Oh dear, the brain is empty

Wed Jun 18, 2008 at 10:54 pm in Interviews, People Doing Crafts | No Comments

OK, some of y’all know me better than others, and you might know that when I say I’m going to do something, I do what I say I’m going to do, generally. And I don’t consider promises made to myself any less important. I have serious issues with myself when I don’t do things I say I will. So when I say I’ll keep a blog, I do it. When I say I’m going to post every day, I do it. Such is June, despite the things that happen, and in fact, I want to be able to look back in a year and say yeah, Caper was awesome, and I grieved, and I shared it.

Problem is, when your brain is just tired and sort of, well, blank, it’s hard to actually write a blog post. Note, please, how much I write when I have nothing to say. Gee, why do I write a blog?

So I’m going to point you to something that is worthwhile reading, on the chance you haven’t seen this before. This is an interview on Poppytalk with Faythe Levine who’s responsible for creating the Handmade Nation documentary. So probably many have heard of this, it’s the story of what they call the rise of the “crafting movement.” Whether you think there’s a DIY movement or a crafty resurgence or not (and I’ve heard varying opinions), this collection of ideas and people is quite interesting. Levine conceives of it as documenting people living creatively. She even addresses that sticky question of art vs. craft – where’s that thin line anyway?

You can see the You Tube preview of the documentary. And I like this poster, and I would’ve gotten one except they only seem to have been available at the Renegade Craft Fair in Brooklyn, where I was not. There were only 100, printed in brown, illustration by Kate Bingaman-Burt.

Handmade Nation Poster

I should not be writing this post

Wed Mar 12, 2008 at 7:44 pm in Conference/Fair, Embroidery, Favorite Finds, Indie!, People Doing Crafts | No Comments

This morning at 5:30 a.m. when in the grips of an insomnia so irritating as to actually get me out of my warm bed, I decided that I would swear off the internet forever.  I was going to delete every vestige of all my online accounts, and erase every bit of me in the ether!

I think it goes without saying that I am not very at all rational in the early morning before noon. I’m still not really sure why I thought this was a good idea, other than that I was exhausted, grumpy and needed a nice hot shower and a cuppa joe.

I’m not yet over conference-malaise, and I should just go to bed, and that’s not really too far off.  I just want to go to bed late enough that I can sleep for a good 11 hours tonight straight through.

So in this week’s now-typical style, I present various things running through my head:

1)  Remember that picture I showed you of the woman knitting socks in the SXSW panel? Well, I posted that picture to Flickr, and lo and behold she left a comment!  It’s Julia aka Yarn Maven from Bastrop, Texas.  I didn’t get a chance to get her name in the panel because I got caught up talking to the two founders of BurdaStyle, but I’m so glad to meet her. :)

2)  I do yammer on sometimes about advocating buying handmade stuff.  But it’s only because I really like it.  Fun thing about buying things I might make myself – still useful, but this way I get to enjoy others’ design aesthetics as well.  Here’s my latest purchases.

On the left is the orange Bouquet wall clock for Jeff’s study from Decoy Lab.  He’s been on an orange thing recently, looking for accessories.  Orange is a great accent.  As seen on February’s Poppytalk selections.

On the right is a sewing case I bought for taking embroidery stuff along with me.  It’s from Blue Banana Shop in Singapore, whose stuff is very bright and cheery.

New Etsy purchases - sewing case and clock

Pay no attention to my strange collection of books there.  I just realized what those were.  This is part of my collection of academic books on the old Testament.  The one on the far left, Paul the Convert, was written by a professor for whom I was a teaching assistant, my favorite professor from grad school, the inimitable Alan Segal.

Nerd Out

Sat Mar 8, 2008 at 9:09 am in Blogging, Conference/Fair, People Doing Crafts, Weekend Warrior | No Comments

Dear Readers,

From today through next Tuesday from morning through night, I’ll be at SXSW interactive, which you might know is going on here in good Austin. So I might be a little more absent than usual, but hopefully I’ll come back full of ideas!

Did you know there’s even a panel today of crafting interest? It’s called High-Tech Craft: Why Sewing and Knitting Still Matter. The description says:

Traditional crafts such as knitting and sewing are surging in popularity today thanks to the growing Do-It-Yourself (DIY) movement. These modern crafters on the panel not only promote the notion of DIY, they are using technology to reclaim these old techniques. From soft circuits and mathematical knitting to fashion technology and wearable computing, find out more about this new trend of high-tech…

Panelists: Natalie Zee Drieu (Senior Editor, CRAFT Magazine), Syuzi Pakhchyan (SparkLab), Alison Lewis (Producer, IHeartSwitch), Mouna Andraos (Electronic Crafts), Diana Eng (Fashion Designer, Diana Eng)

Mostly I will be going to panels about promoting community via the interwebs (actually, the crafting one still works for that, doesn’t it?), including things on promoting nonprofit interests or causes via the web, volunteerism, and other sorts of lovely interesting things.

NERD FUN! See you soon, y’all :)