Crafts!

April 14, 2003. I made a guest book for my friends Anne and Pete to use at their wedding.

August 12, 2002. More journals! I made a Star Journal and a Little Square Journal.

July 17, 2002. I made another book, a journal to keep notes on the things that I'm knitting.

June 19, 2002. My latest craft project was a present for my mom for Mother's Day and her birthday. I made a book for her using the skills I learned in the book making class I took. You can go here to see the book I made.

I also added some cards that I made for Dave, but they're not really recent crafts, since one was for his birthday in January, and one was for Valentine's Day. They've been hanging around for a while, and I finally got around to scanning them in.

May 23, 2002. Finally, here's what our sewing machine looks like.

Closed.

Open. Isn't it cool?

May 15, 2002. When I took my book making class a month ago, we all went down to the art supply store together, after class, to buy book-making supplies. The teacher was buying Sumi ink and a bamboo quill pen, and asked me if I'd ever tried using a bamboo pen, and I said no. I didn't buy one then, but I did about a week later, and I finally played with them tonight. I LOVE IT. I didn't expect it to be so fluid and easy, and also to allow you to move really slowly and somewhat precisely. I also love the inherent messiness, the way the ink bleeds (I also got Asian paper), and how all the lines look soft and pillowy. I got both a bamboo quill pen:

and a Sumi brush:

You can see what sort of marks they make here.

May 14, 2002. Jessica and I took our Beginning Sewing Machine class at Jo-Ann Fabrics last Saturday, and here's what I learned:

1. There are different needles for different fabrics (denim, wovens, stretch, etc.).

2. You should use 100% polyester thread for home decorating projects, because cotton or cotton-core threads can rot in the sun.

3. You should replace your needle every 10-12 sewing hours.

4. The groove in the needle (you can feel it with your fingernail) is the front of the needle, but that might not necessarily face the front of your machine.

5. If you have an older machine (like I do) you'll need to oil it with sewing machine oil (not regular oil, it's too heavy).

6. You should periodically clean the lint out of the bobbin area with a lint brush. Get in the habit of cleaning it when you change your needle, so you are doing it fairly regularly. After you've cleaned the bobbin area, turn the hand wheel a few times slowly to make sure you got all the pieces put back together correctly.

7. You should only turn your hand wheel toward you (otherwise you can cause the thread to tangle).

8. There are all kinds of fancy extra feet you can buy, for doing jeans or two seams, or even buttonholes (well, you can buy those, my machine is too old to want to do much of anything fancy).

I also learned that a woman who seems very nice and gentle at first can kind of get mean when something goes wrong. My sewing machine jammed up when I was trying to sew, and the teacher tried to fix it, and then calmly, slowly (meanly) told me that $30 was too much to pay for this piece of junk and I should just spend $250 to get the cheapest machine at Jo-Ann Fabrics. And that she hates it when people come in with old piece of junk machines that don't have any features and barely work, and they buy two or three bad machines for $30, when they could have just gotten a nice one that worked for $250. Grrr. I was really upset when I came home but Superhero Dave fixed the machine in four seconds and now it's working fine. So there. All I want to do right now is sew a straight line! If I actually end up doing more with it, then I'll consider buying something more expensive! Sheesh.

April 28, 2002. We signed up for the sewing class! I'm really excited. Though I'm sure it's going to be super-embarrassing, since our Singer is really loud and also doesn't seem to have any type of speed control, so it's really loud all the time.

April 24, 2002. My coworker Jessica and I are going to take a Basic Sewing Machine class at Jo-Ann Fabrics. Yay! I really need someone to show me all the whys and wherefores. So does Jessica, since when she pantomimed sewing, it looked like she was typing. Look out fashion world! We'll be making our own clothes before you know it in a few years.