apres le jour

Living on pizza deliveries, buying a mcdonalds card so I could get mcdoubles faster, screaming at the printer in the wee hours of the morning was all worth it! Thank you city of craft for being the most fun event I participated this year! (also thank you lis for trucking it out with me after slogging through an exam. and also for paying for the pizza.)

DISCLAIMER: you can probably tell by the quality of the following photos that I didn't have a hand in it. they are by the amazing celine kim, (unless otherwise noted.) official event photographer! all stolen from here. I managed to chat with her for a second and eavesdrop on her other conversations, to attain info on what kind of camera I should buy so I can stop stealing other people's pictures/camera/trying to figure out how to upload grainy photos from my phone.

yay, new leaf fuzzies (that are not so fuzzy). they were almost all adopted! I also had some mystical deer fuzzies but I didn't get pictures. I might make more in the future. maybe when my thumb stops hurting.

I also made THREE new tote bag designs. 1 fat rabbit, 1 deer, 1 mushroom. wow, that's a lot for me. they are on slightly larger than usual totes. 2 of them will be really limited (10each), but the mushroom one will stay, but maybe modified a little.

I'd also like to list the vendors I liked but that would be all of them so here's my top 5:

1. Scouts Handmade:
I kinda of covet these necklaces a lot a lot. they are painted and waxed leather! I don't wanna jump on the geometry trend but I gotta have these except everytime i see her the one I want is sold out. oh well, guess other people also know how boss they are. damn. also, I won a bracelet from a Nutzo game and I wear it all the time. so versatile bb.


2. plants you can't kill by shannon gerard:
a good plant for a brown thumb would be a cactus. killed that one too? hey, that's okay, because you can have a crocheted cactus! You really can't kill those, even if you sit on it, it'll just get a bit squashed and bounce right back, kinda like a rubber boob implant. Now, I haven't killed any of my current plants yet, although I did kill my last cactus. I overwatered. I killed it with my love!! If any of my current plants croak, I know what I'd be lining up for...


3.) killside krafts
(no event photo yet? stole this from her flickr)
my tablemate! not only is she cute and talented, she is also smart. some chicks just have it all. these handbound notebooks have a handstained laser-cut wooden cover, more than one type of paper inside, sewn-in ribbon bookmark, and lace elastic to keep any spare junk you stick in there from falling out. some even have little designs cut into the cover. what more can you want? I copiously use mine, jsyk.


4.) caboto:
by the time i got to it with my jar of coins (i'm that jerk who pays with toonies) they were pretty much sold out. these jewels are so nice they look like they could get me invited to the cool kids' lunch table if I was wearing one. just think of the social life i could be having right now.


and.....

5.) 1%talent:
I owe you forever for screenprinting totebags, sewing pillows, luggage lugging, and putting up with random enraged screaming fits of crying. thanks dude. oh, and you also have nice tees and cards. yeah guys buy them please!! and tell him i sent you. how's that for "promotion"?

ps. im probably never paying u back.


OH, and one more thing:

I'll be at zine zone this saturday. which means, that's TOMORROW! holy shit, what am I doing spending a hour on a blog entry?! anyway, that's

Saturday, December 17th from 12- 6pm, at XPACE (58 Ossington Ave)

come if you can. i know there's lots of things going on this weekend but you can make an hour out of your day, right? I will be there with a new zine! yay!

CITY OF CRAFT

IS IN TWO DAYS!!

here are the deets:

City of Craft
December 10 & 11
Saturday 11-6pm
Sunday 11-5pm
The Theatre Centre 1087 Queen St. West
Thrush Holmes Empire 1093 Queen St. West
http://cityofcraft.blogspot.com/

guys i was so ambitious and dreamed up a whole new line featuring the theme "sleeping britianna in snowland" (wha?) but as for the results, I probably only accomplished 3% of what I set out to do. As for the rest, I'll let you know how that goes... but you should visit me the day of (table 23, theatre centre) to see if I was actually any more successful.

So I moved recently (again) and I had no internet for a while... Even today I was wrestling with it wondering why the rogers page was loading over and over again while my rage for them surges like my blood sugar level after one too many trips to timmies. But yeah, here in canada-land you don't have many options. the lack of online distractions did make me somewhat more productive.

as the season is getting merrier, there are amazing craft shows going on every weekend! (two or three of them at a time!). Every time I trip over what I presume is garbage on the street it's a crumpled flier advertising another event. I'd like to blog about them but I'm very much behind on life. I also am having doubts about my abilities as a blogger in general.

here is me visiting H's studio and making him do my work for me


yeah

you go wash that screen.

hands in the air

this friday, I attended city of craft's pompom party at the workroom. like most parties, it had its share of yummy snack foods, attractive people, cheerful space, but unlike most parties, the tables were strewn with copious amounts of rejected yarn, and everyone was determinedly sober.

my first pompom. I feel proud as if I had given birth.

process. this little eyebrow scissor is the best pompom cutter you will know. best $5 at pmall spent. don't worry, i did not use it to cut eyebrow prior.

my third (and last, that's right, I had only produced three pompoms in the span of two hours. i will not win any assembly-line awards) pompom, and favourite! it resembled a half-spawn owl duckling still in the egg much like those gross balut (don't click if you have a weak stomach), only much cuddlier.

the fruits of everyone's labour. I felt a little better because some others were producing as slowly as I was.

even the dog had an adorable pompom collar.

I headed out early as I was also suppose to attend dance thing only to walk in the opposite direction, and ended up at the gallery cooper cole (formely known as show and tell). it looked like they were having a party. It turned out to be the opening night for a show called "brothers of the weird", and as the name suggests, was just as trippy.


my favourite piece! (+some random guy)

i feel like i actually accomplished something

I like collecting, organizing, and making useless lists, but I am also somewhat of a minimalist (though no one might believe it if they've seen my room) so my own habits makes me want to shed hair. I think I found a good solution to my hoarding problem, which is of course, project my wants into images on the internet. first, computer data doesn't take up any space at all!, is what I thought, until the visible clutter on my desktop started to make my skin crawl every time it emerged through the "ding" of the boot-up. (I may have problems). Then, I made endless tumblrs to categorize and document photos that I loved so I didn't have to save them anymore, because reorganizing the picture folders on my harddrive was starting to become a parttime job.

And now I've found a new hobby: making etsy treasuries.
I like how etsy assigns you the title of "curator" as to make you feel important and all. like, these pictoral lists are a semblance of my being and vision! the role gives me the feeling of being a creative person without really doing anything at all besides window shopping. When I was hungry, instead of going grocery shopping at the 7-11 down the street, I used that inspiration to create a treasury of all the grocery and food-related wares. My stomach suffered, but I looked at it as a new diet fad catering to whimsical long-haired creatures, like looking at a picture of a bagel.

Needless to say, I burnt out pretty fast after day1, and am now looking for new sources of procastination.

also here's my treasuries, it's not just so everyone can tell me how I have good taste but also because these stuff are amazing, makes me not want to make anything in depression

rabbits

elephants

houses

brownies, not the edible kind

today was the opening launch of indexg's new exhibition of art brownie, where artists create affordable ($30-$100) 2.5x2.5 piece of original art. despite wanting to stay in and cuddle up to a heating pad (seriously guise, it's a better investment than a boyfriend on those canadian winter nights), I decide to make the journey because I've been hearing a lot of excitement about this show.

but i was kinda disappointed. for some reason i thought it was going to be a huge event, akin to the squarefoot show, but it only covered half of one wall. maybe because the pieces were so much tinier? but it wasn't too impactful.

nevertheless, there was lots of other stuff to look at in the gallery, including real brownies to indulge on.

my super duper friend m. is so good at making stuff. I wish I could be a whittler. But then, I just looked up the definition of a whittler and it's not so flattering:

1.whittler - someone who whittles (usually as an idle pastime)

do-nothing, idler, layabout, loafer, bum - person who does no work; "a lazy bum"

so just to clarify, that's not the type of whittler I'm talking about.

this is n's piece. here's her website. her stuff is pretty.

i don't know who made this because the listing for the artists was really crowded. but this looks like a space rock or something. I don't know why I find the fact that's it's next to a buddah so trippy looking. buddah looks like he knows something we don't, and space rock is an abandoned brain wave emission.

And there were other nice ones, but my camera ran out of batteries by then.

perfect for catladies. I'm not a cat lady. but it's not by choice.

looks so cute and punch-able. I want one! by fabricawakuwaku, I believe this is their site, though it is kind of hard for me to navigate.

the end of fall

I have been so beaten down by the stress of apartment hunting I haven't had time to appreciate my favourite season until it's almost over. The backyard is strewn with fallen leaves almost an inch deep, but it makes a good background in a sceneic, wholesome way.

And I have some good photos now! Thanks to debbie for playing photographer, model, photo editor, and of course chair mover, frosty weather braver, and all those unappreciated tasks that go along with taking pictures.

I also made a shop with the use of an etsy account so now you can actually buy things from us online.

Oh.

I've been branching out with the type of yarn we use, and straying away from old favourites. As I experiment, I've come to realize that expensive is not always better! It's really dependent on the project you're using it for. Some of the expensive yarns are really hard to use because they don't keep a stiff shape and can't mix and match easily. (And one time, we were crocheting with a really nice soft and halo-y yarn but also felt like a bunch of silk strands bunched together, which grossed us out with its resemblance to human hair. Could be the colours we picked, could be we were totally sleep-deprived. your pick.)

But the colour choices of these expensive yarns are just so seductively lush. I want to post some of the new stuff I've been making with them. And maybe a list of the brands of yarns we tend to use. Or maybe not. A lot of the yarn we use was odds and ends of discontinued spools and the like, or unlabeled stuff. It makes it hard to relocate a favourite, but it also makes the crocheted toys feel more special somehow? Like they were made with the discarded bits of everyone else's leftovers, yet they're trying so hard to look cute!

But for now I give you this guy. I can't stop looking at his face. I wanted him to look ugly, but he also looks kinda crazy? His name is Omar.

I've been having so many internet/computer problems recently, it's hard to even check my email, much less update about upcoming events. speaking about an upcoming event I'm super excited to be a part of: city of craft 2011! there's so many good vendors. you can check them out on their website. It takes place dec. 10+11. Be there or ... there is no other option. It's only $2 at the door. Come on.

the big city

we are in NY! just in time for the uniqlo global flagship store to open too!

tons of crappy stuff happened, probably from all that bad karma i built up over the years. I should count my blessings that I haven't gotten mugged yet or something. *crosses fingers*.

I will be at the new york comic con a little bit on friday (oct.14th) and saturday (oct.15th). I will have some bunny totes. they will not be embellished with additional details like the image above, but they're still simple and cute. (I actually use mine really often, it goes with everything. this is the first time I've ever used anything I made.) I'm also going to have some bunny tank tops, super limited edition of 3. please come by if you happen to be in the area.

next time i update it might be with how i went totally crazy with materialistic desire in manhattan or something, revealing how all my frugal preachiness was actually just a front.

stuck on you

I made stickers. and morico recruited XL as a honorary member. I'd like to think she's enjoying her new status, but probably not. perks include: bus fare, staying up late into the night for no reason, being slaved like a dog, etc.

now I have this obsession with stickers. I stick them on everything. it's like drawing on walls but removable, which makes my inner 6-year old happy.

cat and mouse

a grumpy cat and a dead mouse.

here's some crochet inspiration for the day

f.expo

So last (last?) weekend, I attended fan expo, and managed to squish morico into 1/3 of a table. I hope no one actually glimpsed at my face much, because I looked half-crazed (which was an accurate representation, actually.) Some stuff that went down: consuming greasy food like it was a sport, getting lost and having a breakdown, realizing it costs like $90+ to get a photo with shatner.) It may also be my first time seeing the CNtower up close, proving I'm not as good of a torontonian as I thought.

I think I am going to too many events because all I am doing is writing about them. this is probably going to become the bore that is the 1%talent blog (kidding! it's clearly because you're more successful ♡).

there are many other things I wish I could write about, like recommendations for movies/books/music (or what I'd like to think of as a polite way of forcing my preferences down other people's throats in a subtle manner), but, I'm told I either do not have sophisticated taste in such things, or just am really bad at writing about them in general. Thus that is how my career as a reviewer in a semi-pretentious magazine ended before it ever began.

hello montreal

I attended otakuthon this year for the first time all by my lonesome.

it was really just an excuse to go to montreal and look at pretty buildings, stroll in parks, and eat bagels. i meet some friendly young'uns that made me feel old as usual.

they were so energetic and cute while I just wanted a neck pillow.

morico was just going to have a tiny collection there cos all my partners in crime went abroad. but I ended up being more productive than I thought I was able.

That course I took back in college called not sleeping proved helpful.

they eventually all found homes. thank you to everyone who bought one!

The debut of a new tote design. i love farty fat things. maybe because I can relate.

he has no friends

this bear is clark. he always starts the day with a glass of orange juice.

because he's the type that says the wrong things at the wrong time, he's not very well-liked. he tries hard but in the end he still has no friends.

in the picture, it looks more grey but in reality it's more like yellowish-brown. i like this yarn because it reminds me of grandpas. not my own grandpa, but the type of grandpa character that wears high brown trousers and shirts tucked too tight, and smells a little bit mouldy; likes prunes and keeps dentures in a glass of water by the bedside table. with that kind of inspiration, it's no wonder he turned out to be so uncool.