Category Archives: other projects

Winter worlds

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It has been feeling pretty wintery around here. We’ve had a few dustings of snow and some cold days mixed in with days in the 50s. Very New England. And, I’ve been making Tiny Worlds, because, you know, they were started and in a bin and I am cleaning my studio *wink wink*

A big one and a littler one. These cups come from the thrift store and it is hard to find cups that work for the winter scenes. I wouldn’t use a flowery cup for one of these and cups decorated with flowers are the most common. Sometimes they don’t come with saucers, in case you are wondering.

I will be putting these into my etsy shop at the end of the week- I have a few more in progress and I want to do it all together.

Reminder- I won’t be doing any markets this December. If you are interested in anything you see here you can email me directly at mimik@pobox.com or check out my etsy shop.

donate

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Have you seen what is going on over at Gather Here? They are doing a raffle to support the Red Cross’s effort to help victims of Hurricane Sandy- all the info to join in is here. I donated the doll model I made for the book We Make Dolls– He was on the cover!

There are lots of amazing prizes- check them out here. I have been obsessed with the news of the damage from the storm and I’m so happy to be able to find a way to help.

another week goes by

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Lots of things going on and not much time for writing blog posts! Here is what I bought myself on my San Francisco trip.

This gorgeous tape from another vendor at Renegade- petitcollage

If you’ve ever bought something from me, you know I love some cute decorative tape!

Cute mushrooms from Castle In The Air. I’m not sure what I’ll do with them but until I figure it out, I will enjoy having them in the studio.

My 2 surprise balls from Tail Of The Yak, plus a yard of ribbon.

Here is their bag and their card- so lovely!

Threads from Lacis–

Next time I will do an inventory before I go so I will know just what I need- because they will surely have it!

And lastly some fabric from A Verb For Keeping Warm.

I love that yellow on the right so much that when I got home I checked out if it came in other colorways. Why, yes it does! And different scales too! I got this in the mail a week later from fabric.com–

I’ve got a lot of things going on and my head is all over the place. I need to work on my inventory after San Francisco. Foxes are on my list of things that need to be made and I played with my wool and dyes to see if I could come up with some good foxy colors. These colors look better in real life.

We went up to Portland (Maine) for the weekend to see son Peter, help him move into a new apartment and eat some amazing food. We celebrated my birthday with an amazing dinner at 555. It was perfect.

And I had a happy surprise this week- look who has come back home to me!

I have a search alert of my name on Ebay just in case. And I am so happy that I did because I never would have known without it!

I will have some finished things to show soon. I’m going to the dogs- check back tomorrow!

 

what’s up

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I am in a weird twilight zone between Brooklyn Renegade and San Francisco Renegade. I will be in San Francisco in 2 weeks!

When I got back from Brooklyn, I had a very long to-do list. I’ve been working through computer jobs, travel planning and home sewing. I made new shades for the kitchen-

a nightgown, and a baby gift-

I’ve got a number of projects going on in the studio so I’ll have some dolls to show soon.

I am going to have to start haunting the thrift shops again- I need more fox-colored wools.

I’ve got lots on my mind. The SF show has a lot of little logistical problems that I have to figure out but it is all coming together. I’m excited!

I ought to be spending some time in the garden but it seems to be doing just fine without me-

I know that other parts of the country have been having a difficult summer, but the Boston area seems to be having the perfect Daylily weather. I have never seen them look so healthy and have so many flowers. Everything else is looking good too.

Two of my garden favs- crocosmia “Lucifer”

and poppies-

 

and the winner is…

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#92, Betty from Kentucky! Congratulations! And thanks so much to everyone who entered.

and a garden picture so this post will have some color.

I’m off for a quick trip to Connecticut but I will be back to work by mid-week.

I am going to try to get the Generals into my Etsy shop soon.

I am getting my summer plans firmed up. Brooklyn Renegade- I will be in the NY area from June 22 to June 26

and San Francisco Renegade- I’ll be in the SF area from July 19 to July 27. WooHoo, a vacation!

yesterday and today

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Yesterday I went to the Antique and Vintage Textile Show in Sturbridge, MA. It is about an hour drive from my house and well worth it. There are some amazing things to see- it is like a museum but you can touch everything. Somehow I forgot to bring my camera- oops! If you want to go, there is another show in July and also September. May and September are the big shows, July is a lot quieter.

I had fun looking at amazing antique toile fabrics- the originals that most of what I use is reproduced from. I bought buttons. I hadn’t planned on focusing on that, but I never seem to know until I get there!

I am most excited about these-

I can’t wait to put them on a fox’s jacket!

Today was spent doing a lot of this and that. This morning I collected a pile of dolls and sewed on signature tags and wrote up and attached their hang tags. It is a boring job but it is good to get it out of the way. I often leave it until the last minute before going to a show and that is only one of the many ways I can make myself crazy. Anyway, all done now.

thinking about online classes

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We’ve got Spring! Actually, we seem to be getting near summer temps so these won’t last very long.

I am taking a class with Diane of Craftypod fame on how to run an online class. Now I have so many questions! Whenever I announce that I am going to run a class at my house, people pipe up and ask me to do an online class- that is why I am looking into the technicalities of it all.

Now that I am actually having to think about the specifics, I’d love some feedback. My confession is that I have only ever taken one online class and that was probably about 10 years ago. I can hardly even remember it!

What kind of class do people want? I can only really imagine (at this point) teaching the Tiny World Pattern. What would someone want to get out of an online class that would be so much better than just buying the pattern? Or should I be thinking of a completely different kind of class?

How long would a class like this go for? A week? When I teach it at my house, the class runs from 10 am to 4 pm and most people don’t finish. I know people probably don’t sit down for a whole day and go through an online class- or do they?

One of the fun things about having classes at my house is that I have all the materials and fun tools to play with. Are people going to feel comfortable collecting everything they need? Do most project-type classes have kits with the supplies?

On top of that, if you have taken craft project online classes, what do you like best about them? Why do they work for you? Should I go try out a few classes? If so, got any recommendations?

I’d love to hear your feedback! If I can get some ideas that will narrow things down, I might do a survey but at this point, I wouldn’t even know what questions to ask!

a new pincushion for ME!

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I made myself a new pincushion. I have to admit that I felt silly making it nice, just for me- to make a house, instead of just a blob or something on top. Reminder to self- do it nicely and right, for myself. Okay then.

The base is something I got from my parents’ house. I believe it is the bottom part of a hair receiver. There was clearly suppose to be a top lid of some sort and it was missing. I’ve had this in my studio for a number of years, knowing I would eventually get around to making it into a pincushion. Doesn’t it look like a little farm house with veggies growing in the garden?!

I like to put my needles in the top element and yes, I sort my pins by color. I am obsessive that way. I’m very opinionated about my pins too- I like colorful, thin, long (1 3/8″) glass-headed pins. Like these but in colors. Here is the new pincushion with the old one. That link goes to the original post when I made that one- in August 2004! It has gotten worn out and a bit floppy on it’s base.

Here is another photo with my hand for scale. It is pretty big and I realized the other photos didn’t convey that.

 

studio reshuffle

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It’s that time of year. The studio needs to be cleaned and the Stuff needs reorganizing. I try to figure out what I am actually using and make it easily accessible. I also try to go through all the fabric regularly, getting rid of things I will probably never use. I call this turning the compost. It’s only kind of a joke. I now have three bags of fabric that I’ll be taking to my crafty meet-up next week. Give-away time!

Here are some in progress photos because it’ll be a while before everything settles into place again.

It all started with a large bookcase that needed to be moved out of another room. I always need more shelves so I took out the measuring tape to see if I could fit it into my studio. The reshuffle began! I moved the bureau towards the window (of course there was already something there- out into the hall that stuff went). The bookcase that was already in my room was emptied and moved across to it’s new place by the closet.

It is now filled with books, tea cups and cotton fabrics, mostly toiles and other tattooed people components.

The new (to my room), bigger bookshelf fits perfectly. I’m filling it back up with the books that were in the other bookcase plus other things of course.

Then I decided that I needed a new way to store all my other cotton fabrics. I have been using them a lot more this year and the bins under the table system was just not working. One trip to Ikea later and you can see my new drawers. Here is a better photo-

This is great! I can see all the fabric easily and there are enough baskets to put all kinds of goodies that have been in piles or in bins that I trip over every time I walked through the room.

The plastic drawer bins and the small wooden bookcase on top of the fabric drawers used to be where the bureau is now. Are you confused yet?

I have had this little set of metal drawers sitting on the floor for about 1 1/2 years and I now finally have a place for it. I filled it up with beads, charms, sewing notions I’ve collected for robots and papers for making tiny books.

There are lots of little problems that I haven’t quite figured out yet. An example is my thread rack- I like it where it is but I know it will slide right off at the worst possible moment so I need to figure out how to attach it to something. And then actually do it.

And some real life desk pictures. I started working on some tiny worlds. Then I moved on to something else. Yep, I just piled them up, as much out of the way as I could push them without bothering to put them away. Because I’ll get back to them any minute, right? Okay then.

And that poor tattooed lady. I have a ridiculous number of unfinished dolls in my studio right now. I should try to focus on finishing them up. Somehow it is sad to see them all waiting for me. If I just worked on finishing things I would probably be busy though February at least! It’s good though too- it is an easy way to start in again because a lot of the decisions are already made. So, time to get back to work!