Finally, that new thing I’ve been hinting about for awhile – leethal quick knits!  The new section is a major pattern resource, containing links to around 70ish free patterns, which will continue to grow as I add more, and my brand new club!!

I’m so excited about the club!  It will be monthly, at least for now; it’s in its beta phase, so you can just get a 1 month membership for the August package, then in the future there will be multi-month memberships.  As you can see on the site, each month’s package will include:

• a 15 yard mini-skein of recycled hand-dyed yarn
• a 10 yard mini-skein of spun recycled yarn
• quick knit pattern exclusive to the club
• any crafty bits called for in the pattern (e.g. buttons)
• extra mystery leethal goodies and/or bits of crafty fun

As for the exclusivity of the patterns – my plan is to group club patterns into sets for sale after 3+ months pass.  So, club members are the only knitters to have access to the patterns until after 3 or more months, at which point non-members will be able to purchase them.

The August membership is for sale until August 5th, and packages will be mailed out on the 18th.  I’ve started planning the pattern and yarns, and it’s all a secret, but I will tell you something about the colorways – if you like the colors in my new site design, you’ll love one of the club yarns!  See the club page for more details, and as it says there, things could change in future months as I see how it goes.

A note to bloggers:  To encourage word-of-mouth club promotion, I will be giving membership discounts if you promise to blog about your club package once you receive it.  Comment here or email me for details if you’re interested!

Then there’s the leethal quick knits patterns page, with all patterns I’ve designed that use no more than 15 yards of yarn – including free, for sale, and published outside of leethal.

But the most exciting to you might be the link list page – around 65ish links (and ever growing) to patterns by other designers that use less than 20 yards!  Most are free (I only have 1 for sale actually) but I want to add more for sale patterns when I find more, to encourage supporting independent designers, so let me know if you know a good pattern I should add!

Patterns are divided into accessories, useful stuff, toys and decor, silliness, and crochet – I know it’s called quick knits, but I am not anti-crochet!  If you’ve released a design that uses less than 20 yards, you should see if you’re on the list!  I didn’t contact any designers because it would take waaay too long and I figured everyone would be happy to be linked…

I tried to be a bit picky when choosing patterns to put on the list – I want it to be a quality resource, so I didn’t add every single under 20 yard pattern I found.  (Though I’m sure there are lots I didn’t find at all, so let me know if I missed any!)  I think it’s a great collection, a lot of interesting/cool/funny stuff that I would totally knit!  Hope you enjoy!!

how was your wwkip day?  not that we don’t all knit in public all the time, but it’s always fun to have an excuse to go knit with a friend over coffee + ice cream (in my case) instead of staying in and working all day like i normally do on saturdays.  i met my awesome buddy star at pix for an americano and some fabulous blood orange ice cream – no shots of me knitting since i was working on a supersecret project!  (but there is this super awkward one the barista guy took when he misheard star asking me to take one and thought we wanted him to, haha)

we got to talking about designer fairness issues, a subject that was going around on knit designers’ blogs a few months ago after annie modesitt bravely addressed a major problem with vogue knitting’s designer contracts.  unfortunately, the subject came up because of a potential problem star might have with a design contract, reminding me that i never wrote about the subject here like i’d planned to.  basically, if you are a knit designer, aspiring to be one, or are a buyer of patterns in any form, i encourage you to read one or all of the posts by annie modesitt, ysolda, or knitgrrl. (these are just the ones i’ve read – let me know if there are more good ones.)

personally, i am more and more confident that self-publishing almost exclusively is the route i plan to continue taking as a designer.  i may someday submit a design to a magazine, if i have a pattern i think would be a good fit, but if/when that happens i will be reading my contract thoroughly and i will not be signing unless i’m ok with everything.  and i’ll know that there’s still a chance something will happen with my pattern that i’m not happy with, because sadly, that’s just the way it goes, it seems to me.  (usually this means it gets edited down to fit the layout, but it could be worse.)

if you are a new designer, aspiring to get published in a magazine or book as soon as the opportunity arises, i urge you, please, read those posts and don’t accept any contract that isn’t fair to you.  by signing a contract that doesn’t value your work, you would not just be hurting yourself, but you’d be making it harder for all other designers to get fair treatment.  with magazines fighting to stay in print, paying more attention to their websites as marketing tools, trying to cut corners whereever possible to stay afloat, we really need to make sure we’re not sacrificing our own well-being as designers to help them.  i want the magazines to survive as much as any other knitter, but designers deserve fair treatment dammit.  like ysolda says:  The only way things are going to change for everyone is if we stand together.

one last way to look at it, if you don’t understand why it’s important for designers to be treated fairly… imagine a knitting magazine minus the patterns… well, that’s just ridiculous… how about, think about what you like about knitting magazines and knitting websites out of everything there is (patterns, articles, book reviews, ads, etc) – now think about what percentage of the value for you comes from the patterns… now read this excerpt from annie modesitt’s post:

Designers earn just a hair more now for a pattern than they did in the mid-80′s. Factor in cost of living, and we’re earning less than we did 20 years ago. Add to this the latest slap in the face – 90% of internet sales revenue will go back to the magazine – and we, as designers, realize exactly how much we’re valued. T E N P E R C E N T.

not cool. right? right.

ok moving on to fun fiber-related stuff… black sheep is friday!!  i’ll be heading to eugene with caitlin, star, and kate, and i’m suuuper excited!  it was a great time last year, and i got tons of fibery goodness!  this year, i’m bringing less cash and buying only a few specific things i have in mind, but even though my spending it limited, it’s just so fun to look at all the pretty fiber and yarn… mmmmmmm… and then there’s the animals! yay!

and lastly, for this knit-tastic post, i made this hat for a birthday present for my brother ben:

ok that’s all, just wanted to show you.  i have a feeling i won’t be posting for a little while because pete’s parents are in town so we’ll be hanging with them a bunch doing fun portlandy things.  if you see me at black sheep, say hi!

a couple days ago i realized that i missed my 1 year anniversary of being self-employed – kind of a big deal, pretty freaking awesome!  i honestly didn’t think i’d make it a year without getting some kind of part-time job or taking work i didn’t want, but i did it!  so, in traditional blog-related anniversary fashion, i made a massive (2-part) photo mosaic of images taken from my blog posts over the last year…

it was fun reading back over all i’ve done! that’s a smattering of worky things, designs, fun (craft-related) events/outings, etc…  so i’ve been doing a lot of reflecting the last couple days, and it’s funny that it seems my state of mind now isn’t too far away from where it was a year ago.  i’m so happy that i’ve made it here, but this whole freelancey self-employed career is just as scary now as it was then!  it’s also amazing and exciting and totally worth the stress and constant working and any other downsides!  but yeah, i’m still just doing a few solid things that i know will bring me a little rent money, and the rest is up in the air, just like it was a year ago.  the big difference is now i know i made it this first year, so i don’t see any reason why i can’t make it another!

moving on, diane is doing a craftypod giveaway for my ten 10 yard cuffs ebook!  to win, you just have to comment on the post with your thoughts on ebooks – there are some interesting comments so far.  i feel similarly to a lot of people – i love to hold a book in my hands and flip through the physical pages, but buying ebooks saves paper, ink, other resources, shipping, and money, so it’s a trade off.  as a self-publisher, pdfs are soooo much easier to sell than anything physical that i have to mail out (especially knitting pdfs thanks to ravelry!!), and they save me so much time and money that i can sell them so much cheaper and everyone benefits.

i do make a physical version of the cuffs book, but only for the kits – i give the option of getting a kit with a pdf instead, but i don’t give the option of getting a real book instead of an ebook alone.  this is mostly because of my own resources (time and money) but also because each book i make up uses paper (even if it is recycled paper) and ink and i try not to be wasteful.  but, it’s all very hard for me to make decisions like this (ebook vs real book) because of my love for real books, so i totally understand the people who say they don’t buy digital.  i think it’s this major adjustment we’re all going to have to slowly get used to because it just makes sense (economically, ecologically) for both self-publishers and buyers to go in the digital direction.  and as far as publishing companies go, well that’s a whole other subject, but i think more and more writers will go in the self-publishing direction, and therefore end up going digital.  generally speaking.  what do you think?

and then this topic leads to another of diane’s recent posts – how to kill your favorite website.  this is a fantastic post about the financial demise of craftstylish, as it followed many other craft publications in its inability to successfully monetize and keep up its awesomeness.  you should go read the post – it’s a tough subject and diane did a great job of concisely breaking it down.  basically, this world needs to evolve, because what used to work just doesn’t anymore.  as for what you, the reader, can do, i’ll copy diane’s conclusion here: “For now, when you watch TV, read websites, or flip through magazines, consider asking yourself these questions: ‘Who made this? Did I get value from it? And if so, how can I support the people who created that value?’”

and she inspired me to create yet another mosaic, this one featuring my favorite craftstylish projects from my 8 months of tutorials over there.  and i’ll quote her again because she said it best: “I think it’s good to point out: all this content was brought to you by them. There’s no way I could have created the time to make so many how-tos if they weren’t paying me for them.”  so true.

so now that i’m going in this new direction for my own career path – trying to be a bit more self-sufficient instead of relying on the continued success of outside sources (like i was doing with craftstylish), i do plan to devote some time once in awhile to quality tutorials here on do stuff! but, of course, this is part of my “job” and unfortunately it does all come down to money (hey i may live in a cheap apartment in portland, but rent and food still cost money).  i think it’s obvious that this blog’s purpose is, in part, to help crafters and potential shoppers become aware of my stuff and patterns for sale.  but i don’t plan on ever putting ads on my blog and i hope that i’m able to make ends meet doing what i’m doing, so that i can afford the time to put valuable content here for you to enjoy, cost free!  (one thing i did just add while working on my site redesign is the little share this page! button at the bottom of each post. sharing any of my posts that you like, via twitter, facebook, email, or a ton of other methods offered, is an easy and free way that you can help support me!)

which leads me to yet another craftypod topic, from the latest podcast which i just listened to - craft blogging: what should you write about? the part that spoke most strongly to me was about writing your passion.  when i first started brainstorming about making a zine, which then branched off and became this blog, i was so excited to think up the concept/title do stuff! because, as silly as it sounds, that it my passion!  doing stuff!  my whole life i’ve always hated the idea of boredom – i’d get angry at my brothers for saying they were bored – i’ve always had a million projects going on at once (even as a little kid), multi-tasking whenever possible.  so instead of just starting a craft zine/blog, i wanted to start a “stuff” zine/blog, so i’d have the freedom to write about any stuff that i like to do!  sure, i’m passionate about knitting and knit design, and crafting in general, but i’m also passionate about photography, and i also have bursts of passionate phases in printmaking, cooking/baking, sewing, web design, dyeing+spinning, art, music, beading, home decorating projects, and who knows what else in the future!

so, i created do stuff! and sometimes i lose sight of the point.  so i need to remember my passion: doing stuff!  i can’t let myself blog so often about things i’m selling (i try really hard to keep that down to a smallish percentage of my posts) and i need to remember to blog more often, in general, because there’s always some fun stuff going on in my life!  it may not be craft related, which is why i might not think to blog it, but if it’s doing stuff related and i’m into it, then hey, it’s blog material!  so i’ve come up with a few different blog topics that i hope to make regular quicky posts – things that i can get up here without so much time and writing required, so that i’ll be posting more often, and with more variety.  i’ll leave the topics a secret for now, but you’ll start seeing them soon!

the last year has gone by so quickly (but it’s felt long at the same time, as time always does) – tuesday was the 1 year anniversary of my first threadbanger weekly diy roundup post, which i’ve done every single week since then.  so i decided they should all be in one place together, for you and for myself, so spent hours last night while watching tv making this huge linked, dated, numbered list.  all 53 (1 per week, plus friday’s #53), categorized to give it some order.

update: #109 bike projects on 5/28/10 was my last roundup for threadbanger, so now this is a full list of all my weekly roundups!

the categories aren’t perfect, many posts could fit into multiple categories, but this is the best i could come up with.  i figured knitters/crocheters would like to see the free pattern posts in one place – but, as you can see with the asterisks, some of those have some non-yarn projects, and some of the roundups in other categories have some knit/crochet patterns mixed in.

then the plan is to keep this post updated – every month or so i’ll add the new ones, so if you like roundups you can bookmark this post and watch as it grows!  [yeah that didn't happen, but the list is complete now!]

knit/crochet (*some non-knit/crochet items):

• 11: granny square projects! (7/11/08)
• 29: ski masks! (11/14/08)
• 36: mittens! (1/02/09)*
• 37: scarves! (1/09/09)
• 38: coffee sleeves and mug cozies! (1/16/09)*
• 40: hat patterns, part 1! (2/02/09)
• 41: hat patterns, part 2! (2/06/09)
• 42: hat patterns, part 3! (2/13/09)
• 43: movie costume and accessory projects! (2/20/09)*
• 44: scarflets and cowls! (2/27/09)
• 45: crochet kitchen stuff! (3/06/09)
• 49: nintendo knit and crochet projects! (4/03/09)
• 55: funny knit patterns! (5/15/09)
• 56: summery knit and crochet patterns! (5/22/09)
• 65: quick knit and crochet patterns! (7/24/09)
• 67: sock knitting! (8/7/09)
• 68: small crochet projects! (8/14/09)
• 69: knit and crochet head kerchiefs! (8/21/09)
• 71: knit and crochet vests! (9/4/09)
• 75: game-related knit+crochet projects! (10/02/09)
• 77: knit and crochet halloween costumes! (10/16/09)
• 80: knit and crochet blankets! (11/06/09)
• 82: knit sweater patterns! (11/20/09)
• 88: knit and crochet cephalopods and tentacles! (1/04/10)
• 92: knit mittens (part 2)! (1/29/10)
• 95: knit+crochet leg warmers! (2/19/10)
• 98: fingerless mitts, part 2 – crocheted! (3/12/10)
• 99: fingerless mitts, part 3 – knit! (3/19/10)
• 104: knit triangle shawls! (4/23/10)

objects:

• 04: bulletin boards! (5/22/08)
• 09: reusable shopping bags! (6/27/08)**
• 10: drink cozies! (7/04/08)**
• 16: hair accessories! (8/15/08)**
• 17: cat/pet beds! (8/22/08)
• 18: backpacks and messenger bags! (8/29/08)
• 19: pens, pencils, and cases! (9/05/08)
• 20: household cleaners! (9/12/08)
• 22: coasters! (9/26/08)**
• 32: wreaths! (12/05/08)
• 35: games! (12/26/08)
• 48: sock monkeys! (3/27/09)**
• 57: laptop cases! (5/29/09)**
• 62: straps! (7/4/09)**
• 70: earrings! (8/28/09)
• 73: notebooks! (9/18/09)
• 76: trivets, pot holders, and table decor! (10/09/09)
• 84: pincushions! (12/04/09)**
• 105: headboards! (4/30/10)
• 108: light switch plates! (5/21/10)

clothing:

• 01: shoes, shoes, and more shoes! (4/28/08)**
• 02: shoes for guys! (5/09/08)
• 13: t-shirts into tank tops! (7/25/08)
• 15: skirt tutorials! (8/08/08)
• 52: handmade prom dresses! (4/24/09)
• 53: more skirts! (5/01/09)
• 79: crafted scarves! (10/30/09)
• 97: fingerless mitts, part 1 – sewn and recycled! (3/05/10)
• 102: spring sewing projects! (4/09/10)

projects using a material:

• 05: old jeans! (5/30/08)
• 07: necktie projects! (6/13/08)
• 08: scrap thread uses! (6/20/08)
• 12: button down shirt projects! (7/18/08)
• 24: felted sweater wool projects! (10/10/08)
• 47: unwanted vinyl record projects! (3/20/09)
• 60: pillowcase projects! (6/19/09)
• 64: paper clip projects! (7/17/09)
• 74: photo projects from photojojo! (9/25/09)
• 96: zipper projects! (2/26/10)

techniques/projects using a technique:

• 03: printing on fabric! (5/15/08)
• 14: weaving! (8/01/08)
• 21: couch and chair re-upholstery! (9/19/08)
• 61: spinning yarn! (6/26/09)
• 91: artful embroidery! (1/22/10)
• 103: paper quilling! (4/16/10)

assorted other category:

• 06: planting! (6/06/08)
• 46: flower projects! (3/13/09)**
• 58: rainbow pride projects! (6/05/09)**
• 59: music projects! (6/12/09)**
• 63: recipe organization! (7/10/09)
• 66: pet projects! (7/31/09)**
• 72: craft space organization and inspiration! (9/11/09)
• 90: crafters helping haiti! (1/15/10)
• 100: craft space organization! (3/26/10)
• 107: mac projects! (5/14/10)**
• 109: bike projects! (5/28/10)**

seasonal/holiday:

• 23: fall projects! (10/03/08)**
• 25: halloween costumes! (10/17/08)
• 26: pumpkin carving! (10/24/08)
• 27: election-related projects! (10/31/08)
• 28: holiday gift guides! (11/07/08)
• 30: diy thanksgiving! (11/21/08)
• 31: handmade holiday shopping! (11/28/08)
• 33: ornaments! (12/12/08)**
• 34: gift wrapping! (12/19/08)
• 39: happy inauguration day! (1/20/09)**
• 50: egg decorating! (4/10/09)
• 51: recent earthy project highlights! (4/17/09)
• 54: mother’s day gifts! (5/08/09)
• 78: halloween crafting! (10/23/09)
• 81: drinks for winter warming! (11/13/09)
• 83: advent calendars! (11/27/09)
• 85: holiday ornaments! (12/11/09)
• 86: stockings! (12/18/09)**
• 87: holiday food! (12/25/09)
• 89: downloadable 2010 calendars! (1/08/10)
• 93: heart craft projects! (2/05/10)**
• 94: heart projects, part 2! (2/12/10)
• 101: eggs and bunnies! (4/02/10)**
• 106: mother’s day corsages! (5/07/10)

**several knit/crochet patterns

i have non-crafty things totally in the spirit of doing stuff! that i want to talk about, which don’t have pictures, so i’m going to stick a few old black and white film photos in here because of my excitement about my recent discovery that you can develop film with coffee!! can you believe it?! my mind was so seriously blown when i came across that photojojo post!  so these were developed the old fashioned chemical way (by me in my bathroom), but i hope to be showing you coffee-developed photos sometime soon! (you can see other people’s coffee photos here.)

have i mentioned before that pete is starting a non-profit?  it’s still in the way beginning planning stages, but we’ve brainstormed about it quite a bit, and i’ve just gotten the simple place-holder webpage up!  it’s called 2 cent solar, and you can read a bit about it at 2centsolar.org.  (not taking donations yet because it’s not started yet, but i’ll definitely keep you updated!)  the basic logo is also a place holder – we’ll probably be putting a call out to graphic designers to donate their skillz and make a logo, so let us know if you might be interested…

ok this is something i should have done years ago, but i tried once and couldn’t figure it out, gave up for awhile, transferred my domain names away from yahoo to a more easily manageable place, finally got around to trying again and finally figured it out! oh yeah, “what’s it?” you ask…  well leethal.net is now leethal.net, it no longer takes you to leethal.coloredlights.net.  which means this blog is now leethal.net/zine instead of the old leethal.coloredlights.net/zine (so long!) etc.  all old links with the coloredlights in the middle will still work, so you shouldn’t need to change your rss feed or bookmarks or anything, but i’m really happy that new links won’t have to be so long and annoying anymore!

so i wanted to ask you all a favor, since i’m not so savvy with this domain server kind of stuff (clearly)… could you let me know if you happen to come across any issues, broken links, etc, in any of my sites?  i fixed all of ours (mine and pete’s) so nothing transfers to coloredlights anymore like they all used to.  the other thing is that i think they should all work either with or without the www but maybe that might be a problem on some browsers or computers, so if you can’t get to any sites without the w’s, let me know and i’ll make sure to always use w’s when linking.  here are all of them, just for fun…

leethal.net, leemeredith.com, badmoviebingo.net (and badmoviebingogame.com), metalheadpete.com, the newest 2centsolar.org (and 2centsolar.com, twocentsolar.org, twocentsolar.com), and coloredlights.net, my original website i started in college.  we have a lot of websites!

another thing i’ll just mention here because i’ve been thinking about it a lot lately and maybe some readers out there have advice or anything else to share…  i’m starting to plan a self-published book!  i got myself indie publishing at powell’s the other day (image from concretehermit), i’ve started to shop around local printers a little (if you know of a portland printer that does full-color books, i’d love recommendations!!) and i’m pretty excited about the whole thing!  i do want to get issue #2 of do stuff! finished and released before putting too much effort into the book though…

and speaking of books… one big thing i’m planning to start here on do stuff! is book reviews!  i have an ever growing list of books in my current collection that need to be raved about (and even some with giveaways!!) so i want to start doing reviews regularly, like one every 2 weeks ish, starting possibly today or tomorrow.  so, if any rad books happen to magically end up in my mailbox, i’d definitely do something bloggy with them, hint hint if any authors/publishers happen to be reading hehe…  so many awesome craft books have been coming out lately, i can hardly keep up with them all!!

wow, the last week was so overwhelmingly awesome, i don’t even know where to start.  so i’m going to break it up a bit, to avoid a massive post that you can’t get through… so here’s part 1: fun times with amazing people!

friday morning the weekend of crazamazingly crafty fun times (all because of the handmade nation premiere) started with superyummy breakfast at cadillac cafe with rachel (in from austin), kim (in from vancouver bc), sarah+josh, susan+pearl, betsy (in from north carolina), teresa (and her incredible art necklaces), diane, and pete.  it was so great get to meet the non-portlanders who i only knew online before.  rachel gave pete+i that adorable painted doll set, in the embroidered sack – cutest things ever!! i love them so much!

so, if you’re on twitter you’re probably well aware of this… a few weeks ago some of us were geeking out over our excitement about the weekend and kim first uttered the word “#craftgasm” and there it was.  rachel designed a logo, i carved it into a lino block, printed up enough patches for everyone, and carried them with me all weekend to pass out, mostly to twitter nerds, but also to anyone else that entered our craftnerd circle.

by the end of the weekend, my patch was surrounded by rad buttons!  those top three are ones i made way back when i was still at my day job – they are a quote digibudi said on the craftypod episode men who craft; i doodled them on scrap paper at work, then turned the doodles into buttons when i got home.  they say “fish need to swim,” “birds need to fly,” “humans need to create.”  then the bottom 2 were picked up at the museum after the panel (which i’ll get into in my part 2 post) and the “do!” button was made at the diy table at crafty wonderland on sunday – “do!” as in “do stuff!” yeah!!

anyway, after breakfast we all headed over to knittn’ kitten and took over the store!  you can see kim and betsy posing in awesome smock finds at the top, and then banzo the kitten sniffing my finds from the kitten!  i didn’t mean to get so much, but things kept jumping into my basket!  all those big spools of fat thread are for handspun plying, and you can see me discovering that that stripey fabric will make a rad skirt in diane‘s photostream.  my favorite find was that little bag of weirdo cat beads – the two blue ones will definitely become a pair of earrings, and i’m not sure what to do with the red one, but i love love it!!

after the kitten, rachel, kim, diane, and i were off to check out cool cottons and kinokuniya!  i was able to resist buying anything (there weren’t as many knitting books as usual, so that helped me resist), but over lunch we poured over rachel’s amazing find and now i want to buy that one!!  then we went up to kim’s room at the ace hotel downtown – holy crap the ace is awesome!! wow!

check out the fire escape route above – screen printed on fabric with stitching and a button! there was rad artwork everywhere, and i was lucky to get to see 2 different rooms since michaela and jennifer joined us at the screening and i got to go up and see michaela+greg’s room.  i love all the little details all over the hotel, so great!  and not only is there a stumptown inside the hotel, but, as you can see below, there’s even a photo booth! everything i love!  we shot a strip with us craftstylish gals, in which i was the frontmost person, making my head huge (like an orange on a toothpick)!  (when i get a digital copy of it up on flickr, i’ll link to it here.)

so then most of day 2 was spent hanging out and having crafty fun times at susan’s house.  it was so so awesome to be in a room full of crafters of all kinds (not just knitters like i’m used to, not that there’s anything wrong with knitters, of course!) all working on their own projects, and helping each other, and talking and laughing… it was a great day!!  below you can see betsy with her toast (!) needlepoint project (which gave heather the desire to crossstitch on toast!) and a crochet lesson…

we were so happy to present diane with her group gift of the tie quilt she found a few weeks ago…

…and there was a little tweeting of course.  (that’s 3 iphones in one photo!)  and i always love spending time with the perfect pearl (and caitlin too of course), below.  besides everyone i’ve already mentioned, garth and kacy and patrick and michelle and her little girl and heather‘s little ones joined us too… i hope i’m not forgetting anyone, there were so many rad people!

day 3 started with a vanilla ginger pear filled waffle at the waffle wagon on division, where star got to join a bunch of us for a bit.  it was fun to be out in the sunshine (we have sun in portland!) and the food was delicious indeed.  (personally though, i prefer the waffle window on hawthorne – in my humble opinion it’s just as yummytastic for half the price, but that’s just me.)  how lucky i am to live within walking distance of both a waffle wagon and a waffle window! i love you, se portland!

then i headed to crafty wonderland to check out the goods, make a button, and get a crafty surprise from the new machine!!  i got to hang with betsy before she left town, and talk to some other twitter friends with tables, and meet faythe levine and jill bliss.  what a weekend!!

ok to conclude, i’m going to borrow a quote from diane’s blog/zine (hope you don’t mind, diane!)

When you’re in a group of real-live people, and a spontaneous joke happens, or a great conversation, that’s a 3D moment.  There are so many unique sensory elements involved: the sights, sounds, and smells of the place you’re all in, plus the facial expressions and voices of the other people. There’s your emotional state, and the emotions of the other people. There’s the energy of the group as a whole, and the feeling of connection. All these elements make for vivid, memorable experiences.

i hope there’s another huge craft event happening in portland soon so everyone comes back!!

you can see everyone’s photos in the flickr group diane created for the weekend! if you took any, be sure to add them to the pool!

i had been excited about susan beal‘s new book, button it up, since she was writing it, and now it’s out and my review over on the threadbanger blog just went up!  to celebrate the buttony goodness of the book, craftstylish has been having button month all march!  so many fun projects!  i was already totally addicted to vintage button collecting, and now that i’m going through my stash at lightning speed with my projects, i’m feeling obsessive about shopping for more!  i need to happen upon a jar full of em at a thrift store or garage sale, that would be freakin awesome!

so, my first project for the month was a free knitting pattern for this buttony chevron cuff! combining two loves (knitting and vintage buttons) is the best! the pattern is written to work for any needles/yarn and you can choose your cuff width. (ravelry link)

next was one of my most ambitious projects – the gridded button portrait:

can you tell who it’s a portrait of when it’s far away (in the photo below)?

if you can’t tell, you’ll see over in the tutorial. as i explained on craftstylish, i was really into chuck close in college and i did a couple different self portraits inspired by his style (this one with markers and this painting). i was excited to try this gridded concept with buttons, and i think it worked out fantastically! someday if i happened upon a massive stash of vintage buttons, i might do a bigger one, like a whole door or something!

and then last week’s post was how to make wall art with vintage fabric and buttons. i love showing off bits of cool fabric as wall art, and i think adding some vintage buttons to the mix turns it into something special!  the green one is my personal favorite:

but i like them all! now i want to make a bunch more and fill up the whole wall!!

so you should totally check out all the button projects over there, but a few of my favorites are susan’s shrink art buttons, linda’s woven button coaster, erika’s beautiful button pillow, and diane’s singleton buttons.  i still have 3 more button projects coming up, and i’m sure everyone else will have more great ones, so keep checking back!

and now for some buttontastic eye candy from susan’s book! here are a couple of my favorite projects:

and you know how i love cuffs!

(check out my threadbanger review for a few more pictures)

well i still can’t believe they asked me to do this, but i’m the latest crafty superstar over on cut out + keep (along with crafters like jennifer perkins and natalie zee drieu)!  all my projects over there are originally from either here on do stuff! or craftstylish; an assortment of five different types of crafty tutorials (knitting, sewing, printing).  the projects got added one at a time throughout the last week… here is a screen shot i took when i noticed the rotating bubble on top said my name!

ok i feel weird talking about myself so much like this, so moving on…. there are a bunch of crafty superstars i wasn’t familiar with before, with some awesome projects! check out joan of dark’s decode hat (i love that the bobbles are randomly placed!), katie marcus’s deep v top, lady wurlitzer’s carrier tidy, and i remember loving this record album mail organizer the first time i saw it on sarah mccoll’s blog.  good stuff!

if you are new to my blog, coming from cut out + keep, or anywhere else, welcome!  i’m sorry i’m terrible at replying to comments, but i want everyone to know that i read and appreciate every single comment i get (here, via email, via ravelry, etc), so if you don’t hear back from me, know that i really do thank your for your feedback!

one extra thing, since this is such a short post… i just want to say how much i love twitter!  in the last few days, i’ve gotten help with finding an accountant for taxes, advice on making quiche, tons of links to great things (a constant flow, always), many laughs, motivation and inspiration from all the awesome people (tweeple?) i follow!  if you don’t tweet and you’re curious about it, i definitely recommend giving it a try.  it’s not for everyone, but it’s definitely for me!!  (and, by the way, i’m just getting set up with tweetdeck, so now i’m able to follow a whole lot more people!  until now, i’ve had to keep my follow list super minimal in order to realistically keep up with everyone…)  yay twitter!

well this post was supposed to happen on monday, but i woke up monday morning with a horrible cold – i’ve been sick more in the last few months than any other winter, no good!  i was couch-ridden through wednesday, then thursday and yesterday were spent slowly catching up on work that should have been done early in the week… still not all the way healthy, and still not caught up, but i’m getting there.

so, i just wanted to show you my craftstylish project posts for february, since i didn’t show you as they went up… february was pet month, so my projects were all kitty related!  the first one being the heatable catnip blanket, inspired by kristin roach’s heatable catnip pillow.

then next was a how-to for the kitty castle and scratching post that i showed photos of here awhile back…

then i made a litter rug from a towel:

and last, i ran out of ideas for the cat herself, so i showed you how to make a kitty hat! with ideas for other ways of embellishing the face too…

some of my favorite february pet projects by other bloggers included kayte terry’s supercute mouse toy, cal patch’s recycled sweater pet bed, and diane gilleland’s awesome collapsible travel dish!!

so that’s what was meant to go up last weekend. i have other stuff to share, later, but for now i’ll leave you with newer news. i had my first online video appearance yesterday, on the threadbanger podcast! simple project (felted pullover to cardigan) – heather mann and i worked together to do a couple video tutorials a little while ago, and this is the first to get released. heather’s is rad, so hopefully they’ll put that one in a podcast soon!  if this embedded video doesn’t work, go here, or it’s also on youtube.

as is normal, i kind of hate how i look in the video, but eh, i think the tutorial turned out well, so that’s the important thing.  i think if we ever end up doing more of these i’ll get more comfortable in front of the camera and i won’t be so awkward.  apparently my camera-awkwardness could be interpreted in other ways, since someone on youtube commented Lee Meredith is so high in the video! lol!  haha.

it’s been a super eventful week, and i have lots to share, so i’m gonna shove most of it into this post, and i’ll try to keep each thing brief so it doesn’t drag on too long…

first of all – bad movie bingo has an official website!  when i first posted about our game i had planned to just have it for sale through pete’s site, but then on monday i impulsively bought badmoviebingo.net and badmoviebingogame.com and built the site!  it’s simple, but i think it does the job.  and the list of recommended movies will keep on growing!

this week was our annual week of fun, or something – our 4 year anniversary was monday, then my birthday was wednesday, and then v-day yesterday… so we always try to do lots of fun stuff or go somewhere, and this year was great!  pete’s “weekend” is always wednesday/thursday so we got to hang out around portland all day on my bday and then we took a day trip to astoria on thursday!  but, i’m getting ahead of myself, back to monday… besides building that website, i also did this:

resulting in:

except not quite… the color in those photos is exactly what i was going for, but in real life (or in most lighting conditions) it’s hot pink.  oh well.  i get lots of stares from kids and babies, and the kitten loves it.  next time i’ll go a shade darker and hopefully it’ll turn out how it looks in those photos.  but i’m having fun with it!  not what i wanted, but i did want something new and different, and that’s what i got!  oh and, there’s another sneak peek in those pictures at the knitting pattern i’ll be releasing in a few days!

so then, on my bday, we had a great day – cricket cafe for breakfast (i highly recommend my favorite breakfast ever from there: hash browns topped with veggie sausage, veggie gravy and olives+mushrooms or your favorite veggies/etc) and then we saw coraline 3d!  so great!  amazing art!  i’m so glad we had the chance to see it in 3d!  then there was some good thrift store shopping and zine shopping at microcosm.  and then we met up with a bunch of rad friends for (tofu) hot dogs and trivia at zach’s!  want some linkage?  thanks homero+david, caitlin, elif, vivian, emily, and all our blogless friends (kate, woods, simon, patrick…) – and we missed you star!!  it was a great bday, filled with fun times, good friends, yummy junk food, and cheap beer!

next: astoria! on thursday we finally drove out to the (almost) coast for the first time!  we mostly just walked around and i took tonnnns of photos (see the 60ish digitals i’ve put on flickr here), and we stopped into a bookstore where i found an awesome natural dyeing book from ’83 for only $4!  and we ate some super delicious mac n cheese at a rad little coffeeshop with stumptown coffee!

and we walked all over the place and i took photos…

and then when we couldn’t walk anymore we went to the fort george brewery and pete got me a stout sampler (feb is stout month!) and we got to hang out with shannon and opal, that was fun!  then we invented a new game: speed scrabble! no rules, no points, just fast.  we created new and exciting words like nuntv (a cable channel with nothing but nuns) and kantcore (super into the philosopher kant).

so then another cool thing about the day was that i shot some film! i hadn’t done that in so long!  i shot a few polaroids, nothing worth showing, and partial rolls of 35mm b+w in my canonet and 120 color in my holga.  so i have a question for portlanders… anyone know of a photo lab (preferably in southeast) that develops medium format film?  ideally, i’d love to find a lab that’s not crazy good quality (and therefore expensive) but that does medium format c-41 for cheap-ish, and if it also sells b+w developing chemicals that would be fantastic.  so that’s another question, anyone know a place i can get photo chemisty in portland (east side)?  once i find all these things, hopefully i’ll start shooting more film again!

oh and lastly, i’ve been playing around with stop motion a little!  i got myself a wireless remote for my d80 and i did some fun experimenting the other day, but it’s not ready to share yet.  i will show you this little video i made of the river waves on the astoria coast:

hey i’ve fallen behind on showing you my craftstylish tutorial posts!  so i’ll go back and tell you about the last 3 that i haven’t mentioned here…

a few weeks ago i explained how to make my short-rows wavy hat with multiple yarns striping, both with 2 row wide stripes and 1 wedge wide sections.

then last weekend my tutorial was for an all-recycled journal/sketchbook…

the how-to was just how to make the book, i left the cover decoration up to the creator – i covered mine with decoupaged vintage book pages:

and lastly, today’s was for a collaged table with a built-in game board!

here are some shots of my coffee table – i made it a couple years ago, so i’m happy to have written the tutorial now so it gets seen by people outside of my living room…

old books have weird pictures!!

and while i’m linking you over to blog posts i’ve written elsewhere… i’m still doing weekly diy roundups every friday on threadbanger – the latest one was one of my favorites i’ve ever done! a roundup full of way creepy cool ski masks, with lots of free patterns!  these are the masks i made a few years ago when i went through a mask phase:

in addition to the roundups, i’m now doing cool website alerts every week now – my last couple were one of my long-time favorites, craft leftovers, and one of my new favorite blogs, dollar store crafts.

if you want to keep up with all my various blog posting, i usually tweet when posts go up – my twitter name is _leethal_.  yay twitter!

once again, i have a bunch of things to talk about here today, i’ve let it build up again… so first of all, my second craftstylish post went up yesterday – tutorial for a blanket made with felted sweater blocks:

and i did a felted sweater wool projects roundup on threadbanger to kind of go with it. yay felted sweaters!  i’m currently working on a couple different felt projects that i’m pretty darn excited about, which may turn into new leethal products… coming soon!

i am teaching a 3-part workshop-type class on making recycled yarn at the 100th monkey studio in se portland saturday the 18th, 25th, and the 1st, from 12-2.  all materials will be provided and you’ll leave the class with 4-6 big skeins of hand-dyed yarn!  the first week we’ll take apart and unravel sweaters…

then the next 2 weeks we’ll use different kinds of dyeing techniques (all using non-toxic food dyes and kool-aid) to dye the recycled yarn in solid, variegated, and self-striping patterns….

(all those pictures are from the same original sweater) so when the workshop is over everyone will have many hundreds of yards of various hand-dyed wool yarns (worth around $120-200 if you were to buy the same from a yarn store or craft show), and all the knowledge to keep on making recycled yarn at home!  go here to sign up!  i’m really excited about it!!

moving on… pete is thinking about starting up a non-profit.  he’s still in the very beginning planning stages, just kind of figuring out if it’s possible/realistic and stuff, so i won’t get into details… i’ll just say it has to do with renewable energy and we’ve done a bit of brainstorming and i’m kind of excited about it if it works out… but my point here and now is that we don’t know much of anything about how non-profits work and stuff, and he’s done a bit of online research but it’s still all pretty hard to grasp, so if there’s anyone out there with non-profit startup experience, we’d appreciate any tips/advice/whatever you’d want to share!  (you can email me at leethalkoala at yahoo dot com or pete at crazpete at yahoo)  thanks!!

i just upgraded my wordpress a couple days ago, it’s so different now, i was way behind on upgrades.  i backed it up for the first time too, which seemed weird.  is it right that one 3mb .sql file holds my whole blog, with all the posts and all other info that goes with it?  doesn’t seem right… i mean, i know there are no photos, but still… i just don’t get bloggy stuff anymore.  i’m working on a big leethal store redesign that is basically a blog, but that doesn’t look like a blog… as of right now it’s still just an idea in my head and my sketchbook, but that’s the reason i’ve been messing with wordpress stuff.

anyway, one more thing… we went to the museum of contemporary craft yesterday!  ohmygosh the current exhibition is amazing!!  it’s called Manuf®actured: The Conspicuous Transformation of Everyday Objects and you’ve probably already seen blog posts about it – i read about it in several places before making it out there, but i have to spread the word further.  if you are in portland, definitely get out there – not only is it a fantastic show, but it’s also free!

it’s hard for me to choose favorite pieces, but i’ll single out devorah sperber‘s after warhol, mitra fabian‘s selections from proliferation series, cat chow‘s zipper tassle, and livia marin’s ficciones de un uso, 2214 lipsticks, each sculpted into a different “curiously compelling sculptural icon,” was overwhelmingly mesmerizing.

(photos are from core77)

ok i’ll leave you with that for today, and hopefully i’ll be back with some crafty project pictures at some point over the weekend.  happy friday!

the zine symposium was pretty awesome! here is what my cramped little half-table space looked like:

while it felt similar to a craft show, it was pretty different from what i’m used to… i only sold small stuff – zines, buttons, patches – and i did a ton of swapping! i met a lot of awesome people and it felt rad to be a part of the event, it had a real community kind of feeling. so, wanna see what i got? everything was traded!

all three of those – arts & crafts revolution vol’s 1+2 and rip, stab, stitch – are by terri anderson of vancouver, bc and are flipping awesome! rip, stitch, stab is a long, detailed book-binding how-to zine, full of hand-drawn illustrations and fabulous ideas. the first vol. of arts & crafts revolution is a cute little one that states on the first page: “this is mainly a zine of ideas… a jumping off point. not an instruction booklet.” heck yeah! my kind of craft zine for sure. and vol.2 is a big fat amazing crafty book of awesomeness! including: basics of sewing, knitting, stamping, screen printing, sections on “thrift craft” and “enviro crafts”, how-to’s on yarn scrap dryer balls, craft apron, record bowls, a big section on “damn the man crafts” (“dismantle the system… one stitch at a time!”), and lastly, diy kink. holy crap this zine is rad, the only problem is, i don’t know how you can buy it! i can’t find a website or any online distros that carry any of these. so, i don’t want to post terri’s email here on my blog, but if you leave a comment or email me i would love to give you her email so you can order a copy from her!

those two don’t go together, just trying to group pictures… the first one, “what did you buy today?” is volume 26 of the obsessive consumption zine by kate bingaman-burt. i had read about kate on diane’s blog so i was super excited to see her at the event. i really love her drawing style, makes me want to draw more like i used to back in college. it was so hard to choose one zine for the swap – there were something like 32 issues, all with different gorgeous covers.

destination diy is the zine about the podcast of the same name, which used to be “diy portland” and is one of the many reasons we moved up here! i got to meet julie sabatier and she was super awesome and nice, and i even got mini-interviewed for the podcast, although i think what i said was kinda dumb so i doubt i’ll be on. (“what’s your favorite thing about the portland zine symposium?” “umm, i don’t have a favorite thing, i love the community feel of everything…..” something like that.) and i got a sticker to put on my car and show my diy pride! and, i did a swap with destination diy intern hilary galian for the hands print on fabric below (left).

the brown+pink patch is by drew nowhere, who also gave me all 4 of his subterranea travel zines!

the multnomah county library zine people had a table 2 over from me, and they took polaroids of people with their giant library card all weekend, so on sunday before it was over i had to get one taken! yay library!!

the journey of the quetzalcoatlus is by james williams, who was the other half of my table. we had actually met before, at the library zine social a few months ago, so it worked out well that he ended up sharing my table. he was nice about watching my side while i walked around a little and stuff. his comic zines are pretty rad, great artwork, and that one is educational too! oh and he drew me while bored on the first day, hehe.

the following are various zines i got that i don’t have links for, but if you click on the pictures the flickr pages have the title and creator info…

i wish i’d done some walking around and trading on saturday, i think i missed out on a lot. i met sam of chickeney on saturday, who had bought some buttons from me awhile back, and she got some more, and i’d planned to check out her stuff on sunday but i didn’t see her there. but, i was kind of hurrying and overwhelmed with all the stuff to check out, so i could have walked right past her, and other cool things. i didn’t want to be away from my table for long, so i didn’t do nearly as much trading as i wish i’d been able to do. oh well… i still got lots of neato stuff!

moving on from zines, i did the knitolympics/ravolympics this year and made my first sweater ever!! it’s a twinkle pattern, so it uses size 19 needles! it’s the “marilyn jacket” from twinkle’s big city knits. and here it is:

if i try to close it in front it looks terrible, so i’m not gonna bother putting on buttons or a tie or anything. i might end up putting an edge around the sleeve bottoms. i copied raveler A-L and did the k1p1 trim all the way around the back, i’m glad i did that, it would be too short without it.

i found a great dark red bulky sweater at the bins to unravel for my next sweater project, so now i need to decide whether to choose another twinkle pattern, or one from this book! i’m sticking with fat-needle projects for now, i was way into how quickly that marilyn jacket knit up!

for pete’s birthday i carved these two music recording gear lino blocks and printed a bunch of shirts – 7 to be exact. 4 with those and 3 banjo shirts, including this one which is actually embroidered, not printed, that i posted about on threadbanger a few days ago. wanna see them all? ok!

block printing is so much fun! i definitely plan to do much more in the near future!

oh oh and my other bday present to pete was soo super nerdytastic! i made him a website! metalheadpete.com! it’s still very much work in progress… i just built the site template kind of, and then we’ll change/add stuff as we get to it. the music sample mp3s are all many years old – his new stuff can be found on the myspace page for now; it’s all incomplete, but still fun to hear. (don’t be scared by the word “metal” – it’s a very experimental kind of mixed genres music that i don’t know how to describe, but there’s no growling vocals or anything, at least not in the new stuff.) he’ll probably put up cds for sale on the music page in the future, so if you like what you hear, you might want to subscribe to his blog!

one last totally random thing, since i’m on the subject of music… yesterday i was hanging out with star and scott and lauren and this question was asked: “if you could see any 3 people/bands play live, living or dead (or any 3 shows), who would they be?” so, i think mine are: the velvet underground with nico in ny when andy warhol was their manager, karen dalton + bob dylan + friends at a greenwich village coffeeshop in the early/mid 60′s, and the beatles apple rooftop show (last live show ever), but that last one is kind of tied with john+yoko post-beatles instead. i would list elliott smith if i hadn’t been lucky enough to have seen him once live, even if it wasn’t the best show to see him play (sunset street fair, so short set, huge crowd, not-great sound, etc). what are your picks??