I had the pleasure of receiving an email from Tiffany Pang of Muntedkowhai the other day. She’s a creative artist who has coupled lace crochet work in a polygamous with metal and vintage buttons resulting in some of the most beautiful jewelry I have seen in a long time. The craftsmanship in these pieces is only equaled by their beauty. I was so happy when she agreed to an interview instead of just a review of her work. I love the stories behind the pieces I see! It’s the history of the creator that gives each creation its uniqueness. Continue reading →

Since making the itty bitty bag, I’ve been stuffing it full of bits of fabric, ribbon, and yarn. Well what to do with all that? I’ve also been piling up the cones of itty yarn. I think “oh this will be great for xyz” and then just never use it, or never as much as I think I will. So some bits of craft leftovers and some remaining yarn on a cone = felted basket goodness. Without having weave in all those ends because of the felting, it’s the perfect thing to use up all those scraps. Continue reading →

The November Craft Leftovers Monthly is in the shop!
Continue reading →

… And her lovely spinner’s flock! It was an odd chain of events that lead to this interview which warrants a little back story: My friend Kelly and I were at the Yarn Exchange talking about random this and thats when she told me she had seen all these lovely sheep over on Airport road and we should go check them out. A few weeks later, same scenario, but there were now all these little lambs now! We started scheming how we could go and take their photos and were trying to figure out who we should contact and etc etc when this woman walks in. She had some fliers and wanted to know if we could put some up. She was just starting out selling roving from her little flock and wanted to get the word out.

Well, after talking for a little bit, it turns out those were her sheep on airport road! Well, at least some of them were and she was going to be moving them to a new place where they couldn’t get out of the fences. I said “Hey Kelly, you will never believe this!” And Kelly came over and Charlotte was so nice to put up with our enthusiastic ramblings. And she was also nice enough to agree to meet up at their new home once they were moved so Kelly could take photos and I could interview her! Glorious luck!

We had such a great time meeting the sheep and talking with Charlotte. I wish I would have had a digital recorder than, but I didn’t. Now I do though, so maybe next time.

Charlotte started out sewing and slowly was drawn into spinning after taking a class at the Fine Line and Kishwaukee College. Now working with fibers has really become her passion. Her husband John had grown up on a farm and was interested in raising animals again and encouraged her to find out more about raising sheep for their fleece. She talked to Tony Neal and it worked out that she actually gave her their first sheep! It’s wonderful how these things work out. I had never heard of a spinners flock before and I really like the idea of it now that I have. Basically, instead of going for the “perfect” sheep, you have a selection of sheep with different fibers types and colors that would be good for spinning.

She has 2 rams - a pure bred merino and a pure texel, which is normally a meat breed, but they have lustrious 3 - 5 inch fibers. She also has Ewes which are merino/cvn mixes. CVN stands for California Varigated Mutant. It’s so interesting to see their fiber because it is all different colors, not just on the exterior of the fleece, but the fibers closer to the body are also different! She also has Finn Sheep, they have long staple fibers and tend to have multiples, which turned out to be the case because she has a set of twins! The oldest sheep were two months old at the time, so about 4 months now.

The sheep are sheered once a year and then the wool has to be processed. She skirts them to remove all the undesirable wool and then washes it by hand before sending it to the mill. They then wash it again and make it into roving. It usually takes about a month to 6 weeks to get off the sheep and then onto her wheel. She has started expirimenting with dyeing the batts with professional grade acid dyes as well as spinning beads and locks into the yarn.

She has a French angora rabbit and will be getting 2 german angora rabbits soon. Her kids love the sheep and one son in particular is really excited about getting a sheep dog. As he put it, “We are going to get the dog and play ‘risbee’!!” She has three small children, 2 boys and a girl.

At the end of the interview she showed us roving samples from the sheep as well as her rabbit. So lovely! I drooled and Kelly drooled and then she gave me a huge bag of merino roving for dyeing because she knew I was a dyer and a spinner and then she gave Kelly a lovely skein of hand spun yarn because she is a knitter! She is so nice! I can’t wait to get my hands on some more of her roving. I am particularly interested in the merino/cvm roving. It was so pretty and soft.

She sells the roving from her sheep as well as other local shepherds. You can call or email her for information, availability, and samples. Her email address is theshepherdsgirl@gmail.com (at) gmail (dot) com or you can call her at 815.748.3782.

Go email or call her, she is so nice and would love to hear from you.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Now I wanted to pair up a give away with this interview and because of delays in posting, it corresponds to some great other news! I just this week purchased a mail box to be my business address! Jason and I had been talking about it for awhile, and I can’t deny that I have fantasies about receiving mail from all of you, but for more practical matters of supply shipment receiving and not having a permanent address right now and keeping our home address private, we decided it would be a good idea to get a pmb address (parcel mail box address).

I wanted to test it out and stimulate the mail flow a little bit by hosting some give aways. Like I said, I have fantasies of mail from unknown people :)

This is what the give away is for:

Plus some other goodies that are yet to be decided (maybe some yarn and stitch markers if you are lucky, hehe).

All you have to do to enter is mail me a post card (cheaper postage for you) or a letter (if you feel so inclined, I love hearing from you all) with a short story of how you learned to spin/knit/crochet/weave/etc and who taught you. I love stories so be as long winded or as short as you like. Oh and if you are not a spinner, don’t despair! I’ll wrestle up some great hand dyed yarn for you instead of roving.

To:
Craft Leftovers
217 Welch Ave., Suite #101
Ames, IA 50014

It has to be post marked by August 1st (one week from today). I’ll announce the winner two weeks after that, so August 15th (give it plenty of time for people’s mail to get to me).

And that’s all for today. I’ll see you all on Monday!

++ Kristin Roach ++

ps - all the clm subscriptions are out and on their way to you lovely folks, I’m going to eat lunch and send an email to all the subscribers, if you ordered and don’t get a confirmation by tomorrow, email me at craftleftovers (at) gmail (dot) com and let me know. I don’t want to miss anyone!

I met Beth about a year ago at the local yarn shop where I worked, she was always wearing these fabulous knit dresses and wonderfully creative clothes. We always got on well, but it wasn’t until Earth Day when I saw her booth at the Earth Day festival on campus that I realized she had an etsy shop and sold her own yarn and knit hats and prints and did ceramics too! What a dynamo! We started hanging out and it’s been so fun getting to know her and see her spring into action and self employment. So without further delay I would like to introduce you to my friend Beth and her wonderful work and life. She lives in DeKalb, IL. You can visit her shop here and her blog here.

What’s your favorite medium to work in?
Oooh that is a tough one. Any given day I might be trying something new or going back to something that I had abandoned. I can give a list of stuff I work in though. There are SOME things I don’t do after all.
My latest projects have all been knitting, mainly hats in recycled yarns (which I NEED TO FINISH). I have some projects planned that include making some vintage tin badges I found at a garage sale into belt buckles, working on some wood block prints, and making jewelry out of the leftovers from frogging sweaters for yarn. So ok, I was supposed to say favorite materials… Silk, cotton, cashmere and angora blends are some of my favorite yarns. I like vintage materials, odds and ends in interesting styles. I also love terra cotta clay. It has a lovely earthy richness.

When did you first learn to knit? Who taught you?
I first learned to knit in a class taught by Lindsay Obermeyer, a pretty well known fiber artist. You can check out a little of her work in the summer 2006 issue of Knit.1 Anyway she was heading the Fibers department at NIU for a year while the main professor was on sabbatical. So I took one of her classes as an elective and in the class we learned how to make a few kinds of beadwork, how to make netting and how to knit. I had a lot of trouble at first with it, but pretty soon I was off. After the required samplers the first thing that I knit was a hat. I really really stuck with knitting in (a) way other crafts and arts had not grabbed my attention. I tend to get frustrated and bored with a lot of things. I’ve always been one of those people who has to do things my way or the highway and I don’t care much for procedure so the first thing I bought was a stitch dictionary and set about learning how to read the directions so I could apply the patterns to things I want to knit. It took me a year to learn how to read patterns. I made a lot of mistakes, but I still have quite a few of those first things that I knit.

How did you come up with the name for your shop? And how does it relate to what you sell?
Ahhh the name of my shop. After I decided I wanted an Etsy store I knew I HAD to have a great name. Something that spoke to philosophy but wasn’t constraining so I wouldn’t feel the need to set up a different shop at some point in the future because I chose (the wrong) name. So I sat down with the thesaurus on my computer and an idea that I wanted two contrasting words one that meant taking apart and one that meant rebuilding, so I went through about a million permutations of the idea with different words till I found one that said what I wanted and easily rolled off my tongue. Therefore: defaceReconstruct. I made it one word because it looked cool. It really relates to all of my products because, really in order to make ANYTHING you have to take something apart. You have to dig clay and metals out of the ground, you have to shear the sheep, you have to cut down the tree. I have always had an attraction to reduction. What is the simplest way to produce something, starting with its base elements. I have always wanted to own a sheep and take the fiber from that animal to make into yarn to make into and garment or accessory. I have my hands on all of the chain. This is obviously not practical at this time of my life,… but I try to take these attractions and principles into the things I do produce. I think reusing old things is almost as good.

What first made you think to recycle yarn to resell?
I had heard of it a couple of years ago as a cheap way to get nice yarn and as I had a pretty fiendish yarn habit I thought this sounded great. So I went to the Salvation Army and picked out a bright green heathered sweater to frog. It prompty stayed in its original bag for a year and a half. Yeah… it took me a while to get around to it. So in March of this year I finally got around to taking apart that sweater. It was not in the best condition the yarn had MANY weak points and was a little brittle from being worn. But I was hooked. I loved taking apart something crappy and gaining something great out of it. For the record I kept that yarn and have made several lovely already broken in hats out of it. So in April I got a random Convo on my neglected Etsy store that had three lonely hats in it from a girl named Cassie asking if I would like to participate in an Eco Art Fair for Earth Day. I didn’t have ANYTHING to sell. I’d been depressed for the last year or so and hadn’t made any artwork or crafts. So I had a lightbulb and thought, I’ll buy some sweaters and sell the yarn at the fair. And so it began. I got a pretty good response at the fair and have taken it forward from there.

How did you come up with your Green Bean? Does it speak to the idea of being green by using recycled materials? You mean sprouting bean?
Hahahah oh geez, its a little embarrassing how that got invented, but I’ll tell. I once drew a little doodle of a legless armless woman with a bonnet on looking at a baby on the ground. I liked the way the woman looked so much that later, when thinking of things to draw for my printmaking class, I gave it arms and legs and called it Bean Baby. I made a large print of bean baby sleeping inside a sprouting bean. I took the sprouting bean and gave it arms legs and eyes and the sprouting bean was born. There is a whole little theology with these characters that includes an ear of corn with a halo that is god. That was a strange time in my life. Heh. I’m not sure that I specifically connect it with being green so much as just a simpler feeling of anthropomorphized (ten dollar word) nature.

In your profile you say that you are working on writing up some patterns, a wonderful idea! I like they way you phrase that you desire to share the creativity. Any idea when we might see the first patterns for sale?
Within the next month or so. I’m making basic patterns with ideas for personalized embellishments so I still have to work on the embellishments part, but I’m getting close. I also have a secret collaborative project in the works, but I’ll be mum about that for the time being. I think sometimes people have a hard time envisioning what they might do with recycled yarn, so I want to share my ideas for that.

What goals do you have for your shop? yourself?
I’m hoping to make at least a living wage working for myself. Obviously I want to do as well as I can, but to at least make enough money to pay my own bills and put a little away would be my wildest dream at the moment. I dream big ;)
I’m hoping my shop grows and breathes and gets a life of its own. Sometimes goals are all well and good, but there are also times you have to follow the rabbit down the hole and drink the potion. I think I’m drinking the potion right now. Haha.
Anyway, I’m hoping to give back to the world a little bit by bringing high quality recycled yarns to people on a budget, who enjoy fine fibers. I want to supply other crafters who are interested in using recycled products, but hesitate to recycle them themselves. As for my non-shop related goals I’m hoping to travel a bit more by train, maybe make it to Europe again at some point. I’m also filled with lust for a tiny little house of our own. I want a garden and dog and a work shed in the backyard and maybe a kid someday before my ovaries stop working. That’s pretty maybe on the kid, but I think I’d want one at some point. Who knows?

Thanks beth!

I found this lovely pair of artist’s shop while cruising around etsy. After reading the shop profile so many questions filled my head! First off the work is amazing, and the back story turned out to be just as interesting.

You can check out their shop and all of their wonderful works here.

I contacted Susan and she was kind enough to answer my questions, and in such a great narrative flow.

Here is her profile that sparked my curiosity:

“Born in NY,went to college as an art major, moved to AZ in 1969 in a paisley paneled van. Lived in a ghost town & helped bring it back to life. Learned how to milk goats, make jewelry, grow a garden and raise a child.

My mother taught me to be creative and productive; my father gave me his Type A personality; my 3 husbands taught me self-worth, patience, tenacity and gratitude.

Everything here in our Etsy shop is made by my husband and me, by hand, in our home in Arizona. Our 3 cats occasionally lend a paw. They are our muses, after all…”

And here are the questions I asked and that she so kindly responded to in full:

Me: I really enjoyed the short story of how you got where you are, from art school in ny to milking goats and gardening in az, would you care to extrapolate on that story? Where did you go? what did you study? How did you make the change to where you are now?
Susan: “Well, Kristin, I’ve lived a long and colorful life. I went to SUNY New Paltz, NY, and took a major in Art Ed and English. While there, I met my first husband. He was a draftsman, musician and philosopher, and we pooled resources and bought a van, paneled it with paisley material and headed west. We were looking to meet up with some friends from NY, but really had no idea where they were. So we stopped at every commune and arts colony in NM, & AZ, went up to Berkeley (just missed them) came back to AZ and found them birthing their baby in the Verde River. We stayed, camped for awhile and wound up buying a miner’s shack in Jerome AZ. That’s where we had gardens and goats and I gave birth at home to our son. We made silver jewelry and traveled to Santo Domingo, Jemez Pueblo, and the Hopi & Navajo reservations trading for heishe beads and inlaid jewelry. I also did beadwork and leather work to trade.

Later on, we started an artist’s guild, selling other local artists wares along with our own out of our van, ran an art gallery, and I wound up running for Town Council, being elected Vice Mayor. My first husband and I broke up when our son was 9. I got a job at the Jerome Post Office (small town, 400 people) and combined with the art gallery job, I managed to make a skimpy living. I met my second husband while I was working at the Post Office in Jerome. Later I got promoted to Postmaster in a small mining town, Bagdad, AZ and moved there. I did quite a bit of commuting on weekends, to maintain my marriage and keep my house and son in order. My second husband and I divorced, and I moved full time to Bagdad, living there for 17 years as Postmaster. My creative outlet was editing the state Postmaster newsletter, taking photos and doing layout. I met my 3rd (and last) husband in 1996 and we married three weeks later. He’s retired and very creative. He makes all the beautiful turquoise items in our shop. He also works with antler and inlays them with various stones and shells.

Me: In your profile is said that you and your husband currently make everything in the shop, do you collaborate or are items specifically his and your’s? how do your styles and creative methods come together, how are they different?
Susan: I have a lot of materials and supplies from the old days in Jerome, and together we’ve purchased lapidary equipment and tools. We work together on what stones look good together, how to assemble the final piece, pricing, etc. He is the perfectionist; I’m more the free spirit. He brought the beautiful, natural, untreated Kingman turquoise with him, from his days as a copper miner and rockhound. After working in awhile in his lapidary shop, he’ll bring me special beads and polished stones for me to use. (So sweet!) Or a finished piece to photograph and list on Etsy.

I retired in 2005 and have been having a blast getting back into some of the things I did when I wasn’t working fulltime. I love making my crocheted brooches- each is different and has its own personality.

Me: How did you decide to start and etsy shop together?
Susan: I started the shop last October. I had planned on doing it earlier- I joined Etsy in April- but my husband had some very serious health problems and I wound up spending most of the summer in hospital rooms and doctor’s offices. That’s where I originally started knitting and crocheting to pass the time. In September he started to heal (triple bypass, etc etc) and by October he was doing well enough I could see the way to start our shop. At first, I put up my knit & crocheted pieces, then some beaded jewelry, earrings, and then he finished the first big turquoise piece, a necklace of many drilled nuggets, so of course we had to put it up on Etsy. I started making the crocheted brooches – they were fun and quick to make, and I just love the way they look on a scarf or a shirt.

Me: What, other than your 3 kitty muses, inspires your work?
Susan: We’re inspired by the gorgeous Arizona weather, the cats, the garden and fruit trees in bloom- just about anything, really. We try to reduce, re-use, recycle as much as we can. Not much goes to waste around here. We compost and grow our veggies and enjoy each day to its fullest. Our goal is to make things that beautify the wearer and have a natural feel. And it keeps us active and in touch with so many people on Etsy. The sense of community is really great, and the satisfaction of seeing our little shop with all it’s creations makes us smile.

Me: What goals do you and your husband have for yourselves, your work, your shop?
Susan: As far as long-term goals, we look forward to continued good health and we like to stay busy. Etsy does that for us. It makes each new day a happy surprise. It gives us something to look forward to - It keeps us young!

Thank you so much Susan for taking the time to answer my questions. I have so enjoyed your story and wish you and Mitch the best in all of your endeavors! Best wishes and the Best of Health to you!

Also a PS from Susan, her sister also has an etsy shop, and it is also packed with lovely handmade things, make sure to check that out too!

See you all next week! Keep it crafty everyone!