radical lace & subversive knitting

this exhibit at nyc's museum of art & design look so cool! i think i am going to have to finagle my way up there sometime before june 17th just so i can see it and do all the other new yorky things i've wanted to do since going there once in 11th grade.

(i just blogged about janet echelman, one of the featured artists, over at my personal blog, if you want to read it!)

also, museum of art & design = mad museum! i love it.

i love etsy!

for real, i do. i haven't sold anything yet but i am so glad that i made the switch. i am still at home for my winter break so i'm using my parents' computer which has super-slow dialup, so i haven't been able to explore all that much, but i am slowly (sloooowly) looking around and finding a lot of really cool people.

who are some of your favorite etsy folks/things? maryink and mwilson (esp. the "morphism" prints) are some of my recently favorited new discoveries.

in other news, i bought a ton of yarn and i am crocheting again! i'm planning to do valentine hats again this year (people seemed to like those last time!) so i got some nice pinks and reddish colors, which is a change from the summer/fall when i was really into earthy stuff like brown and gray and green (not that you can tell from what's in the shop at the moment, though). i just have to pace myself so i don't burn my hands out. whoops.

happy new year!

finally!

today was the first day in what seemed like forever that i had absolutely nothing planned to do, so i gathered up all the hats i've been working on since the summer and went out into the backyard and photographed them and i've been working on putting them up on etsy ever since.

my parents have dial-up so it's taking forever, but slowly and surely they will all be posted! i am so excited. take a look at the shop here:

http://madeyedesigns.etsy.com

i will probably wait til they're all up to start advertising the new shop in a big way, just to give myself some breathing room and to see how things go. i am hoping/thinking that being on etsy will mean more traffic and also way less time needed to maintain the site. (seriously, if i was going to be putting everything up on my own site like i have been, this would still be in the works and i probably wouldn't be able to get it all done for weeks!)

guys, let me know what you think about madeye moving to etsy, and about the new hats! (i posted some of them here over the summer, but others are making their web debut!)

an idea

i am thinking that the next version of the madeye shop to go up (whenever that is) will be hosted on etsy, rather than run through my own html site.

thoughts? comments? if you use etsy, what do you think of it? pros & cons?

i signed up when it was in beta version, but never really listed anything. now it seems like such a great resource for buyers and sellers that it would almost be silly to mess with doing my own site, especially since that takes up so much time (which is one of the big reasons i haven't posted anything new since the spring!).

http://madeyedesigns.etsy.com

hello, i'm not dead!

hi to anyone still reading!

you might be wondering where i am and what's going on with madeye. well, i certainly would not hold those thoughts against you. it's been almost three months since my last post here, and way longer since i update the site.

well, here's the story:

i'm about to wrap up my second-to-last semester in college, so i'm busy with school work and freaking out about the future (you'd be suprised how much of my time that occupies). i'm in charge of my school's newspaper, although my amazing co-editor is going to be taking over a lot of those duties for me in the spring. i've also got an editorial internship at a really awesome magazine, so i'm also busy with listening to awesome music and writing about it and going to the post office and all that stuff. oh, also... i've been watching a lot of six feet under (thanks, bravo).

so, my life is like exploding with stuff right now, and there just hasn't been a lot of time for stitching! but that makes me pretty sad, so i am trying to get back into things; i also have a whole ton of hats that i made before my life got so crazy, and they are just waiting to be put up on the site. but, for now, things are still pretty slow, so i just wanted to let anyone who might be curious know what's going on over here in madeye-land.

say hi if you miss me!

when idioms attack

i stuck "get them while they last!" onto the banner advertising the sale as almost a joke... not that i didn't expect a few of the hats to go, but i didn't really think it would be at any great speed. however, they really have been going... and fast. so if you're sitting on your butt, sit no longer! run! go! let your fingers fly over the keyboard to madeye-designs.net and snatch up those hats before someone else does!

big big sale

kraftduh

so of course i forgot to print out my fancy photoshop-ified business cards for kraftwork, and wound up handing out little paper squares with the website address written on them by my roommate karly (who came with me last night) and myself. d'oh! it was also a pretty slow night and i didn't sell a thing, but i did do a pretty great trade with tracy from debrifield!

still trying to figure out what to do about all the hats from the past year. i'd love to sell them (of course) but i feel like they're dead weight on the website and i'd rather get most cleared out before i put up all the new stuff (whenever that happens). i'm considering donating them to a group that provides hats for chemo patients, not just to "get rid" of the hats but because i've been thinking about that for a while and it seems like a good time and opportunity. still thinking... i'll come up with something eventually.

so glad it's friday, especially because we're having a craft night at my apartment this weekend! YES!

preparing for the working of the kraft

so i finally installed photoshop on my laptop last night and, after fumbling around miserably for ten years, managed to eke out a new business card design for madeye:



it's so lo-fi! it's to be printed out on colored cardstock today afterwork, then cut into the appropriate sizes, and handed out at kraftwork tonight. maybe one day i'll get real business cards IN FULL COLOR or something novel like that.

it's been so long!

so, my life has taken over... well, my life. i haven't posted at all lately and i've been crafting even less. but rest assured, the fall collection is on its way. it may actually be here before fall itself!

in case you missed me terribly, come and visit at Kraftwork this thursday, september 7, 7-10 PM! madeye WILL be there!

ooh, and there are birds...

the first issue of what you make it is out and i really dig it. it's a fun look at a few DIY crafters/fashionistas with some really neat art smattered throughout. i'm totally a softie for interviews & pictures of crafters in their own workspaces so the copacetique piece sucked me right in. take a look!

in other news, i bought yarn today. and next week i go on vacation. to roasting boiling broiling hot florida. where i plan to spend most of the daylight hours inside, catching up on work, and churning out some hats. hopefully once i get settled back at school at the end of the month i'll have time for a site redesign, some photo sessions with the madeye mannequin heads, and then the fall 06 madeye collection will be ready for its debut. hopefully?

d'oh.

as is probably quite obvious, you can no longer access the website via madeyedesigns.net! this is because i stupidly let my subscription to my name hosting service expire, and some robot ad spam site statched madeyedesigns.net up! needless to say, this makes me pretty sad, and i'm totally mad at myself, but i'm trying to fix the problem as best i can.
so, please use either madeye-designs.net or madeye-designs.com-- they both should work.

if you know anyone that might have been a past and/or a potential future madeye visitor, please let them know about this! i certainly don't expect anyone to, but if you could even blog about this little change, then heck... that would be awesome.

also, if you have a website that links to madeye, could you please change your link accordingly? either the .com or the .net will be fine, though i think i'm going to favor the .net just because it's closer to the old address. (the .com was bought mainly so no one else would snatch it up and cause even further confusion!)

thanks & sorry for the inconvenience!

oh noooo!

so i inadvertantly let my ownership of www.madeyedesigns.net expire. i should have renewed it last week when i got all of the reminder emails but i was busy and it just got lost in the shuffle. i thought it wouldn't be a big deal but when i checked tonight to make sure it was okay, i discovered that the name seems to have been bought by some kind of robot ad site. you can see it by just going to http://www.madeyedesigns.net.

while the site is still accessible at its actual url, http://www.brightandbeautiful.org/madeye (madeyedesigns.net was just a referrer url), i still obviously want my domain name back since it's on all my business cards etcetera, and also is the url that i actually give people and that is linked to by most websites that link to me, and all of that jazz. also, as i discovered last summer when i first wanted to buy the name, madeyedesigns.com is actually taken already. this means all of my visitors are going to be hitting this robot site AND that i don't have any better options for other names to buy, if this one can't be bought back.

basically, i need some advice! if this has happened to you or anyone you know, what did you do? what can i do? what would you suggest? i emailed the address that came up on the "why am i seeing this site?" link on the robot page, but haven't heard back yet. if they can't tell me anything or refuse to sell it back to me, what can be done? (i already checked on one of those sites where you can "place a bid" to buy a domain name from someone that has it, but the minimum bid had to be $200 and i just don't have that kind of money!)

i appreciate any help i can get. i know this is all my fault for letting it expire, but i want to fix it asap! i feel so clueless and ridiculous for letting this happen. argh.

www.madeyedesigns.net is going to be down for a bit because i am a complete idiot and failed to renew my ownership of it.

please go to http://www.brightandbeautiful.org/madeye to see the site.

update on this ridiculous situation coming soon, hopefully...

ruffles of much frustration / formerly naked animals

here's the most recent hat i've finished, the one with the ruffles as previously mentioned. yeah, i do think i might try them again. this is pretty freaking cute, i think. oh well.



here's a woefully yellow detail of the applique. (man, my camera is apparently quite tired of taking pictures of hats these days, and appears to be refusing to take decent shots in rebellion.)



between the two of those, you might be able to discern the actual color of the yarn. i really like it, but it's quite subtle-- moreso than i'm used to, anyway. here's perhaps a better take of it:




i do think i'm going to carry the bird / disc / ruffle thing on over to some pins that i've started on lately. i really like making pins but doing flowers got soooo infernally old, so hopefully this will be a nice change.

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here are some non-madeye crochet projects i've done recently... very small ones, very simple, but the end product is so cute that i just want to share:



they're bare bears! pamela barsky makes them. they're nudie muslin bears that you can decorate however you want. these were gifts from my boss / the owner of the store where i work, to the staff, for us to decorate for display in the store. mine is the one with the hearts (the love rash, as i like to call it) and the green scarf (which i made and now want a big version of for myself). the other is by my friend & coworker denise... he's on team zissou! i made his hat. it matches his painted-on red speedo! he is spectacular.

oh, sampler! / oh, ruffles!

Fabric Pendants
Originally uploaded by You Win.

so i've been meaning to get on this sampler business for quite some time, but i've just never had the time / energy / inspiration. of course i always feel a twinge of sadness (jealousy?) when i see photos of others' contributions. they're usually insanely cute and, in retrospect, enough for me to put my whole life on hold just so i can whip up some crafty madeye goodness to share, on the off chance i might get in my package whatever item has just struck my fancy.

of course i do realize that i could most likely just buy whatever item of cuteness / awesomeness it is... such is the case with these fabric pendants from glue and glitter from my atlanta-buddy and sometime-kraftwork-tableneighbor, becky. i looove them and i really hope she puts them on her site so i can get one. because i loooove them.

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in other news, i actually finished a hat last night at stitch & bitch! it involved ruffles. sewing on ruffles. which i am not a fan of... but it looks so cute and ruffly now that it's done that i might have to recant last night's proclamation of "NO MORE RUFFLES EVER AGAIN!" and do some more on something else. ohhh hypocrisy, you are so bitter... but ohhh ruffles, you are so sweet!

picture coming soon!

my mother, the secret knitting ninja

so i've been knitting (or purling, rather) sporadically for the past few months, since i learned back in november. tonight (in lieu of stitch & bitch, which i skipped again) i decided to bust out my total idiot's guide to knitting & crocheting and see if i could teach myself to knit (as opposed to purl), which really just resulted in me realizing that i've been purling in a really awkward/wrongish way that makes knitting seem like a whole other art form. so, i need to work on that. i also need some more needles, because at the moment i have too-small and too-big needles but none that are just right, a la goldilocks.

but, right, the really remarkable part of this is how, after i ripped my half a dozen rows of tight-fisted lumpy knitting and wound the yarn back up, my mom asked if she could try to see if she remembered how to do it. apparently she knit twenty five years ago? first i've heard of it!

so i handed over the supplies and lo and behlod, after not doing it for twenty five years, my mom can knit / purl better than i can. huh.

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completely unrelated, but here are some pictures of the store i work at, as promised in a previous post.



the store from the back (i love our big front window). our floors are the building's original ones-- it used to be a hardware store (the original mural advertising the store and gilman paints are still on the back of the building) and you can see where the big cases used to be from where there are worn marks on the hardwood.



we do complimentary gift wrapping on any purchase (and sometimes on items purchased elsewhere). gift wrapping is probably my favorite job to do at work. sometimes i get teased about it. sometimes i get a little too excited about it and offer to wrap very tiny things that don't need to be wrapped and then i wind up having to make insanely tiny little packages that probably cost more to wrap than the actual item. my love of gift wrapping at work has got me thinking that maybe i should offer giftwrapping for purchases from the site, but i haven't figured out how to orchestrate that exactly.



one of our displays, though we sold the flamingos a few days after i took this picture. i adore the glass vases-- i got a dark green squarish one for my apartment next year. behind you can see some of our jewelery cases, which i spend a lot of time unlocking and showing to people.

we don't carry any madeye stuff yet, but i mean to remedy that. last fall i got so busy with school that it all but slipped my mind entirely, but this year i will definitely get on it.

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is there anybody out there?! hello?! if i stop asking, will someone start responding?!

indirect awesomeness

rare device, a brooklyn boutique that featured a few madeye hats last winter/fall, is mentioned in lucky magazine this month. rena, the shop's owner (who seems very nice from my limited interactions with her!) scanned the page and posted it to the rare device blog, but you can also see it here.

i was reading the magazine on my lunch break at work and got so exited that i... well, i made a post-it note that said "she bought some hats from madeye!" and stuck it to the page for whoever picked it up next.

anyway, i think that's pretty exciting, and a nice indirect compliment. i'd never read much of lucky before, except for this issue, but i like a lot of what i saw (if only i was like, a supermillionaire that didn't care about paying hundreds of dollars for sundresses... and if only i could walk in heels, right?) and so if i like lucky and lucky likes rare device and rare device likes madeye... i take that as a good sign.

that reminds me that i took a lot of pictures of the store where i work to share here, but haven't gotten around to uploading them yet. i'll do that soon. it's an amazing little place and i really want to show it off.

also: um, hello, is anyone out there? i feel like i'm blogging to a brick wall. speak, people! speak!

oui oui! chapeau de piaf

another in what is becoming a considerably sized series of scrappy bird hats. this one goes international.



same black yarn as the first scrappy bird hat, same crazy black & white checked / houndstooth skirt scrap, plus tan corduroy (also appeared in the scrappy bird hat-- see the swirlies!). birds are black craft store felt, eiffel tower is cut out of a hot pink toile print fabric from hobby lobby.



close up... my camera is NOT liking to focus these days. no good. but here you can see the heart a little better, though i may end up re-stitching that part because it's kind of lumpy.

usually i find the eiffel tower motif to be a little overdone and cliche, but i feel somewhat qualified to use it now that i've actually BEEN to the tower myself. and not just the big cardboard one they had at prom senior year... i mean the REAL thing.



honestly, i never expected or really desired to see the eiffel tower, especially, until i was actually there, at which point i kind of freaked out because it's pretty much undeniably cool. mostly because it's huge, but then the lights that sparkle all over it at the top of every hour just make it more irresistable. especially to me, because i am apparently a sucker for sparkly things... that's what the eiffel tower taught me.

okay, now the lumpy heart is really starting to bug me, so i'm going to go fix that and watch even more obnoxious soul-draining television (today's count so far: "the hills" and "cheyenne" on mtv, and the hilary duff episode of "celebrity home" on style. hilary duff has a sewing room that is AMAZING and designed to house this $5,000 sewing machine that she's not even entirely sure how to use. wtf, duff?)

PS: if you drop by, comment! please! i want to know who's out there snooping around!

and some more

i actually started this one before the one i posted yesterday, but then got "crafters block" or what have you after stitching on the flowers and some of the buttons. so i stuck it on the mannequin head and let it sit for a few days... we had quite a few late-night staredowns, let me tell you. meanwhile, got the idea for the bird as seen on yesterday's, so i drew up a smaller stencil in a different size and here we have it.



i really like the black yarn i used for the hat, though i can't remember the name of it at the moment. i got two skeins from the a.c. moore clearance bin last week on my First Yarn Shopping Trip In Months, since it was down to $3 and had been sitting there since december. it's acrylic/something/something, kind of the same feel as lamb's pride worsted but a lot lighter.



two different kinds of houndstooth material make up the base of the applique (from two different thrifted skirts, both of which i would have saved to wear had they fit me). buttons are from my mom's preschool craft stash. the red flower is just a regular old flower, but the green one is one i attempted to felt last week. it basically just got fuzzy and KIND of drew up but not much. i'll give it another try sometime, but i do like how it turned out... for this project, at least. oh, and the bird is craft store black felt, just like the one from yesterday's. hat.

katy has requested one with an owl, so that among other things will be coming up soon.

time to go to my "real" job now. ha!

(ps: seriously, say hello if you read!)