Fibrations 2018

What a beautiful exhausting day!

I gotta tell you, I ended up with blisters hauling this thing around all day, but it was super worth it! I had an amazing day MCing the event!
In case you didn't know, or haven't read my previous posts about the Fibrations festival, it's a local event put on by Knotty by Nature, a local fiber store. Ryan and Steph and members of the community (like myself) come together to create the magical fiber day!
There's dozens of vendors, and every year I get to meet a lot of amazing and talented people. It's a fantastic blast!

The (highly white, upper end of middle aged) community out in full force at the event! There were so many people this year! Maybe not the most ever, but I was so happy with the turn out!

Anyway, it was an amazing day! I was given a bunch of gifts from just wonderful vendors simply for being a great MC and information person!
Here's a photo of all the goodies I picked up!

The black and rainbow is called "Unicorn Farts" and comes from Spunwareovertherainbow (which is just the best name run by the kindest human!). And she GAVE me this wonderful skein!! I nearly died!
Then there's some books (Zines) by Caitlin Ffrench. She specializes in botanical dyes and inks, for yarn and paper and what have you. KBN paid half the fee for me to be able to take her class, and it was spectacular! I learned so much and now have some inks and watercolors made from all natural materials like seeds, barks, pieces of iron and metals!
Then Christian from Hypnoknits gave me the patch. You can't read it but it says "There is no gender in fiber craft" and it makes my heart soar!
Then I got this incredible coloring books from a vendors husband. He loves making coloring books! And I love coloring! So he gave me these! And then I bought an enamel pin from Black Cat yarns<3 p=""> and small bundled yarn there from Black Cat Yarns. The yarn is called "Unicorn Farts" as well haha!
Then I bought the little yarn crafting octopus enamel pin because it was just waaaay too cute not to.
The pink Joma yarn (now Subculture Yarn) was part of a project, where the proceeds went to help someone... with.. something... I forget, but as soon as I saw her post about it, I knew I needed to pick it up, to help the cause and to get this gorgeous pink!
Then I won the rest of the things! The amazing "Lite Brite" by Black Cat Yarns, two random crochet bowls (I felt bad for the artist as they did not have many tickets for their item), a bag of knit baby items (so do not remember entering for this... pretty sure the tickets got mixed up but whatever haha).
I also picked up a quilted pillow from Rosalie, a friend of Dela's (and honestly myself) for Lex's mom Cathy for xmas!
So yeah, just one of the best Fibrations yet! Can't wait for next year!

Tiny Tina Belcher Does Roller Derby!

After some of my friends saw my Bob's Burgers yarnbombing for IYBD, I got a commission to make a Tina Belcher doll for a roller derby star who is named after Tina Belcher, Tina F. Lawless. It's fun to watch her play! And to yell GO FLAWLESS!!
Anyway, when I got the commission, I was so excited! I always get a thrill when people actually like what I do!
So I got to working on the doll, so I could bring it to the next derby match.

BUT! I wanted to do something special, a kind of bonus. I was just so happy to be commissioned!
I made Derby gear for Tina!

I'm so happy with how it turned out!
And the look on Flawless's face when I gave it to her, priceless! She was just so thrilled with it and the surprise skates and Derby gear.
All around success!

International Yarn Bombing Day 2018

So, if you google IYBD, it says that the day is June 11th every year, regardless of when it falls during the week. There are other people that celebrate it the same day as World Wide Knit in Public Day (WWKIPD), which is the second Saturday in June (I think).
Either way, I don't think the date means as much as it used to. I think the idea remains tho. Some people and some groups are still doing it, but yarn bombing as a whole seems to have passed out of popularity.
I still enjoy it a lot. It's still my favourite thing to crochet.

So a bit of back story with this years yarn bomb.
When I ride the bus home, the bus has this thing that talks and announces the road that you're about to be at. Near my house, there is a road called Belcher Ave. Every time I would go past it, I would laugh to myself, thinking about Bob's Burgers and the Belcher family. Then it dawned on me that I should do a Bob's Burgers yarn bomb for IYBD.

I didn't end up doing Gene, cause there were only two street signs and cause I ran out of time (I mostly did not start soon enough, like I do every year pretty much).
I am really proud of my Tina and my Bob. I really like his apron.

So today (which to be fair, is neither WWKIPD or June 11th), I walked down to Belcher Ave and yarn bombed it!
First, I put Tina and Louise at one end.

And then I put Bob and Linda at the other end.

Bob and Linda did not go up as easy as Tina and Louise. But I feel like this was a successful yarn bomb!
I think I will keep dong IYBD, so long as I can keep coming up with ideas. I still have to do my library lego man idea. Even if all I do is one yarn bomb a year, I wanna still keep doing it as much as I can. I love my crochet Belcher family.


P.S. Did you know that my granny squares are still up at Knotty by Nature? from 2012? I grabbed another photo when I was there on Saturday. Can you believe the comparison?? I mean, it has been 6 years. I'm still so happy they're still there.

International Yarn bombing day 2017

Well, I didn't get a chance to do anything for IYBD this year.
To be honest, I feel like the event has really lost steam. I didn't see any Facebook events for it from the creator or any of the organizations that took it up in the past couple years. There weren't even a lot of posts on Instagram.
But that's ok. Yarn bombing has taken on many different guises over the years since it's original inception, and yarn art is a constant evolving thing.
I did however participate in Worldwide Knit (and crochet) in Public Day, which was June 10th.I couldn't remember if IYBD took place on the Saturday or Sunday of the 9th, 10th, or 11th weekend in June, so it was nice to at least be involved with some kind of yarn event for this weekend.
It took place in my community at Knotty by Nature, a wonderful fiber arts store that has always been great to me. I help them out whenever I can, and the owners are truly kind to me.
When they first opened up, their new shop (they moved from downtown Victoria to out by Ross Bay Cemetery) in 2012, I welcomed them to their new location by yarn bombing their store location. You can see the post I did about it from back then here. They came in the next day to see that I had left them a wonderful yarn bombed store and they were super excited and happy about it. They did their best to maintain a number of the pieces for as long as they could.
So imagine my surprise when I discovered that one of the pieces is still there! After 5 long years, plus a little bit more, it's still there! Incredibly weather worn, much like the hearts from my last post.

I am amazed that any of the color has remained. It's obviously super weathered.
It brought my heart such joy to see it there tho. And to see so many people attending the worldwide knit it public event.
While I didn't put out a crazy awesome epic yarnbomb for IYBD, so many of the people I knew commented on the epic one I did at the park across the way for IYBD in 2012, my second year participating, where I made the incredible crocheted picnic for Hollywood park. So if nothing else, it is great to be remembered for one of my best works. I hope to do another epic feast of crochet food someday. It is by far one of my favorite things to make out of yarn and really all fibers (I enjoy my needle felted sushi too). In fact, I was crocheting a hotdog for a friend during the worldwide knit in public day event!
I hope you enjoy all these throw back pieces I have been discovering. Hopefully I will continue to yarnbomb in the future, even if it has largely gone out of style.

Unbelievable

So I went to visit my friends that I haven't seen in a while. 

Time gets away from me. This blog is a classic example, but I still post!

Anyway, I was just walking down the street and happened to glance over at the fence I was passing.

It was then that I noticed the hearts on the fence. Worn, weathered and not at all in the red hue anymore really, but still there!

You may remember the hearts from this post.

But here they are 5 years later!

I cannot believe they are still there... 

You can see that Danika's heart (top most, right most heart) has survived the best, but the pink heart looks pretty good. And still pretty pink.

My first one, the top left most, is even still there! Wow.

So this is clearly my oldest yarnbomb to survive. It gives me an odd kind of motivation to get back into yarn bombing.

I'm still in the middle of health issues, so I dunno when I can get back to it, and I have other yarn related activities I would love to get to, but I still really love yarn bombing.

I can't actually have Ketchup anymore

But I can write interesting posts pretending to be about ketchup when really they're about catching-up!
I enjoy bad puns.

Anyhow!
I finally finished my Portal Turret blanket! You may remember it from my 2015 ketchup post where I had recently been to Fibrations and trying my hand at all kinds of fiber crafts.

It is kinda hard to get a good photo of my blanket, as there is no surface in my new place that is big enough to take a photo of it all laid out.

As you can see here, it's smooshed up against various things in my living room. 

Here the blanket is on my bed. It's a queen sized mattress, so I guess it's a queen sized blanket!
I know, I know, the ends aren't weaved all in. But if you look closely at the top half, I have done some! It's a lot of little work.
I also think I want to crochet around the edges to really tie the whole thing together. Give it a nice border.

I will also be backing it with a lovely fabric that I found at Spoonflower, just as soon as I can afford several feet of it.

So yes! This is Portal blanket was 672 squares of awesome! 21 by 32 squares. SO MANY SQUARES!! I think next I would love to do the companion cube blanket. Interestingly enough, I chose to do the turret over the cube initially because the cube was more squares. But when I decided to turn the turret into a whole blanket (all the light blue squares you see), it ended up being a bunch more! So now the companion cube blanket doesn't seem as daunting. This one only took about 18 months on and off.

I hope you enjoyed seeing my lovely blanket.

International Yarnbombing Day 2016 - Where's Waldo?

This year, international yarnbombing day snuck up on me again. But unlike last year, I remembered in time! I remembered with about two weeks to spare, just as I got a new job.

So I wanted to do something cool, but something I could execute in a reasonable amount of time.

Perfect opportunity to do my Where's Waldo project!

So I spent two weeks cranking out a Waldo based off the very first book from 1987, where Waldo has 12 accoutrements that he loses throughout the book! So I made a Waldo with a cup, snorkel, binoculars, kettle, sleeping bag, shovel, backpack, camera, hammer, bag, belt and walking stick.

The plan was to wander around downtown Victoria and take pictures of random, not necessarily easy to guess locations and have Waldo lose an item at each one. I sorta did that, and chronicled it on Instagram.

First, I stopped at Terroir, the amazing tea salon on Fort st. They were having a tea tasting with the tea harvester from Taiwan.

I enjoyed amazing teas, done at different temperatures than normal, and there were so many different flavors! I digress, but it was delicious.

Waldo left his cup behind after we enjoyed our tea.
Next, we ended up in Centennial Square. Waldo decided to try out his snorkel in the pool.

But then he left his snorkel there as we headed off to the next venue.

We decided to get some chocolate from this awesome chocolate shop just off Fan Tan Alley. Waldo was using his binoculars to look around the shop, put them down, and promptly forgot them.

After our delicious chocolates, we crossed Market Square and headed onto LoJo. We ducked into the shopping arcade, where there's a secret garden Waldo and I hung out in.

Waldo thought this would be the perfect place to make some tea. He took out his kettle and was half way through before I told him that he couldn't do that here!

(This picture is a real "where's Waldo")

He ended up forgetting his kettle. I feel kind of responsible for that one.

After we left the arcade, Waldo mentioned being hungry. I decided we should head to Trounce Alley and eat some tapas.

After Tapas, Waldo was sleepy. He pulled out his sleeping bag to nap, but I told him we had to continue on. In our haste to leave, he left his sleeping bag behind.

As we were walking along, Waldo caught a magnificent scent. It turned out that we were walking past Lush. We wandered in and smelled a bunch of their bath bombs. Waldo decided to whip out his shovel and dig away at one of the bath bombs, but couldn't really crack them.

It ended up getting stuck and he had to leave it behind.

After that we wanted to go take a look at the ocean. Walking the promenade, we stopped to take a look as the water-planes were taking off.

Waldo took off his backpack to get a better look up on the rail. When he climbed back down, he just forgot to put it back on.

As we continued walking along, we came across the statues that I yarnbombed back for the very first International Yarnbombing day in 2011. I explained to Waldo how I had turned the statues into Katamari characters. He wanted to take a picture with the statues to commemorate the yarnbombing.

He ended up leaving his camera there though, so I guess I won't be getting those pictures.

On our way back downtown, we passed a lot of construction. Waldo decided that he could really help the workers out as they weren't working on a Saturday.

He lost track of his mallet before he could really fix anything however.

Suddenly! Waldo and I ended up in London!

Just kidding. We were just in Nootka Court, where there is an English style phone box. Waldo decided to try it out, as everyone uses cell phones nowadays. He took off his bag while he was in there and didn't grab it on his way out.

Also while in Nootka Court, we checked out the beautiful totem pole they have in the garden.
Waldo didn't realize his belt had come off now that it wasn't holding up all his various tools.

The belt was left behind as well.

With only his walking stick left in his possession, the Bug Zoo caught Waldo's eye.
I mentioned to him that they would definitely have walking stick bugs in there. He wanted to compare the two so we did.

His walking stick was pretty much as big as a real walking stick insect.

In his haste at comparing the two however, Waldo ended up leaving his walking stick behind at the bug zoo.

With no accoutrements left, Waldo and I decided to head on home.
We traveled by bus and as my stop approached, I thought Waldo was with me, but alas, he remained on the bus.

Where's Waldo now??

All in all, it was a really fun day full of great adventure. I hope you had fun looking for Waldo too.
Happy International Yarnbombing day for 2016!