Get Some Craft!

It's that time of year - when the best craft fair in Vancouver happens!


Got Craft? - is Maked's favorite craft fair. Since we're on hiatus, we're not vendors there this year, sadly, but you should go anyway if you can. I'll be there shopping. There's also going to be a DIY craft table put on by Spool of Thread (a sewing store/lounge that is about to open in Vancouver!). Plus good tunes, awesome vendors, and just a fabulous atmosphere generally. Seriously, it's that awesome.

Details:
Sunday, May 2nd, 2010 10am - 5pm
Royal Canadian Legion :
2205 Commercial Drive (@ E.6th Ave), Vancouver

Chainmaille and pots?

I haven't had a lot of time to work on it, but my byzantine chain project is going faster than I expected. I also thought the tiny rings would be more fussy to deal with, but actually, they are a breeze. I could totally do smaller rings (if they were available)! I thought this project would be more frustrating, but it's turning out easy peasy. =) (I'm making a necklace, so I've got a ways to go yet.)


What did turn out to be difficult was finding pots for my indoor plants. I have one plant that we've had for 2 years - which is a VERY long time for us. We generally kill everything quite quickly. (I think we over watered everything in the past.) We never got a proper pot for our plant because we honestly didn't expect it to last that long. I was in the garden store the other day, getting little pepper seedlings and they had my houseplant there, which was handy because I didn't know what the thing was. Turns out it's a ficus! Except it has curly leaves, so it's cuter than normal. The lady at the garden store said I should have repotted it into a larger pot when I got it 2 years ago. Whoops. So I did that last week and bought a little asparagus fern and decided they both needed proper pots because I'm not going to kill them, they're going to thrive (even though the ficus can't seem to keep it's leaves).

I discovered that there is not a terribly large selection of modern pots in downtown Vancouver. I wanted something bright and sleek - something that would pop against all our white walls. Apparently this was asking for the moon. Most pots are very earthy-styled.... muted colours, fussy designs. I spent an inordinate amount of time searching for more interesting pots (needed them in 2 sizes too, which made it even harder) - I was actually surprised that there weren't more stores selling pots that would appeal to urbanites, seems like that would be a nobrainer for Vancouver stores.

In the end, I went back to the first store I checked and got some there. The big one is a bit dinged up, but they fit the bill perfectly otherwise - bright, sleek, shiny.... and were super cheap because they're actually christmas items! Which store was the one that came through with the good selection? Canadian Tire. I know! They actually have some very good stuff, consistently. So there you go. And the fact that it was so hard to find them, makes me that much more pleased every time I look at them. ;)

Finishing & Starting

It's funny how difficult it seems to finish projects sometimes. Starting them is so much more interesting! I've been very good lately about only starting projects when I've finished one I have on the go - so I don't end up buried under a million half-done works-in-progress.

I finished a big one recently - a baby blanket for a friend. I started out using a different pattern, but really wasn't feeling it at all, so about 1/4 of the way through I abandoned that and went with a crochet pattern I had done before and liked - the Tiramisu. Much better! It was a perfect mindless crochet project, good for keeping my hands busy during movies and it actually went quite quickly once I got going. The yarn got much softer after I washed it, which is good because I wasn't really enjoying it much. It's Elann's Superwash Bamboo. Finished it off with some yellow ribbon from my stash (yes, I have a ribbon stash, of course), and bask in the glow of a finished project. Feels good.

I started looking for crochet patterns to decide what I was going to do next, and actually decided to put the yarn away for a bit and tackle another project I've had on my todo list for ages... chainmaille. I got a package of tiny silver rings (perfectly laser cut by UrbanMaille) for my birthday last year and haven't tackled the project I wanted them for because it was kind of a daunting task. These rings are really tiny (see photo)!

But, the only way to start is to just start. So I started (see photo)! This is a byzantine chain which is a pattern I fell in love with when I first experimented with chainmaille several years ago. And since I like to do things that are ridiculously intricate and time consuming, this project fits the bill very nicely. Stay tuned, I'll let you know how I progress. =)