Hurricane, anyone? and other stories …

So we had a hurricane hereabouts this past weekend.  Not *here* in Austin - we didn’t get more than a few sprinkles, some nice cool breezes and a low pressure system.  But my parents and Jeff’s mom live in or near Houston, and they certainly got a lot of hurricane Ike.  Jeff’s mom has been here all weekend because her town has been under mandatory evacuation since last Wednesday (she lives 20 minutes from the coast).  Neither of my parents have power and some trees got uprooted, but their houses are okay.  From what I hear, people are doing the Post-Hurricane Refrigerator Fest:  grilling/cooking everything in their refrigerators on their grills and campstoves because it’s going to go bad if they don’t.

Meanwhile, I spent the weekend up to my ears in fabric and other materials for my swap.  Such fun!  I am so far pleased with what I’ve come up with - also pleased that what I planned is working out instead of having to switch course midstream.  Sometimes I come up with kooky plans that are way too impractical.

I put my daisy-flower afghan up on the wall to see how it looked a couple of days ago - you may recall I was thinking I had all the squares done.  However, when I got it all tacked to the wall I realized it was not going to be the size and shape I wanted, and that I also wanted to rearrange the colors.  One issue was that I decided not to put a border on the squares, but just to stitch them together as they are so I had to deal with the loss of several inches.  The end result of my reconfiguration is that I have nine more squares to make.  I was kinda hoping I was more done than that, but it’s better to have it turn out right than wimp out right at the end.

I don’t know if you ever look at the “currently reading” section over there –> but lately I’ve been trolling through this Embellished Crochet book almost every night trying to decide what I want to do from it.  I don’t know why, but the prospect of beading and/or embroidering a crochet garment is attractive, whereas normally I think something that sounds like thhhbbbbpppttt when I think of making clothing.  I really am not fond of making clothing, but I think I might make that sweater there on the cover.  I bought this book while going to look for the BH&G Holiday Crafts magazine that Anna VS mentioned - I liked the snowman on the cover and the mention of lots and lots of felt crafts.  I like felt.  That magazine is going to get me in trouble, because I’m going to try to do too much this fall again.

Seems like September has inspired a fresh bout of crafting, eh?

If you live in Austin …

… you might want to check out some Maker Faire related items.  The Craft blog is posting madly about the upcoming event (weekend of October 18th, I believe), and I do believe some of it looks rather entertaining.  At last year’s Maker Faire I spent most of the day I went looking at robots. Turns out Austin has a big community of robot afficionados doing everything from spin art to sand drawing to playing video games via trampoline.  Pretty darn awesome.  But I missed other things like weaving and spinning demonstrations, and the Swap-O-Rama-Rama.  And Evil Mad Scientist’s CandyFab machine (though I smelled it).  And some other stuff.  There was really too much to do for one day.  (That’s my hands at the 2007 Maker Faire with my brand-new tiny transistor making noise with graphite there on the right.  And you can see the Robo Spin Art that went into my A Piacere piece.)

This year I am going to look more into the crafty element, vis-a-vis:

• Bazaar Bizaare is making an appearance in 2008. I’ve heard many things about these, but have never been to one.
• The Craftzine bloggers made a Google map of crafty businesses in Austin. Except for the ones in Cedar Park (a bit of a drive for me) I’ve been to most of these.  I’m addicted to craft stores.  I can’t even really admit to my visit to one the other day.
• An interview with Lisa Stevens of Austin’s Greater Austin Garbage Arts.  This year’s Swap-O-Rama-Rama will be headed up by Stevens and her GAGA partner Molly Whitten.

I’d like to note that the Garbage Arts establishment is actually right next door to a very lovely local coffee roaster and shop called Fair Bean that you can find me at around 8:30 many mornings.  I’m a coffee addict, and they do know their coffee.

Since I’m just going to repost Craft today, you should also not miss the New York Times article on Faythe Levine, creator of the Handmade Nation documentary.  Not often the craft peeps get love from the big news outlets, so I like to pass on the links.

The Benefits of Organization, or How I Always Lose Stuff

Last spring I wrote down the pattern I made up for the brown squares that will go in my flower afghan.  When I decided to stop working on the blanket for the summer, I put everything - yarn, finished squares, crochet hook and pattern pieces into a basket and closed it up.  The point was - TRY NOT TO LOSE ANYTHING.

Raise your hand if you know what’s coming next.

Yeah, that’s right, I can’t find the piece of paper with the pattern for the brown squares.  I also apparently thieved the crochet hook from myself. Oh, and I didn’t write down which type of brown yarn I was using or save a label.

So it took a while to figure out what drugs I was on what I had been doing with this brown granny square.  I figured it all out again (eventually, after three failed attempts) and then decided I could improve it.  So half the squares will be of one sort and half will be a slight variation.  Hey, at least they’re all the same color now.

I did figure out the hook size and yarn type (it was only the second one I tried).

Crocheting shall continue apace. I have just four more squares to do!  That’s a little bit less of a woohoo because I still have to put borders on everything and sew it together, which is not a throwaway bit of work.

<crosses fingers it turns out well>