A totally drool worthy and inspiring flick pool worth checking out if you are a dyer, spinner or knitter.
http://www.flickr.com/groups/handspunhanddyedhandknit/

Here's a Panta (pattern here) that i whipped up a while ago and found the pics in my camera while cleaning out old pics.

Handspun swapy goodness

swap to Bloo closeup
Originally uploaded by Saint_Ann.

Just a closeup pic of some handspun i dyed and spun up for a swap on craftster between spinners and crafters. Anne and Aubrey you should get in on the next round (i'll let you know when sign ups are). It's a fun way to get some cool gifties in the mail.

colors

I hate the colors on this blog. I changed it to make it better, but it takes soooo long to do since I'm not good at it. Right now it sucks and I don't what came out, but I don't have time to change it. I don't want to sit through hours trying to get a good combo again yet, so I guess I will have to wait. If I got back to a standard blogger template, I will lose all the customized sidebar stuff, albeit there isn't much. ugh.

The good thing about colors is that we will be swimming in colorful yarns this weekend at our Wine, Dye and Knit party, hosted by yours truly. Zona, Aubrey and I will be splitting a space at the Piecemaker's craft fair and we need to build up our inventory! We'll make sure to take pictures and post.

Crafting Divas' Vitae

So, I think we've done enought things to have our own curriculum vitae. Here's a list of where you can find us!!!

• I Can't Believe I'm Knitting, In Motion -- A knitting DVD featuring Melissa Leapman. Aubrey, Anne and Rachel are in there for about 10 seconds each in the extra feature section "Knitter on the Street" The videos are available at stores like Michaels and JoAnn. In March 2006, I blogged the experience.
  
• Shapeshifting Sweaters, Uncommon Threads, episode #241, Season 2, Feb. 2007 -- Anne, Zona, Aubrey and Rachel demonstrate a wonderful project using recycled sweaters on this crafty show on the DIY Network. It hasn't aired yet, nor has the airing schedule been released, but I'll update this as soon as I know! :) Our experience is blogged here.
  
• Meowzers, Uncommon Threads, episode #265, Season 2, Feb. 2007-- Anne, Aubrey and Zona demonstrate a bed for your beloved kitty and show off some other kitty toys on this episode. It hasn't aired yet, nor has the airing schedule been released, but I'll update this as soon as I know! :) Our experience is blogged here.
• Knit-torious, SqueezeOC, Nov. 9, 2006 -- An article on knitting for which Aubrey and Anne knitted the bikini. Aubrey and Anne were featured in the bio. Blogged here with links.
  
• "Fu", MagKnits, Issue # __?_ -- Anne's pattern just got accepted for publication in MagKnits. It's still undecided whether the pattern will be in the February or March 2007 issue.
  
• I Do Knits, Knitty Gritty, episode #_?__, Season 4(?) -- Aubrey and Anne will be knitsters on this wedding-themed episode. This still has not happened yet, but we are scheduled to tape on December 4, 2006.
  

Sexy Bikini on SqueezeOC

Look! We are another mini-step closer as crafty supahstahs! Sorry if you saw this on my blog. But isn't it exciting!!?? Aubrey and I collaboratively designed and knitted the bikini below, which was featured in last week's SqueezeOC, a weekly local entertainment pub. The also have and online version of the article, but after seeing the print version, I like the print version much better! Here's the article. Here's a bio on Aubrey and me. The photos above are from Squeeze OC. Yay us!!

Creative Yarn

I meant to post this a while back, but I kept forgetting. Aubrey and I decided to take some salacious yarn photos along with some other creative posings with yarn. They didn't turn out super great, but I really like them. Thanks to Zona, who took all the photos.

Have you ever knitted with goats?

Um, yeah, it was a really cold day here in SoCal. We decided to start a fire and roast some yarnmallows.

We got hungry and decided to cook. Below Aubrey is enjoying her bowl of yellow egg noodles.

One of my favorite pictures. I am in a knitting Zen moment. Well, actually, I'm acrophobic and was afraid to jump on this super bouncy large trampoline. Yeah, I'm a chicken.

Ah, last but not least, for the fetishists. Salacious photos of us bathing together.

Psudo-sod = knit grass for art's sake.

Yesterday was spent sitting and knitting at the Huntington Beach Art Center with my new friend, Amy who has an exibit at the canter currently on display. She is part of an exhibit called "MANufactured", exploring models of painting and sculpture through the use of such manufactured materials as plastic, fabric, and fiber; including Cathy Breslaw, Amy Caterina, Maureen Shields, and Tomoko Suzuki.
Amy is on a mission to knit an entire Psudo-sod car cover and calling on all knitters to participate by knitting a swatch for her. I sat and chatted, laughed, knit sod and even sold some yarn while i was there.
Psudo-sod is one strand of brown worsted weight yarn held together with one strand of grass colored eyelash yarn, knit on large needles, all in garter stitch. Sounds yucky from a yarn standpoint but actually resembles grass when worked up. Stupid Blogger isn't latteing me post pics so go over to my personal blog to see the pics i snapped of her progress as of yesterday.
The car cover project isn't the only thing on display. She has Forest Fire Friends which are large knit animals and some other pieces using Psudo-sod at the Huntington Beach Art Center.

Yummy Yarns

I posted this on my blog, but I just love the colors I also had to post here. This is my current inventory for both Etsy and also the Dec. 1 craft fair. This is from the dye party at Aubrey's and the Saturday night of Zona's crafty adventure at Piecemakers.

I haven't put anything on Esty yet, but I did put up my store banner.

"You like me....You really like me!"

This weekend was my first foray into selling my yarn to the general public face to face. And it went well.....really well!
I had a booth at the local Piecemakers Harvest Craft Fair and sat there for 2 days spinning and chatting with all kinds of people. There were people that walked up to my table and "Ooooo" while touching and squeezing the twisty colorful hanks but then they'd look up and say "what is this?". They didn't realize that it was yarn. I guess when you aren't familiar with handspun and all you see are factory spun balls and hanks at your local Michaels you wouldn't know yarn comes in other forms. Anyways.... there were only a few of those people. For the most part it was people that were facinated by the whole dying and spinning process and coudn't decide which loveley hand to take home. Lots of children would stop thier parents and come stand by me as i spun away and explained how the "fluff" came from the sheep and what i did to it. I think that was my favorite part of the weekend......explaining the process to thecurious and wide eyed kids.
By the end of Saturday my inventory was severly depleted. I had sold more than half of what i brought with me! My dress form was naked of her scarves and accessories - all sold!

Anne, Aubrey and several people from our Weds night knitting group came down to visit with me throughout the day and i met several people that might come by some Weds night to knit with us.
On Saturday night when i got home i scoured the house for more knit accessories to adorn the dress form, worked up a quick scarf and dug out a few hats to bring along for Sunday. Sunday moring i ditched the baskets the yarn had been in the previous day and spread out my remaining inventory on the sheep printed tablecloth. Everything filled in nicely and it didn't look as sparce as when i worried it might.
Sunday was a slower day as far as attendace but there was a slow steady pace of purchases and it was a good day afterall. Rachel came by and sat with me for a while and knit while helping out with customers. She also brought yummy apple cupcakse to snak on. Yum!
Anne came by and put up some of her beautiful handdyed yarn and people were ooo'ing and aaahhh'ing over those as well. It was nice to see her selling some stuff as well. She even did a little drop spindle demo for a fellow spinner!
Overall the weekend was a success! I made way more than i would have anticipated and i will be doing it again in December. Anne is going to share the booth and i think we are going to make a killing!

Best Cards Ever!

Because we had so much fun, we wanted to thank our producers from our Uncommon Threads shows. The girls and I decided to put our creative juice together again and custom-make Alana and Steve thank-you cards that are reminiscent of the projects we worked on.
Aren't they cute?!

Alana's Card:


Steve's Card:

As a joke, we decided that Aubrey should make this a dead cat, and I don't know if you can see the tag, but this dead cat's name is "StepOut."

champagne might be the devil...

I'm not quite positive on that yet but i'm pretty sure. Yesterday my day was spend recovering from trying to keep up with Jeff's boss' wife on Sat night.
They took us out to dinner and before we even left there house we had polished off 2 bottles of Moet. Dinner was at Oceanfront 21 (i think that was the name of the place....memories are still a little foggy) in Newport and it was awesome but then.....oh lord. The grossest 2 dive bars in the world - The Beach Ball and The Class of 47 (where i am sad to say that Jeff and I used to regulars and i'm sure glad those days are over) where many vodka containing drinks were consumed. Leslie (the boss' wife) is a mad woman but she's so much fun.
Jeff and Rick just watched us wild women in action and made sure we didn't get into trouble.
Yesterday we had to go do the HB rounds of family visits. Since we live in tha bario we go to them, they don't come to us. Plus James & Lisa (bro-in-law & his wife) were down from Ventura so it was nice to see them.
By the time we finally got home last night i planted myself on the couch and tried to finish the one skeins worth of knitting that i have to do before i can sew together the remainder of my Jess coat and i couldn't even follow the stitch pattern. I knit a few rows, realized the were wrong, ripped them out, tried again, failed misserably and gave up. My brain just wasn't functioning AT ALL.
What a loooong, too-much-fun filled weekend it's been! I feel tons better today and have a busy week ahead of me!

Wine Makes Everything Better!

Posing with the lovely Allison Whitlock:

Episode #265: Meowzers!
Day 2 of our taping occurred on Sept. 6. We showed up bare-faced (dark circles and all) in regular (and rather untidy) street clothes. You see, we were instructed to showed up "camera-ready" and fully made-up for both taping days, by Sonya, the associate producer that works with Alana, producer for the Shelly project. We were good little girls and came fully primped that first day, we knew better for Day 2. On Day 1, we had to change out to street clothes so we didn't get our dress clothes dirty with all the rehearsals.

This 2nd day was so much more relaxed and fun. In part, this was because we already knew what to expect, and our producer, Steve, was really cool and funny. Alana was also really cool and super nice, but it was a little challenging to rehearse without her for most of the Day 1 morning. Alana had a taping, so she had Sonya, who is also nice, rehearse us by herself. We didn't know what to expect, and because Alana wasn't readily available for us to consult with, some parts were made more challenging than it should have been. Anyway, back to Day 2...

Day 2 was so laid back that Aubrey, Zona and I even had time to knit while awaiting our turn to tape! (Rachel was only able to do the previous day.) On Day 1, the entire show was dedicated to one project, whereas, on Day 2, we did our project, then Allison Whitlock (host) demonstrated her project and then we did a show & tell of other stuff we had made.

The step-out table with all the stuff and materials we needed for our project:

We struck a few poses on set while waiting for taping to start.

A few behind-the-scene moments:


Last, but certainly not least, I must tell you about our awesome producer (and it's not just because he gave us alcohol, well... he did score some extra brownie points!). Not only did Steve make us laugh throughout the day, he surprised us with a gift after taping in our 80's rock-ish decorated dressing room with poufy black leather sofas. He had set up a bucket of beer, a bottle of KJ Chardonnay (one of my faves at the moment - he must be a mindreader too!), and a lovely thank-you note. Earlier, Steve had told us that since we were the last episode and last taping of the season, we'd have the opportunity to celebrate with the crew with some beers. Well, their schedules got switched and they still had to tape some filler and tidbit stuff after taping our episode, so we didn't get to celebrate with them, but of course, its totally understandable. I mean, it would've been the icing on the cake, but we weren't disappointed or anything -- we already had tons of fun on both days. Anyway, Steve wanted to keep his promise, so he surprised us!!

The funny thing is that no one had a corkscrew, and we really wanted to toast and drink the wine.

Handy Tip of the Day: So, what do you do when you need to open a bottle of wine and don't have a corkscrew? Use a drill and a screw! This tip was brought to you by the über-crafty art department of Uncommon Threads!


We were all very huggy. Hope we didn't scare Steve! Thanks to all the Screen Door Entertainment/Uncommon Threads crew! Everyone was super duper nice. :)

Argh!

I was all ready to post the about the second taping, and I even downloaded some of the pics, but alas, blogger was having problems...and I lost my post. ARGHHH.

"Intern! Where's my latte!"

Ah yes, it's true we are officially Supah Stahs now! Here are a few of the pics i snapped while in Burbank last week.


Here we see a few camera guys and jason, the prop guy on the set.

Here is Shelly and all his/her pieces in a pile of recycled sweater hell!

Rachel, Anne & Aubrey slaving away making extra step out pieces for Shelly. Look Aubrey, It's your secret enemy in the yellow shirt, Barry! Watch out he's sneaking up on you!

Patiently waiting in the green room (which wasn't even green) Aubrey is ready for her close up!

Uncommon Threads does little segments on unusual needle arts projects and this was one they were getting ready to film while we were leaving on Tues night. It was a full length coat made from stuffed animal pelts!

Steve (super producer extrordinair) and Ann going over the cat bed for the next days shoot.

3 out of 4 Supah Stahs on the way home. Rachel left the night before.

Sleep? What's that?

Episode # 241: Shapeshifting Sweaters.
Our little foray into the world of TV began late Wednesday night. I drove my pimp mobile (a rental Chevy Impala since some b*tch hit and ran into my 6 months old hybrid car!) to pick up Zona and Aubrey. We stopped by to do some last minute shopping. You know, we all have full time jobs on top of all this stuff.

Screen Door Entertainment, who is producing the show for DIY, was awesome enough that they realized how far the girls and I would be driving. Technically, we're "local" but the drive to Burbank from North and Central Orange County is not that "local," especially since they wanted us at the studios at 7:00 a.m. BOTH days. So...they got us a hotel room literally nearly steps from the studio. YAY!


Above: We are such dorks and just HAD to pose with Buttons the giant sock monkey made of burlap!

Aubrey and I shared a room, since we're both night owls. I realized that there were more step-outs than I thought I needed to do. (Hey, in my defense, I was very busy doing my friend's veil and wedding, had multiple visitors for like 2 months straight, including in-laws from Jakarta that stayed 1 month.) Anyway, Aubrey was sweet enough to stay up late to help and I think she finally fell asleep at 2am, whereas I slept at 4am, partly due to the excitement. Zona got lucky she didn't end up rooming with us and go the room to herself (Rachel decided drive in on Thursday) or otherwise, Zona may have cursed me for any ugly undereyebags that she got.

We were told to arrive at our 7am call time, dressed and made up, although we were slated to be the 3rd show to be taped on Sept. 5. Sonya, the associate producer, was very nice, but she made us rehearse like 5 times. Alana, with whom I mainly corresponded from the beginning, was taping a show in the morning, so she didn't meet with us until late morning.

Above Left: Morning rehearsals with Alana. Notice that we stripped off our clothes that we were going to wear based on the instructions to "come dressed and made-up at 7am"

Above, Left to Right: Rachel, Me, Aubrey, Zona, & producer Alana. Umm, if their eyes look funny its because white people tend to have eyes that turn red in photos and I suck as correcting the bunny eyes.

Apparently the film crew and producers had been experiencing everything taking longer than they had thought, they had to cut some projects. I think the time factor has to do with the network's request for things to be done more "real-time" like, instead like those older craft or cooking shows, where they don't even hide that they have something pre-finished or pre-started. I guess they want viewers to feel a true "magic of television" that things were all shot in real time, but they editted down to 30 minutes per episode. Oh well.

So, they decided to make my Shelly Tortoise project the whole show and they cut out Aubrey's cool slipper project, the sweater lampshade project that Zona and Rachel were going to demo, and my magazine file cozy. The cut projects ended up being a show and tell.

Above: The set. The woman in the right photo is the stunningly beautiful (and tall!) host, Allison.

Aside from the slight frustration that most of the step-outs weren't used and we had to sew a brand new tortoise, which we dubbed Shelby, on the spot, it was really fun. It was such a loooong day. Because we had to create a new one (and not use 2 whole step-outs I had made), we didn't finish taping until 7:30pm. Oh, step-outs are what they called all they separate steps that we had to pre-make during pertinent parts of the construction of the project.

Oh yeah - the sweater fuzz flying around wasn't too fun either. The entire crew, including the host Allison Whitlock, was super friendly and amiable. Dave, the art director/master prop dude was really funny and personable as well. I owe several apologies to the sound guy (AJ?) because I coughed several times, which apparently sounds really really sharp and loud with the mike on. It was those damned sweater fibers! I swear, if anyone had to do an autopsy on me they would have to wonder why I have so many weird multi-colored felted wool fibers nestled in my lungs. I don't need any more respiratory problems -- I've already got terrible allergies and asthma!

See Aubrey's account of the experience here (and ignore my cross-post).

I took one of the unfinished step-outs home and look at Whitey Coyote -- instant love! I don't think this floor pillow will ever get used by my house guests.

Uncommon Threads - The Adventure Begins

Initially, the girls and I were only going to do one episode of Uncommon Threads, as we found out and submitted for the show late in the game. Now we are doing two episodes, and I am surely feeling the crunch. Needless to say, the process is quite exciting since none of us has done anything quite like this. As Zona says, by the end of next week, we will be "Crafting Supahstahhhs!"

I've already blogged the adventure to date on my own blog Crafty Diversions, so I won't repeat like a broken record. We will be filming on September 5 & 6, 2006. The show producers are currently trying to get us a hotel room near the studios, since the 4 of us live in OC and we have a 7:00 am call! yikes! So, we're keeping all our fingers crossed. Apparently we are shooting for the end of the season (with Sept 6 being the last shoot), and their budget is a little tight. Darn! They did promise us beer on the last day, since it's their wrap party. Yeah!

Please accept the invitation

So, this is supposed to be a group blog. Aubrey and Rachel have not accepted the invitation yet. Granted, we've all been busy. Oh well.

I've been running a mile a minute lately, and things only seem to have gotten busier since I returned from my vacation. One of the reasons is because I am finally fulfilling a long-time dream of having my own artsy-fartsy craft coffee cafe. Woohoo! After racking our brains and surveying our friends, we decided on naming it Handicraft Cafe. Crafty Diversions was also very popular choice (that's why I chose it as a blog/domain name). I had hoped to do something like this and thought I'd go ahead and purchase the domain. It's going to be a long hard road, but one about which I am very excited and certainly willing to put in the elbow grease. Luckily, I have Aubrey who wants to do it with me and seems to be just as excited. And I have hubby who is being very supportive. Furthermore, there's the girls in the knitting group cheering us on.

The stressful part of it is that more I research things, the more work there seems to be. Aubrey and I have gotten past the conceptual phase into early planning stage and so we have committed to weekly meetings to discuss business. So, all this added to a full-time emotionally-draining job (that I love) is challenging. Other recent activities that have been eating away at my time include the Uncommon Threads show, for which we will be filming in early September. Blogged here.

Yay!

I think this is an excellent idea! Good thinking, Anne :)

Our First Group Blog

Friends, welcome to our first group blog. I hope this to be the start of a forum, blog, communication or whatever you want to call it or whatever it morphs to in the future for my future business venture with Aubrey.

Zona, Rachel, Aubrey and I have already experienced many fun adventures in the name of our hobbies and things handmade. Aubrey and I hope that our friends will continue to inspire us and share this and future adventures with us as we transition in making my long-time dream of living and breathing crafts a reality (not our grandmas' crafts!).