crafty mcgee

Back for at least a month

I decided I just had to sign up for my little mochi's Coraline box swap.  I've got the perfect box, and had some good ideas even before I saw the movie yesterday, now I'm a little overwhelmed. It's impossible not to love a film where, as the website says "everything you see is made by hand".  I had been a teeny-tiny bit skeptical - while I love Neil Gaiman's stories, I'm not a big fan of his writing style. Also, I love the version illustrated by Dave McKean (shown above - so eerie) and the film characters are nothing alike. But no worries - the film was fabulous, highly recommended, and I'm sure will inspire even more online projects than it already has. I hope I made the cutoff!

I suppose I should give a brief update of what I've been doing for the last six months. After successfully working to get President Obama elected (yaaay!) - all I can say is see my new tag line. I work for local government, and things are very unstable at the moment. I tend to veg when I'm worried. Vegging for me means listening to music almost constantly (thus the Pandora widget), or watching movies, or Lost, or  Battlestar Galactica, or the late, great, lamented Pushing Daisies. Oh well, I guess it's better than drinking copious amounts of alcohol. Still, I do have lots of ideas both crafty and non, and my tutorials bookmark list is longer than all of my other bookmarks combined. I'm going to plan on a new "combating panic through craft" strategy. Thanks for checking in!

This time I have an excuse

To start this post, I'm showing a picture of the kind of place I wish I had been in for the last month. I went to the cotton yarn sale at a local knitting store, and found a new reprint of Jan Messent's Knitted Gardens a book previously available for $100 up used. Look at all the little animals, the knitted veggies, the beehives! Such an inspirational book.

But why, you ask, have I wished I was in a monastery? Well, August has never been my favorite month, and this year didn't change my mind. The first half was helping my son get shipped off to college across the state. A little sad, but mostly just hectic (and financially stressful - never good). I took the day off to help pack the truck and see him off. When I came back inside from my child moving away more or less permanently, I checked my email and learned that my high school/college sweetheart, to whom I was engaged, and who I've kept in touch with over the years, had died of a heart attack the very same day. Attached to that sad message was a photo of all of us in college. Well, the juxtaposition really threw me for a loop, and I've been a bit out of it the last few weeks. When I told my cousin the news, part of what she said was "maybe you should paint a room". Little did she know I had been doing just that! In the midst of the launch, I finally got around to refurnishing and repainting my bedroom, the very last holdover from my whole-house remodel four years ago. Yes, when things get chaotic, I'm the type that likes to push it to the very limit. And since Hunter's been gone, I've been converting his room into a craft room, with a closing door to restrict access to naughty cats. I could post some work-in-progress pictures, but I'm creating some special bits, and I think I'll save it for my next post.

I did receive some amazing things in the mail.

The fabric from Bethany's swap. I think that ALL of the pieces were truly exceptional (check them out), and I got all of my favorites! The cacti is Bethany's, Dorathy's pitcher plants, and Mimi's sweet little flowers. AND one of Michelle's batiked dolls:

A Halloween one! Yay!! I am going to very carefully craft it into a feature of this year's decorations.

I also received a pretty quilt from bekka, who is blogless.

Great colors! My near-disaster quilt was well received by my swapee, who found the story funny (in a good way). In addition to room decoration, a have promised a couple more pieces for various things. So I should at least post sporadically this month. Thanks for sticking around!

Inspiration day: Shiba Productions

When I started making my vignettes, a few people mentioned that they'd make great illustrations for storybooks. I remembered a set of books with 3-D illustrations and hologram covers that I had when I was a kid. Specifically, I remembered The Little Mermaid, but I couldn't remember the publisher or the illustrator. It was not easy sifting through the hundreds of versions of the book published in the late 60's and early 70's, but I found it! Actually, my copy of the book, along with The Snow Queen and The Steadfast Tin Soldier, are biding their time in my mom's garage, but that's another story.

I found out that - of course - they were produced in Japan! A stop-motion film animator named Kihachiro Kawamoto started Shiba Productions as a young man. Most of the books have covers similar to the Thumbelina one above. Some of them are collectors items, and very expensive. A few are sold on ebay from time to time, and I recently scored a few. (I am also on the lookout for affordable copies of Mr. Kawamoto's films if anyone knows of a source).

He says that even though the figures in the photos are dolls, he likes to call them puppets because they are actors in the scenes. I love that!

And they aren't all fairy tales, what's not to like about a puppy in a space suit? The hardest part of this post was deciding what pictures to use. I find all of them extremely inspiring. Hope you like them too, and happy first day of summer!

japanese craft books: stamp carving inspiration

ISBN 407248881X

Here's my latest purchase from the Kinokinuya bookstore near my work. This book is filled with cute images and clever ideas - like stamping on unusual surfaces:

If you click on the image you can enlarge it enough to see the robot! I've put a request in the crafting in Japanese group on Flickr to see if I can get specific directions for stamping on glass. This calendar is great:

I think it would make a great project with kids, or a great gift, and the possibilities are endless! I have a good idea of what I'm doing for Moki's recipe card swap, but this book has some good ideas for multiple color printing:

The little blueprint stamp is really cool! I'm also impressed with all of the text she's carved, I've always shied away from that. All in all, a very helpful book. While I was at the bookstore, I couldn't resist this sweet pen case:

Now I can take at least a few drawing tools along with me all the time.

japanese craft book day: so many ideas

 
Here are two of the small (about 5"x7") magazine format Japanese craft books I got a few weeks ago. The one on the right "cafe chez moi" (ISBN4-576-05163-6) is filled with all kinds of great little crafts (a lot of them suitable for kids) and photo tours of crafty shops and studios. Here's a sample:
     
I've got to admit, I bought the book on the right based on the cover alone.  "No 5" (which may also be called Amulet - ISBN4-576-05206-3) seems to be a type of catalog and course listing for a cafe/shop that doubles as a craft school! At least that's what I gathered from the pictures (please correct me if you know what it really is)!  It has a lot of paper crafts, and what looks like an interesting feature (pic on right) on a woman named Kazuko Hamachi, whose books are published in German! I googled her name, all of the matches are in German - yipe!

The last book I got in this order is the best of all - nuigurumi style (ISBN 4-05-604179-2). Lyn posted about this a few months back (she also posted about cafe chez moi - I had forgotten - but we used different pics), but here are a few images she left out:

And there are still more...WAY more! Not only is it filled with amazing images, but there are full page patterns and clear directions for everything. This is the hands-down winner of the McGee Award for Best Japanese Craft Book of 2005!

holiday show & tell: books

Being my favorite holiday and all, I have collected a lot of Christmas stuff over the years. I'll share some of them over the next few weeks. I'll start with the books, since my decorations aren't all unpacked yet. First up a couple of pop-ups by paper artist Robert Clarke Sabuda. The Christmas Alphabet is a beautifully designed book with - you guessed it - 26 little pop-up images. The 12 Days of Christmas seems to be out of print.
 

Here are a couple of very funny, very British books by the wonderful Raymond Briggs, who also did the beautiful The Snowman (which reminds me that I haven't seen that special for many years) - Father Christmas and the (also out of print) Father Christmas Takes a Holiday, in which Santa travels to France, Scotland and Las Vegas.
   

A couple more rather contemporary titles: Santa Calls  by the marvelous illustrator William Joyce; and I Spy Christmas, the holiday version of one of my son's (and my) favorite series. Someday I'll set up my decorations to look like this.
   

Here are some pictures from an old book of my mom's, Told Under the Christmas Tree.
       

Finally - a book I've had since I was tiny, that always meant Christmas to me -

and my favorite picture from the book (though it was hard to choose).

In case you are wondering, it wasn't me who colored in the elves beards with pen, it was my little brother!

a great mail week

My poor mail carrier. In addition to the daily pound of catalogs and political flyers, he also has to schlep this really good stuff. First up, from my Secret Pal:

Two lovely skeins of luxurious yarn. One is bamboo, the other is soy silk. What to make?  Perhaps something where I could use them together? Thanks, SP!
   
Inspired by Kim, I went on a little spree at Reprodepot. (You can see them better if you click on them). I think that groovy 70's-ish print on the far left will be perfect for a quilt I want to start after the holidays. I have no idea what I'm going to do with the Munki Munki pool fabric, but I couldn't resist it. I also got some fabric from the sale bin at eQuilter. I love the animal print:

Then, I got the Katy Horan print from Tiny Showcase that I ordered a couple of weeks ago:

And last, but certainly not least, I've got one, too! Unusual Toys for You to Knit and Enjoy by Jess Hutch. It's wonderful! Since everyone else has shown the cover, here's a different bit:

I plan on making at least two of everything in this book!

a halloween story

Some background: This picture comes from a set of picture books my grandma had called "My Book House".  I recently found a set of these books in a local used book store! Back to Halloween...

This picture always spooked me. I'm not afraid of Native Americans, but ghost Indians...yipe! The story is "Tippity Witchit's Hallowe'en", about a little black kitten on Halloween night, but trust me, it's not a very good story. Look at the pictures and make up a better one.

   
I don't know about you, but sinisterly cavorting agriculture freaks me out. And another creepy one:

But it all turns out okay in the end.

precious vintage children's books

It's taken me a while to calm down after the dreadful events of the past week. I have been working on stuff (I like to at least think that it helps me relax). I got my Halloween blocks ready for the Modern Quilt-Along, Rogue is knitting up nicely, and I'm working on a embroidered block (at least one) for Shanna's Quilts for Katrina project. But I've been thinking   about how much things have changed since I was a kid, and thought I'd show a few of my favorite children's books. I have lots of them, but many of them are still packed in boxes from the remodel I did a couple of years ago. Here are the ones that never got packed away, that I always keep close. These two belonged to my mom and her brothers:
 

As a girl, I was always extremely impressed by well-drawn horses. These books are illustrated by a couple named Hollings. There are a lot of amazing black & white (or brown & white, in the Cowboy book) illustrations inside, too.

This was probably my very favorite as a little girl:

By the wonderful Tasha Tudor, who is, as far as I know, still living her amazing life in Vermont. This last one is an interactive coloring book:
 
Colored by me, and dedicated to my mom, dad, and the only brother I had at the time (I have since gained one more). Eep! I just realized everyone can now see how old I am. Oh well.....these days, I'm feeling my older and younger that that simultaneously. There are lots of other pictures from these books in the Vintage Children's Books  group at Flickr.