just makes me feel less uptight about it so it can actually be used. it is a light summer weight quilt that only consists of a top and a back with a thriftily used chenille sheet for the batting.

i also quickly found a spot for the tatted hoop i got from the all citizens shop in bruno, saskatchewan. it's up in the bedroom next to the shrimp lace and tea bag paper shoes i got from tara bursey at last year's city of craft. sorry, tara, your shrine has been expanded to include others. tyler tells me that the tatting was done by bernadette greule who also composes cowboy poetry and sometimes performs at the shop.

of course, this influx of new things is making us go through old things we had been hiding from ourselves. there is much to get rid of in order to properly clear up all of our working space and i am in the mood to get tough with my possessions. who knows? maybe there is a yard sale in our near future. or a rummage show? your ideas are heartily encouraged.

improbabilities on the highways of wisconsin.

who knew as we awoke in our luxurious madison side-of-the-highway motel room what a string of unlikely events lay between us and our destination of minneapolis. not us. and, probably, not you.

we took some time getting organized, finishing some little jobs and piecing the car contents back together like a tetris game. then we hit the road - a new scenic byway i had never taken before. on faythe's advice, we had planned out some roadside programming on the way to minneapolis (i am performing there, but that is another story/life of mine). wisconsin, it would seem, is full of roadside extravagances that we have never experienced. this, in spite of the fact that i have been through this whole corridor numerous times. but i used to be younger and i would drive endlessly without stopping. now, in my advancing years, i bother to look at things if only to give my aching back a break from the car.

sadly, the house on the rock did not figure into our plans although it was on the route. the collections there sounds thrilling but it apparently merits an entire day's exploration. it is also slicker (read: pricier) than our current mothy purses can allow. we managed to find plenty of cheap/free roadside mania to partake in, nonetheless.

on faythe's suggestion, we hunted down dr. evermor's forevertron, an entire art park of massive metal sculputres centred around the forevertron, a guinness book record-holding scrap sculpture of immense size. we wandered around the opening to the park, snapping photos and marveling.

then things got weird. as walked towards the entrance to the park proper a couple of other visitors came out and told us to take as many pictures as we could as fast as we could because the entire park was being shut down by "the government." when we tried to enter to snap said hasty photos we were turned away by a lady who said she ran the place. she was flanked by police officers and seemed quite demanding about our departure. while leaving, the other tourists informed us that a live bomb had been discovered among either the sculptures or materials on site and that officials were scouring the place for contaminants of some kind. one of these visitors also told us that a ufo sculpture on site was made out of a flammable metal. weird.

we took a few more pictures around the front of the space before being shooed out by the lady who worked there. this lady confirmed some of the rumours. a live bomb had apparently been discovered there by some visitors a couple of weeks ago and all sorts of police, government and health officials had descended on the place since. it just so happens we had arrived at a critical moment when the decision to close the park had come down.

"dr. evermor's negligence with materials," she said. "i've got to go eat at the welfare...just kidding."

so we left.

onwards towards baraboo. we had seen signs for a circus museum but got distracted by a saint vincent depaul before we even got there. we have been going pretty nuts with thrifts over the past few days. there is a big list of things to pick up and even more things by which to be distracted. but my mind was entirely blown by this discovery:

no big deal, right? just some weird tacky wall thing, right? only, if you look carefully, you will note that is it a souvenir from bruno, saskatchewan! possibly, you might remember our visit there last year. as far as we know, there is little in bruno other than 500 people, all citizens, tyler, serena (sometimes), a religious school, a grain elevator and the usual trappings of a rural town (grocery, bar, pharmacy, bank, insurance, senior's centre...) i mean, it's not nothing. it's a fantastic place. but it's a tiny place, and one that we have a slim but tenacious connection to. and to find such a strange souvenir of it here, in wisconsin. and what are we even doing here, in this small off-the-freeway place? and why did we stop to go to this particular shop? we drank more water and hoped we weren't hallucinating.

we plan on passing through bruno later in this trip so we have to wrestle with the final home of this object until then. we both kind of want to cling to it as a reminder of the difference between impossibility and improbability (a clear difference when living out in the world as we are). but possibly it deserves to be brought back home. tyler and serena, will you cry if we don't leave this with you? let's work it out. we are troubled and dehydrated.

after all of this excitement and confusion, the circus museum seemed pointless. and our drive through the wisconsin dells was entirely too overwhelming to digest. my god, that place is incredible. this is about as much of it as we could actually absorb in our saturated states:

...and there is so much more where that came from. maybe on the way back (with any luck). i kind of want to sleep in an elephant's trunk, or under a water slide, or in an upside down house. why didn't i listen to dr. dave when he told me to go here years ago?

now onward into minnesota to find graham. wisconsin, you have more than piqued our curiosity; you have challenged its limits.

ohio gothic.

typewriter shop sign - a vestigial clue towards businesses past.

worried about car odours? buy a watermelon tree like olivera does.

why aren't signs as big and impressive as they used to be? this one spoke volumes in scale.

heft in the mail.

i love you, drawn & quarterly.

i wish i could drop everything right now and live inside this book.

experiments in bribing people to be nice to me: a success (or, surprise, surprise).

first off, i would like to thank everyone who replied to my impromptu secret contest. it was nice to lure so many of you out of lurkerdom and also to hear you say nice things about me. to be honest, i was only expecting things like "you make nice buttons" and was blown away by all the responses. i actually felt a little guilty reading all this nice stuff - as though i had demanded that a group of friends and strangers be kind to me for a prize. in spite of any guilt, the appreciation was also avariciously absorbed. early spring always makes me a little blue and hearing that people look at my work and like it is helping me slough off that winter shell.

it is also wildly thrilling to me to find out where the things i have made end up. i know through my record keeping that i have made over 100,000 buttons. once you add all the zines and hats and neck warmers and drawings and shirts and prints and miscellaneous things, it works out to lots and lots of stuff. it boggles my mind to think where all that stuff ends up. and i find it calming to know that one button was on a streetcar and one button was in peterborough and two are at petra's place, etc. etc.

which brings us (in a roundabout kind of way) to our impromptu contest winner. it seems that the early bird gets the worm in this case and my mysterious care package (don't worry, it is full of 100% stuff) will be going to tina of a tiny studio. although everyone who commented would have been deserving of gifts in his or (who are we kidding?) her own way, i am glad to be giving a nice big care package to someone brand new to craft blogging. i visited tina's blog and was happy to be able to read the whole thing in under fifteen minutes. welcome to the fabulous world of obesessive self-documentation, tina. and get in touch to arrange delivery/hand-off of your goodies. if you are a fan of the workroom, maybe you want to pick it up at the hunt and gather trunk show that karyn and i are putting on together.

canadian.

thank you, jill.

a felted stone gathers some moss.

...well, lichen.

look what the postie brought me today! a brilliantly composed felted stone with french knot lichen by ottoman (aka oregonian fibre artist, summer hamel). she sells these as pin cushions, but i am going to keep mine just as is. i think it has a sculptural loveliness about it that i just want to stare at. hopefully the lavender in it will keep the moths at bay, too.

with the covered stone i just got from resurrection fern, the mushroom terrarium i got from holly procktor and some little assemblages of my own makings, i am accumulating quite a little natural history display (or unnatural? quasi-natural?)

as for my own real-life lichen collection, some molds have taken hold to the ones i put under glass. does anyone have any suggested cures before i haul out the fungicide that will also kill any mushroom spores that may be hiding in the moss of my terraria? i am glad i did not give the small ones to my most plant-insecure friends. they would have blamed themselves. but, no. it's not you. it's me. and now we all know for sure.

hyperbolics in plastic and the oceanic travels of shopping bags.

pictured above is the beginning of a hyperbolic model i have been working on made entirely from plastic bag yarn. this is for an upcoming project (that will find its way into the window of the knit cafe) spearheaded by angelune des lauriers and intended as a craftivist earth day project.

angelune has assembled a group of crocheting friends (including shannon, kalpna, leah, marnie, myself and others) to make these plastic models, aping the oceanic forms of corals and other sea animals. the notion is to assemble a great plastic reef as a way to bring attention to the great pacific garbage patch (also known as the trash/garbage vortex or garbage island). this fetid new continent, located somewhere between the hawaiian islands and the coast of california, is reported to be twice the size of texas and is composed prominently of discarded plastics. it weighs an estimated three million tons and has resulted from a combination of ocean currents and collective carelessness (although i'm not sure quite how much we should blame the ocean). other reports note the area to be more like a massive garbage stew (as opposed to one contiguous garbage heap) which might explain why google earth doesn't just simply display this 'island.' regardless of these details, there is much agreement that this is a big mess and it's our fault.

so what is there to do? well, currently, i have decided to crochet plastic coral in the hopes that someone smarter will see this project, be alerted to the ocean's ordeal and brilliantly solve the problem. i know it's not the most active choice, but it's better than freezing in a state of absolute confusion and doing nothing at all.

and what can you do? if you are a genius, you can figure out how to fix this problem and make the world okay again. if you are not a genius (or if the above task is going to take you a while), you can drop off your colourful plastic bags at the knit cafe to be turned into yarn and then crochet models. for me, the ideal bag is ripped and unusable. i can still work around most rips when making the yarn and don't need the handles at all. this also makes me feel that the bag has been used to its maximum ability.

i should also mention that this project is highly derivative of some incredible past works, most notably the hyperbolic coral reef conceived by the institute for figuring to address issues of marine coral blanching and the later plastic bag sea crochet of helle jorgensen. in the name of education, these undertakings seem open to future interpretations/incarnations but props are certainly due. go check out their sites.



on a more pragmatic note, i have also learned that bamboo hooks and plastic yarns do not mix well. be forewarned, lest you suffer the same fate as me. i'm glad i hung on to all my metal hooks.

gifts from afar.

hey, look what i got from my friend missy and raoul at racho cocoa in athens, georgia. actually, that is just a sampling on the generous care package missy put together for me. there are postcards, missy's note pads, foreign candies, never-ending eight-hour shift zines (who wrote that?), a wooden tofu baby pendant, a triangular pouch and (our shared loved) a squished penny! the cup of tea was not in the package, but i'm sure if missy could find a way it would have been. there was also a vintage shirt (now in the wash) and a pile of security envelopes.

this package was waiting for me when i got back from vancouver and so was another surprise package from our little leah in berlin.





apparently the flea markets there are pretty amazing. i wish i could teleport to germany and spend a week wandering around with leah. she also included some brilliantly creepy glass jars with the names of chemical compounds taped to them (just our style around here) and a metal pin of a local folk hero. leah will have to explain the latter further, as history confuses me. i really love the washe bag, by the way and am just thinking about how to properly display/use it.

even though i currently feel overwhelmed with stuff, i was so nice to come home to care package from some far reaches and favorite people. thank you guys. what's in toronto that you babes want? all dressed chips? kit kat bars? codeine?

actually, i can't remember what chocolate bars are specific to canada. coffee crisp? who knows? but i remember those ones with puffed rice in them being strictly american.

dead people's stuff.

i knew i was coming out west to go through my father's possessions but was not prepared for the generations upon generations of stuff that he was apparently housing without my knowledge.

above is just a small example - a pile of hankies with at least three distinct monograms on them. my aunt washed them and i pressed them and sorted them into two piles - usable and destroyed. i think i am going to try to find crafty or arty uses for the destroyed ones and use the usable ones to save the planet during runny nose season.

this is the process i have been going through over and over again with a billion tiny little things. i have a strong feeling that i will return to toronto with piles of small objects that i will then have to make sense of and sort into my small apartment life. and the decisions will be much harder than that of the hankies because i can't turn my great uncle's military medals into crafts.

those of you who are friends should brace yourself for calls from me demanding help. for starters, does anyone have a velvet display case?

gifts for the new year.

above is a lovely package i received today from jia in singapore. although it is supposed to be an envelope contribution, jia also included a whole bunch of other gifts including note cards, a beautiful piece of arrow print fabric and an elastic belt! i have actually been on the hunt for elastic belts for a while but there is no way she could have known that. thank you very much, jia.



but back to business - here are the new patterns found in her envelope contribution. subtle differences, but i love these wavy plaids.



this collection come to me via leah in australia. the two on the right are going into my solids collection and text collection (respectively). i though it was worth mentioning that the one with writing says 'secretive lines'. i may have to use that term in this project somehow.



these one here come from cindy in illinois. it may be hard to see in the photograph, but the red one has the most amazing and subtle pattern. i'm really excited to see it in button form.



and, finally, there is this envelope from rose ann in ohio. as you can see, there is very little envelope to be turned into buttons so these ones will be very rare.

and, with that, i have cleared my entire mountain of envelope contributions. today's new patterns brings me to a grand total of 293. who knows, there may be more packages in the mail yet but i can't imagine there are too many. i guess i am going to have to work hard in the coming days to get collection phase two rolling. i know i was spending all my rent on postage, but i already miss the heaps of mail and the little points of contact with likeminded strangers the world over. my pattern greed is also reemerging, as i know there are more patterns lurking out there, hiding out in post office garbage cans and recycling bins. but for the moment, i feel happy that i managed to complete one thing by the end of the year. all of your reward packs will be going out in the coming days, contributors.

happy new year!

weird stuff under the tree.

well, christmas has come and gone but i did want to highlight a couple of extra special gifts that came our way. the first one (above) came to aitor via julie in philadelphia. it's almost self-explanatory. i will do my best to photograph the 'houses' contained within when aitor decides to install them.





this, on the other hand, is a gift my mother brought back from europe. i am still on the fence as to weather i should hang the whole thing on the wall or try my luck at actually using them. skerple quality seems dubious at best.

triple yarngasm.

gross. that word looks gross.

i am currently collecting myself after three back-to-back days of yarn acquisition. it started on saturday with my annual pilgrimage to the full-on hen house experience of the romni wools boxing day sale. aitor got a reprieve from attending this year as my visiting mother and newly transplanted aunt were more than happy to frolic in yarn with me for an afternoon. i got some great deals of garnstudio's eskimo bulky wool (i know, eskimo) some sublime organic merino (which is so soft) and some little blobs of madame lucien paul angora yarn from the basement (even softer). i wish i had bough more of all of those as they all worked beautifully into some new neck warmers. but as they say, 20/20 vision is perfect. or someone i know once said that, anyway.

on sunday i had the big free yarn score via leah.

then, today, i went to an insanely massive destashing sale hosted by tosca teran of nanopod: hybrid studio. it was amazing! there were no skeins over $3! i'm still going through all the amazing silks, angoras, wools and mohairs (true story!). tosca is liquidating the enormous stash of her knitting teacher mom (who is moving back to california) and has had a series of these sales. i'm not exactly sure how she's getting the word out about future sales, but joining the nanopod facebook group might not be a bad idea if you'd like to hear about her next sale. there is also some talk of her joining the fun at the love and rummage trunk show coming up in february.



so what am i doing with all this stuff? good question, aitor. some of it will be retained for personal projects (sorry, honey) but the bulk of what i acquired is already being made into neck warmers and elf hats to keep bodies warm in the coming cruddy months. the eskimo and sublime yarns have already been made into some positively ducky new neck warmers that have challenged my previous colour predilections (photos forthcoming). i usually only sell these crocheted items in person at fairs and in toronto at the good catch general store, but if there is any interest expressed by out-of-towners, i am happy to list some in the etsy shop. just encourage me. i have not had much success selling these things online (probably because people want to try them on) but am happy to try again. especially with the neck warmers - their fit is more adaptable.

thrift america.

photos by rev. aitor

so, up there is my attempt to collude with my sweetie to take pictures of the quilt top i got for $5 in south carolina. it was my big score of the trip. i am going to have to consult with my friend jen on fabric dating (i think dirty 30's, but she can set me right). oh, yes - these photos were also designed to tap into jen's fabric fetishist jealousies (but not too hard). it's kind of a weird quilt. or rather, it's a normal one with two extra rows sloppily added to one end, the top in this photo. i've been trying to figure out what to do with it. some compatriots of mine pull these apart to make smaller things for the lovely fabrics. but i am a little clingy about old things, so i think i am going to take those extra rows off, use the fabrics for other things and actually quilt up the rest. here is a detail of some of the fabrics used:

i'm pretty excited about the possibilities.

we actually left the motel today to do some getting out. we did visit a local thrift shop where we encountered (but - shockingly - did not purchase) this little gem:



if you look closely, you will note that the hotdog is full of little holes. we tried to figure out it's clearly specific function. there's only a small hole in the bottom so it can't be packed full of much; it could house incense sticks, but that didn't seem to match the themes (or related themes) of hotdogs or america, - it would also be a lot of incense; and then it occurred to me - sparklers! what could make your picnic more patriotic than a hotdog shooting a million sparks? god bless america. pass the beer mustard.

speaking of beer mustard, this is a new product we discovered at this discount grocery (and canned goods) store we found in town here. it is a penny pincher's godsend if navigated correctly (read the labels - how can frozen crab cakes contain 'less than 2% crab meat'?) that said, i did find myself totally confounded when i stumbled into the soda aisle today...



...closer...



there's a huge version here, if you want to explore all the glory. but bunch? crisp? mountain holler? dr. pop? patch? tubz? have any of you heard of any of these? it felt like i had stepped into a twilight zone reality where only one thing was different and nobody much cared.