new sea creatures.

i have a guest in town, so my writing is falling by the wayside. but here are some new creatures (some for the plastic bag project and some for something beyond).

more plastic bags and sea life.

i came home from the plastic bag yarn ball so itching to see how it would crochet that i stayed up half the night working on some new sea creatures that i have been thinking of.

here is an image of the product of my mad crochet fury. it's kind of more like a deep sea tube worm than a coral reef inhabitant. actually, i need to do a little more research into coral reef shapes in general. anybody have any faves they would like to share?

oh, and here is another product of furious crochet. that plastic is rough to work with. immediately after seeing this, i mosturized my hands. this new project is giving me crone hands!

plastic bags and movie tickets.

the bulk of my outdoor time today was spent balling up plastic bag yarn at the knit cafe. it was a great way to spend a late afternoon. as with all gatherings of crafty folk, the conversation veered to all sorts of places - plastics and the garbage patch, dog crap...you know...crafty lady stuff.

actually, discussion about dog crap came out of the notion that plastic bags are made for groceries and then we are encouraged to put them in other plastic made for garbage. then other plastic bags are made for poop. in some cases, these latter bags are not plastic and make some kind of sense (ie. they are compostable). but still, why did my under-the-sink garbage basket thing come with its own new bags and warn me that it might not function properly if i reused grocery bags in it? like the fear that my warranty would be invalidated on a five dollar object. being convinced of that is like being convinced that the water from the bathroom tap is worse to drink than that from the kitchen.

as a side note (which i have been meaning to share for a while), i came across some plastic bags from target during our great american adventure that listed on them tips for being more eco-friendly by reusing bags. among earth-moving suggestions like using them as garbage bags, one of the items on the potential-reuse list was water balloons. water balloons? aside from the fact that a shopping bag from target would make a terrible water balloon, there are levels upon levels ecological ill in that idea.

for my part, i am just excited to get crocheting with the yarn we made. plastics boast really crazy colour options and a petroleum-based sheen that i rarely get to work with. i have some big visions about what to make for the project.



oh, and word to the wise: jen and i finished making the handmade nation tickets tonight. they go on sale at the ontario crafts council gallery on queen west when their doors open at 11:00am tomorrow. i suggest getting there soon if you'd like one.

a love letter to crochet.

up there is a brand new white heart i got from shannon yesterday. i love it so much, shan! so much, in fact, that i continue to wear it over my heart even the day after valentine's day. it looks like a deformity under my coat and also reflects my current feelings about the world. i have a friend who used to work in biotech doing something with pig hearts. i wonder if they blanch when devoid of blood. i will have to ask her. i know shannon also consulted an expert in updating the design for her crocheted hearts - a medical illustrator, no less. karyn wrote all about it in a recent interview with shannon here.

as for me and my hooking, i just wrapped up a super fast hyperbolic model over the last couple of days.

after reading about the institute for figuring's various hyperbolic sub-reefs (the toxic reef, the ghostly bleached reef, et al), i felt motivated to get over my personal fibre snobberies and dive into some weirdo yarns i had kicking around. although i usually lean towards working with natural materials (and took a more stark mathmatical approach of only making hyperbolic models out of solid colours), the arguments for crocheting out of discarded materials seemed to me (in a lesser way) to seep into the shameful stash of acrylic and novelty yearns that i never use. i have collected this stuff over years to make soft toys and hats for vegans but my interest in both undertakings has steadily waned. over time, i have developed a pronounced distaste for synthetic yarns, likening their content to that of garbage bags - a non-biodegradable, spun fossil fuel that i didn't want to interact with anymore. now that my crochet adventures have brought me full-circle to crocheting with actual plastic bags, it seemed time to revisit my shame stash - or at least the stuff that didn't sell at the trunk show.

i have to admit that this latest model looks more like a sea creature than any of my self-imposed purist hyperbolics. the plastic makes it luminous and the bizarre loft of this yarn gives it a loamy, spongy feel. it also measures 10 inches across and only took a few hours to make. score a few for synthetics. it will also last forever and survive moth attacks.

i am now working on another model out of what seems to be a mix of cotton and fiberglass. i might even edge it in eyelash yarn. crazy.

i am not saying that i am about to go out and buy a bunch of new crazy yarns, but i certainly feel inspired to go through what i have and possibly acquire more if it is used and free. but i don't entirely know what i am going to do with all these models. my overbearing aesthetics (and kindly life partner) probably won't allow for keeping these as part of my home's decor. i am considering shipping them off to join the reefs maintained by the institute for figuring. but i could also be coerced into beginning a collective toronto reef, if anyone else is interested (global coral proliferation is a peripheral goal of the iff). who is interested? and what should we do?

touch me (or adventures in love, longing, crafts, design, ideas and erotica).

implant paper weights by emma gerard

for valentine's day, i was awakened to a very special treat - east indian sweets and russian tea, my favorite!

the reverend and i finally got ourselves out of the house (i fully admit to being the sole hindrance) and ambled down to the erotic arts and crafts fair at the gladstone hotel. this fair has been running annually for three years now (by the good folks at come as you are) but has historically fallen on the weekend before valentine's day when city of craft has historically done an annual trunk show, too, so i have never been able to go. it was really exciting to check it out.

first of all, shannon gerard was there. that's her lap full of heart parts up there. and even further above that is a collection of implant paper weights by glass artist (and shannon counsin), emma gerard. emma's implant project is pretty incredible - terrifying, even. and it's no easy task to deal with issues of health and body image in manners that are both clear and engaging. i was also pretty into shannon's collection of 1" buttons - boobs, dinks and quotes from when harry met sally.

another entirely fascinating project was lisa murphy's tactile mind, a book project that blends both relief sculpture and braille to present erotica for the blind.

the thing that really struck me about her project is how far she takes it beyond the basic concept. the works presented throughout the book display a greater aesthetic than mere erotica, it is her own. it also made me wonder very obvious things like how blind people experience representational relief through their fingers. a simple thing to ponder, but i probably will never know the answer. i wish i could have stayed longer to learn more about the themes that she is working from (as she/the project don't have a website as of yet) but the room was getting crowded and i started to feel the crunch to move on.

we also encountered these playing card lamps by wild card. although aitor made some apt comparison to key cutters (one of his valentine's gifts was a smutty deck for his collection), i was just happy that the lady let me take pictures of the backs of the cards which i found enthralling...

after perusing the craft fair, aitor and i went trolling around for the other things we've been meaning to check out at the gladstone (well, i have, anyway). first was the brand new penny smash project by souvenir masterminds, motherbrand. when i heard of this project i felt foiled in a life-long dream (that i was probably never going to actualize) of making my own penny squisher design. well, now it has been done by these guys and it has been done well. the $2.01 price tag per penny is pretty steep by penny squisher standards, but part of the dough goes to sketch so you can justify the indulgence that way. i hardly needed justification. i settled on a design my marian banjes (about whom i currently know nothing but will undoubtedly soon research). it narrowly beat out douglas copeland's contributions because i was in the mood for bold emotion above political humour today. but all the designs are pretty grand.

we finished our gladstone day trip with a jaunt up to the third and fourth floors where wish you were here, a postcard collection curated by katharine mulherin, is tucked into every little nook and open space. the quantity of work and artists is impressive and there is very much to like - even too many personal stand-outs to mention - so i will leave you with two contributions of personal interest. in order, they are a) a foil stamped collection by sandy plotnikoff and b) a surprising postcard from a scary place by seth scriver. really, you should go check it out. it's up until the end of march!

how moths can devour the fabric of the universe.

is it just me, or is toronto entirely crawling with moths?

i finally unpacked my hyperbolic models only to find some familiar wormy cocoons in their folds. the damage was not severe (and could have been much worse) but it certainly conjured up notions of time-space wormholes. i wish my brain was capable of more than notions. this is why i crochet.

the unpacking was motivated by many factors - a desire to have an unpacked home, the upcoming hyperbolics i have committed to crocheting and a hyperbolic crochet class i am teaching at the knit cafe in april. it was time to dust these puppies off and contemplate them once again. it's the impending spring, i guess. a time when the desire for thaw turns a woman's fancy to the frilly lettuce of advanced mathematics.

the universe being what it is (perfectly ordered by a process of infinite luck), my friend leah just mentioned a fantastically generous hyperbolic quest she has been on while touring in the baltics. there is no need for gifts, little wayfarer. but i won't lie; that would have been an amazing surprise.

a plastic yarn ball, some love from the void and a stolen picture.

there is no way to make cohesive sense out of today's activities even though they were not complicated activities. regardless, a pattern is not emerging from the fuzz. so...

a) a date has been set for the plastic bag yarn ball, and you are invited! next monday at the knit cafe of toronto. be there or be elsewhere!

b) today i received some reciprocal internet appreciation from summer at ottoman. thank you, summer.

c) i stole that picture from karyn. it's from the trunk show.