Last night there was an event at the Vernon Community Arts Centre that I helped with. My job? Design fake wine labels and create a bogus wine list to go with them. The funny thing? I don’t drink!

The wine list was a huge hit, and I had the pleasure of having people come up to me repeatedly during the event to compliment me on the list, which was really rewarding, because I worked my butt off on it! I had a lot of fun working on the project, and got to take home several empty bottles with my labels on them as keepsakes.

And now I have to struggle to prepare for another event at the aforementioned Vernon Community Arts Centre called Artsolutely….for which I feel that I am almost completely unprepared. Pictures forthcoming, perhaps? Eventually? Sigh…

Okay, so I haven’t posted in many, many months. It’s been a busy, sometimes chaotic time and I just haven’t felt like posting. Since my last post I have moved. Twice. The whole story is long, but let’s just say I’m still shaking the concrete dust out of my possessions, 5 months after the fact. I’ve been in my current apartment for a little over 3 months now, and I’m SO much happier here. It’s amazing how much a change of environment can positively affect a person’s life.

As always, I was super excited about Halloween, and the chance to make a costume and get dressed up. This year’s costume went through some drastic changes, and ultimately I ended up making a miniature blue velvet top hat bedecked with vintage velvet flowers and a vintage silk scarf, and an intricately hand-beaded mask, both of which you can sort of see in the picture. I haven’t yet gotten a photo that does justice to the mask’s detail, but the whole thing is completely covered in beads, sequins, and freshwater pearls. It’s quite heavy, and in retrospect, lining it with wool felt on the inside was a wee bit of a mistake — that sucker is ITCHY when you wear it all day!

Now it’s time to nurse my the cold I caught this week with tea, a warm blanket, and Antiques Roadshow. Slap a pair of knitted slippers and a flannel nightie (with obligatory smocked yoke) on me and call me Grammy! Yeehaw!

Secondly, and as I said, on a totally unrelated topic, it appears my Batman-based dreams are finally coming true. The Dark Knight has decided to build a second Batcave adjacent to my front door!

Seriously though, this Big Friggin Hole is the latest chapter in my ongoing plumbing problems. Two very nice men spent 7 hours digging through solid clay in search of a pipe that had the audacity to be located somewhere else. I made them conciliatory french fries and cried when they left.

It appears now that the new plan of action to find this elusive pipe will involve a jackhammer and the entranceway in my apartment. As in, jackhammer + my floor = fucking gong show. And all the while, I have no use of my shower, and limited use of my water-based utilities in general.  Fun times, fun times.

On the plus side, it was amusing to have three men in my bathroom this morning telling each other that ‘no, no, the head’s wrong way’, and giving directions such as “push it further….just a bit…..no, no, now back again….no, you just keep missing it….try again, slower.” ……..as they used their little snake camera thingy to see down the pipes.

Let’s hear it for a dirty mind making a stressful situation oddly amusing!

Still, I can’t wait until it’s over…

But seriously, just look at it! Bask in it’s awesome kitschy vintage glory. Bask, dammit!

::cough::

I did say I was a bit of a fanatic, didn’t I? Well….moving on…..

The Batman clock alone would have been enough to make my day, but when I was browsing the purse section, I stumbled upon something equally as awesome in a totally different way, which shows how random my taste in collectible stuff is.

This antique (or vintage, depending on what one’s definition of antique may be) micro-beaded purse is one of those things that I’ve read about, drooled over, and coveted for a long time, so when I spotted it hanging among the cheap, modern purses hanging in the handbag section of Value Village, my heart skipped a beat.

The bag body is made of loom-woven cut steel beads in muted metallic colours. The beaded ’fabric’ feels like nothing else….thousands of tiny metal beads woven densely together flow through the hands with a delightful weight and drape that’s quite sensual. Er…does that sound weird?

 I’ve posted a picture of my (slightly work roughened and decidedly unmanicured) finger against the beads to give an idea of how tiny they are. From a distance the bag looks almost like a heavy woven textile rather than a piece composed of beads!

The frame has an art deco style to it with the stylized leaf motif, and I think it’s brass that was once gilded. You push in the little knob at the top which releases the catch and allows you to open the purse. The frame is pretty warped, but still opens perfectly and closes securely. It’s stamped “Made in France” on the inside.

The purse is in pretty poor condition — just look at how the lining has shattered! The points where the beadwork and lining are stitched to the purse frame’s hinges have ripped, and there’s some bead loss there as well as on the fringe. I don’t know if it’s repairable or worth repairing, but like with most neat old stuff that I collect, I didn’t buy it because I thought it might be worth something, but just out of love for the item as an interesting and beautiful object; a little piece of history!

Just a quick post about something I’ve been working on lately, that being little knitted or crocheted bags/clutches/pockets/whatever-you-want-to-call-’ems. The photo to the left shows a finished one, and a couple of crocheted iPod cozies.

 The photo to the right shows a few bags in progress. I like the process of designing and knitting the main body of the bag, but I hate making and installing the linings and zippers, so I keep putting it off and doing the fun part instead. It would be nice if I could get a bunch of bags knitted and then take a day to line and finish them all. Hmm.

I lost interest in making monsters again after making the two in my last post, but it’ll come back eventually. They’re so time consuming and require a lot more attention than the bags do, so I have to be in a certain sort of mood to make them, and I usually can’t keep it up for very long.

Anywho, that’s it for now! Poodles!

And to your right is Rafferty, a monster of many talents, none of which are useful. He’s a very talented Crumhorn player, a licensed goldfish masseur, and can describe any smell accurately without actually posessing a nose of any sort. He’s also a gifted gift-wrapper. And he’s single, ladies!

So for a while now I’ve been contemplating making the switch from synthetic felt to 100% wool felt for my monster creations. If I’m going to spend 4-8 hours stitching a monster, I want to be sure I’m using quality materials that will hold up and make that work worthwhile!  So I recently ordered some wonderfully amazing scrumptious and generally tantalizing wool felt from Bear Dance Crafts, which was an awesome experience. Super customer service, and my order shipped so quickly, it seems I barely had time to blink before the mail man was knocking at my door! I love that I can order my felt from a place in B.C.!

Anyways, the felt is SO much nicer to work with than the acrylic stuff I had been using. It’s much more dense, the colours are much more vibrant (and Bear Dance has 75 to choose from!), and the smoothness of the wool felt shows up my stitches so much better! I’m definitely making the switch for all my felt creations.

I’m also trying really hard to make (and not immediately lose!) patterns for my monsters.  I’ve actually been trying to do this for a while, with the idea of perhaps trying to publish a book of them somewhere down the line, or selling pattern kits or something, but since the ‘pattern pieces’ were basically unlabelled little paper shapes, they very quickly got lost or thrown out accidentally. I’m not exactly the tidiest person around….>_<;;;

Anyways, hopefully there will be new monsters to post of in the coming month! I’m working on new designs, and also making of some my older designs with the awesome power of wooly goodness! Whooo!

</wool geekery>

I weep.

***UPDATE JANUARY 6***

>_<;;;

For me, creating the display is easily as much fun as making the stock. I’ve been collecting various vintage things for the last couple of years with this display in mind, and it started with the gorgeous silk sari that I draped the table with. It was a thrift shop find, and a smokin’ bargain at $8. There’s also my handmade papièr maché display busts, a selection of charmingly shabby vintage and antique books from my collection, some Art Deco saucers, scraps of vintage handmade and machine-made lace, and some other little treasures mixed in there.

Other than the sale, I was busy making xmas gifts for my friends and family. I did up a bunch of art cards for my friends, which of course I forgot to scan or take photos of. Phooey. But I did snap pics of the ‘lil monster plush I made for my mum:

And I think the gift I made for my brother is one of my favorite monster creations to date:

 I was so stuck on what to make him, and as usual, having procrastinated as much as humanly possible in making everyone’s gifts, I was getting a bit desperate, which has one benefit — I’m often led to try different things artistically when pressed for time. I had a truly hideous set of nesting dolls laying around that I’d bought a couple of years ago, and suddenly it struck me that they were the same sort of shape as my little stripey monsters. A quick prime and several hours of painting later, I had a little family of nesting monsters for my brother! There *is* a little baby monster, but he turned out really fugly, so he’s getting a makeover before I send him off to his family. Something I certainly wouldn’t condone for human babies, but for a little hollow wooden baby monster, a makeover is perfectly acceptable.

On an unrelated note, have I mentioned that I love that, being a grown-up, I can get gifts of a purely domestic nature such as new sheets, a laundry hamper, oven mitts, cutlery, etc., and be absolutely thrilled with them? ‘Cause it’s rad. No more burning myself taking things out of the oven! What could be better than the gift of personal safety? I mean, seriously? ;P

Thriftaholique

 A blog dedicated to images scanned from my vintage books, and various and sundry tales of my adventures in thrift shopping and the results thereof.

Please to check it out. Barkis is willin’, are you willin’ too?

Halloween 2010, crochet-style. Oooooooh, yeah.