craft + activism = craftivism.

The subject line of this post is something I never even dreamed I would ever type, but, YES!, it’s true!

(Text from article, click text or photo to see the whole article!)

Miss Yoshino Rosalia Jasso, age 17, has been chosen as a State Finalist in the National American Miss California Pageant to be held August 7, 2011, at the Anaheim Marriott Hotel in Anaheim, California. The National American Miss pageants are held for girls ages 4-18, and have five different age divisions. Yoshino Rosalia will be participating in the Teen age division and will be modeling for the Formal Wear competition, a “first-ever” gown designed by her that includes an over-skirt created with plastic bags. ….

Miss Yoshino Rosalia Jasso is the Resident Artist of The Long Beach Depot For Creative ReUse and serves as the primary Instructor of the Creative Reuse Workshops. Miss Jasso received her High School Proficiency Diploma at age 16 and has been attending Long Beach City College, majoring in Business. She enjoys creative reuse art, reading, writing, equal rights activism and craftivism.

While I don’t know much about beauty pageants, I do know that they can offer lots of opportunities for scholarships, which is a great thing! GO YOSHINO!!!!

Craftivism, ftw!

One of the greatest things about being involved in the world of craft is the people you meet. Over the years, I’ve come to befriend two very talented crafters and thinkers, Sally Fort and Inga Hamilton, aka Rockpool Candy*. A few months ago, Sally got the idea that some project needed to be done… and invited Inga and I to brainstorm on just what this project was. After about a bazillion awesome emails where we traded thoughts and inspirations and ideas back and forth, we kept asking ourselves questions surrounding QR codes and textiles, mainly:

Can they (QR codes) be functional and direct people to places on the internet?

How can QR codes be created in textile form?

How can designers, crafters, makers, tinkerers, artists, coders and interested dabblers use textile QR codes to send viewers to interesting places?

How can an internationally and digitally collaborative project share ways of working and increase opportunities for exposure and networking?

And thus, QR-3D was born.

And asks for YOUR participation should you be obliged to join in this project with us! Some amazing codes have already been sent in, which you can see over here and here, over at the QR-3D pool at Flickr.

*Be sure to go read the Rockpool Candy post on how she made her QR code using codes from her and her husband, combining them to be a “matrimony code,” the end result being the headboard for their bed!! Holy heck it’s awesome.

P.S. Recently I asked to participate in an Artist Series over at Unconsumption. You can see my project here, where I used a Radical Cross Stitch tutorial on how to cross stitch on clothes to cross stitch Unconsumption’s logo Mr. Cart on to a t-shirt using a chart made by Cat Mazza’s knitPro!

This was originally posted here on June 7, 2010. But because it’s especially lovely, I’m serving it up again. And just how do YOUR hands* look?


The title pretty much says it all. Here’s a gem of a clip from Cary Grant’s 1943 movie, Mr. Lucky:

Many thanks to the consistently awesome Step for sending this to me!

*To figure out what I’m talking about above, watch the video. Definitely a technique I haven’t tried when teaching people to knit?

So happily I came across this post earlier today, which is an article I was interviewed for last year. This article is written by the incredibly lovely Brazilian journalist, Priscilla Santos, who interviewed me (along with Faythe Levine) for an article a few years ago for Vida Simples magazine. (Original article here and here.)

Translation for this article seems to come out pretty fair in Google Translate, which is great as it includes tutorials for:
Wallpapering with Xerox!
Building a fix-wheeled bike!
Making a mini guitar amplifier!
Making an invisible bookcase!

In case you haven’t checked out the DIY scene down in Brazil lately, there are some pretty amazing things going on down there! I especially recommend the work being done by Rede Nami and Anarkia (Panmela Castro), but know that there’s much more amazing work being done by others, too!

Plus, there’s a lovely article about the work of Rede Nami here. And more about the work of Anarkia here over at Culture is Your Weapon and here at Senses Lost.

[And somewhat unrelated to this, yet still related, while looking for links I also discovered the further awesome Brazilian projects Grupo Opni and Coletivo Briza!]

I first noted this over on Tumblr. Got a blog over there? Lemme know, so I can see what awesomeness you’re up to!

*”en Brazil” may not be the correct Portuguese. Feel free to correct me! THANKS, Luiza for correcting me! Awesome!

Yesterday on the way home I was listening to music on shuffle, and Kristin Hersh’s cover of Nirvana’s “Pennyroyal Tea” came on.

I love Kristin Hersh and LOVE her work with Throwing Muses! But, whenever I hear her name, my mind drifts to songs like “Your Ghost” a duet with Michael Stipe from her amazing 1994 debut solo album, Hips and Makers:

And almost under the clunk-whomp-thwack of the train via my headphones came this almost guttural primal scream making me want to recheck the track listing to see if this really was Kristin Hersh. Not angry necessarily, just deep and true and honest and freeing. A sound full of creative power holding back zero reservations. Now if you weren’t familiar with her work with Throwing Muses and just knew of her solo work, this cover may just take you as a surprise. It seems a complete 180 turn in the vocals.

And it got me thinking, about how empowering it is to just shake it up, do something different, make people check that track listing/schedule/blog feed/show listing and just go for it. Learn a new skill, try a new route home, test a new recipe, whatever. Just need to step out of what you think you are, or what other people think you are and just say fuck* it.

Because you know what? You may just fucking** nail it like Kirstin Hersh does on this covers album. And when that happens? It feels pretty freakin’ good.

Where can you hear this amazing Nirvana covers album? Over here at the brilliant music blog that is Music is Art.

*Sorry, Mom.
**Even sorrier.