This just in! I'm in a book!

I'm so excited I can barely contain myself -- my projects are now featured in a book! 

Sweater Surgery by Stefanie Girard is hot off the presses and contains four of my purses. You can find it on Amazon, or you can call your local independent bookstore and ask them to order it for you.

Here's a rundown of the four purses that are featured:

• Cheerleader purse--Full pattern and directions (written by me) on pages 38-39. Also appears on pages 8 and 113.
  
• Erika purse--Named for my friend Erika, who I gave this purse to for her birthday but who was kind enough to lend it back to me to send to the publisher for photographing. Basic construction info listed on page 93. Also appears on pages 7 and 92.
  
• Cindy purse--Named after the woman who sold my first sweater purse through her store, Sun Center Bead Emporium (sadly, now closed). Featured on p. 94 and also appears on page 5.
  
• Joan purse--Named after my dearest mother, who was kind enough to sacrifice her Kenmore sewing machine to me back in the early 1980s. Described on page 95 and also appears on page 5.
  

You can click on the purse names above to link to photos of these purses in my Flickr photostream.

A different kind of key ring

I saw this fabulous ring listed on Elsewares. What a cool idea! Apparently the ring is cast in sterling silver from an actual key. I definitely don't have the metal-smithing skills to make this myself, so I'll add it to my wish list for now.

I've always had a fascination with old keys, in part because my dad's parents took us to a place called The Baldpate Inn, which has an extensive key collection. Also, my mom's father passed down a box of old keys that had belonged to my great-grandfather. I've since used some of these keys to make a couple different projects--a windchime for my mother and a lampshade for me.


Elsewares also has other darling things, like a fly catcher necklace, a sterling bird necklace, and the Um tote. I'm in love with the tote because not only is a made of felted wool, but it also folds flat. Very clever.

We're all intertwined

A funny thing happened this week that made me think of a quote that has been attributed to the Greek philosopher Aristotle:

"It is not once nor twice but times without number that the same ideas make their appearance in the world."

I was reading a post on a crafty blog I enjoy, Bella Dia. She described how she had been inspired to make a cake stand out of old glassware, thanks to a post that she had seen on betz white's blog.

Sound familiar? It's essentially the same project that I blogged about in October 2007. Had I ever seen betz white's blog post? Not until this week.

I'm constantly amazed by how many crafters come up with essentially the same project as someone else (often me, it seems). It just goes to show you that there really aren't any original ideas out there.

But that's okay. I don't see this as people "stealing" each other's ideas. My friend Cat and I have talked about this several times since we often dream up projects indepently and then later realize that we're making the same darn thing. Instead, I like to think that it's some amazing interconnected web, where we're all channeling the same muse at the same time.

And besides, what is an idea really? Just something we thought up. It's only our egos that make us feel like we should be possessive about our ideas. And what are we really? Just specks of dust passing our time in this great universe. Okay, enough amateur philosophizing for now! (But this does mean that I now have an excuse to use the cool picture I took at the Einstein Memorial of the constellations at his feet.)

Here's one more interesting experience that seems to emphasize that we're all interconneted. I recently crossed paths again with a gal I went to high school with. The last time we saw each other was probably eight years ago here in Gainesville because we shared mutual friends. In the time between then and now, she got a degree through the department that I now work for and became friends with the people who are now my co-workers. That in itself was a cool six-degrees-of-separation moment. But now she tells me that she fell in love with my Etsy site a year or so ago and had no idea it was me. Small world.

Einstein Memorial
Originally uploaded by sassycrafter

Clever keychain

Thanks to Cat for inspiring this project, which will be featured in the January issue of The Satellite magazine. It's a great way to use up odd beads leftover from previous projects. All you need is some leftover beads, flex wire, a couple of crimp beads and some imagination.

So what's stopping you? Go bling out your keychain!

Halloween pre-weekend

In the true spirit of the sassy crafter, I cooked up this costume in nothin' flat. I stopped by Loop de Loop at around 6pm and visited with my friends Cat and Perry. Cat insisted that I try on this little green dress, saying that it looked perfect for me. Aside from being a little big, it was indeed perfect. I took it home thinking that one day I'd transform it into the perfect cigarette girl costume.

So I get home, eat some chow, and commence watching Game 3 of the World Series. Sometime after 9pm I get inspired to start transforming the dress into the envisioned cigarette girl costume. Around 10pm I get a call from Cat saying that she's on her way to a Halloween party and that I should join her and her friends. Sewing complete, I move on to the other critical details of the costume -- the pillbox hat and the tray featuring cigarettes and candy. I frantically empty the change from the little basket that I keep on my dresser, and then go digging in my utility shed for black spray paint. Bingo.

As the paint is drying I rush inside to put on a smattering of make-up. After all, a cigarette girl's look isn't complete without deep lipstick and false eyelashes. Then I remove the dust cover from my turntable so that I have a tray, and raid the nicotine I keep stashed in my freezer. One final stop at Walgreen's for some candy and I'm ready to roll.

Needless to say, the costume was well receieved. Of course, why wouldn't it be if I'm offering people free drugs and candy?

Ah... Savannah

Savannah is my second favorite Southern city. Much like New Orleans, it's a city that is steeped with history but doesn't come off as the least bit stodgy. In fact, it's a hip, contemporary town that isn't worried about taking itself too seriously. Chalk it up to the great art school that continues to bring in creative people who fall in love with Savannah and never get around to leaving.

The New York Times just did a feature on Savannah and gave a shout-out to one of my favorite places for creative inspiration -- shopSCAD.

I stumbled across shopSCAD completely by chance when I visited the city in July 2004 with my friend Jenny. I was totally mesmerized by the amazing things for sale there, all created by current or former SCAD students and/or faculty. Jenny's lucky that she was ever able to drag me out of there!

I was particularly smitten with the wallets, checkbook covers, and passport covers made from vintage papers, made by a company called 11:11, or "eleven eleven." When I went to the site today, I also fell in love with the darling pillows made by Pamela Riley and the chipmunk chest by Katie Runnels which is pictured above.

If you're ever in Savannah, be sure not to miss this little gem. Or, visit the newly opened shopSCAD in Atlanta.

drudgery vs. following your heart

Several days ago a friend sent me a link to an article in Orion Magazine titled "Burgers a la Thomas Jefferson." It's about a guy named Tod Murphy who started a restaurant in Vermont called The Farmer's Diner. The key concepts are that the restaurant only serves food that was raised or grown within 70 miles and that the food must be affordable. I'm a fan of this concept, and I think a lot of other people are, too. The entire article is worth a read, but one part that particularly grabbed me was this anecdote by Murphy:

"They asked me to speak down in Boston at the IDEAS Conference at the Federal Reserve Bank. The hotel that they put me in was six or eight blocks away, so I was hoofing it over in the morning, and I went by a couple of T [subway] stops, and I was watching people huddled under their backpacks, coming out of the T, going to Starbucks, and then they’re going to their jobs. Then I went into the Federal Reserve where they have these displays set up about social history. They have the 1800-whatevers, and there’s a scythe, and reapers, and binders, and pictures of horses and stuff. So I stopped at the scythe to read the sign. It talked about how people used to be on the land, and it was awful, life was so hard, terrible drudgery, they had no teeth, this kind of thing. But 'drudgery' was the word that struck me. I had just walked through a crowd of people who were the epitome of drudgery, people who are pursuing what is held out as 'progress, living life.'”

Wow. Kind of makes you realize that most Americans are plodding along toward some vague notion of a better life. In my mind, Murphy has found that better life. And it doesn't revolve around daily $4 non-fat lattes.

Also along the lines of people following what's in their hearts, tonight I watched "Craft in America: Community" that WUFT-TV aired a few weeks ago (I TiVoed it). This particular quote resonated with me, both because of how I feel about buying the work of other artists and about producing my own work (sadly, I was unable to credit the speaker since it was a voiceover):

"We're making items that no one needs except for the aesthetic reasons. They're buying our objects because someone thought it up, it's their design, and it comes from the hand."

I also enjoyed the other segments of the program, including the one about Penland School. I have long wanted to Penland. I'm on their mailing list and always drool over the classes they offer in printmaking and letterpress, photography, metals, and books and paper. I think of Penland as a summer camp for grown-ups. Hopefully one day I'll be lucky enough to be a camper there.

And finally, my random thought of the day. Is it possible to sell watermelons from the trunk of a car? I saw a woman attempting to do this today. She had a pile of eight of so watermelons piled up behind her car. She was not-so-casually perched on the back seat, legs hanging out through the open door.

Sure, there's no physical reason you can't sell watermelons in this manner, but will people buy them? You see, Southerners can be darn particular about tradition, and tradition states that you sell watermelons from the back of a pick-up truck. That's just the way it is. Maybe I should've stopped and asked her how business was going, just so that I could know whether you truly can sell watermelons from a car. If she's there tomorrow, I'll stop and ask her.