indelible studios

Old World Wisconsin
Originally uploaded by digitalsuzi

Yesterday M and I went with my mom, sister, nephew, aunt, and cousin to Old World Wisconsin, a living history museum that shows how people lived in our state in the 19th century. “Interpreters” in each building show you how things were done — blacksmithing, baking cornbread in a woodstove, tending cattle and bees, running a stagecoach inn, teaching at a one-room schoolhouse, playing games and with toys. We loved it, the grownups maybe even more than the kids, although the kids had fun too. Many of the materials they use are from the time period, although some are reproductions, and it was fascinating to see how spare and beautiful everything was. It amazes me that people would put time and effort into embroidering or decorating things, because they worked so hard and needed things to be very utilitarian, and when did they have time to do it? But beauty was important to them, and I’m sure that handwork was something both useful — skill-building, even if it was just decorative — and relaxing. I loved looking at all the fiber tools and fabric, especially in the general store.  I got lots of ideas for things to make and ways to decorate — and I’ll post pictures once we get our camera-cord situation figured out (in the meantime, you can do a flickr search for “old world wisconsin” and get a pretty good idea of what things look like). Another thing that amazed me was how closely the homes there resembled the aesthetic of high-design, eco-friendly homes I see on the internet. And we were all astounded at the size of the place; the landscape seems pretty authentic with its untouched pasture land and woods, and there are several little villages, each comprised of one nationality of people and their traditional architecture and ways of doing things (German, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish, etc), although there was a bigger “crossroads village” and one that was an integrated community that included African Americans, even during the Civil War era. We didn’t get to stop there because the kids were about to melt down from hunger, but I’d like to learn more about it. M loved the schoolhouse since we actually got to “play school” and write on the slates and answer questions.  She also loved the baby animals, and a hoop game called the game of Graces (a game women could play, unlike baseball and other outdoor games). My nephew loved the hoop-and-stick game — of which you’ve surely seen pictures: a boy runs along, hitting a hoop with a stick, very simple!  Now we’re on the lookout for a way to make our own Graces set to decorate with ribbons, and maybe a hoop and stick set too.

As you can tell if you look around this site, I haven’t blogged in forever (unless you count my tumblr, which I really don’t) – once again I was swallowed whole by the semester.  Now that it’s finished, I have a million ideas for craft projects, cooking projects, and other stuff, and can’t wait to share them with you.  I plan to redo this site to make it more beautiful and useful.  I also plan to launch another blog where I’ll write out my more academic ideas, because I’ve realized that the commitment to blog helps motivate me.

Stitch n bitch group – Originally uploaded by Alicia Yeah

The internet is an amazing place.  You can find out about nearly anything! Here’s a list of some of my favorite sites for exploring craft ideas, talking craft, and asking questions – I haven’t participated actively in all of them (yet) but love to read peoples’ tips and questions.

• Craftster – the sewing machines category has been very helpful as I’ve gotten my used machine set up.  And there are some great tutorials on here too.
  
• Flickr groups – I didn’t really realize that Flickr was such a social networking place, we’d just used it as the family photo album; but now I’ve got my own account and have been enjoying making contacts and reading posts in the groups – it’s especially great for seeing what people are making with particular products, like the Bend the Rules Sewing group or the Anna Maria Horner fabrics groups.
  
• Threadbanger – I feel like I might be a little stodgy for Threadbanger, but you can’t beat the video tutorials!  And really cool projects. 
  
• Mothering dot commune – not a craft dedicated forum but some great tips in the sections that are related to craft, especially about crafts for kids and using natural materials.
  
• Stitchin fingers – I haven’t used this yet but it seems like a great resource for fiber artists.
  
• Ravelry – I’m not enough of a knitter/crocheter yet to really use this but I intend to, someday.
  
• Sew Mama Sew forums - I love the blog, haven’t used the forums yet but the blog is so helpful I bet it’s really great.
  
• Threads magazine forums – just found out about this via the CraftStylish blog.
  
• Get Crafty – one of the oldest online crafty places!  The forums can be fun.
  
• Ask Metafilter – some of the categories have great tips for crafty stuff.  Always nice to see people’s answers to others’ dilemmas.
  
• Craftzine community – haven’t used this one yet either but judging by Craftzine itself, should be very cool and useful.
  

Our air conditioner is broken and although one night was hot and sticky, I’ve been enjoying the breezes blowing into our usually-hermetically-sealed apartment.  It’s been coolish and rainy off and on, so not too bad.  Having the door open also makes me more likely to go out onto our balcony, which doesn’t have a terrible view but not a fantastic one either – but M likes to water the plants (and eat the herbs, an idea I introduced which she is maybe a little too interested in) and it’s nice to sit out and just watch the neighborhood, chill… wish we had nicer chairs and a little table.

One of the reasons I’ve been so delighted with my summer crafting is that it’s giving me a creative outlet, and I think I’ve been seriously needing one for quite a while now.  Motherhood – with its sleep deprivation, its billions of small interruptions, the constant partial attention to everything – coupled with grad school and just, you know, *life,* made it difficult to be creative or even figure out what I wanted to do creatively.  Writing is hard because I write so much for school.  Art is hard because, well, I don’t have the supplies.  Crafting was hard until I got the supplies, dropped from heaven via freecycle.  But then there’s just finding the time to be, to mull and ponder and marinate.  Something I’ve been missing from my younger years is the ability to be up at night – to go outside, to go out, to stay awake past 10 pm – because nighttime is very inspiring for me, and a creatively alive time.  I struggle to stay up now, and need to get more sleep in general, but sometimes I really relish a good stay-up (unless it’s paper-deadline-related).

I have more creative plans for the week ahead, and they’re not only crafting, although I think I’ve finally gotten over the “scrapped skirt” confidence flagging and can move on to more stuff – and I have a pincushion, coasters, beanbags, and some other stuff to show you.  Oh, and I figured out how to do a decent handstitch to close up a seam, finally.  I figured it out by taking apart my great-grandmother’s pillows – I just observed how she made her stitches, and it clicked the way it never did with illustrations or photos in a book.  More evidence of the importance of examining things, learning about process from the objects themselves.

My daughter is making me want to read the book Your 3-year-old: Friend or Enemy these days.  She is amazing, delightful, funny, sweet, everything you could want in a kid, and just about everyone, from her teachers to people we run into on the street, tell me what a sweetheart she is.  On the flip side, she protests everything I tell her, which is making my patience run thin, and she has been whiny and fighting our new bedtime system this week.  After getting to play with my sister for a couple hours one evening, she greeted me at the door with, “do you want to go check your email? I like Auntie better!”  Yeah, especially when Auntie has promised ice cream!  Yet immediately after she does something that pushes my buttons, she’ll be whining that she needs more help with something or that I need to do something for her.  A constant push-pull.

But some evidence that she is truly my daughter, a daughter more like me in temperament and taste than I would have guessed, is beginning to surface: 1) she insists on putting her barrettes in herself.  She shoves them in on top of her head so none of them hold her bangs back (we’re trying to grow them out), and are all in a clump.  But she likes them better that way because she can really *see* the fancy parts.  and 2) Today we went to the bookstore to pick out a book for my nephew’s birthday.  I told M she could pick out a magazine for herself, and she immediately picked out Martha Stewart’s Good Things for Kids.  Yep.  Somehow she knew that it had “instructions” in it (I didn’t tell her that!), and she set about trying to find the instructions for the soda-bottle piggy bank on the front.

What else?  I have been loving so many blogs and finding so many new ones.  I have some in my RSS feeds and then I have these other bookmarks lists that I keep in my google toolbar – I have 17 lists of approximately 10 blogs each, so I can “open in tabs” and not have them crash my browser.  It occurred to me today after spending a while going through some of the lists that that’s OVER 170 blogs.  Um.  Maybe I need to pare that down a little.   I don’t check them every day.  I read maybe 3 or so lists per day.  I should at least move some to a less-frequent list or something, it’s just that I’m afraid I’ll miss something really awesome.  And you know, there’s that feeling of connection, inspiration, commisseration.

Case in point of something awesome not to miss out on: Grosgrain’s plan to start giveaways!  She is starting with the Strawberry Quart Capelet.  And now by linking to it I hope I’ve entered the giveaway – I enter as many as possible.  Love them.  Blogland is so great.

Now to go sit on the balcony for a few moments and appreciate the night air.

mein moodboard details, Originally uploaded by design.mein

I have been saving photos to my computer for a long time, filing them in “craft inspiration” and “house inspiration” files, which I love to flip through digitally when I need some distraction or inspiration. But now with a blog I find I need to keep the links to the inspiration as well as the photo… I can bookmark these, or star them in my google reader, but I do miss the “flip through” feeling I get when I look through the pictures on my hard drive. So I guess I’ll do both?

And as for actual IRL paper sources of inspiration, like magazines and cards, I’ve had a million different systems over the years – from binders to pasting photos in a sketchbook to just keeping inspiration files. I actually found a box in my parents’ basement full of clippings I’d saved from fashion magazines when I was in middle and high school. Just loose in a box, gah. I recently put up an inspiration wire over my desk, which is holding some of M’s artwork, some colors of embroidery floss braided together, a couple of pictures from the Toast catalog, and my recently completed cross-stitch pieces.

I always have thought Julia Cameron’s idea about filling the well is truly important for creativity, but it’s something I manage to forget about somehow as I go about life. I hope that the inspiration wire will help remind me to look for inspiring things and think about what is important to me now. I think I would prefer a board, a “mood board” as it were, since I love the idea of a creative “mood” or “color story” or whatever, and since the wire seems a little more haphazard. But the materials were at hand, so there you go. And it does remind me to look for and collect beautiful little details. As blogging does.

I must not be the only person thinking about this since there is a blog I love all about inspiration boards!

I would love to hear how you keep track of your digital and paper and other kinds of inspiration.