Every month seems to bring a new craft meme lately. This month, it’s Finish What You Have, a spin off of the very popular Use What You Have month a while back. Great idea, Turkey Feathers. I’ve got an unquilted baby quilt calling my name for this one.

I first became a fan of Anne Black, a Danish ceramics designer, when Design Sponge posted about her work. The shapes are beautiful, often with a very simple silkscreened pattern like a dotted line or a starburst. What really kills me is her jewelry line, though. Like these bracelets:

and necklaces:

There are also brooches and earrings. More of her work at Tivoli Home (where I got the pictures) and Greener Grass Design, among other places.

Lovely pillow dolls cropping up all over lately, in embroidery, silkscreen, and other media.

crafty mcgee: embroidered April showers and deer

orangeyouglad on Craftster: screen-printed cat pillows with tutorial

Jess Hutch (from whom I stole this post’s title): embroidered Alice, dolly, kitten in mittens, and chihuahua

Tania: screen-printed birds and dolls

Loosetooth: painted and printed pillow dolls, cowgirl, and hedgehogs+squirrels (scroll down)

Wee Wonderfuls: embroidered brunette and redhead

One of my favorite illustrators is Meg Hunt. Her drawings have some depth and mystery to them, which make you wonder what the back story is, what’s the secret being whispered? Masks, animals, zombies, and monsters are recurring themes. She also did some really great mixed media with embroidery and layered fabrics a while back. She keeps a blog with what she’s working on at the moment, like her current series of freakshow drawings.

You can also get her great kleptopus patches at april fool.

It’s getting to be that time of year again, at least in my hemisphere. Craft fair season! I’ll never turn down a traditional craft fair, but I’m loving the trend of fairs geared to a younger, more modern crowd. It’s also great fun to get to meet the crafters you love and admire on the web. Their wares are always even more impressive in person. And, even if you can’t go, you can still trawl the fair websites for great crafters and shops.

And neither here nor there, but the sites often have great design, like this Darger-esque illo on the Felt Club site, and the seamripper ones on Renegade Craft Fair (she’s a cofounder).

Here’s a list of what I’ve got bookmarked lately, some already over, some coming up sooner or later this year. Feel free to add others you know of in the comments.

Felt Club (Hollywood)
Renegade Craft Fair (Brooklyn and Chicago)
Bazaar Bizarre (Boston, LA, Cleveland, San Francisco)
Mutation (Savannah)
Art vs. Craft (Milwaukee)
Craftin’ Outlaws (Columbus)
I Heart Rummage (Seattle)
Art Star Craft Bazaar (Philadelphia)
Urban Craft Uprising (Seattle)
No Coast Craft-O-Rama (Minneapolis)
Handmade Market (Chicago)
Maker Faire (San Mateo)
Tranzac (Toronto)
Craftalicious (Santa Cruz)
Stitch (Austin)
Crafty Bastards (Washington DC)
Handmade Arcade (Pittsburgh)
ANT (Central Massachusetts)
Bust Holiday Craftacular (New York City)
Urban Craft Fair (Detroit)
One Night Stand(s) (Chicago)

It’s interesting, a nontrivial number of these are sponsored by Bust.

My sister, one of the reasons I’m a blogger today, used to keep her site on Diary-X. That is, until a few weeks ago when Diary-X had a catastrophic hard drive failure and went kaput. They had never backed anything up. My sister lost 3 years of entries. It’s all too horrible.

So the moral is, go run a backup. You never know what might happen.

mediatinker made a very cool plush of the bizarro furry lobster thing (aka the “yeti crab”) some enterprising scientists dredged up out of a hydrothermal vent. I love how the news story was out for only a couple of days before the stuffed version appeared. And there’s a pattern!

stuffed

real

I love cards and stationery, especially hand made letterpress and screen-printed ones. My ever-growing collection has been residing in a messy pile on my bookshelf. When I need one, the whole pile comes out, and I rummage around for an appropriate one. In a fit of reorganizing the other day, I set them free. Each one came out of it’s envelope or protective sleeve and went into 2 fabric bins. You occasionally see displays like this at card shops, and I love the feel of flipping through my collection as if I were at my favorite stationery store.

ETA: I got these great foldup fabric bins at a 100-yen store in Japan. I’ve also seen suitable canvas bins at Ikea and the Container Store, among other possibilities. Any pretty box would do.

I’ve read and admired Brandy Agerbeck/Loosetooth.com for a long time. Her artwork, jewelry, sewing, and overall cheery disposition make her several blogs a joy to read. Lately she’s been working on perhaps my favorite stuff, some really neat octopus, lady, and dress prints posted at her Art/Work one.

Other favorite parts of her site: calendar collages and Craft Show 101 guide.

Print Gocco is yet another example of the wonderful Japanese crafty + techy streak. It’s a nifty little screen-printing system that’s all self-contained and really easy to use. Unfortunately, Riso, the company that makes it, recently announced that they’re discontinuing it.

Save Gocco will hopefully change their mind. If you’re a Gocco-ist, make sure to go sign their petition/guestbook. The site also has a great list of Gocco resources, including where you can still get supplies. As for the units themselves, the last online shop selling them to US customers finally sold out, and they’re now going for over $200 on eBay.

Although Riso claims they have enough supplies to last 3 years, people are already trying to figure out replacements in anticipation of the inevitable stoppage (some of the ink colors are already running out). Amy mentioned the other day that she had successfully used Max Grumbacher oil paints and there’s a thread on Craftster that recommends Versatex Fabric Inks and Permaset, or Aquatex if you’re in Australia. Even the screens might be replacable with thermal screen. I’m sure we can look forward to other clever ideas from fellow Gocco enthusiasts.

More Gocco love:

we heart gocco at the wurst gallery is a wonderful show of prints, and they’re even for sale, ranging from $2.50-$30 US. Each artist also has a short interview, including their favorite Gocco tips.

The Gocco Set from Onsmith Comics is also pretty neat. It’s a set of 17 different prints for $60.

The Gocco Group on Flickr is a treasure trove, both of wonderful work and of information in the discuss boards.

Krafola has a good discussion going about Gocco vs computer printers, which also includes a list of compatible pens.

2 good tutorials: The Small Object’s tutorial and dilettante crafter’s tutorial.

Print by Evan Harris from we heart gocco

I often read upset posts on newer craftblogs. Not many comments, low stats, nobody linking you, why bother writing at all? It can be a little discouraging and can even feel like the community is closed to new people. I would like to offer some encouragement and advice on enjoying your site and making the most of it.

First of all, try not to get too caught up in blogging for others. Lisa has started a great meme on why we blog, where you can read what motivates different people. My craftlog grew out of a journal I was using to keep track of my projects for myself, so it helps me to still imagine it that way sometimes. Ultimately, you have to have some other reasons for doing this than the praise and attention of readers, or else you just won’t 1. keep it up and 2. enjoy it.

That said, of course we all want readers and comments and links and the rest. The wonderful community that has built up in the craftblog world is one of the reasons we all love it, and of course you want to be a part of it. So, here are some practical tips for the beginning craftblogger:

Make your weblog attractive and readable.

• Post good content, obviously, where good is very broadly defined. There are lots of subgenres of craftblogs out there, so odds are you will find readers if you do and post what you like (see “why we blog” above).
• You don’t have to be a whiz at web design to make a pretty site. Most of the software and hosts people use these days come with pretty nice defaults that are easy to tweak. Make sure the text is readable and looks OK in different browsers.
• Take the best pictures you can as often as you can. Read your camera’s manual for advice on taking closeups and working in different lighting. thimble just posted a roundup of good tutorials on taking better pictures.
• Make sure your site has an RSS feed (not a problem for most readymade sites since they usually have one already). Sign up for a feedreader like Bloglines and look at your feed to make sure it’s how you want it.
• Post frequency: with feedreaders so common now, it’s not as important anymore that you post a lot, but if you don’t post for 2 weeks, readers might wonder if you’ve abandoned the blog.

Increase your exposure.

• On your site, make a list of your favorite links. Instead of using bookmarks or a feed reader or whatever you normally do to visit these sites, click the links from your page (with any privacy software turned off). If the site linked to has a hit tracker, they’ll be able to see the hits are coming from your site. If you’re lucky, they’ll go investigate who this new site is linking them. I find out about all sorts of blogs through my stats.
• Comment on your favorite sites. Now, I don’t want to encourage spamming people for attention. That’s not nice. But do get over any shyness you might have about commenting on posts you particularly like. The person running the site will probably go to yours to see who you are, and other commenters might visit as well.
• Crosspost your best projects to other craft communities. Livejournal has a bazillion different ones, there’s always Craftster, and you can probably find a forum somewhere for any craft you happen to specialize in. Put your URL as your signature in your user information.
• Participate in a few memes, like Month of Softies, tie one on, or any of the gigantic number of craftalongs going on. Again, don’t do this just to get exposure; do it because you want to participate but maybe haven’t due to shyness or hesitation. A lot of these are through Flickr or a central site where all the participants are linked.

What about those swaps?

• Keep a look out for posts suggesting or hinting that something is up for swap. If you love it, comment or email to see if they’re interested in swapping.
• Craftster has a whole section devoted to themed swaps.
• There are several centrally organized ones like Backtack and Gifty. Some have the bonus of a master list of links too. If you know a swap just ran but you missed it, keep it bookmarked so you can check when it might run again.

Finally, just be patient. I only had hits from my family for craftlog’s entire first year. But I still had fun keeping it!

Feel free to post any other advice in the comments section since I’m sure there are varied opinions on this topic.

merwing always posts cool stuff, including fantastic embroideries, felt stuffies (I particularly love her owls), and her recent bright idea of using a ruler as a trinket shelf. If forced to choose my favorite thing she’s made, though, I have to go with this frogboy embroidery. It reminds me of those old comic book ads for Sea Monkeys.

Anyone else follow any livejournal craft communities? I used to read the crochet one on and off, looking for the occasional good pattern and interesting work. The sociology of it was what really kept me coming back, though. LJ is known for drama, and the crochet community was just chock full of it. Besides the standard copyright battles, much of the drama revolved around different views of the purposes of online communities. The conflicts generally arose between the people who think of posting their projects online as one big Mom’s Fridge (praise me! love me!) and those who put more value on criticism and skill. This split was kind of on a low simmer after the formation of 2 splinter groups, polite_crochet and crochet_snark (which in turn spawned crochet snark snark). Everything blew up again though about a month ago in a protracted flame war involving (and I am not kidding) chocheted tampon dolls and dildo cozies, a sort of solidarity movement to protest the resulting new “obscenity” rules, what may or may not have been child pornography, and even the police being called. Finally, the moderator took her ball and went home (although the archives have recently reappeared). This led to a period of turmoil where the thousands of members of the community all had to find new crochet communities. The fragmentation of the community has been fascinating. In the immediate aftermath, probably a dozen new communities were started, and several ailing ones were promoted. Of those, maybe half a dozen haven’t been getting many posts lately so I would consider them dormant. I still can’t tell who will ultimately “win” and be the new general crochet community, but here’s a list (probably incomplete) of the contenders:

• crochetcrochet
• crochets
• a_twistedstitch
• crotcheters
• friendlycrochet
• basic_crochet

crochet tampons by ohh-rissa

The first in a series where I pick my favorite post from my favorite weblogs.

Sam lamb makes amazing things out of felt, but her embroidered bird babies are my all time favorite.