Visual Caffeine

Moderation in all things- including moderation.

-Jaques Pepin

Photo by D. Sharon Pruitt

Your turn! Do you have a quote or a photo that you think would make a good Visual Caffeine post? Email me using the Contact tab above!

Crafty Book Review - Martha Stewart's Encyclopedia of Crafts

Martha Stewart's Encyclopedia of Sewing and Fabric Crafts: Basic Techniques for Sewing, Applique, Embroidery, Quilting, Dyeing, and Printing, plus 150 Inspired Projects from A to Z

When I first saw this book, I actually had no intention of buying it. For some reason, the idea of an encyclopedia of crafts just left me cold. What would it be, an a-z listing of various mediums?
(A - applique...B- beading. C- Crochet)
I don't know, it just sounded dull.

Boy, was I wrong. First of all, although it is set up in alphabetical order, the book is rife with the unexpected. (B is in fact for beading...beading flowers! And bugs!) The book is a nearly endless supply of ideas and inspiration.
Each chapter begins with a beautifully photographed step-by-step lesson on how to do said skill. Then a bunch of projects follow, generally accompanied by one or two photos and a brief how-to paragraph.
(Which crafts made it into the XYZ slots, you ask? The editors adorably sidestep the issue by assigning all the indexes back there. Cute!)

I'm not sure if any of the projects are original to the book. I recognized a lot from past issues of the magazine. However, I recognized these projects mainly because I have a habit of tearing out said projects, "filing*" them away, and never seeing them again. Having them together in a book is fantastic! They're easy to find, and therefore much more likely to actually get made. Hooray!

One more thing to note: This book is HEAVY. It is literally a tome. If you're resting the book on a table, it's fine, and the pages tend to lie nice and flat. If you're cuddled up on the couch, however, grab some manner of support pillow. You're going to need it.



*filing= stuffing into binders or folders in no particular order

A Peek Inside the Creative Life of Michal Wright-Ward

First off, a little backstory. Who are you? What do you make?
My name is Michal Wright-Ward, I've been making plush for about four years now. I make plush monsters, animals, and other silly creatures. I also draw, design and illustrate - cute/silly critters, of course.

What projects are you in the middle of right now that you should probably be working on instead of doing this?
Oh, there's always something cooking up in the studio. Right now I'm making plush and Christmas ornaments for my new online shop Mystic Forest Dwellers (www.mysticforestdwellers.com), and working on plush a gallery show I'm participating in this December. The sewing machine beckons (oy...).

Where do you primarily create?
Everywhere, in our little half-room studio, on lunch break at work, in the living room... Pretty much everywhere except for the loo. Don't ask what my husband said when I was hand sewing in bed one time.

Where do you find inspiration?
Everywhere, mostly in children's books and in nature. I find that my fellow plush makers friends inspire me a hack lot too. There's just so much imagination at work out there, so cool!

Do you have a favorite book/blog/movie/etc you'd like to recommend?
I love theneedle.org, seeing what people are up to. Also Craft Magazine's blog and Whipup.net and Craftster.

Where can readers see more of your work?
I always post stuff on my blog http://yarn-n-coffee.blogspot.com, and flickr, but mostly lately - on facebook.

Thanks for sharing a glimpse of your creative lie with us, Michal!

Boom!

Oh dear. I appear to have run out of maternity leave posts. I wrote a bunch of them (though not nearly as many as I'd hoped) and scheduled them out, and they have run their course.
Baby Olive arrived four weeks earlier than expected, and that blew my carefully crafted schedule to smithereens. I am totally okay with that.

Smithereens, I tell you!
Things have naturally been a blur since then (January 13th), and I'm just now starting to put the pieces back together. Things have changed dramatically, and I don't want things to be the same as they were pre-Olive, anyway. Honestly, I'm not sure what this means for the blog. Yes, I just reformatted it. Yes, I spent tons of time and energy on that. And yes, now I am thinking of scrapping it all and starting over. Or stopping. Whatever.
Not that I have any intention (or indeed, ability) to stop creating stuff. I've been working on a new collaborative project over at The Year of Living Sketchily. The Etsy shop is back up now, too.
I need time to figure out how all these older pieces fit into my new, busier life. Traditionally, taking time has sent me into a panic. I need to be doing! Constantly! Or else! Olive, however, is forcing me to take a different approach. "You need to hold me! Constantly! Or else!" And I am happy to.
All this is really just a long winded way of saying that change is afoot. Silence in the meantime. Bear with me. See you soon.

Flickr Finds - Macarons

I find macarons horribly intimidating, and utterly delicious. Alas, I live in the tiniest of cow towns, so my access to these little delights is sporadic at best.
There are literally thousands of photos of macarons on Flickr (41,000+ as of this writing!). Here are just four. (And yes, there is a recipe link tucked away in there!)


1. Macarons: before, 2. Pierre Hermé - Le jour du macaron (20 mars 2007), 3. Paris Macarons ....., 4. pistachio and grapefruit macarons

If you'd like to see one of your Flickr finest in an upcoming feature, post it to our group: http://www.flickr.com/groups/absolutelysmall/