7 posts tagged “links”
One of my long-term favorite crafty/fashion/artsy blogs, Red Lipstick, ceased publication yesterday. I'm disappointed! I haven't been following a lot of blogs lately, but I've started to get back into it, and it was a blog I was definitely planning to catch up with.
Staceyjoy's second-to-last post at Red Lipstick was about Weekend Designer, a site I think a lot of crafty types will want to check out -- sewing patterns for recent runway items. Many of the patterns are simple -- skirts, blouses, and accessories made mostly from squares -- but some are as complex as jeans or tailored vests.
I'm not sure whether you will actually wear a caftan after you make it, and I think I might put some waist darts on that pencil skirt; even so, it's worth more than a look. Their tagline is, "It ain't rocket science." You'll learn a lot about drafting your own patterns if you do some of their more complex projects. They seem to be taking the mystery out of sewing as much as Threadbanger aims to, but with less of an indie-rock vibe.
I'm not sure where else this has been featured lately: I'm keeping up with WhipUp and not so much with CRAFT, these days. Both are good, but about a year or so ago, CRAFT started to focus a lot on local craft shows & other stuff that isn't of much interest if you don't live in [insert hipster-friendly metro area *here*], along with a lot of patterns for sale (great if you're the person selling them, not so much if you're interested in free tutorials). A lot of the same free tutorials show up on WhipUp first. That said, I always enjoy CRAFT when I do get around to checking it out.
(Creative Commons photo of Chanel boutique in Paris by Flickr's wallyg.)
I wrote a post here the other day, but I haven't posted it yet, because I have been working (by which I mean, "not working") on some images for it. Here is an entirely different, inappropriately long post for you. Which took hours to write.
The following is Full of Win:
It's a collection of punch-out cards, all of which have red flocking on them (that's velvety stuff). Every single one looks like it was produced at some point between about 1950 and 1965. There are envelopes in the middle, which are printed and themed to go with the cards, but you have to assemble the envelopes. At only $5, I think it's a really good addition to my ephemera collection. (My mom is in her early 50s. When she saw the book, she exclaimed that it was just like the Valentines that were given out among her classmates in elementary school in the early 1950s, so it definitely gets the retro seal of approval.)
Through a combination of circumstances that would be wearisome to describe, I have wound up thinking of buying myself some dolls. I used to collect dolls and some action figures in a casual manner. I bought a blonde 1972 Blythe before they became popular again (or, rather, at the cutting edge of that trend), but my girl needed some work and I wound up selling her to a Japanese collector a few years later because I didn't feel like doing things like rerooting her and finding a new leg for her and etc, and I figured that being paid $1200 for the pleasure of letting someone else do it would be ideal.
Anyway, when I sold my original Blythe, I also had a doll from the first issue of Rosie Red, who is very pretty. (I still have her, but a lot of my stuff is packed willy-nilly in boxes, and I have no idea where she is.) That doll is now worth upwards of $400, and I've considered selling her and buying Rosie Red Encore/Again, basically the same doll for a lot less money. However, I can't remember if I ever opened the box, and I have no idea what her condition will be when I find her. (The Rosie Red photo is taken from this Flickr page.)
I quit following Blythe for a while, because my heart was won over by a similar, slightly less-expensive doll named Pullip. I think it had something to do with a few of the earlier releases of Pullip having stars in their eyes! So, I got my first (so far only) Pullip about two years ago: Greggia. (The photo below is from this Flickr page.)
There have been a few dolls in the interim that I would have purchased (like Papin and Assa and Paja and Savon and a couple of the related Dal dolls, like Sooni and Fiori), but recently I fell hard for another Pullip that I wanted to add to my collection: Veritas. She's supposed to be "a Venetian explorer," but really she looks like Pirate Pullip Mark II, or perhaps more accurately Restoration Pullip; the first pirate Pullip was Rovam, who was more fantasy and less historical-looking.
Now, of course, since Pullip Veritas was the thing at the top of my Christmas list, with little stars and hearts around it and a note that said, "Everything else is optional but this is the thing I really want; I don't even need anything else!" -- of course, that being the case, Veritas was the one thing on my Christmas list that I didn't get. I got a promise to purchase it in January, but I'm pretty sure the person who made the promise (who was overly generous to me at Xmas anyway) can't actually afford to blow $100 on a doll right now.
The problem is that I've spent so much time plotting my purchase and sending telepathic "please arrive early" signals to my paycheck that I've had ample opportunity to look at other doll stuff, and found myself falling back in love with a few of the newest Blythes. So now I could quite easily spend my entire next paycheck on dolls (I didn't say I would, just that I could).
The specific doll that has caught my eye is Welcome Winter; she just came out very recently. I realize that she looks a lot like Pullip Greggia, actually: essentially neutral country print dress, pale jacket and head scarf, light brown hair. Her hair is ashier than Greggia's. I love that she wears a rabbit pendant, and then the same rabbit charm is at the end of the string that you pull to change her eyes (usually it's just a ring or, maybe, a tab... 72 Blythe had a ring but I think some of the newer ones might not). She has special, non-standard eye chips: two different shades of brown instead of a pink and an orangy golden brown. Before someone who has actually seen a photo of me gets around to saying it: yeah, when you display her blue eyes, she looks as much like me as a Blythe is likely to ever look. Maybe my hair isn't that dark. (The photo below is from this Flickr page.)
I have been looking around, though; I also love the following, and could be happy with any of them... in spite of their lack of a rabbit pull-string charm:
- Dainty Biscuit is very Victorian Princess (and not particularly hime-loli, I think), with long, wavy, light pink hair. To match her dress -- like you do. (Well, when I had pink hair -- darker pink than that -- I tended to have to match my clothes and lipstick to it!) She also has special eye colors, like purple! (Dainty Biscuit Flickr Pool.)
- Enchanted Petal has a dress that actually looks like it could have been decorated with candy sprinkles, and has light aqua-colored hair. She also has special eye colors. (Enchanted Petal Flickr Pool.)
- Pullip Prunella is one of the very newest Pullips; she is a special collaboration with h.Naoto, a Japanese street fashion brand (IE, very "alternative") and comes with a small human-size h.Naoto tote bag. Dal Hangry is also part of this line. These were hard-to-get in pre-order but for the moment people seem to be selling them for reasonable prices (more like a Neo-Blythe than a Pullip, but not too high).
- Pullip Blanche -- I don't like her outfit, but I do like her face paint and wig, and the wigs are interchangeable, so it seems like this might be one to buy naked on eBay at some point.
- There's a whole line of inexpensive re-releases of 1972 Blythe by Ashton-Drake, and there are several I'd like from that line (Medieval Mood, Lounging Lovely, etc).
- I could go on forever.
The worst thing is that I want a BJD really badly, have for around 5 years, probably an Elfdoll Lishe (here's a brunette Lishe and a blonde Lishe), and I was going to save up for that because it's like $600 and I really shouldn't buy it to begin with, and my plans are in ruins! I also need bookshelves! Egad!
I've left the role of Alice Cherry Blossom: Ballerina out of all of this; basically, I was going to buy her, instead of the Pullip doll, until I realized she's only five inches tall. Yeah, for $300, which was a stretch for me to begin with... when I thought she was more like 9 inches. She's cute but she's not that cute (that's like $60/inch!). Deciding not to buy her was what made me start to think about picking up Welcome Winter or one of the others.
Of course, the crafty application of all this is that I can customize them practically infinitely, and if you don't believe me, look around the Flickr groups I linked. When I had my 72 Blythe I didn't make clothes for her, but I did dress her in Skipper clothes and tote her around with me for a while. Now I've upped my game with some Re-Ment miniatures and so forth, and am working on getting or making or customizing some tiny furniture.
(The other doll thing I am super-bad at: I tend not to give them individual names. My Pullip Greggia is Greggia, which I pronounce "GREH-jee-ah", my Blythe was always Blythe, Rosie Red Blythe is Rosie Red, etc. Everyone else's dolls seem to be named things like Molly and Wren. If I ever got that BJD I'd probably just call it Lishe.)
All that aside: we are getting the sub-zero temps that have been sweeping across the Midwest this week. I just got a weather advisory in my browser that suggests that I cover any exposed skin before going outside. I tried to put the dog's sweater on her before I took her out this morning, and she was having none of it, trust me.
Finally, a few interesting (totally girly and appropriate for this post) art links:
Macoto Takahashi: Ultra-shoujo manga style, and I mean retro-shoujo. In 2001 I bought a little cardboard sliding-drawer organizer box at a NYC shop called Air Market that sold imported Japanese stuff; it had one of her illustrations printed on it. I also got some rub-on transfers of her art there at the same time (I gave one packet to a friend). I had no idea what the artist's name was until now.
Annika Wester: Sort of a cross between Jeffrey Fulvimari and Edward Gorey. Her official portfolio doesn't have a ton of stuff, so also check out this Annika Wester page and this Annika Wester interview (where they also bring up Edward Gorey; glad it's not just me).
Yes, I should be asleep.
Yes, I had intended to be asleep.
Yes, my sleep "schedule" is currently a thing of havoc and dismay.
But it's very, very cold in my bedroom, so I've been up while waiting for my new heated mattress pad to dry! A wonderful early Xmas gift from my mom, to ensure that I don't have ridiculous chill-induced foot cramps while I'm trying to sleep.
I found a few utterly wonderful things. I wrote about one for DIY Life, and you'll just have to see that when it goes up. The other is not really appropriate for that site, so here it is. I think it's wonderful.
(They showcase the sort of things that I collect... and are perfect for all those of you who have lately been head-over-heels about that Petit Pattern book series from Japan. Oh, I'll admit it: there are a few of them on my Amazon Wishlist, too.)
As some people know, I write for a relatively new blog called DIY Life... I've spent most of the last month working on a big intro/tutorial about amigurumi. I came up with so much material that it turned into four posts, only one of which is an intro/tutorial. The editors decided to call it Amigurumi-o-rama. I think that you can probably learn anything you'd want to know about amigurumi there, if there's anything you don't know.
(I'm adding this to the amigurumi group even though I'm pretty sure that they do indeed know everything in the articles.)
Please check it out! I really hope that people like the posts, and that you can get something out of them, because I worked so, so hard on them, and I got to feature some work that I totally admire.
The tutorial is based on the Amineko pattern, because Best Bunny is behind a registration wall at Lion Brand, and the doll at Stitch has all that hair to root... it's, "crochet along with me, these are some potential pitfalls, hey check out the shapes you're learning to make." There's a post with links to animal patterns, one for food patterns, and one coming up today (10 August) with pop culture patterns like Daleks, Yoda, and Pikachu. The tutorial is crochet-based, but the articles have both knit and crochet stuff in them.
(I've been a member of this group since way before I was asked to write for DIY Life, but I never had anything I was proud enough to post about until now! & next week, I hope I'll be posting a free pattern of my own.)
OK, so, I wrote this long post about the cabled armwarmers I knitted, and haven't posted it yet because I wanted to add a picture, but I'm having picture problems. It has since occurred to me that I don't have a userpic on this blog. Bad, bad me!
I finished the earwarmer headband, and am working on a pattern. I don't know whether to include a pic, or to make a second headband: the headband that I finished was kind of experimental. I didn't have enough yarn to wash the gauge swatch to see if it would bloom... it did. So, the headband is wider than I'd like, and I had to pull it out half a dozen times to get it to the right length. I'm pleased with the final product, in that I've been wearing it all the time, but if I had it to do again, I would almost certainly make it a little bit narrower... it sticks out at the back of my head.
So I can post a photo, but only with the caveat that nobody else's will look exactly like mine, because the instructions are to produce something slightly different. If I make a second example, I'm not sure which bulky-gauge yarn to work with this time, maybe just Lamb's Pride Bulky. Something variegated would be nicer, more fashion-forward. But these are one-ball stash-killer projects. I have some Berroco Chinchilla I want to use up, but I am afraid it would be way too slippery to work as a headband.
Also, I have been talking about knitting too much lately, because that's what I've mostly been doing. Rest assured, I have other, non-knitting things to talk about. Perhaps tomorrow, even. We can talk about DIY decorating projects, right? Hint hint.
Among other bad girls: Nikol Lohr, of Thrifty Knitter, who wrote the book Naughty Needles. I'm waiting for the library to get it to me - I usually review books that come from the library, and as such, I have to wait until they actually decide to add them to the system, then I have to wait until the book arrives from the reserve list. I could get this particular book any time in the next month, as they didn't have it a few weeks ago and do have it now, and I am next in line for a copy, but the check-out period is three weeks.
I'm sure the review will be generally positive: I liked what I saw in the bookstore, and I particularly appreciated the array of models, all of whom are pretty, but most of whom are also curvy.* I've always liked Nikol's site Disgruntled Housewife, as well as the others she's worked on. At any rate, Naughty Needles has a website, and there are a few extra patterns there... some are even pretty innocent, like a technique-teaching purse pattern, or a pony hat for kids (cute, and way less costumey than the adorable unicorn getup in Vickie Howell's New Knits on the Block.) Nikol also wrote that trippy Katamari Damacy earmuff pattern that ShojoBeat offered for free this winter, & that I went on about at length.
* Lots of knitting books feature models who are very thin or very, very, young. For example, the photos I've seen from Pretty In Punk, an upcoming book, mostly feature garments that won't work on figures that have much in the way of curves: a tiny ruffled tube skirt, a sweater with big horizontal stripes. These are cute, but unflattering for most people. I love Teva Durham's Loop-D-Loop book, but it's another that seems limiting in flatterability (most of the stuff that looks good on boobtastic people like me is not actually offered in boobtastic sizes). It's not fair to say, "These patterns shouldn't exist, because they're only for stick figures!" - some people are that thin, and they need patterns too! But for sure, the patterns won't work for me. The majority of the patterns in Naughty Needles do indeed appear to have been designed for an array of body types.
Stolen unrepentantly from other blogs:
Craftacular (via Not Martha) - Craft wiki. Pretty barren now. Eventually hopes to be a compendium of tutorials and patterns.
I guess one way of putting my "craft philosophy" into words is to say that I am I interested in "best practices" - there usually really ARE one or two "best" ways of doing a given thing, that will lead to the longest-lasting or most-professional-looking project (usually, but not always, mutually inclusive). Every time I post on Craftster, which hasn't been many, it's been to point out that if someone tweaks the way they're doing something, it'll last three times longer. This is usually stuff like using plastic-fusion spray paints to make over hard-side plastic luggage, instead of regular spray paint, or learning to wrap the base of wire loops when beading. For this reason, I think it'll be very interesting to see how Craftacular develops.
Thrift Store Scraps Into Lots of Hats (via CRAFTblog) - not all of these are made the way I would make them, to look the most "finished," but there are a lot of cute design ideas here. Check out the way the owl hat is made from the sleeve of a sweater or sweatshirt.
For the Love of Yarn: new online crochet and knitting magazine; it seems to me that the emphasis is on crochet. There are a couple of cute amigurumi patterns (a turtle and a snail).
via WhipUp, who also launched their first contest today! Do something on the theme of "Everyday Creativity" and you may win a copy of Jeffrey Yamaguchi's great book 52 Projects. I liked it so much that it's one of the only books I've actually purchased in the last year. (You didn't know I was a habitual library rat? That's where all the books for this blog come from.)
There's also a new Knitty, which I'm sure everyone knows about by now. Every so often I feel like doing a line-item overview of all the patterns, but I refrain because they're free, and you don't have to make them if you don't like them!
However, one of the few Knitty patterns I've ever made - the "Sueet" purse from two years ago - was a horrible knitting experience, a lousy pattern in so many ways, so much so that I'm never touching another of Natalie Wilson's patterns again. There were silly errors in the pattern (ex: a four-stitch decrease procedure to deal with three stitches at the end of the straps). The overall method of construction was simply non-intuitive. Instead of being done in a wide, flat piece, the bag would be better knit in the round and either grafted on the bottom with kitchener stitch, which would make it slightly more difficult, or given a flat-panel bottom (rather than trying to force one into the shape of it after the fact). The yarn, Berroco Suede, was unpleasant to work with, snagging on my every callous. I finished the bag ages ago, dragging my heels the entire time, but I still haven't lined it. When I do, it will probably be a present for someone, or sold at my cost (that is, without a profit). The whole pattern almost scared me off of free patterns in general and Knitty patterns in particular - for pretty much ever. The compromise is avoiding Natalie Wilson's other patterns, which aren't really my style anyway.
On the other hand, I've been making the recent "Branching Out" lace scarf pattern, published in last spring's Knitty, and it couldn't be simpler: everything is working out just as it's supposed to. I started it in November and set it aside for a while. I'm not in a hurry to finish it, so I knit a few motifs each week... I've done perhaps 12 so far. I'm using the Silky Wool in purple - I had some around - but I may actually make another in laceweight yarn at some point in the future. Each pair of leaves in the center of the scarf, one on each side of the center axis, is a pattern repeat.
There's one pattern in the new Knitty that I think is gut-bustingly awful from the top down; I'll have to think long and hard about whether I wish to elaborate on that point. Probably NOT. But I will elaborate on my favorite (which, given my predilections, may not be difficult to guess): cute and simple little Nagano Sakura. Most everything there that isn't the sweater I hate looks pretty nice, overall.
