Baker's Dozen Squares to date

Many of you know already that I am participating in a swap on Ravelry. It's called Baker's Dozen and we have to make twelve 12" squares over the course of 13 months, and we receive 12 squares during our own month. I've made eight squares since April, and I'm the member of the month for December. I figured it was a good time to tally them up and show them off.

Month One: April
PennyIA (Penny) wanted to make a Ron Weasley blanket. She wanted manly earthy tones (Brown, Orange, Green) and simple squares. Her goal was to donate the blanket to the veteran's hospital.
My square for Penny was a simple Tunisian crochet square with four colours of yarn I already had on hand.

Penny's blanket is DONE! That's my square on the bottom right-hand corner.


Month Two: May
luckhappens (Kelli) wanted a sampler afghan of monochromatic squares in the cream / off-white family and she wanted her yarn to be botanical (cotton, bamboo, hemp, rayon, soy, linen, silk or a blend).
My square for Kelli was a pattern called modern alchemy in cream cotton that I bought for the project. I needed to improvise a border that would get the jagged edging to be square, but I think it worked out OK. I was in such a rush to send my square to Kelli that I forgot to take a photo. This photo was taken by Kelli which is why it shows the three teas I gave her as part of the swap. People normally give things like stitch markers and whatnot (i.e. craft-related stuff) but I don't know where to buy a lot of stuff like that so I send tea because I'm a tea-lover!


Month Three: June
omahabookworm (Susan) wanted to make blankets for kids in the local homeless shelter so she wanted squares that kids could be a bit rough on. She wanted bright colours (blues, greens, pinks, red, orange, purple, yellow) in any pattern.
My square for Susan was a velvet and lace square in purple and pink that I already had on hand. I needed to adapt the pattern a bit to make it 12" but I think it worked out well. Once again I forgot to take the photo myself so this is Susan's photo.


Month Four: July
CraftyMomOf3 (Renee) wanted to make a cream and sage blanket for her camper.
My square for Renee was a mandela in cotton yarn (I only bought the green because I had cream left from the other beige square). Yet again, I didn't take a photo; this is Renee's. The middle green part of this pattern was really fun to make.


Month Five: August
knitpixie (Aimee) just got married in June and wanted cream-coloured cotton squares to make a blanket for her eventual baby.
My square for Aimee was an on-the-huh square I made out of new beige cotton I bought for the project. I had to modify the pattern to work with a single colour but it turned out well. I took a photo but I've somehow managed to lose that memory card so I don't actually have a photo now. Aimee is very busy with her new job and hasn't posted photos of all of her squares yet. I will update this post when a photo shows up!

Month Six: September
middleofnowhere (Casey) wanted red, black, or white for a blanket for her sister's 21st birthday. She wanted eclectic and random patterns.
My square for Casey was an ice cave square in the three colours she wanted. I had the red and white on hand but I bought black for this project. This square is super dense, but I hope it gets softer once it's washed.

Month Seven: October
puzzlelover (Diane) wanted cotton fall coloured squares, preferably monocromatic, in any of: red, orange, greens, yellows, browns, etc.
My square for Diane is a 16-circles square, but I goofed and didn't read the bit about cotton. So I sent her an acrylic square using brown yarn that was leftover from when I made my first afghan for Kyle. I hope she's not mad at me :(

Month Eight: November
Irish (Maureen) wanted cream, sage or cranberry/ burgundy squares, and she wanted cables/textures. She preferred wool but said acrylic was fine.
My square for Maureen was an improvised square I created to highlight a textured green wool I had in my stash. I didn't like the look of the wool on it's own (it looked unplanned and sloppy) so I used 2 other greens I had in my stash (both acrylic). I used double-crochets alternating with chains to create texture. I like the end result but I feel like it's one of those squares you either like or hate. This is Maureen's photo and it's a bit darker and yellower than the actual yarn looks in real life.

So that's them so far! I'll post some photos when I start receiving my own squares in December. I'm planning on making a shawl out of jewel tones. I'm pretty excited. This is the photo I used for inspiration:

Halloween costumes!

For the Biology Grad Halloween Party this year, our crafters got extra crafty on their costumes!

From left to right: Kara as Kristofferson (Fantastic Mr. Fox), Michelle as Michelle (so convincing! she could be her twin!), Katya as a devil, Mirna as a flamenco dancer, and Ellen as a barmaid. Below: Kara and Cory (as Ash from Fantastic Mr. Fox).


Little-known fact: Jessica is also present in these photos, but her ghost costume was just too good to show up on film.

Great job, everybody!

HappyBirthday Jess!

We celebrated Jessica's birthday last week (about a week after her actual birthday) with some collectively decorated angel food cake and a mimed (by most) happy-birthday song. In honour of this occasion, we presented her with a 2011 calendar which some of us hand-crafted for her. We each decorated one or two pages/months of the calendar, according to our talents and imaginations. We also composed a poem for Jess, commemorating the year-long devotion to our craft group. Michelle performed the reading of the poem (entitled "Ode to Jess") to a rapt audience, while Mirna captured the recital on video (but Michelle has since destroyed any evidence of this...).


Below are each of our contributions to the calendar, in alphabetical order.



Ellen painted in acrylics (what a gorgeous rendition of a royal flycatcher bird!), and hand-sewed the Christmas ornaments with felt and ribbons.



Kara filled one page with colourful flowers/snowflakes, and did a couple of great pencil sketches of talking animals ("Yummmy yummy yummy" and "Oh No").



Katya played around with watercolours, for an abstract design using her signature colour combinations. She also painted a colourful version of Opabinia, a prehistoric creature the story of which you need a PhD in biology to undertand or remember!



Li used a collage of bird photos to express her gratitude to Jess for repeatedly baking for us over the past year, and Laxmi did a beautiful collage of flower photos as well.



Michelle printed a photo of her cat, Theo, and crocheted a small sampler using Theo's actual hair, spun into yarn and sewn onto the page. She also did a collage of silk flower petals and leaves, free-motion sewn onto felt.



Last but not least, Mirna glued an arrangement of glittery 3-dimensional dragonflies and butterflies, and the cute Easter bunny and eggs. She also marked her birthday on the calendar with what she thought was a harmless-looking ladybug sticker, which became the joke of the night (for reasons we will keep to ourselves, as Mirna's Spanish temper may get the better of her if we tell...).

Make-Up and Dress-Up Party

In addition to our birthday celebrations for Katya and Li the other night (September 29th), we also held a Make-up themed craft night. We all dressed up for the occasion, and looked really good, if we may say so ourselves!
Top row above, left to right: Jess, Mary, Laxmi, Kara, Cory, Katya and Michelle
Bottom row, left to right: Li, Ellen, Jasmine and Mirna

Some of us were the artists/painters and the others were the blank canvas/paintees. The artists brought their tools and supplies (make-up, brushes and what-not, as well as a large selection of nail polish), and set up shop in various corners of the house. The paintees then chose who they wanted to be painted by, and sat down to have the work done. Mary and Laxmi, dressed in their beautiful saris, watched and admired. Laxmi was the official photographer for the evening.



Make-Up artists Ellen and Mirna, with their creation: Jasmine

Cory, with work done by Katya.

Michelle make-up courtesy of Mirna and Ellen.

Katya's colourful eye shadow on Jess.

Nail artists were Kara, Jess and Cory. We have no close-ups of their work, but some beautiful and funky designs were created with interesting combinations of colours and shapes. Michelle now has colourful toenails with a design of multi-coloured polka-dots on a bright pink background, courtesy of Kara. A couple of girls got French manicures, and some very pretty flower designs on their fingernails.

Birthday Pinata for Katya and Li

Two of our collegues and friends, Katya and Li, celebrated their birthdays within a week of each other this past week. To add some fun and crafty spice to their celebrations, we (Mirna, Ellen and Michelle) built a pinata for them (cardboard box with top mostly cut out, a trap door at the bottom, and tissue paper decorations).

The pinata was filled with chocolate and candy, and little slips of paper with embarrassing and/or funny and/or touching stories about each of them. After a hearty song of Happy Birthday, Katya and Li pulled the strings on the pinata and spilled the contents. They then each took turns reading the slips of paper (each reading stories about each other). The stories were collected over the past week or two, with the participation of alot of Ciborowski lab members. It is interesting to note that since Li is so much more well-behaved than Katya, Katya's stories outnumber Li's, and some of Li's stories were pure fiction!

Check out the hilarious and well-done cartoon sketch of Katya and Harry Potter's Severus Snape, done by Jess and Daniel:

Congrats and well wishes to Van on her marriage!

As a group, we UWindsor Crafters have been together for about a year now (we should probably celebrate some sort of anniversary! another excuse to have cake!). The year has seen some changes in the group: Nicole, one of the original members and creators of the group, left us last November (to go off and do a PhD in Quebec), though she's still with us virtually.

Van got engaged some months ago, then finished her Master's, and moved to Guelph to start her PhD. Her wedding to Tim was this past weekend, Sept 25. We all wish her well, and as a remembrance of the good crafty times we've had together, a few of us worked together on a wall-hanging which we presented to her as a wedding gift.

Jess started the piece by painting a white sheet of fabric with fabric paints.


Michelle then added to the design and free-motion quilted the piece, and finished it by wrapping around and glueing to an 11"x11" canvas. Kara did some beautiful lettering on the back of the piece, and we all signed it.


Best wishes Van and Tim!

Whisper Craft Unveiling

Our game of "Telephone with Crafts" (or Whisper Craft Project, as we have been calling it) came to an end about a month ago. On the evening of Sept 1st we got together for the unveiling. Most of the participants were able to attend (with the exception of Van, who was in the process of moving to Guelph that very day). Thanks to Nicole for joining us all the way from Quebec!

The Whisper Craft Project, once again, was meant to be a series of art/craft creations, each inspired by the piece created before in the link. We started with an original inspiration of a photo and/or object; Van offered to be the starting point in the link. The rest of us followed in this order: Jess, Michelle, Katya and Nicole.

Below are photos and descriptions of each of our creations. We were each allowed to see (and be inspired by) only the piece created by the person before us in the series.

Van

Inspired by the dragonfly photo on the Microcosmos video cover, and another dragonfly ornament. More details to come.



Jess
Inspiration for whisper craft: When I first saw Van's whisper craft, I was drawn to the contents of the frame- colourful, diverse flowers. I was pretty sure I wanted to paint something, but kept rejecting ideas I had about painting flowers- flowers in a vase? Too literal. Garden of flowers? Meh. I then spent more time looking at her whisper craft, and decided that instead of focusing on the main subject of her craft (the flowers), I would focus on the cute little dragonfly in the upper corner. Once I had changed my frame of mind, I was quickly inspired to paint a dragonfly, with floral elements in the background.

Making the whisper craft: My craft was painted with acrylic paints on a canvas bought from Michael's. I used large flat brushes for the sky and to paint the earth green, and then used smaller round brushes to paint in the abstract floral background. I then used really fine, sharp-tipped brushes to paint the dragonfly, starting by painting it all black, and then filling in the colour patches. I had originally thought I'd use a gloss to make the wings shiny, but I ultimately decided to go ahead and make the whole darn dragonfly shiny. This was accomplished using acrylic gloss I picked up from Michael's (took about 4-5 coats to achieve ultimate shinyness).



Michelle
I've been going through a mosaic phase the past couple of months, where I obsessively want to cover everything I see in tile bits. So my whisper craft was going to be a mosaic, no matter what! I loved Jess's painting, and what drew me to it most was the grassy background.

I decided to recreate that background in bits of green tiles and glass. For the sky, in addition to having some blues, I opted to use mirror shards as well (bad luck for me for the next 7 years for breaking the mirror I used!). Mirrors, reflecting light, make me think of the sky. I switched the layout of the piece from Jess's wide (landscape) to tall (portrait), and used a wooden cabinet door as the base of the mosaic.

Instead of a focal point of a dragonfly resting on a stem (try getting THAT much detail with mosaics!) I added a bit of red glass to represent some flowers in the grass. The effect of the whole is very abstract. This could have either made it really difficult for the next person in line to be inspired, or gave Katya lots of options and possibilities and free reign to the imagination for her piece.



Katya
Michelle's piece reminded me of a waterfall, which reminded me of spirits that live in waterfalls, which reminded me of spirits in general. By that time I was already painting a sunset in the ocean and added an upside down ghost ship as a bridge to the Otherworld. It didn't photograph well, so instead I sent Nicole another piece (see photo below) which was inspired by the colors of the first one.

Unlike Jess, I cheaped out on the brushes (and everything else) and used my fingers and a mesh. The mesh can create a pretty cool texture. Hands take long time to clean. Enting. Oil on canvas.



Nicole
When I saw Katya's tree painting, my thoughts immediately went to an afghan pattern I had seen on Ravelry a few times, called "Tree of Life". I had no idea how difficult it would be, but I wanted to give it a try. I stuck fairly close to replicating Katya's piece by using a green and turquoise variegated yarn that I already had on hand. I noticed some light and darkness in Katya's painting that reminded me of healthy nature versus pollution; I tried to incorporate that idea into my piece by adding a smattering of other coloured yarn. The tree shape is created using Front and Back Post Double-Crochet stitches and I ended up deviating from the pattern a little bit to add some asymmetry to the branches. Finally, I bordered the piece using an orange, yellow and blue variegated yarn. I plan to use this crocheted piece as the centre of a lapghan or a shawl, I haven't decided yet.