Archive for the ‘Artsy Craftsy’ Category

It only took a week, but I’ve finally figured out which way my New Year’s Resolutions will be “trending” in 2012.

Faithful readers might recall that I was considering two paths: The pile-your-plate-so-high-you-can-barely-see-over-it method, à la The Happiness Project, and the lean and mean, keep it simple Zen Habits approach.

And the winner is: Zen Habits.

Not by a landslide, mind you; I seriously considered creating a Happiness Project, and even got so far as to create a profile on the website.

But then my head started to explode thinking of just how I would wedge in all that self-improvement alongside a huge work project I’ve committed to for the first half of the year.

Who knows? Maybe when I wrap the paid gig, I’ll get Happy. I’m already lower-case happy, so the next step is probably to get upper-case Happy.

Right now though, I feel better knowing I’m narrowing the field to just five interests: Meditating, cooking, knitting, de-cluttering and Frenching.

Okay, so maybe five interests / rezzies  is still a lot, but I don’t intend to drive myself nuts by attaching any particular time-frame or hyper-specific goals to them. Not yet anyway. Plus, I can stretch stuff out over the course of the year if I want. For instance, when it’s like 1000 degrees outside in July and August, I expect to be knitting up a storm because I won’t be working. While the Wee Lass is crafting her little heart out at day camp,  I hope to be taking classes at Purl SoHo.

And I’ve re-discovered a very cute way to improve my French.

Mid-career, when I ditched magazine-ville to toil at the biggest beauty company in the world, my boss (le patron) insisted I take oodles of classes at Berlitz so that I could become “business proficient” in French. I don’t know that I ever achieved that, but I did start writing all my emails in French, and I could certainly make my way around Paris when I went there for projects (les projets).

Still, I remember climbing the walls at Berlitz because there were soooooooo many tenses to learn. Oh my lordy. Passé composé, l’imparfait, le subjonctif, etc., etc. Many was the time when I thought to myself, “If only I just had to learn one tense instead of like eight million. Such joy that would bring me.”

Flashforward to me reading the festive Marc Jacobs profile in this month’s Vogue. A good chunk of it took place in his Louis Vuitton workrooms in Parigi, and I totally loved the description of him rolling around on a wheely desk chair from outfit to outfit, puffing on a ciggy and instructing his staffers to move a pin over here, slide a ruffle over there.

Of course, a lot of those atelier staffers are French. And here’s how the American design god communicates with them in their native langue: Only in present tense! How cute is that? He has a basic vocabulary of fashion terms, and he doesn’t bother to eff around with any of this l’imparfait or subjonctif nonsense.

Yes, I know, it isn’t nonsense; there’s a reason for all those godforsaken tenses. But just really mastering one feels super Zen Habits to me. And super 2012.

Last weekend, in an effort to round-out the Wee Lass’s Xmas situation (she’s getting her very first bike and a Molly McIntire doll, plus a few major goodies from her Uncle Tony, who’s flying in from AZ on Saturday), Hubby and I popped by our local BJ’s to try to find a few smaller, less-pricey items.

(It’s deeply un-chic to shop there, but man, can you nab some serious bargains at the Beej, as we like to call it. I routinely score New York Times bestsellers at rock-bottom prices.)

But back to the toys. Immediately, my eyes seized on the kiddie sewing machines.

“We have to get one,” I squealed, lunging for the shelf. “I’ve been wanting one for so long.”

“Don’t be crazy,” Hubby replied. “If you want a sewing machine for yourself, why not get a real one?”

“Naaaaaaah,” I said. “I’ve been down that road before. I’m a failed fashion designer, remember? Well, maybe I will. But right now, let’s start with this. I’ll tell her it’s for both of us.”

Like that’s gonna work. Can you imagine? Me wresting the munchkin-sized Singer out of my little lady’s tiny mitts? D-r-a-m-a.

Still, I have to admit I’m excited to get my own mitts on that darling toy. It feels very circle-of-life, because I originally moved to New York for the crazy-grueling Fashion Design curriculum at F.I.T., but switched my major early on because my sewing and draping skills weren’t up to snuff.

As a Vogue-besotted high schooler, I learned to sew well enough to get into FIT, but not well enough to really excel in the program – especially in comparison with classmates who’d honed their chops at vocational fashion high schools, stitching up frocks on industrial machines that clocked-in at about 100 stitches per nano-second. (I’m not making excuses, but there’s a big difference between personal and commercial sewing machines.)

So I ended up in Communications, interned at a magazine in my last semester et voila - a 20-something year career in fashion publishing.

But for years – decades – after that, despite the fact that my jobs in magazine-ville were increasingly crack-a-lackin, I couldn’t shake the notion that I’d given up too easily on the design thing, and that if I’d just kept hammering away, I’d be…what, exactly?

A not-Japanese version of Rei Kawakubo? A not-British version of Vivienne Westwood?

So at one point, I had not one but three sewing machines in a storage unit in the East Village, a few blocks away from my groovy St. Marks pad. Just knowing they were there, covered in dust and wedged in-between my off-season purses, made me feel that, some day, I’d revisit my childhood fantasy. And make it work this time.

I realize how much emotional baggage and backstory that is to spring on an innocent little girl, who just reallllly loves doing crafts with Mommy. So I think I’ll just keep it to myself. After all, artsy craftsy endeavors should be fun, not fraught with angst, right?

But lordy, how much would I love to learn to sew really, really well? A lot.

A. Lot.

It sort of snuck up on me and bit me in the bum, but the annual Harvest Festival fundraiser for the Wee Lass’s school is taking place THIS WEEKEND. As in six days from now.

As in:

Sunday, 10 | 16, from 11 to 4

It’s held in the “Market Oval” in front of the Newport campus of the school, but is really sort of everywhere – in the classrooms, the gym, the school yard. You need a lot of room for two Bouncy Castles and approximately 8 million hot dogs.

Last year, I killed it at the tie-dye table. And I could be there again this year. All I know right this second is that I’m definitely on the Crafts team. Which could mean Spin Art, or jewelry-making, or pumpkin-painting, or lord knows what kind of super-creative gew gaws.

But if I do get assigned to tie-dye again, I’ll just try to push it out of my memory that I worked so hard on so many groovy psychedelic T-shirts, purses and socks last year that I felt like an arthritic 90-year-old lady with a lovely hand-knit shawl wrapped around her bony body. I was ouching for a good cause.

And it truly is a good cause. Such a great school. And such a fun festival.

Jesus. Between shoving furniture up and down staircases during the big home-office re-org, and thwacking myself hard on the shins with my trusty tennis racket, my legs are a total disaster.

Sure, it’s finally looking good here in Momover Central. And my backhand has improved. Yay! But I’m black and blue from hip to toe and I hate, hate, hate that.

If only I had some grown-up Crawlers, the genius-y bumper-pad pants created by one Kristi Clark.

Kristi’s a friend of a friend, and I don’t know her that well. But she fled the hustle bustle and grime-y grit of NYC after 15 long years – to the loveliness of Hermosa Beach – so that in and of itself is applause-worthy. “I enjoy the slower pace and the sunshine,” she told me recently. Consider me officially jealous.

But back to those pants, because the backstory is so adorable.

As it turns out, Kristi’s Oregon-based mommy – Kay – is a kick-ass sewing machine. Well, not an actual sewing machine – a Sewing Machine. So when Kristi, after watching her many nieces and nephews take tumbles and spills all over the place, decided to press Mom into service for some bumper-pad pants prototypes, Mom obliged.

“She learned to sew from my grandmother,” says Kristi, “and is old-school and extremely meticulous. She was always doing creative projects when I was growing up – Halloween costumes, prom dresses.”

Prom dresses??? If you trust your mother enough to make the frock you’ll be wearing on the biggest night of your life, she’s right up there with Miuccia Prada.

Understandably, Kristi’s had some trust issues moving her Crawlers base of operations from Mom’s cozy sewing lair in Eugene to the big, bad world. But she had to, because her super-cute line (which also includes amazing dresses hand-stitched by You Know Who) is growing really fast.

In addition to her online business, Kristi just landed her first retail account, Magpie in Manhattan Beach. Oooh, how circle-of-life is that? Girl flees Manhattan, and winds up selling her cheerful and practical bumper-pad pants to one of the hippest shops in Manhattan Beach. Fairytale-esque, I’m thinking.

Oh my. There is a waaaaaaay too much horrible stuff happening in the world at the moment. I’m afraid to turn on the TV, or flip through the news on my iPad, and I literally can’t get this un-cheery Clash song out of my head.

All the more reason why I’m happy to be having an Anti-Real World Summer. Because I’m not working (well, I’ve got the house torn to smithereens, organizing, but I loooooooove that), I have taken up full-time residence in my Mommy Cocoon.

I’m cooking (shocker), playing part-time nanny to the Wee Lass when she isn’t in day camp, and falling head over heels in smitten-ness with crafts. Last week, after jamming myself into a last-minute viewing of the beyond beyond beyond Alexander McQueen exhibit at the Met, I had the you-know-whats to pick up a potholder-making kit at the gift shop.

More on the potholder-making kit in an upcoming blog post; I’m struggling and I’m hoping you like-minded crafter mamas might be able to help me.

One project I didn’t need a lick of assistance with is this cute scarf I whipped-up for my little lady. Yes, there’s a sizeable hole toward the bottom, cleverly disguised by the festive fringe. But still, ya gotta admit that it came out just fine, right?

I may make the matching purse, if I can find the same yarn separately. If I can’t, I may just buy another one of the kits. I’m like totally down with stock-piling all the kiddie craft kits. They’re a great way to get going, and they remind me of my dirt-roads-and-ponies Oklahoma childhood, and my Native American granny and her a-ma-zing handmade quilts.

And her not-so-groovy Barbie clothes, too, which she sewed on a machine!!!! While I preferred the store-bought gold lamé pants for my Malibu Skipper, even at that young age I could appreciate the love my grandmother put into those teensy-weensy get-ups.

And trust me, my granny lived in the Mommy Cocoon. No real world for her.

I think I’ve mentioned a few million times that I’ve developed a nasty little driving phobia? To the extent that I never get behind the wheel of our sleek silver wheels?

Well, until we get back to Joisy and I take some lessons (and/or get hypnotized, because I already have my license, it’s the fear that’s the problem), that ain’t gonna change.

Thus, obvi, for our massive half-country trip, Hubby has been doing all the getting us to where we want to be going. And as his co-pilot, I am so wracked with guilt that I will not permit myself to sleep as much as a nano-wink while I’m parked next to him in the passenger’s seat.

Instead, I’ve come up with a brills solution that doesn’t involve me burying my nose in a book or magazine and getting all anti-social and un-bond-y: Knitting.

Although I struggled in my first attempt a month ago – I couldn’t for the life of me remember how to cast on – I dragged the troops to this adorable shop called Loopy Yarns while we were in Chicago. And after spending a small fortune on yarn, needles, a Knit Kit and one of the Stitch ‘N Bitch books, I happily had a eureka moment in our hotel room and I’ve been knitting ever since.

All through St. Louis, Tulsa, Branson, back to St. Louis. And now we’re in Nashville, about to head to Knoxville. We’re working our way northeast to be reunited with our lovely home and our furious meow-meows, Thunder and Lightning, who have been tucked away at the Cat Practice in Manhattan, no doubt cursing us for two solid weeks.

By the time we pull up to our condo complex, I may just have completed my first project. It’s a ginormous heathery purple scarf that I know I will wear with pride next winter. Delusionally, I like to think that it’s vaguely Yohji Yamamoto-ish or Comme des Garςons–esque in its oversize scale and rough-hewn vibe.

Sure, there are a few dropped stitches (read: gaping holes) and such. But it’s mostly just awesome.

And awesome is good.

Right now, when I should be destroying my Sunday morning by diving in to a writing assignment (When. Will. It. Ever. End.), I’m instead rousting around in my stashes of amazing girly stuff for anything related to my obsession du jour: Knitting.

I used to take knitting lessons as a kid. But I don’t know that I ever finished anything, because my teacher was such a mega-meanster that she used to squeeze and pinch the dickens out of my poor little digits if I wasn’t holding the needles correctly. Grrr. Who does that? Why teach if you have zero, zippo, nada patience?

Anyway, let’s move on from that childhood trauma, shall we?

I don’t know why I’m newly smitten with knitting again, but I totes am. Maybe it has to do with those geeky Seaside Knitters mysteries I read. One reason I love those books so much is that they’re set in a New England coastal town, not unlike the gorge one I moved to when I was 10, from the wide-open plains of Oklahoma.

(And ironically, the section of the city we now live in is also called Newport. Love that. It even has a mini marina with sailboats and yachts. So cute.)

But enough with the geography.

Here’s what I’ve happily hoarded in recent years, mostly from the giveaway table at Cookie, which was such a wacky assemblage of tot stuff and mommy stuff that both the Wee Lass and I scored, big-time. She got a Disney Princess talking throne chair that my super-chic design-snob colleagues wouldn’t touch with a 90-foot pole, and I got all this learn-to-knit gear.

Like the awesome DVD pictured here, and two beginner kits that are really aimed at 9 year-olds:

Begin to Knit by Quincraft

Suss Knit Kit

Plus I think I already told you about the beauteous Chicks With Sticks book I recently nabbed, right? I’m on a tear.

Of course, on Friday night, as I was parked on the couch in our family room – yummy glass of sparkling rosé at the ready and a DVRd episode of Real Housewives of New York flickering in the background (can we sidebar for a sec and discuss what a psychotic b—-h LuAnn is being this season???), I couldn’t for the life of me remember how to cast on.

You can’t knit if you can’t cast on. I had to turn off the TV, put down the pink bubbly and focus. And I still couldn’t do it. So this evening, after I finish my work and start packing for our upcoming trip to America’s heartland, I’m gonna pop this DVD in and try to figure out the whole casting-on business.

Project!