it’s a silent, choppy, flawed test run, and the beginning of big fun times to come.

heads up seattle people: i’m giving a needle felting basics class on saturday, with a focus on bead making! we’ll do lots of styles, shapes & sizes, embellishment techniques and more. there are a couple of spaces left and i hope you’ll snap ’em up so we can play together.

the class is being hosted by the wonderful folks at beadworld. they don’t have a website (!) so to register or get more info, give them a call!

before i get into the meat of this post, i need to tell you that i don’t like talking about my flair. i do like to share good ideas and glorify the work of others and i even like sharing photos of the things i make.

what i have a lot of trouble with is talking about cool neat things that happen to me along the way. it’s a perverse, white-knuckled humility that i haven’t figured out entirely, but those that are close to me have done everything short of attacking me physically to shake me out of this weird self-consciousness. so, here i take a deep breath and share a couple neat things:

i’ve mentioned kristen rask, owner of schmancy and curator of plush you here before. she’s one of those people who’s teaching me about the value of reasonable amounts of pride. a smart woman, a funny woman, a taker of no crap, kristen is one my heroes. (she did kick me in the shin once, but i totally deserved it.) anyway, kristen invited me to an interview for her constantly inspiring plushyou! blog and she posted that interview today.

here it is.

the other neat thing is that i have a tutorial coming out in issue 06 of craft magazine. if you subscribe, you have it already but for everyone else, it hits news stands on feb 5. it’s the longest tutorial i’ve written and i think it’s pretty cool. it isn’t needle felting related but teaches you how to make hand-sewn plush monsters. the kind of unbelievably cool part is that the craft folks have seen fit to put my monsters on the cover of that magazine. i don’t have a good shot of the cover but the monsters look like this:

of course, i’m completely amazed.

and now you know what’s up in my neck of the woods. and now i need to have a lie down.

i don’t normally do holiday-themed ANYTHING, but i couldn’t resist the challenge set forth at dabbled. i mean, “darker/creepier than your average valentine” is a fun constraint to play with.

so, i felted the base from scratch with three shades of red corriedale. i cut the heart from bright pink commercial felt. the straps are felted from scratch and then felted onto the base along with the heart. inside my paper stash i found a great shiny piece of wrapping paper for the love note that i cut to fit inside the syringe. i hammered some grommets on there for hanging. (i am new to grommets…and i LOVE them.)

the syringe came from creation station, my favorite surplus upcycle supply place in this area. they are a hoarders worst nightmare, but they have so much stuff that inspires me to create. they also just opened an etsy shop. (i love those folks so you’ll see some of my creations over there as examples from time to time.)

you should enter the dabbled contest too! clicky.

this invitational plush art exhibition at purdue university is up through feb 1, so if you are in or near west lafayette, indiana, get over there and see it in person.

if, like me, you are stuck in your own neck of the woods, you can see photos of all the art in liz erlewine’s flickr pool. (photos of my needle felted pickaxe can be seen here in a recent post.)

odds are that you’ll see something you absolutely must have as your very own, so to acquire your favorite plushed pieces, you’ll just click on over to box wonder.

one of the cool people i stalk on the internets is alice, from the addicting wonderland blog, which has a focus on gaming, geekery and technology (three great tastes that go great together).

she had the kindness to call my attention to this:

recognize that little man? the green one with the braces? yeah, he’s mine.

the article is about the diy movement, etsy and more. alice is in there too, as well she should be. clicky.

this is my piece for an upcoming plush art exhibition called PLUSHED::art gone soft:: being held at purdue university, january 21 – february 1. i wish i could go!

more photos on flickr. clicky.

i can’t help but spread the love of the batts i got from art club today. the photos don’t begin to cover it. i’m drooling. more photos on flickr. clicky

this weekend marks the end of my whirlwind of holiday art activities with two cool events!

come out for “friday at the frye” – december 17, 7 – 10pm. i’m really excited to be doing a free workshop with my hero kristen rask (of schmancy, plushyou! fame) at my favorite seattle art museum. there will be other art activities too, and a guided tour of an AMAZING exhibition – hug: recent work by patricia piccinini. go to the frye website for more details. clicky.

and, for my portland people, we’ve got the big crafty wonderland super colossal holiday sale!
december 16th, 11am – 5pm at the historic norse hall. it will feature over 100 vendors, a full bar, recycled gift-wrapping with SCRAP at the DIY table, goodie bags to the first 200 shoppers,
a cool printed event program and so much more! come say hi and buy indie for the holidays! clicky. update: i got really sick on saturday and was unable to rally to make it to the event. i heard it was AWESOME…maybe next year!

although urban craft uprising was indeed the bestest fun happy times i’ve had in a long time, i woke up today feeling sad. someone snagged this little bunny man from my table on saturday and i feel like he’s out there somewhere.

i know theft is some times the cost of doing business, but my finger puppets are…alive…to me. i have a hard time even selling them because they really make me so happy. i understand why he’s desirable, but he’s part of my family and i want him back, no questions asked.

help me out, ok?