One of the things I most look forward to each week is the weekly photoblog posting from my friend Viktor from Atlanta. His blog, Nostalgia Migranta, showcases his amazing photographs elegantly, with a minimum of fuss. Viktor just forwarded me a mysterious photoblog post from a blog called cafedelunivers. This is some extreme craft. It's also not safe for work, so follow the link at your own peril.
The summer is drawing to a close. As great as it's been, with my trip to China, buying an awesome house and having time to decompress, I think I'm actually ready to shake the summer fog from my brain and get back to teaching. I've been neglecting my Extreme Craft duties as well. I'm always reminded of this when I check up on sites like what not to crochet, and one of my new favorites, Badder Homes and Gardens.
Badder Homes and Gardens is maintained by Nikki, Krista and Sarah, three whip-smart Texas gals whose motto is "even cynical bitches want their homes to look pretty". They've got a great collective eye for clever art and design, and a knack for describing beauty with bathroom humor, which is no easy feat.
As most Extreme Craft readers know, craft can be a dangerous, even life-threatening business. 55 year old Ellin Klor found this out the hard way when she was on the way to a knitting club meeting. Apparently, she was so jazzed to show her friends some new patterns that she bounded up the front stairs, knitting needles in hand. Unfortunately, Ms. Klor tripped, and one of the knitting needles (the actual remnant is pictured above) pierced her chest, lodged in her heart, and snapped off. She didn't even notice until she got into the house, where 911 was promptly called.
The trauma team at Stanford University Hospital successfully removed the (shockingly large gauge) needle from her heart, stitched her up and sent her home. Twelve days later, Klor woke up with a pain in her chest and shortness of breath, and got back in touch with her doctors. When she went back to the hospital, every test came back negative until a doctor noticed that one of her lymph nodes was swollen.
Klor was soon diagnosed with breast cancer, which she had successfully fought a decade earlier. Doctors actually think that the knitting needle incident saved her life, as the malignancy wouldn't have been caught until it started to spread. According to a Newsweek article, her line of thinking that got her past the breast cancer was something like "if a knitting needle through my heart isn't enought to kill me, there's no way that a little thing like cancer is going to get in my way."
20/20 ran a video piece about Ellin Klor last Sunday, and although they didn't provide embeddable video that I could directly put up, they do have an archive of the piece HERE.
If this isn't an argument for playing fast and loose with craft, I don't know what is. Don't be afraid to run with scissors (or bound up the stairs with knitting needles). It might just save your life.
That last post inspired me to catch up with What Not to Crochet, which I hadn't visited in a while. I wasn't disappointed (It's actually impossible to be disappointed with that site). Among the cranky musings about slankets and snuggies, eye melting swimwear and fashion world miscues, there was this photo of a crochet pattern book that shows how to make crochet Hummel figurines!
I'm sure your grandkids are just DYING for a crochet doll of a Bavarian farm girl being pecked at by ducks instead that copy of Grand Theft Auto they've been hinting at.
Slowly, slowly, Extreme Craft will be recovering from my neglecting it in favor of 1000 Ideas for Creative Reuse. I thought this bit of Engrish would be just the thing to kick things off again. Anybody who's ever been to most embroidery shows knows what this person is talking about.
LINK thanks Welles!
Britain's Telegraph newspaper has delivered a SHOCKING exposé of the seedy underbelly of the craft graffiti subculture. Extreme Craft's been following these degenerates like Knitta Please! for years now, but they've finally broken through into the mainstream. For the record, here is their take on the ur-moment of knit graffiti's birth:
The craze is thought to have been dreamed up by clothes shop owner Magda Sayeg, 35, from Texas in the US.
She set up the website Knitta Please, which started off as a group for frustrated knitters who didn't know what to do with their half-finished jumpers and scarfs and so started putting them over door handles.
The craze quickly took off with Mrs Sayeg's most outlandish project being the bus.
"I was sat in my shop one afternoon and decided to do something to brighten up the place," she said.
"I looked at the door handle and decided to knit a small cosy for it.
"It drew a lot of attention after I put it on the door with people asking what it was all about.
"I called a friend later that night and explained an idea to her about using old knitting to graffiti things in the street.
"She had started knitting a baby blanket so gave it to me so I could wrap it around a 'stop' sign just outside my window.
"There was such a reaction to it. People were stopping their cars, scratching their heads and taking photographs.
"That is when I realised that I wanted to do more so set up the group."
The "Raised in Craftivity" show at the Wignall Museum in Rancho Cucamonga sports some pretty great (albeit sanctioned) examples of knit graffiti outside of the museum. Young minds are being warped. If the knitting vandals could actually knit with SILLY STRING, that would take things back to their spray can roots.
LINK thanks Gretchen!
A Kraft Kontroversy has been raging for the past few days, and I've been remiss in weighing in on it. Felt Club Majordomo Jenny Ryan and her husband, noted cartoonist Johnny Ryan, collaborated on this, the most extreme anthropomorphized plushie that I've ever seen. After Mark Frauenfelder posted the 9-11 plushies on BoingBoing, their comments section exploded, with people lining up on both sides of a raging debate.
I've got a very low threshold for bullshitty, sentimental mementos of tragic (or even special) events. You can buy World Trade Center tire covers for your custom van for chrissake. After I got sick of Christopher Reeve being wheeled out to produce tears at one too many award shows, I made a rather nasty little ceramic pot embellished with Reeves, dressed as Superman in his wheelchair, as St. Christopher. I understand Jenny and Johnny's motivation, and I've got to take my hat off to a plushie that can make me feel this conflicted.
I suggest you work your way through the comments on Mark's post and decide for yourself.
At various times in my life, I have waxed and waned between slavering Andy Warhol fan and slight ambivelence (currently swinging back in the direction of slavering fanboy, but that's a long story). I'm certainly aware of Brigid Berlin's legacy to the artworld. As a part of Warhol's factory scene, Berlin was a provocateur and performance artist, and popped up regularly in the photos and films that churned out of the factory.
I didn't know that Berlin is still an accomplished artist, and that she has shifted her allegiance to the dark side....CRAFT! Her delightful needlepoint pillows are being shown at John McWhinnie in New York. Berlin eschews typical needlepoint subjects like flowers and samplers in favor of a topic that she knows much better: tabloid newspapers. Her tabloid subjects are fitting not only because her antics were tabloid fodder back in the day, but also because her father was Richard Berlin, who oversaw the Hearst media empire for most of his life.
The show will be on view between October 21st and November 22nd. See if you can ditch your security detail and the paparazzi to see this.
LINK via EscapetoNewYork
