Art for your Sweet Tooth!

Now that they're officially out, I can give details on the art exhibit I was asked to take part in. Called "Get Baked: Art for Your Sweet Tooth," the show is taking place at the St. John's Arts and Culture Centre next month, and is a fundraiser for Marguerite's Place. If you're not in St. John's or aren't aware of it, Marguerite's Place, when finished, will include supportive housing units for single women over 30, as well other programs run by the St. John's Status of Women Council and Women's Centre. The facility is named in honour of Marguerite Dyson, a Women's Centre volunteer, who was murdered in her St. John's boarding house in 1996, at the age of 51.

Not only is the show for a great cause, it has a great theme: Cupcakes! The whole project was the idea of Alicia E., curator and tattoo artist/graphic artist/art glass designer, who happens to love cupcakes more than anyone I know (she's even got cupcake tattoos). Alicia is also one of the most hard-working people I know, and has organized  all kinds of artistic events as fundraisers for various charities around the city.

It's a mixed media exhibit, and I'm doing three pieces: one is a photography piece (for which I'll need a kitchen that has more natural light than mine- anyone got one they'd like to volunteer? There'll be cupcakes in it for you!), one is a fairly sizeable embroidery piece (wall art), and the other involves one of my favourite mediums... recycled sweaters.Will post some pics as they get nearer to being finished. :)

There are going to be some pretty interesting pieces on display and for sale (including Jared Reid's, which involves 750 plaster cupcakes sculptures!), so if you're around, please come and check it out!

Merry Old Christmas Day...

... and happy new year! Thanks so much for the e-mails... I'll be starting on new orders this weekend, and hopefully restocking Gingersnap with Munkeh, Cuddly Bunny and others in the next couple of weeks.

This is officially the last day of Christmas- how quickly did that go by?! In our house growing up (and in a lot of houses in Newfoundland, apparently) we celebrated the end of Christmas... we had another big dinner, and we even hung our stockings up again on Old Christmas Eve. We'd get a few little things this time; Mom would tell us Santa Claus was on his way back to the North Pole and if he had anything left in his sack, he'd give it to boys and girls who hung up their stocking. She later told us it was for things she had forgotten/put away and couldn't find on Christmas Eve. I'm making little Old Christmas gifts for Baby M. and for my little niece and nephews, but they're still not quite finished (will hopefully be done by tonight). I'll post pics when they are!

This was our first Christmas with Baby M. :) Of course, he's not old enough yet to understand what's going on (and loved the wrapping paper as much as any gift) but it was SO NICE. We did a lot of visiting and he was so pleasant the whole time. He's a happy little boy... hardly ever cries and is almost always smiling, and really is a joy.

I did a homemade Christmas for a lot of my family members and friends this year. My sister did, too- she made all the kids beautiful onesies with felt-applique designs on them (her own patterns) and fleece pants (and she has a newborn and an always-busy two-year-old, so I'm doubly amazed at her). I got out the felted wool sweaters again and made mittens!






The mitten part was pretty easy to do- the pattern wasn't hard, and felted wool is really forgiving, so if the seams aren't all quite the same, it's not noticeable. The toughest part was the design. I needle-felted it on the back of the mittens and it took ages! It's done with wool roving (dyed but unspun wool) and a special barbed felting needle... instead of, say, drawing a design, you use the needle to poke, poke, poke the different colours of roving where you want them. The barbs on the needle cause the roving to mesh together with the felted wool, and that's how it stays together. I made a pair for myself, too, and they're pretty cozy.

I've just started three pieces of artwork for an upcoming show I was asked to take part in... I don't know if the details have been released or not yet, so I'll wait to talk about it, but it's a fundraiser for a fabulous cause!

Because some sweaters just look far better on little baby butts!

When it comes to thrift stores, I have a bad habit. I sometimes feel bad for the items there. It's hard to look at a wedding dress and not wonder about the circumstances that led it being donated to charity, or to wonder the reason why a pair of shoes that seem to have once been so well-loved ended up being given away. In the cases of things like wool sweaters and baby quilts, my empathy for them often makes me buy them. I've bought sweaters simply because they were too soft or such a bargain that I couldn't leave them behind, and I've never worn them. That's how my recycled sweater baby pants came about.

It all started with a sweater in three shades of blue- too big for me, but 100% Shetland wool. I bought it, took it home and washed it in hot water to felt it, then cut and sewed, cut and sewed until it became a cute pair of pants for Baby M. A few days later came the sweetest pants in baby blue and soft red stripes. Then came gray ones, and then brown ones for Baby M.'s cousin. And then I found the *perfect* sweater for Ally's youngest daughter, Baby S., so during one of our weekly craft nights, Ally and I made them into pants.

The best part about using 100% wool sweaters (or even wool sweaters with a little nylon, but no more than 10%) is once they're felted, they're pretty much waterproof against diaper leaks. If you lanolize them (a really easy process, as it turns out), they're totally waterproof, and extremely soft.

I can get just one or two pairs of baby pants from one sweater, so they're all unique! They come in sizes from newborn up to about 2T and are available at Gingersnap or directly through me.

Here's the sweetie-pie Baby S. modeling her pants. These are acrylic, so they're not felted. Can you picture these as a sweater? I think they're so much cuter as pants.



And here's my darling Baby M. modeling his (with some help from his daddy), as well as a pic of some of the other first pairs I made...