Masks.....
I've always wanted to learn how to make leather masks. Well, the Tandy Leather in Merrilville, IN had a mask-making contest last halloween, and one of the guys there told me I should try entering. They had had a class on how to do it, which I missed, so I asked him for a quick recap. Unfortuantely, he'd missed that class too, but he helpfully said, "Here, try this piece of leather. It should work." Oh. Well, ok. So armed with a scrap of leather and really more of a hint than a how-to, I figured I'd give it a shot. Here's a Gallery of some recent masks....
Just tooling around.....
Since I clearly don't have enough hobbies, I decided I should learn a bit about leather tooling and crafting. I mean, I can run leather through a sewing machine like a champ (assuming the machine is willing), but I've always been totally amazed by the really cool leather mugs and stuff that you see at faires. To make things worse, my sweetie does the leatherwork thang, and, ok, seriously, what kind of woman would I be if I let him have all the fun? So we went last friday to the Tandy Leather near him, where we got lots of laughs and a few looks from the locals ("Honey, let's go home and have some leather fun!"), then went back to his place where he has the zillion tools-with-weird-names that you need to do leather stuff, and the half dozen I'd bought myself. And I played. And he showed me the pattern for making mugs which, without actually so much trying, I altered, and then I decided that I needed to make shot glasses, etc etc. Fortunately, he didn't get round to telling me why things wouldn't work until I'd made them work, or backed myself into a total corner and whined at him to help me. *laugh* He's a very patient man, and a good photographer. I'm a lucky girl, with far more enthusiasm than actual clue. (If you've never guessed, me with a new craft is a phenomonon pretty close to a squirrel chomping on an electric cable -- a lot happens really fast, there's screeching, and it's seldom pretty or organized....) Anyway, two days later, here's what I had:one partially assembled giant f-off mug with two matching shot glasses, and two shot glasses for my sweetie.
Needle Felting
The second to last weekend of faire last year, I realised that the tent right across from the FoF garden sold wool. I don't know what took me so long. I guess I was thrown by the comforters out front (the sell wool filled comforters, bed toppers and pillows). Needless to say, I don't do much thinking about big fluffy woolen things in the summer, so I never really thought about it.
I felt more than a little sheepish when I finally went inside. Turns out that they also sell handspun yarn, which is totally droolworthy, and cool needle felted animals and things. I really wanted the yarn. But again, my, erm, extraordinarily frugal italien nature won out, and I left with a spindle kit and a needle felting kit. I started with the felting kit. Later that day, I was back to buy more wool for needle felting. The next weekend, I was back for even more wool. And so it goes.
Spinning
Now, I mentioned buying a spinning kit from the same nice ladies. Me trying to use that elicited a lot of laughter from various people in the garden, much to my annoyance. (Ok, honestly, just because I can pick up a lot of crafts and go does not mean that I start out well with every single new thing I try.) To anyone else out there contemplating the joys of drop spindle spinning, I really encourage you to try it. But.... You might want to try it privately, or with someone experienced at your side to help. The charm of the dulcit tones of people laughing at me (not with me -- I was *not* laughing) wore thin within minutes, so I trotted off across the way to the tent with the nice ladies who sold me the kit, and announced that my spindle was broken. It refused to produce yarn. Something must be wrong with it.
And the nice ladies, with an air of great concern, tested it. Now, spindles fall prey to the same syndrome as computers: in the hands of a trained professional, they work just fine. Turns out *I* was doing something wrong. (It didn't come with directions. My mac is reasonable self explainitory, and has a really convenient interactive help system. Spindles... Eh, not so much. You can curse and them all you want, and they will not produce so much as a helpful ding, error message, or what-have-you.) Armed with knew knowledge, I trotted back to my garden and proceeded to spin. The process is less entertaining when it works, and my crowd of entertained onlookers quickly determined that the show was over, and tottled off to find something more amusing to watch. (I'm not bitter. Really. Ok, I am. Between you, me, and everyone else who happens to read this, I have pretty high standards for my work. I don't like not doing things well. Now, I've heard a thousand times that you can't expect to be good at things the first time, and that's fine. That's fine for other people. Other people who, possibly, lucked out and didn't grow up with my mother, queen of the, "If at first you don't succeed, try to find something else you're actually good at, dearie" school of learning. Now, I love my mother dearly, and she's a great lady. And after years of being beaten soundly by, oh, roughly everyone I've met since in the last 15-20 years, I've come to understand that what appears to be failure is merely an oppurtunity to learn something. I tell other people that all the time.I still hate it when it happens to me. I don't like not being good at things. I have almost no tolerance for it. I just like for things I do to turn out nicely, the way I intended them to, on the first go. Then again, I also like to keep my shoes in shoe boxes and my patterns in hanging files, and clean my tape measures with lysol. If I could figure out how to clean my hyphen with lysol, I'd probably do that too. It's all part of my dubious charm.)
So, anyway, three spindles and several pounds of fiber later, I can safely say that spinning is a lovely, relaxing hobby. ;)
