At 33

Hello world!

Tomorrow I turn 33. It is sort of a milestone for me at such a random number.  Firstly it took me some time to realize how old I really am since I pretty much stopped counting after 30. It's not even the number that makes it a milestone but more just the amount of things have have happened in the past few years, let alone months.

 I was humbled and honored to test for my level 2 shorts at Muay Thai.  It was a hard decision and big challenge for me. I wanted to do it and train for it but I don't think I started to train for the right reasons.

I was coming off of a pretty big high from seeing friends fight and all the fight training our gym had been doing. In the end I did it for all the right reasons, my friends around the gym and fellow testers training kept me level headed and helped me to remember what was really important and the spirit of our gym. There was even a point when I thought I might of pulled out just because I didn't feel my mind and heart were in the right place for this honor.

In the end I went through it and it was AMAZING. This time was somehow more impactful in my life then the first test. It was rough no doubt as I had only started into sparring maybe two months beforehand and even with all the extra gym time I put in there just wasn't anything to prepare for the endurance needed just for sparring. 

Overall this helped me to let go of my senseless competitiveness and goal driven accomplishments. It let me just relax, enjoy and appreciate the moments in life more. I also learned to let go some of my silly cultural habits of seniority which has always been this hanging stress in my life. 

Super proud of all my fellow testers and big shouts out to Doug, Malik and Lavaughn for being there with me through Level 2! It wasn't that long ago but I feel that in my short time of about a year and half I have learned so much and looking at the new beginner's classes I get excited for them and to be a part of their journey.

Then two weeks later........

I completed another wonderful runway show with the Alternative Fashion Mob.  I couldn't be more happy with the results and most importantly all the people I worked with. I have amazing friends all around me and they really lift me up and assist when I need it. My Muay Thai testing definitely help me be very "whoo saaaa" through this fashion show where I let all the problems other people were having slide off of me and didn't stress with what was wrong but just how to get through it and have fun.

I was so fortunate to also have the amazing models that I did for this show. To me the right energy and personality is more important when doing such a big production but I was also fortunate enough to have beautiful models.  You can see photos of my full collection on my Torn Angel Facebook Page. 

Amidst all of this has also been the store!

 Everything is coming together and I just got back from TNNA this weekend and made some very interesting orders that I was not prepared for. It was so hard to go there not knowing what exactly my customer base will be and figuring out who my client really is before I am open. It's a struggle to think about what I want my store to be and how I also want to service the community at the same time. I don't want anyone to feel alienated at the same time I want to stick to my creative guns with my yarn selections.

The POS is all set up and I didn't think that would be such an ordeal but it was and now it's all good. We have a rhythm for it all and I understand how it all works. I would show pictures of the whole store but it's still a slight mess right tools and things needing to be made. I'm also a bit spread out to work on the display for the windows and just general it's a mess.

Lastly I got my second tattoo and I can't say it will be my last but she might be. I'll just show you a picture because it means too much to me to just clump my feelings together with everything else and I am still relishing in the glow of it and all the feelings surmounted with this tattoo.

Tomorrow is my birthday and I'll be spending the entire day traveling across time zones to be in Korea! now that so many things are over with I can finally start to get excited as I pack and get ready. I can say that I am nowhere near where I thought I would be today.  If I talked to younger self I would reassure myself and say:

"No, you won't be married with 3 kids as a housewife or working for a large fashion company, but it's ok. You will find a new fantastic path, be happier and be full of wonderful encounters, friendships and fulfillment in ways you didn't know exist. You will be an entire person on your own whole and without regret and you will love everything with all your heart and it will be ok even though it's not where you thought you would be. Enjoy the adventure because it is all yours alone"

Cheers!

Happy Holidays! and oh shit... Branding.....

Happy Holidays everyone!

As I get a few days of respite I work I have taken some of this time to work on myself and my own personal ventures. I have very little work to do when everyone else is on vacation for the holidays so I might as well make the most of the time.

I am in no way, shape, or form a graphic designer but I dabble a little bit for my own sake. I know I need business cards and I need to get a branding strategy together for my wee little yarn store in the works. I didn't want to deal with bubbly or fancy lettering. I've always been a fan of a straightforward easy to read font with a little class and vintage feel. My go to font is a Courier or Typewriter style.
Since I didn't want to use the font as cute or catchy thing in my store name I decided I wanted to do a fancy ampersand. I LOVE the ampersand.

Today I broke out the good ol scrap papers with some heavy 7.0 mm roller ball pens and graphite pencils to get my rough sketches down as I work on this whole branding thang. Branding is very important to a business and I am not trying to down play it at all. It just isn't my specialty nor do I feel that I have the skill set to make it as good as it could be. But these are the breaks when you have very little, to no money allocated in the business for this kind of thing. My main focus is having the funds for stock in the store and rent for at least 5-6 months squirreled away for any emergencies.

I have taken inspiration from the Georgia BOLD style ampersand into these two iterations. I knew I wanted to use the knitting needle in some way and of course the yarn. The difficult thing is thinking how literal I wanted it to look like am ampersand. I wanted it to still have a little mystery and quirk. One of those things that you might assume and not get right away but the closer you look you can get a little chuckle from the nuance of this logo.

I think I much prefer the ball of yarn version even though it isn't as clear. It is just for branding and its like that game where you can put the letters to a simple word out there in the wrong order but the brain still knows what word was intended.

I've also started to hunker down and look at my vendor applications for whole sale ordering and realizing I need to get this business cap on and get active with the business account, email, and get card made. 

There is a lead on a possible location! but that's all I'll say. I'm not going to stress out until May about having a location but of course the sooner the better.

Cheers! and have a wonderful holiday with your family, loved ones and furbabies if you have them!

 

Just for Ewe - and eventually me!

It's been a while since I have had the time to make a post. I've simply been very busy between Independent's day Organization, moving into the new studio space and the Columbus Food Truck Fest. Now that two of those 3 things are pretty much done with I find myself picking up other things. These are important things that I hope will be the foundation for my life in the upcoming years. Re-applying for Grad school and working on a business plan for my own yarn store. If you remember in my "Craft Wars" episode I talked about wanting to open a yarn store. It was not a lie to sound meaningful on TV. It is something that I do really plan on doing.

There is this sweet little Yarn Shop up around the lake house called "Just for Ewe". It is a very inspiring place where the yarn is like waterfalls of color through out the store. Not that I want mine to look like that but it's fun to go in there.

They also have Sheep!

And an Alpaca!

The quaint little storefront is set back away from the road in the back lot next to the sheep and alpaca stable. In the front lot is a small craft gift and candy store.

The entire place is just dripping in colors and fibers

There was even a place for the boys to sit down and relax amidst it all.

I've been reading a ton of small business books and contacting potential vendors about price lists and working out the details in my head of going from pop-up to brick in mortar in two years time frame. I feel good that I am well prepared when people ask me the serious business questions that I can give them complete answers without hesitation. A few other business owners have told me I've been doing my research and off to a really good start. The problem is just making that final leap to start this. I have a handful of forms and documents that I need to send out with checks to get this party started.

NYC Craft Swag

Finally after a bit a time and many meetings I've had the time for myself to work on this post about my crafty purchases in New York City from the beginning of this month.

These were my luscious purchases from Purl Soho. My hubby actually bought me my two half yard pieces of Liberty of London.

I got a good collection of crewel wool to add to my supplies and I was good enough to only buy myself two skeins of yarn both by Madelinetosh .

I went for Florals in Liberty because this is what they are known for. Amazing robust patterns with an array of colors, never looking tacky but so much details into every square inch. I also got this cute Japanese polka dot bias tape which I hope to use on a blouse I have plans to make.

I stayed mostly in blues and greens in my selection since I am still planning to work on bruises for my embroidery but I added in a few choice colors just for me to play with.

Here is a close up for the gorgeous yarns I got in Tomato and Robin's Egg blue. One day when I have my own yarn store I am going to make sure I carry this yarn company. It is just so beautiful and artful.

For yet another hobby that I love which is beading and making jewelry I got myself a new little tool that I thought I would try out and some copper Swarovski encrusted beads for a bracelet.

Of course I had to get some Crafty books while I was at Kino Kuniya and I picked up a Stumpwork embroidery book and fingerless glove book. Also the most recent Gap Press Haute Couture magazine. I've giving up mostly on getting all the pret-a-porter versions of this magazine because they never wow me as much as the Haute Couture does.

Through our many subway rides I came upon this quirky little women's room turned convenience store. I just had to take a picture and share. The men's side was not in good shape and seemed to be turned into a subway maintenance closet.

I love that we have started to finish each trip to NYC with Dim Sum in the City at the huge banquet hall Jing Fong. Got to spend time with one of my favorite people Juyon and see my friend Julie who I don't think I've seen since we were at Yonsei together in 1999 (yes I am old if you didn't know that already). With Hubby in tow of course.

Now the problem lies with what will I do with my fantastic little Liberty of London Fabrics and what to knit with my new yarns?!
Any and all suggestions are welcome!

My Version of Heaven

Is pretty much Purl Soho. What a fantastic store! How in the world I came out of there spending less then $100 is a miracle all on it's own. Part of it was due to me being there just as they were celebrating their 10 year anniversary so the entire store was 20% off. I was too lucky. It isn't a huge store but it is well organized and every single nook and crannie is filled with beautiful fibers. It reminded of the concept that Anthropologie stores go for, where you really need to look under each table and drawer to see what new things are hidden.

As soon as you walk in you are greeted by a wall of Liberty of London fabrics hooped into embroidery hoops decorating a wall. Then your eyes follow the rainbow cascade of yarns and fibers all long the left side.

The Right side of the store is full of notions, embroidery threads, buttons, bias binding tape just oodles of things once again color coded like a rainbow to make your mind blow.

 They had a humungous collection of wool felts that I could of easily spent my paycheck on but I persevered and only bought what I came there to do, Crewel Wool.

 It was very hard with all this charming yarn and my new rule in set that I must use two two skeins before I can buy a new once was very hard but I was good.

It gave me many great ideas of what to do with all the little waste yarn hearts and flowers I've been making. I think I will have to join up with a spinner to make some unique yarns of our own. I wish I had bought this yarn just as inspiration but alas the photo will have to do.

Seeing all the things from the Purlbee in person was nice to get a sense of how the photography can play tricks to make things look much better. Not that things were not still wonderful but it's good to see them in person, makes it realistic and more attainable. I call it the pinterest effect, where you see something think it's neat and store it away never to actually do it. This shattered that effect for me on a few projects.

As soon as the first person asked me if I needed I told immediately that I had come for one thing only and that was Appleton Crewel Wool. The brought out the swatch card from some secret compartment and I went to work making my list and checking against the crewel wool colors that had come in the week before to make sure I had no duplicates. It was a long process but well worth it. I can barely even begin to voice my excitement of trying out this new fiber into my art.

There were about 6 drawers such as this filled with crewel wool colors.

 Then there was the Liberty of London Wall. So much soft and pretty fabrics costing quite a pretty penny. A yard is about $25.00 or more. I've never been able to shut my eyes and throw down for some of this fabric. It is just too hard to decide what to make out of it. It's too pretty and expensive to just use it for a coin purse yet so expensive I shudder at the thought of trying to buy yardage for a skirt or dress. I know I have worked in other more expensive fabrics but for some reason Liberty of London just puts the fear in me.

On the way out I just had to do my classic "I'm an Asian Tourist" self portrait in front of the hoop wall. It was one of the last things we did in the city before we went to our airport for what would end up being a LONG and terrible trip with a bit of Silver lining. I'll discuss that another post when the idea of flying doesn't infuriate me.

Cheers!

Procrastinator

I am dying right now trying to come up with an artist statement and artist bio for this show I applying for. The deadline is of course TOMORROW. I heard about it over the weekend and put that e.mail aside from my friend because I just wanted to enjoy my weekend. Why do I always seem to apply for things last minute?

What I did instead of taking care of this was packing our kitchen away and go to a multitude of cookouts. I also wound an entire box of yarn skeins that I had gotten in last week in between filling up this amazing pool we got at target for $79.99 that came with a filtration unit.

The pool was totally worth it, ten feet by thirty inches high of pure cold relaxation.

But seriously back to the art stuff.

I have probably revised my artist statement about 6 times and still have nothing. I just feel like such a snob when I write them or as my friend Jay refers to himself #artjerk . As you can see I am procrastinating even as I type this blog because it is yet another thing I can do to avoid putting labels and explaining my inner dialogue that I don't even understand that represents myself as an artist.

I also need ten images to submit. I'm not doing very well.......

Let's go over some basics about my work. I work in fiber and fabric. I enjoy clothing the human body. I also enjoy depicting parts of the human body and inner workings through embellishments on fabric. I like to emulate patterns in nature when I make my garments. I feel like fabric and fiber mimic the building blocks of the human body just as they are the building blocks for my projects. I view my work as soft sculpture with the body as a canvas rather then fashion clothing.

Why can't my artist statement be as simply stated as I did above? Oh because it's art, because people tend to not take you as seriously unless you have a bit of long winded response. They want to sit around and prod and poke you with their "why" stick. I learned how to take and defend your work during a critique very well at the Art Institute of Chicago but in terms of writing my own artist statement there wasn't a class for undergraduates.  I think my Liberal Arts classes involved class title such as "Opera", "Norse Mythology", "Failure"(yes it was a class all about failure), "Meteorology", "Korean History" and "French". The most critical writing we did was in Art history and well that isn't very creative just regurgitating facts and commentary.

Well I guess I will stop my sniveling here and troll some other artist sites that I admire, or who's work is similar to mine and see what they have to say and how they said it. I will most likely watch that Art21 episode of Ann Hamilton again as well.

TONIGHT I DINE IN HELL!

Spring Cleaning - The yarn Stash

This weekend I would love to be working on my little loom but I'll be heading to New Jersey for my best friend's Baby Shower. We also got the news of the start date for our kitchen remodel so I've started to pack things away and make room.

I finished this little project on the loom which will eventually be a camera strap. I had forgotten that I didn't have all the components to sew it into a functional strap after my weaving. You'd be amazed how specific you need to make the fittings to attach to the camera to make sure it will work. You wouldn't want your $500+ DSLR to hit the ground due to a  faulty strap, so I am going to do a good bit of research on the best attachments.

With all that being said let me show the Stash you came to see. This is just the yarns that are stored in the basement. I have about two other stash areas for yarns that are in more frequent rotation in upcoming or envisioned projects.

Blush colored yarns in silk and wool blends fill this 2x3x2' bin.

4 of these 5 bins are full of yarn as well. One of them was the above blush colored stash.

This is the majority of my stash of Cone yarns which can happily be used in weaving as well. A lot of this yarn was inherited from diligent dumpster diving when CCAD moved the fashion studio to their new home at the Design Studios on Broad a few years ago. Each of the bins has two layers of cones so I have easily close to 35-40 cones of yarn. Now I need to condense it all down even more and move it out of the way. Unfortunately my studio space is right where they need to do all the plumbing work for our kitchen and half bath.

One day my knitting machines are going to go crazy eating all of this up in the next few years. This isn't any cheap yarn either.  They are all wool, silk or cotton blends. You won't find any nasty acrylic in here.

I hope my stash and projects inspire you to start something fun from fiber this weekend! I'll be taking my tatting and knitting with me to the airport to keep me company.