Lee Does Stuff

trillium artisans!

i feel bad about this, but for some reason i’ve never blogged about trillium artisans, which i joined a few months ago. trillium is a portland non-profit for people like me who try to make money selling things made from recycled materials. it is located in se, on foster and 95th-ish, and the store is open to the public tues-fri. there are a bunch of awesome crafters/artists in trillium, and it’s a great non-profit, so i definitely recommend doing some holiday shopping there! and speaking of holiday shopping:

so, now that that’s out there, wanna see what i have for sale through trillium? right now, i’m only doing knit kits and scarflets – at the store you’ll find about 10 kits and 6 scarflets. and here they are!

and a few of my favorites (it’s hard to only choose a few, but you can see them all here):

and all the scarflets, because i really like all 6!

so i hope to see portlanders at the sale on saturday! hooray trillium!!

new leethal stuff at crafty wonderland!!

i’m so overwhelmed with things to do, but i had to take a quick break to make sure all portlanders know that crafty wonderland is happening on sunday! it’s the last one before the big holiday show – and i bet a lot of the vendors at this one (like me) are not going to be at the holiday show, so it’ll be a great place to start your holiday shopping early!!

i spent all day yesterday printing a ton of new shirts, a few with a brand new screen print design!! check it out!

and i made a big pile of new small colored vinyl bowls, and some other fun new stuff like this orange hat!

i’m hoping to make some last-second monster hats tonight, since those were a big holiday item last year and i have no new ones. anyway, it’ll be a great craft show for sure!! if you’re in p-town, i hope to see you there!!

some extra info about the pdf giveaway

a couple things i forgot to mention, and a couple things i didn’t even think about until they came up (see the previous post if you don’t know what i’m talking about)… the cover picture was from that photo above of pete and his friend nick in san francisco, and the alpaca applique came from this photo taken at black sheep:

if you are outside the states, and you voted in your country’s most recent election, i will definitely send you the pdf! this giveaway is about getting people to vote here in this election, but it’s also about just getting people excited about voting in general, and i want to include everyone who wants to be included.

and on that note – if you are under 18… i want to include you too if you want to participate, so the only thing i can come up with is this: i’ll send it to you if you can tell me something you’ve done (an article you read, a conversation you had with a voter) to show that you’ve thought about this election. if you are paying attention to what’s going on now, without the legal opportunity to vote, then you’ll probably be really into voting when you’re able to… so this makes sense to me, in the spirit of the whole thing.

and, i realize that tons of people have no proof that they voted. just tell me you voted and i’ll believe you, don’t worry. i hope the readers of my blog are honest, i think you all are!

the hat pattern is up on ravelry now, and i’ll repeat here what i said there: i am planning on reworking the pattern a little and releasing it for sale in the future – so the “yay, you voted!” pdf is your only chance to get it free!!

i’ll be heading downtown to this event at the museum of contemporary craft in a little while, so i’ll be catching up on sending pdfs when i get back from there, just so you know when you can expect it. i hope to keep caught up throughout the afternoon/evening while listening to npr, but if i get really overwhelmed with voter comments/emails, it may take me a couple days to get them all sent.

lastly, thank you to everyone who passed along the link on your blogs – i’m getting so much response! it’s awesome!! yay!!!!

edit @ 6pm: i totally forgot this photo that was meant to go in this blog post!

yay, you voted! high five!! here’s a pdf for you!

update: this offer is over now, but see this post for info about the hat pattern!

are excited to vote? i think most of you do stuff! blog readers probably already are, but, if not so much, i want to get you more excited!

to everyone and anyone – if you comment here or email me (leethalkoala at yahoo dot com) with some kind of proof that you voted (link to a photo of yourself with “i voted!” sticker, for example) i will send you this pdf! (see bottom of post for more details.)

the pdf includes: pattern for this knit flared hat!

the dandelion stencil design up top, and this alpaca applique design:

and for non-crafters, this thank you card to print out on cardstock paper:

and, contributed by pete, a page about mac and cheese with some fun “recipes”

some extra info and linkage to go along with the pdf……

my flared hat example is made with 2 strands of malabrigo merino worsted held together. the hat is very fitted, to the point of maybe being a bit too small, but i haven’t blocked it yet. if you want a bigger, floppy hat, this pattern will work great for that style by using fatter yarn (or 3 or 4 strands of worsted). the hat pattern uses size us 11 double pointed needles.

the appliqué page has minimal instructions, recommending steam-a-seam just because that’s what i used. i didn’t elaborate further because full instructions are on the fusible web packaging. there is a fantastic detailed appliqué tutorial here, which includes machine sewing around the edges too (which would be pretty tricky with my alpaca, but i’d love to see pictures if anyone does it). there are more how-to’s around the web, including videos (just do some quick googling).

for my appliqué examples, i did one at 100% print size, with the nose/mouth piece, the same way it prints out. the zebra print one is flipped (mirror image) of the way it prints, at 50% size, with no nose/mouth piece. yay alpacas!

the dandelion stencil was made by taking a photo of the print i did from the original hand-drawn stencil, and adjusting to get a black+white image. so, the lines are a little textured (wavy), but it’s meant to trace/cut onto freezer paper, so that shouldn’t matter. (you can find a fabulous f-p stencil tutorial over at neither hip nor funky!) you can print the stencil out any size you want and use it for something besides freezer paper printing if you want – i’d love to see what you do with it!

the thank you card is a drawing i did by tracing this photo and parts of this photo. it’s designed on the pdf to print out on cardstock, fit to 8.5’x11′ paper size, for a card that folds in half to measure about 6.25’x4.25′. you can color it if you want to!

pete’s mac and cheese page is full of meal ideas and fun facts. i didn’t want this pdf to appeal only to crafty voters!

i am happy to give this pdf to absolutely anyone who voted and wants it, regardless of who/what you choose to vote for, but i won’t hide the fact that i really hope you don’t vote for mccain. just sayin’…

for oregon voters (and any others states that are weird like us and do mail-in only) – i can’t figure out any kind of proof you can give if you’ve already mailed it in. if you haven’t already dropped it in the mailbox, you can send me a picture of the filled/sealed envelope or something like that, but if you’ve mailed it, i’ll have to take your word for it. i am very trusting and won’t doubt anyone who claims to have voted without photographic proof, but seriously, that would be way lame of anyone to lie about it. seriously.

and this is completely free of charge, i did it just out of inspiration (hey, speaking of inspiration, check out the event my brother ben put together down in so-cal!) but if you are overcome with the need to contribute a little something for the time i put into this, i’m throwing a donate button down there.

and hey, one more thing if you got this far – i wasn’t able to get this done and posted until super last-minute as you can see, so if you have a blog i would reeeeally appreciate it if you mentioned this! feel free to use any of my images, copy/paste text, whatever, as long as you link to this post. thanks!!

update: to everyone who linked over to this post and hasn’t seen the rest of the blog – there is a more info post after this one, with details about what you can do if you’re not in the US, or under 18, and more.

halloween!

ok so there’s this project i’ve been working on all day, and on and off for the last week+, and it’s almost done and ready to post, but i wanted to do this separate halloween post first real quick! look what we were!

i was my ravelry profile, with my ski mask project page on the back. here’s my actual profile:

i had to change around the layout of the project page to put the pictures on the right, so my mask would show on both sides at the same time. i also put a comments section on that page, thinking we would see knitting friends who could add comments, but we didn’t, sigh.

and pete was his facebook profile!

of course, everyone out around town was suuuuper into it, and he got a bunch of comments! pretty fun times!

re-made clue game on craftstylish

this week’s craftstylish holiday gift project is up! one of my favorites for sure! the project is (re)making a board game, so the tutorial is trying to be general for any board game you might want to redo, but the one i did is clue: the arrested development edition!

one of my all time favorite shows, if you haven’t seen arrested development i highly recommend buying the dvds. (yes, buying, you’ll want to watch the series over and over!!) so for the game, the 9 clue rooms became 9 places from the show (bluth company office, banana stand, on the stair car, lucille’s apt, the garage, outside model home, prison, wee britain, and the house).

i replaced the 6 clue suspects with 6 of the show’s main characters…

since there are a bunch of leftover characters, when we’re playing we can say who was killed based on who the killer is. for example, i think gob killed tony wonder (ben stiller’s character) on the stair car in a failed illusion when the two magicians tried to collaborate. or, lindsay funke killed bob loblaw in a drunken accident in the house when she found out he was charging her for their flirting sessions. you get the idea…

oregon zoo photo fun!

picture post! pete’s parents took us to the oregon zoo a couple days ago – it’s a great zoo! both pete and i are spoiled by the san diego zoo, so we hadn’t bothered checking it out, but wow! all the animals seemed happy, big spaces, and i know they do a lot of good research and stuff, so yeah, check it out!

you can see all 79 (!) of my zoo photos on the flickr set.

also, 2 new scarflets (cashmere and angora!) and one new hat in the shop!

mom’s applique birthday card

my mom collects elephant things, and her birthday was friday, and my gift to her was not elephant related, so i wanted to make a card that was. i had just read jenny’s how-to for using an iron-on applique method on 3-ring binders, so i tried the concept out on the card and it totally worked! yeah!

(photo from craftzine blog) i used “steam-a-seam2” instead of heatnbond, and it worked out fine, super easy! don’t know if it’ll stay stuck forever, but it seemed to be secure. fun little quick craft, great for fabric scraps, try it!

recycled t-shirt photo album on craftstylish!

my next craftstylish holiday gift project post is up! tutorial for making a custom photo album with a recycled t-shirt cover and filling it with photos and stuff. i really love this project! i hope you do too!!

i think it’s funny that i have always been against holiday season stuff starting too early – in stores, malls, etc – and now i’m doing this holiday gift series that started at the beginning of october. but, ya know, the thing is, if you’re gonna make great handmade gifts for all your loved ones, you really do need to start this early to get it all done in time. not that i’m doing so (too busy!), but if you want to really put the effort in, i think getting started now will be worth it. but, for the record, i’m still anti stores getting in the spirit this early – no good reason there!

i’m trying to be better about posting things as they happen and not letting them pile up into one long post, let’s see how long this lasts…

it’s scarves and hats weather!

quick post tonight – just want to share some new stuff i’ve been working on! now that it’s getting chilly up here i got inspired to make myself a felted sweater neck warmer with a neato wood button i got awhile back, then i embellished it cosy–style:

it turned out so well – super comfy, warm, and cute – that i made a couple more for the shop!

and then this morning i had some hat inspiration out of nowhere and i started designing patterns for a new hat design. it took me two failed tries, but on the third version i got it right! it’s super big and floppy, great for sheilding glasses from portland drizzle!

i’m currently working on a second hat of the same design, but with thick, warm felted lambswool. so those three items are up in the shop already, and hopefully i’ll be adding another batch of fun stuff in a couple more days. yay!