Category Archives: crafty

Craft Week DC

Next week is Craft Week DC. Today’s WaPo Weekend section features two of my favorite artists, which is great because I can link to it even though I’m too tired to blog extensively about Craft Week or the upcoming Smithsonian Craft Show right now.

Michael O’Sullivan’s articleis a guided tour of the week’s events as curated by Washington Glass School co-founder Tim Tate (the guy who made the monkey reliquaries) and a profile of “Ceramics That Go Beyond Cups and Bowls” of Laurel Lukaszewski.

My favorite line of the whole article: “We’d call him the Craft Whisperer, except that Tate never whispers.”

We don’t have any of Laurel’s work (yet) but she’s one of the many groovy artists who live in my groovy neighborhood and I covet her work madly so I’m always excited to see her getting the positive press she deserves.

There’s also a profile of Gayle Friedman a local jewelry artist who shares studio space with my guru, Michele Banks. (Not to be confused with my spiritual advisor, Roger). I only recently started to get acquainted with Gayle’s work – I’ve really liked what I’ve seen so far.

So there you have it. It’s sort of a Friday Five, even. I kind of want to babble more about art and craft, but somewhere around mile 4 of the run I just took my brain solved the thorny problem of my Artomatic installation. Namely, how to do it at all. Before I headed out, I’d reconciled with the fact that I was almost certainly going to have to drop out, but I believe that all is well now. I need to take a shower and get to work, though, if I’m going to make this happen.

recent sweaters



alexandra ballet sweater, originally uploaded by meanlouise.

Pattern from Stefanie Japel’s Fitted Knits – a very curvy boatneck sweater for very curvy girls. Sleeves are slightly longer than 3/4 and flare just slightly. A series of decreases in the back create a slightly unforgiving fit, this is the small – sorta wish I’d made the medium ;-)



capelet, originally uploaded by meanlouise.

It started out as the Anthropologie-inspired capelet, but then I decided to put sleeves on it and then I decided to make it a couple inches longer. I always forget how hard it is to photograph black clothing – the edges look really fuzzy, but they aren’t.

Happy Bobmas!

Today is Bobmas, the holiest day of the knitting year, for today is the day that Ravelry was conceived.

It’s only fitting that today should be the day that most NPR affiliates broadcast “Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me.” For you see, Mo Rocca recently stated on the air that handknitted sweaters were itchy. Well, you can imagine what happened next!

If you lack imagination, I’ll tell you: a group made Mo a beautiful, soft, non-itchy sweater that fit beautifully. How do we know it fit beautifully? These fabulous knitters presented it to him this week at a taping of the show.

(The segment is Panel Round Two – Mo Rocca vs. the Knitters: An Update and Reconciliation).

Chicago Public Radio’s blog gives the scoop:

A couple of weeks ago, Mo Rocca made an off-hand comment that handmade sweaters were “itchy.” A fairly innocuous thing to say one would think.

Following the broadcast, Mo received tons of angry emails from a nationwide group of knitters. Yes. Knitters. People who knit. And they were smoking mad.

The first attempt at assuaging the burbling rage of the yarn spinners was a phone-in apology by Mo during a broadcast. Apparently, it was not enough. The bruised egos of those who crochet would not be salved by a mere apology. There had to be face-to-face confrontation.

After a digression about audiences for show tapings, the post continued with this humorous observation:

The knitters (from a group called Ravelry,) were lovely people who sat in the front row with balls of yarn at their feet. I’m pretty sure they were knitting throughout the whole show, like victims of OCD but with pointy needles.

If you scroll down to the bottom of their post you can see pictures of Mo in his nice new (non-itchy) sweater.

Happy Bobmas, one and all!