weekend roundup (around the house and journeys beyond).

first of all, i would like to introduce my second button board (made by the impeccable tara broderick). i also finally bit the bullet and put them on the wall. i had been waiting to get my office together (the last frontier of organization at the homestead) but decided these needed to be on a wall now. the one i already had was taking up valuable kitchen chair space, and the living room wall is a less invasive use of common space that the kitchen table.



i am still using the boards to sort the security envelope buttons (the collection of which has bloated to a hefty 309). they look so pretty on display and magically tend to harmonize with our blue walls. also, we love kentucky.

after home puttering, i went on a little walk today out into the world and visited the artists' flea market being hosted by board of directors at katherine mulherin's 1086 queen west gallery. aitor and i will be there tomorrow from 10:00am - 6:00pm, trying to see what the art community thinks of our stuff. in the spirit of a flea market, we are also going to bring a small sampling of thrifty goodies set aside for the love and rummage trunk show the weekend after next.

it's funny that so many people have rummage on their minds. or maybe it's not funny and recession just has everyone in a panic. either way, you should be able to find lots of thrifty gift options for your sweeties this valentine's day. oh, and i should also direct your attention to make something - the blog of my trunk show co-conspirator, karyn. aside from being a great place to learn things, get inspired and spy on karyn, it will also be host to a series of interviews with trunk show vendors in the coming weeks. we have a bunch of new vendors this time around and, as always, toronto craft folks are up to some exciting new things. i'm looking forward to hiding from the cold, sipping tea and getting to know my fellow vendors through cyber-stalking. that way i can be extra creepy when i meet everyone in person next weekend.

experiments in terraria.

the moss plate was threatening to dry out. i knew this would happen. so yesterday, aitor and i had a brief outing on the hunt for the last couple of materials we needed to make a terrarium or two (namely charcoal and sphagnum moss).

i have been dreaming up terraria for while - actually, ever since aitor went on a plant splitting spree and gave me a small butterwort. he still has two thriving in his big wardian case while mine was pluckily struggling on our bathroom windowsill. so i started looking around for appropriate containers. that's when i found the one above, which was a serious thrift score. of course, you can't just plop a lone carnivorous plant into a big jar like that all alone. so a hatched a plan to collect some mosses out west (which also acted as a bid to bring a small part of the farm home with me). well, that plan snowballed, as plans are often wont to do, and i ended up with quite a bit of mossy materials.





in the end, the butterwort didn't end up figuring into the big glass jar at all. it's very easy to overcrowd these things and my maximalism really comes out in these situations. this little guy might be a lot to take in for the tastes of others, but i just see a million things to stare at. those stringy red things dance around when misted, which i can never get over.

with the remaining smaller bits and the butterwort, i put together these three smaller containers.



i imagine they are intended for some kind of wild alcoholic beverage (if you know, please fill me in) but they make perfect tiny terraria. i had orginally intended to give these ones to friends, but i think i need to hang onto them for at least a little while. after all, this is all experimental for me so i would it would serve me to observe the trials and successes of these little ecosystems.

after just one night, i can already see condensation on the glasses, the moss has perked up and the lichen have reverted to the softer forms that they had when i met them in british columbia; they had taken on a much more rigid demeanour when just lying around in the open of our dry apartment. the butterwort even ate some bugs that crawled out of the moss! let's hope it starts to look more like its happier brethren soon.



also, if anyone in the city has another large glass-topped jar or container that they feel like getting rid of, i would give it a good home. i have one big chunk of moss left with a couple of ferns growing in it and am trying desperately to keep it happy and healthy. my recent thrift store outings have yielded nothing of use. such is the plight of the impoverished artist who takes on opulent victorian hobbies.

although there is more extensive information on building your own terrarium elsewhere on the web, i will quickly run down what i did to make these:

a) washed and sterilized the glass containers.

b) filled the bottom with loose river rocks.

c) mixed in charcoal (i found it keeps the dust down if you rinse it first and lay it into the glass wet).

d) soaked the dried sphagnum moss and applied a healthy layer over the rocks.

e) placed moss samples in with gentle downward squeezes.

f) laid lichen-encrusted twigs and little pine/alder/cedar cones on top.

g) watered.

h) replaced lid.

i) marveled.

of cats and yarn.

...if you make it into yarn, will your cat be convinced?

in the case of my cat, the results are misleading. she has always had a disconcerting penchant for plastic bags and generally (with a few wild exceptions) stays away from my exposed yarn stash.

so why am i making yarn from plastic bags? well, my friend angelune is planning an earth day project to be displayed in the window of the knit cafe this spring and it involves both hyperbolic crochet and trashy materials...just my style. although i find it to be a very unpleasant material to crochet with, this is a pretty interesting 'fibre' to work. the end product certainly has a unique tenacity about it. if you are interested in trying it out yourself, angelune forwarded us this tutorial to use as a yarn-making guide. helle jorgensen's entire blog is worth poking around on, too. she has really taken work with crochet and plastic bags to a few new levels.

it's not like i'm done, or anything.

just because the security envelope project is currently experiencing its first public outing, does not mean the project has reached an end point. far from it. in fact, i am still receiving contributions from a few stragglers (no derision intended, the time off has been much appreciated).

above are some highlights from joanne, who is my first south african contributor. as hoped, south africa offered me all sorts of new and exotic patterns. those thirteen above are all new for sure. the two at the far right are very exciting, indeed, as the gray one features a very very subtle grid pattern (which is hard to see in photographs) and the blue one has a very large repeat on it.

oh, and here is a picture joanne sent earlier to entice my senses:



yes, yes. there is still much security to explore. and i am steadily scanning patterns in preparation for collection phase two (the quickening). in phase two i will be rewarding folks for finding new patterns only. this will both make the project more like a treasure hunt and hopefully keep me from going broke and having to live in a hole (from which blogging would become impaired).

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.

it's alive! (or the security envelope project has its coming out party).

well, world. it has finally happened. the security envelope project i have be obsessing over has come into being with its first gallery showing. the piece pictured above is a 17 x 17 (289) button grid installed with nails and magnets at the ontario crafts council as part of the group show, diwhy?











the show opens today and runs through march 1st at the crafts council gallery (990 queen street west). aitor and i went today to drop off a spinning rack of button sets - yes you can buy the sets of three themselves for $6 at the gallery for the duration of the run. this gave us a great chance to poke around. i'm really into the whole thing. i was especially excited to get to put the first few stitches in miriam grenville's lovely diy wall paper.



you should go see it all.

putting 289 buttons on 289 nails (or how to drive yourself crazy in four easy hours).

today i installed my piece (affectionately titled 'the security envelope project') at the ontario crafts council for the diwhy? exhibition that opens tomorrow. as a result, i will show you how i did it in case you ever get the urge to display 289 1" buttons on a wall somewhere. oh yes, i should apologize for the photos in advance. the lighting was not great and my photography skills have some holes in them so they are petty grainy.

step #1 - do math
i did this in my head and thus couldn't take pictures. in this case, the buttons'centres will be spaced 1.5 inches apart (leaving .5 inches between each button) and will be arranged in a grid of 17 squared (the highest square number i could muster out of my current collection).

step #2 - make a centre dot on the wall.

step #3 - apply a horizontal piece of masking tape over this dot, extending the width of your intended display. this part can be eyeballed. the level will come in later.

step #4 - measure out a leveled series of dots (at your predetermined intervals and quantity).

step #5 - place a new piece of masking tape vertically using the centre dot as a guide.

sep #6 - repeat step #4 on the vertical axis.

step #7 - start applying lines of tape (eyeballing their levelness), using this centre axis as a guide. part way through, your grid should look like the one above. when you are finished this step, it should look like this:



step #8 - draw levelled lines through your central axis of dots. this should be done with some amount of care.





...see how my eyeball lines and leveled lines vary considerably? i even had to add tape in a few places so as not to draw on the wall (which i was trying to avoid).

step # 9 - nails!



i used 2 inch common nails with a nice flat head. although i started by placing two in the middle, i quickly realized that right-handed people should start in the upper right corner. i would imagine that the reverse is true for lefties but have yet to test this theory.

step #10 - keep it up! don't loose focus and just go for a coffee/tea.



step # 11 - finish nailing and feel a warm sense of accomplishment. after all, this is the most stressful part of the process. if you mess up, you risk making the holes loose and having your nails fall out. i am very proud to report that i hammered in 289 nails without bending one, loosening a hole (well, that's debatable), or hitting a finger. my dad would have been so proud.



step #12 - remove tape. i find that this process is greatly aided by having shannon gerard idling in the vicinity. if you are lucky enough to find yourself in this situation, you will see how much faster she is than you at picking masking tape off a wall.



this is also a good time to start marvelling at the shadows that a big grid of nails casts.

step #13 - apply a single magnet to the end of each nail. i chose the rare earth magnets at a diameter of 1/16 of an inch. these magically fit the nail heads perfectly with no math or effort on my part. when applying magnets to the nail heads, you will also notice that shannon is faster than you.



step #14 - apply your 1" buttons to the magnets. i found that you have a better chance of getting them close to centered if you open the pinbacks. i did not take any pictures of this step because i could not bear the resulting images given the low light. but fear not, i will be back tomorrow and will take some pictures when the sun is shining.

step #15 - be proud of your accomplishment. you actually did something today!

reflections:
- gallery walls are full of patched holes. you should have spackle and paint on hand to deal with the chips and cracks your nails will create.
- tape is hard to peel off walls. i actually may have to think of a better system for future installations, but this was a first stab and worked out exceptionally well.
- accept the irregularities of doing it by hand. it is nearly impossible (for me) to make this grid all sit on the exact same plane. also, there are so many layers of variable (measuring, nailing precision, magnetism, button/pinback cooperation...) that inconsistencies are bound to present themselves. i have decided that these elements make the piece more organic. besides, a show about the diy movement can't possibly want to install the craziness like an automaton, right? like what is this...readymade?

thanks for reading (if you did). is anyone else actually going to try to do this somewhere? let me know, if you are. i am thinking of selling do-it-yourself kits in my etsy shop (of various grid dimensions) but i am holding off until i have perfected the instructions. please let me know what you think of that idea, too.

and go to the show! it opens tomorrow with a reception on february 5th.