A busy weekend . . .

It's hard to believe that it's been almost a week since I posted! A lot has happened in that time . . . Mr. Mojo and I went down to CubeSpace on Saturday for the Stuffed Misfit Stitchathon and Suzi Mayer's cool hat class.

Here's Mr. Mojo hanging out with Eva, one of the founders of CubeSpace.

There were lots of shrunken sweaters and cool fibers . . .

And people cutting up socks . . .

And people making wonderfully crazy hats!

Here's Suzi and her hubby, George, modeling some of their creations! Suzi doesn't have a website, but I'll be sure to let you know when she runs this class again . . .


And here's Mr. Mojo . . . flirting with a lovely sock and glove creature birthed at the event! Looks like one of the participants crafted Mr. Mojo a soulmate . . . after all, she's got rainbow eyes and ribbon wings . . . . what's not to love?

Stay Tuned: The winner of the 100th Post Flag Giveaway was randomly selected this weekend . . . madness is sure to ensue.

Extreme Craft: Knitted Dissections, Paintball, and Monsters, Oh My!

Extreme, adj. 1. Outermost; farthest; edge or border. 2. Going to great lengths; utmost in degree; of the best or worst that can exist in reality or in imagination; excessive; immoderate. 3. Last; beyond which there is none. 4. Radical; advanced. 5. Drastic; very severe.
-adapted from the Webster's New Twentieth Century Dictionary, Unabridged


Whether you define your object-making and meaning-making in the world as art or craft or some delightful hybrid of the two (as I do), occasionally going to extremes is a great way to stretch your creative muscles. Part of the creative journey is taking risks - sometimes, those risks push the edge. And sometimes, they push you to places better - or worse - than you could have imagined.

That's part of why I love the blog Extreme Craft. Who could resist a hand-knit frog open on a dissection board from CraftyHedgehog?



I was also inspired by the blog author's recent effort to try something "extreme" with his own ceramic art. The result? Using a paintball gun to fire capsules of china paint at blank plates!


And then there's my friend Sven over at Scarlet Star Studios, who illustrated a monster a day on the Monster Month Blog in October, and just published them in the Monster Month Book (with text by famed world-traveling cryptozoologist Professor Ichbonnsen and design assistance from Gretchin). Below is an illustration by Sven of the Trick Squilligoss, one of my favorites (after the Zompire Bat). The images are luscious, and Sven's experience creating three-dimensional puppets for stop-mo animation shows through in the construction of these creatures. Sven did the illustrations based on elaborate descriptions provided to him by the globe-trotting Ichbonnsen. Note the "faintly bioluminescent eyes" on the Trick Squilligoss.


I was fortunate enough to be invited to the book release party last week - and while the Professor was unable to attend, I did get Sven to sign my copy of the book.

And thanks to Linda for the picture of me and Sven - Linda's just taken the biggest risk of all.

Quitting her day job to work full-time as an artist.

Now that's what I call extreme craft.

More Challenges, or There's Gesso on my Breakfast!

Note: Don't miss it - I sneaked in my 100th post a few days ago, and have offered to design a flag for one randomly selected blogger who leaves a comment. I'll be doing the random drawing Saturday - the selection that is! The flag creation will be anything but random.

Challenges are a cool part of the Blogosphere. I had so much fun with Michael5000's Oregon Flag Makeover Challenge (here's the whole sordid story of my flag design process, in reverse, in case you missed it) that I've been keeping my eyes peeled for other creative challenges.

Two that caught my eye are Bigezbear's photo of the week challenge - this week's theme was "Breakfast" - and Jen Worden's weekly art challenge. Jen's project this week involved taking a magazine image, outlining it in black marker, then filling in the colored areas with gesso. I really liked the effect, and decided to try it out.

Here's My Breakfast:


The whole eggs-in-toast thing is a big comfort food for me. Spelt toast. Organic, cage free eggs. From happy chickens! The mug of coffee is not in the picture, but can be assumed. I was probably trying to drink from it and take the picture at the same time.

And here's my gessoed magazine image:



It's from Real Simple magazine - a photograph to illustrate an article on headaches. Really, I only buy Real Simple for the pictures.

And now, here's two great challenges that taste great together!

I love the effect of the hard outlines and selective gessoing on the photograph . . . and I'd love to hear about any cool creative challenges out there in the Blogosphere that you are particularly fond of!

Just a Few More Flags . . .

I know, I know . . . you thought that with the earlier post I was finally all done with the flags for the Flag Makeover Challenge . . .

Not so. I kept fiddling while the Sweetie and I watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer (we're working our way through all the seasons) and then I wanted to scan them and share them.

It all started because I really did like the "yin yang" balance idea, but I wasn't sure it was really flaggy enough.


This one came out well - again, green for mossy tree-filled land and blue for wondrous fresh and salt water; the salmon as representative of the history, the future, and the natural resources of our state; all held together by the golden swirl of coastline, of balance . . .

So, if one looks good, I thought, how about two? That's even more balanced . . .

Of course, I have the green representing land - maybe I need a mammal on the flag, too . . .


Hmmm . . . should the Beaver be on land? What if the green was on the other side?

Ah, yes. "What if?" and on-line Scrabble. Two things that will keep a girl awake on a work night.

Of course, as the Sweetie would say, why be ruled by the tyranny of the "or" when you can embrace the "and"?

M5K, check your in-box.

Drawing: The 100th Post

Here we are - my 100th post. It arrived a lot faster than I thought it would.

In Honor of the 100th Post

To honor the 100th post and the end of January - A Drawing (almost) Every Day Month - and the culmination of the L&TofM5K Flag Makeover Contest, I'm going to do something really cool. For you, the readers . . . I will randomly select one person who leaves a comment on this post, and I will design them a flag! Imagine - your own personal flag, designed by me!

Defining Drawing

From the Webster's New Twentieth Century Dictionary, Unabridged, Second Edition:

draw, v.t.

1. pull; haul; drag
2. to pull back the drawstring of (a bow)
3. to attract; charm; entice
4. to bring forth; elicit
5. to take into the lungs; breathe in; inhale
6. to pull out; take out; remove; extract
7. to bring about as a result; cause to happen; bring on
8. to pull out of shape; distort

I love these different definitions, these different ways of looking at a word that we typically think of as meaning mark-making, or making marks as a way of representing something we see. We might also think of the mark-making as something that elicits a response, something you breathe in, an essence you extract from something, something that you distort as you view it, something you use to charm a viewer . . .

And Here's the Flag

Very flaggy. With a leaping Salmon. The green field represents an abstraction of the mossy, tree-filled state of Oregon; the blue band on the top represents the Columbia River; the wider blue band on the left represents the Pacific Ocean. The gold band running North-South represents the Cascade Mountain Range; the gold band running East-West represents both the Oregon Trail and our trade relationships with Asia and exploration of the sea; and the Salmon represents our natural resources and a long tradition of both Native American peoples and more recent immigration. The slight crookedness of the lines, well, that's just an accident.