As much as I want it to, I'm starting to come to grips with the fact that Atlanta is just not a part of the South. I get to travel outside the perimeter (OTP, for those of you not in the know) enough to remind me that the South is just a few kudzu-covered miles away...probably starting with Stone Mountain. In celebration of our rapidly-chiling moral climate, The Museum of Arkansas History is proud to bring you this D.I.Y. guide to....MOONSHINE! If you can scrounge up some copper piping, you could be the life of your next party (a goodbye eyesight party, I'm guessing). Here's the essential moonshine recipe:

75 lb. plain white corn meal
300 lb. sugar
1 lb. yeast
Optional flavoring
300 gallons of water

Extreme Craft on 07/18/05#

For those of you who've discovered Flickr, Hobby Princess suggests a fantastic way for crafters to use it: you can use it as an ongoing web-based "catalog" of your creative work. If you're organizing a collaborative project (like the "Month of Softies" project mentioned in the above link), you can easily aggregate pictures of everyone's contributions into a photoset for all to enjoy -- without even having a website of your own. Flickr accounts are free.

Sister Diane on 07/18/05#

I met Justin Richel at Brooklyn's Renegade Craft Fair. I think his paintings are rad.

Scott on 07/17/05#

CraftyPod -- a podcast that celebrates all things craft. The most recent CraftyPod-cast was "All About Felt."

Yamaguchi on 07/15/05#

With design added! Every summer the V&A Museum in London hosts what they call a "village fete." Now these sorts of affairs typically include a tombola (where you pick a ticket from a revolving drum for a prize) and cotton candy and various other ye olde British-e countryside fun and games like the whoever-can-hit-the-target-wins-a-stuffed-animal game. Only at the V&A London's grooviest design firms do their take on it. It starts Friday night with hipster furniture designer Michael Marriott djs his favorite crap records and continues on Saturday where prizes awarded for best stand best kid's costume. (No the designers don't dress up as children...) One year Fibre recreated miniature dog races (cockney accent optional), and there's been the Guess the House! competition, to identify and place in chronological order an array of line-drawn images of domestic architecture. This year the fun is on 29 & 30th of July.

jennifer on 07/15/05#

Watermellon from China. Inspiring me to make the most of my pumpkin this Halloween

Callie on 07/15/05#

Okay few of us have hair long enough for princes or princesses to climb up and rescue us, but fashion couple Eley Kishimoto and architect duo 6A's Hairywood summer house in London's Old Street is enough to make you wish you did. Inspired by the Jaques Tati's film Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot where Tati’s heroine began every day by opening her hotel bedroom window and gazing out over the beach and sea, Hairywood is Rapunzel's tower on a small scale for us urban Rapunzels (after all it is in the middle of one of London's busiest streets). Made of lasercut plywood, it's quite inspirational--ah the things and places you can apply E-K's patterns. And at the top there's a nice nook (with cushions in more E-K patterns) upon which to canoodle or bring a little picnic. Enough to turn all us inner city lads and lasses from frogs into royalty and perhaps get us all thinking about the joys of plywood.

jennifer on 07/15/05#

After watching this this little shortwith music by Deerhoof and crafty creations by lead singer Satomi Matsuzaki, I cannot get the song out of my head. You have been warned.

sublimestitcher on 07/11/05#

Contribute 50 words of fiction -- no more, no less -- to Fifty Word Fiction. Writing 50 words is pretty easy, but using exactly 50 words for one piece of fiction is a creative challenge. Every word counts. And if you like short "flash fiction," check out and consider contributing a story to Quick Fiction. This journal publishes stories of 500 words or less.

Yamaguchi on 07/08/05#

On Tuesday, an art show changed my life. Seriously! While passing through Kansas City, I stumbled upon the exhibit Extra/Ordinary - Fiber Artists Rethinking Art and Everyday Life, curated by Maria Elena Buszek. The show is a veritable who's who of artists that I have been featuring on Extreme Craft, including Whitney Lee, Mark Newport, and Jenny Hart, plus many others that I will surely be Glimmering in the future.

The show is playful, political, cynical, and full of wonder. Most of the artists have transcended the obvious trope of rendering controversial subject matter using "traditional craft". Whitney Lee, Allyson Mitchell, and Orly Cogan use found objects as their canvases, "collaborating" with their forbears. It was wonderful to see Mark Newport's hand-knit Batman costume in person. There was a level of detail (plenty of cable-knitting!) that is impossible to glean from photographs. If you are anywhere near the Kansas City area, I urge you to rush out to see the show. Extra/Ordinary @ The Cube at Beco. 1922 Baltimore, KCMO. Through July 9th. LINK

Extreme Craft on 07/08/05#