Fricknits

Celebration Garland: How-To

2010-01-31T16:59:20-08:00

Over the past five years I've done a lot of crafting in spite of kids. Crafting around kids. Crafting for kids. I'm-crafting-damnit-can't-I-just-get-one-fricking-minute-to-myself-without-kids. What I did with kids that involved craft materials was nothing I considered crafting. It was more like

1. Drawing on demand for a perfectionist Biscuit who knew he couldn't make the SR-71 Blackbird look exactly "right."

2. Dragging the easel and paints out into the driveway, pouring paints into Tupperware, managing the inevitable freakout when the wind blew the paper up, replacing said paper, and finding drying space for dickety-eleven works of "art" that would eventually (who're we kidding) fill the recycling bin anyway.

3. Managing the glue bottle.

But it seems five may be the magic age! Biscuit is not only interested in crafting, he's able to do so many more things now. He's tried his hand at embroidery, and this summer he worked the foot pedal while I made him some new pillowcases:

(pattern in Last Minute Patchwork and Quilted Gifts)

Then last weekend he went to Jo-Ann with me and chose the trims and fabrics for superhero capes for his best friend Will and Will's little sister. He did a great job, don't you think?

(pattern in Stitched in Time)

So today, when he woke up chattering away about his birthday (which is in September, mind you) and how he wanted to have a cooking party and that we needed to make decorations RIGHT NOW, rather than going with my first instinct and whipping out the calendar to illustrate the point of there being no big rush, I decided to go with it, and together we made this:

Yep, a garland. One of those things I never thought I'd have any desire to make (kind of like wreaths) until I saw them popping up on the Internet and they wormed their way into my mind. (Check out this post to find my original garland-spiration, and this Flickr set for wreaths that make my heart go pitterpat.)

It was so fun making this with the Biscuit. It was playful, colorful, and creative. My teacherly side liked that he got to practice tracing (fine-motor skills), color mixing and matching, puzzles, and design. I also think the project had a nice balance of "on" and "down" time for him, as five-year olds need both--sustaining attention to one project for long is not in the cards, but this project alternates between adult and child roles nicely.

I've written the whole thing up tutorial-style in a Flickr set that is pretty darn thorough- let me know if you try it out!

Haiti: What I Want You to Know

2010-01-17T13:38:12-08:00

Eight years ago, as newlyweds, Mr. Frick and I traveled to Haiti. I went first, spending a couple of days in Port au Prince preparing for the arrival of the rest of our group- students and teachers from the school where I teach, which maintains a relationship with the rural mountain community of Buteau. My "hotel" was close to the airport and the massive slum called the Cite-Soleil. As there is hardly any regular trash removal and Port au Prince is built on a mountainside, everything washes down. I've also never seen such mosquitoes. I would jump in the shower with my 99.9% DEET, and as soon as the water went off, slap that stuff on like crazy. Those suckers were hovering there like hummingbirds, just outside of the spray.

This is a tap-tap. This one is actually pretty nice (a Daihatsu!). Tap-taps are the transport of choice in Haiti, as most folks don't have cars of their own. They're bright and loud and dangerous (apparently folks fall off of the tops of them all the time) and they have names and slogans painted on them like "Full Love, Full Life" and "Sexy Girl" and "Merci Eternel." To read these slogans, you wouldn't know that the people here were citizens of the most impoverished country in the Northern Hemisphere...but that's because our notion of what makes a hopeful life are very, very different from the Haitians'.

When Mr. Frick and the rest of our group arrived we headed into the mountains to Buteau. Mr. Frick, lover of languages, devoted himself to trying to learn Creole, much to the amusement of local kids who flocked to him to engage in "conversation." I told the story long ago here. The people in rural Haiti are subsistence farmers. They are not starving and they do not lack for clean water, which they gather in cisterns. Their homes are incredibly sparse and they live miles away from medical help. Women walk down the mountain to give birth in Leogane. The kids of Buteau kicked our kids' collective ass in soccer. They also led us on a totally terrifying tarantula hunt one night.

I spent a LOT of time putting Band-Aids on kids. As you can tell by the look of this kiddo's leg (and bare feet), living on a mountainside in a hut isn't easy on you. I never heard a single complaint, though. The boy whose eyesight I swear was saved by foaming disinfectant and daily application of Band-Aids had fallen while running after a ball. His big brother brought him to me twice a day- what I'd asked him to do in my halfassed French. When we first arrived, the kids flocked around us repeating "Give me my shoes, give me my shirt," tugging at everything we wore. After a time, it got irritating. I'm not apologizing for the fact that, before we left, I taught a bunch of them to say, "Please give me your shoes, please give me your shirt." I said, "The whites will give you anything if you say please." (We had an African-American student with us. No matter. We were all as white as Santa Claus there.)

Eight years ago we left everything we had-sleeping bags, mosquito nets, toiletries, shoes- except the clothes on our backs with this little girl and her family. They lived right below the church where we slept. It's gone now, as is the school we built desks for. I can't imagine her house stands.

Please, please, PLEASE. Act. Give to the Red Cross. Give to Doctors without Borders. Buy patterns on Ravelry that are specially tagged as part of the Haiti relief effort.

But also...please...learn something about Haiti. Not just the statistics that become part of every disaster relief plea, every news article tied to this tragedy. Learn something about this neighbor of ours. Knowledge is power, but knowledge is also responsibility. We can be the people who care, who know, and who understand, but only if we read and educate ourselves. Giving is good. Giving is NECESSARY. But giving will not be enough in the long term. Haiti needs to become part of our national consciousness, not just because of its current heartrending circumstance, but because it is the only right way to go.

Thanks for indulging me.

In Which I am Resolved by Accident

2010-01-10T09:39:16-08:00

Well here's something to love about Sundays: I've eaten, coffee-d, showered, and put on fresh pajamas, and I feel totally ready for my day. And more coffee.

I talked a little in this post about how overwhelmed I feel swimming in the craft soup that is our corner of the Interwebs, and I have now come up with a method that's fresh and crazy-making in a whole new way than the older crazy-making methods. This tried (for a week) and true(ly insane) method is to keep dickety-nine tabs open in my browser until I'm ready to write a blog post, at which point I can enter all of the links in one handy place, archiving them until Typepad revokes my charter for forgetting to pay the bill forever. So far, so good, until the Fricklet decides to whomp the laptop with his new favorite whomper (one of my acrylic quilting rulers), sending all of my carefully compiled tabs into Interwebs oblivion and me into a fetal knot on the dining room floor.

The only upside to that eventuality is that I promise to take a self portrait of it.

Anyway! I'd really like to increase the degree to which our house feels like our home. Really, really US. I kicked this plan off a year ago when I bought Mr. Frick this fabulous vinyl decal for the holidays, and then the plan ate a crapton of acorns, curled up, and went into hibernation until reemerging almost exactly a year later. Let's hope this year I can keep it awake and active.

(How-to-acquire-one-for-oneself info here on Flickr.)

Our house has for too long felt like a neutral or generic "home space" rather than a place that's uniquely ours. So Mr. Frick and I have begun work on, among other things, an embroidery wall (inspiration!)- he's currently at work on a tiny Mexican wrestling mask from Jenny Hart's Lucha Libre series. I have plans to make one of these, inspired by Allison's at Cluck Cluck Sew:

(photo used with permission)

Maybe I've just got home on the brain, because I'm so attracted to little houses lately. Like these that Maritza is making over at KnottyBits:

(photo used with permission, tutorial here)

I have BIG plans for this project, perhaps in a paintbox-style quilt. (Oh, and speaking of paintboxes, GAH- Elizabeth has started a new Quiltalong on Oh! Fransson and I think, despite the fact that my blocks from the last QAL are still sitting in a cupboard somewhere, that I must do it, because another one of my Big Plans is to work from the stash as much as possible, as Caro admonishes me and um, yeah, I totes have all the stuff I need for this one already.)

And also I WILL be making one of these, because O.M.G. But mine will be hello-yellow.

One thing I will NOT be making (though it turns out it's not hard to find instructions for how to do so) is a macrame owl. Instead, in the grand tradition of entitled children everywhere, I will steal my parents' one.

I know my sister doesn't want it, because it terrifies my nephew. Hurrah! Poor little fella! My Aunt Carol made it, so big tip o' the hat down Greensboro, NC way.

Another little something I'd like to do more of in 2010 is make more of my own clothes. I have nowhere near the talent or ambition you'll see here on The Sew Weekly, but I'll definitely be reading along because that is an incredible project.

Aaaand now my tabs are but the usual four. Phew.

Wow, look at that. Despite my best intentions, I might have made some resolutions after all. Did you?

41-50

2009-12-30T12:59:27-08:00

Remember how I'm breaking up the 100 Things into 10-thing sections? Remember the 100 Things? Remember me? Well, you need not remember any of the above to enjoy this, the HURRAH edition of my fragmented 100 Things. These are 10 things that make JulieFrick celebrate!

41. HURRAH for baking with kids. Yes, there was flour everywhere afterward, necessitating the use of the vacuum cleaner, which both boys hate with the fire of seven suns, but that is the price they pay for quality time with Mama.

(See the Fricklet there in the reflection? Awwww.)

42. HURRAH for challah! It's my new favorite baking-with-kids project. Why? It involves use of the mixer (spinny!), witnessing the miracle of bread rising (science!), punching and kneading dough (aggression!), and "painting" with the pastry brush (art!). I mean, come ON. Way better than chocolate chip cookie making. (I used the recipe in the Enchanted Broccoli Forest.)

43. Hurrah for handspun! Spinning wool is something I'm keeping at a flailing arm's length for now, but that doesn't keep me from hoarding beautiful handspun yarn and friends who spin. Yes, you read that right. I am hoarding people now. There's no end to my sickness.

Speaking of which, 44. Hurrah for Kirsten! I unabashedly declare myself terribly, undeniably, inappropriately in love with her and her family. She designs such gorgeous patterns and has allowed me to test knit for her a few times. Witness the glory that is a Rectangular Ulmus in Crown Mountain Farms handspun, people:

(More details on the Ravelry page.)

5. HURRAH for nostalgia food. As a kid my favorite lunches were:

a. Kraft Mac & C with cut-up Oscar Meyer hot dogs in it. (No other hot dog brands allowed, to this day.)

b. Stouffer's French Bread pizza, with the triangle-cut pepperonis.

c. Ramen with peanut buttered apples on the side.

Good news! If you eat your nostalgia food on a totally grownup plate, like the fancy Italian pottery you got for your wedding, that makes it grownup food. Promise.

(Note the cheese powder is not entirely stirred in, and the hot dogs were cut and charred a bit. This is key.)

46. HURRAH for kismet. I may have squealed a bit when that appeared on my Google Reader.

47. HURRAH for thank you notes. No, really. If you don't hurrah them, you still have to do them, and then it's just drudgery. I was brought up by southerners, which means that I do thank-you's, because the thank-you's I don't do (and there have been some) haunt me endlessly. Get yourself some pretty, pretty postcards (48. HURRAH for those!). They make the job easier. And shorter!

(I got mine from Moo. They have some lovely ready-made ones.)

49. HURRAH for hanging art! I am horrible at this. Mr. Frick is forever wringing his hands over our bare walls. I'm just so bad at committing. Once it's up there, there's a Hole In The Wall, after all. But my parents gave me a fantastic piece for the holidays and I was so excited about it that I whipped out the hammer and special hardened nails and WHAMMO.

10. And finally, HURRAH for projects that are quick, easy, and oh, so sweet. I love how these scraps Caro sent me have livened up the cover of my quilt-planning molskine! (Idea from Last Minute Patchwork and Quilted Gifts).

Have a super-duper bubbly-infused New Year, y'all. I'm headed to the mountains for a couple of days. That's where the macrame owl lives. I promise to steal it take pictures for you.

In Praise of: Grannies

2009-12-29T08:55:44-08:00

And so today we crack a champagne bottle over the helm of a new category: In Praise Of. (I realize you are all clutching those bottles tightly to you right now, and champagne empties will be more widely available in a couple of days- this is a metaphoric cracking. I don't think the notebook could take it.) Let's start with something that's been burning up my web-world (and stash yarn) lately- the nostalgic, simple, and completely satisfying to make Granny Square.

These squares were born from the instructions in Simple Crochet by Erika Knight. I plan to join them as the book instructs by finishing each square with a border and then whipstitching them together. Good thing it's a small blanket, because I have so little patience for such seaming.

The first couple of people who saw my color scheme, which I deemed "kitchy and nostalgic," said, "Oh, it's a Redskins blanket!" I don't think I hid my dismay well. There might have been some gasping and swooning and application of cold compresses. They'll see- they'll ALL SEE when I add that chocolate brown border. RIGHT?

For these squares I'm using Rowan Handknit DK cotton. I have a rather considerable collection. This of course did not stop me from gathering up a few skeins of discontinued colors on discount the other day. Which purchase is totally justified because:

1. I will make so many awesome, awesome crocheted items with it and

2. My Legendary Stash is quickly being eaten up by Giant Granny Square Blankets.

Really, there's a net loss of string in this house. Check it out:

This is G.Biv.

...and this is Roy.

After crocheting their multi-hued cousin (Rav link), I couldn't stop myself, and divided all the odds and ends of my stash wool into piles by color family and went for it on two new Giant Grannies. It's embarrassingly pleasing to me to sit on the couch and alternate between the two while watching old X-Files episodes. Chuckling to myself. You know how it is.

Of course, Grannies don't have to be square. (Mine's soft and round- I like her that way. Tip your waitress.) You can find patterns for these (star, circle, and flower) and for free in the sidebar on The Royal Sisters.

For those of you feeling the pull of the granny- come join the Ravelry group! The granny is a fantastic way to learn crochet. Ms. Bestitched picked it up in just one lesson from Ms. Monsteryarn. One hook, one motion, one glorious sparkling disco-infused hotline to the 70's.

And for those of you for whom granny squares inspire nothing but horror as you recall the 70's and the decisions -sartorial, pharmaceutical, musical, and aesthetic- that you and your parents may have made then, I am sorry. But come on. It's not as if I'm macrame-ing owls over here.

(I don't need to. My Mom has already offered me HERS. Swoon.)