foo fest in photos

So Foo Fest was a big ball of music, politics, art projects, and Providence Pride. I’m glad to have had such an enjoyable, jam-packed street fair as my introduction to this city.

The zine-factory bus, where everyone got a chance to contribute to a zine that was published and handed out at the end of the day.

Free screen printing, courtesy of the AS220 community printshop.

John Olmstead’s kinetic human-powered water fountain

Mini-golf provided by Wooly Productions.

Unidentifiable fluffy stuff amid all the kids games.

Sculpture by Will Reeves, who put together sixty silver fitness balls with polypropelyne cord for a massive, mobile, interactive art project.

 

Umberto Crenca’s Exquisite Corpse project, which invited people to paint one third of a body and then assembled them in Frankenstein-type final portraits.

 

Junk-mail hat-making with Alyn Carlson.

Make your own video game controller, with AS220 Labs.

This guy was dressed up as his production company’s logo, but I didn’t hear him tell anyone his company’s name or m.o. Still, he was fun to follow around.

Deer Tick played an amazing set as the sun began to fall.

They were the surprise special guest, and John apologized for that before they began to play. I don’t think anyone was disappointed. The crowd was super supportive of this hometown country band.

Especially when they brought a couple of special surprise guest guests onstage.

Do you see the people on the roof?

And the movie playing on the wall?

Made in Mexico played next, and not since The Kills have I seen someone so dynamic onstage.

Another amazing set.

Me, the band, and the rabbit man. Just another Saturday.

I came home with big plans to get involved in the printshop.

I picked up this barely-used copy of Lusitania, which it turns out is from 1992!

I also brought home my awesome screen-printed shirt. I just happened to have a spare plain tee in my bag. The back has the AS220 logo in green but the front, as you can see, was a big fat failure. The skyscraper-pen print, which should’ve taken thirty minutes to dry, had apparently not dried when I wadded it up and stuffed it in my bag three hours later.

So now I’m off to find out whether fabric paint can be removed, and if so, to very carefully tend to my first screenprinting project ever!

 

augustus the owl

I know I promised some ugly in my last knitting post, but I think I’ll put that off until I can bear to look at my knitting failures. For now, can we all just stop and admire the glorious cuteness of this little owl?

This little guy is from a kit I bought at Hill Country Weavers when BW and I went to visit his family in Austin a full year ago. I started knitting him right away and then, for some unknown reason, stuck him in a box and didn’t pull him back out until after I moved. 

The kit is the Bramble Owl Softie by Sonya Philip (knitsonya on Ravelry). You can get one online at the KnitWhits website. I stuffed him with an old t-shirt that I cut up into little 1-inch strips, so he’s quite hefty.

Doesn’t he look so scholarly? All he needs is a little pair of owl glasses and he could pass for a Lacanian theorist.

plans

Foo Fest, apparently the artsy-ist of all summer art fairs, happens this Saturday, August 15th from 1 p.m. to 1 a.m. the following morning. I figure this will be a good day to make my way to AS220 for the first time, since the fair spans all of Empire street and should be easy to find. 

There’s also an Anarchist book fair happening outside the venue!

I’m very much looking forward to getting out of my house. My plan is to bring my camera and a sandwich and disappear into the crowd. Saturday is supposed to be a gorgeous day, and even though I’ll be all by myself, I think music and art and books will add up to a nice afternoon. 

without a plan

I don’t have much of a yarn stash, and here is why: when I walk into a yarn store, I’m all business. Don’t get me wrong, I do my share of cashmere fondling and color palette ogling, but I have to have a specific project in mind before I’ll actually take something to the register. Normally I’ll spend hours on Ravelry sifting through other peoples’ yarn choices and modifications so that I know exactly what my project will look like when I walk through my LYS’s front door. This approach has kept my stash from overflowing and my bank account from evaporating, but it has also turned yarn shopping into a somber, utilitarian process and left no room for imagination or experimentation. I decided a few months ago to stop buying yarns strictly for function and instead reach for unique handdyed or handspun yarns that catch my eye. I’ve since accumulated a small but delicious pile of yarns, and I’ve had as much fun staring at the skeins and contemplating their possibilities as actually knitting them. In my month of packing and moving, I turned to my weird yarns for solace and comfort and came out with some truly lovely pieces.

This Cashmere Cuff, by Jessica Vaughan, used up every last inch of the amazingly soft Kim-X yarn I bought at Maker Faire in May. The artist’s description of the yarn goes like this: “Inspired by a photo of a bee visiting ice plants, this landscape yarn will knit up in slowly changing swathes of color to evoke the original scene.” I love that the final result maintains the integrity of the original vision, but that the cowl is still quite wearable, since it looks like a solid color from the front and a different solid from the back. I can’t wait to find buttons for this. It’s so soft, I want it around my neck NOW, 95 degree weather be damned.  

I don’t have a lot of experience knitting with handdyed yarns, so I was delighted to discover that these mitts not only show off my beautiful skein of Shades of Earth from Spincycle Yarns, they also match! This is a heavily modified version of Emily Wessel’s Handspun Fingerless Gloves, and I’m quite happy with the result. They knit up quickly and they’re surprisingly wearable and so begins my addiction to fingerless gloves. 

I got this gray thick-thin hands + notions yarn at the Renegade Craft fair in July. Three days later, as a friend and I enjoyed coffee and tofutti-topped bagels, it magically transformed itself into an Unoriginal Hat with added earflaps and tassels. We had a sudden cold spell in Oakland and I had already packed my warm clothes, and this hat saved me from days of shivering. Everyone looks ridiculous in this hat, but it’s that sort of self-aware ridiculous that is also full of humor and personality, so it works. 

In that same ridiculous vein, this Marian cowl has completely won my heart. I’ll admit it’s neither handspun nor handdyed, but it is made of the candy-colored Twinkle soft chunky that I had never let myself buy because I never had a practical pattern to make it into. As soon as I stumbled onto Jane Richmond’s möbius design, I knew I had to make this, and that even if I never had the guts to wear it, I would at least have something to cuddle on those cold Rhode Island nights. (Richmond’s designs, by the way, are bright, easy, elegant, and either free or cheap!)

So there you have it. This has been the good stuff. Next post, you’ll get a little bit of ugly.

breaking the silence

I’ve spent the past few weeks moving across the country, and it has been a grueling process. I left a lot of love behind in my home state. What I would have given for a manual on how to leave home. I made a few fumbling attempts at farewells, but the weight of my leaving did not really hit me until long after I had seen my friends for the last time, so that in my saddest moments I had no one nearby to comfort me. But, thankfully, my homesickness was sucked into the stress of parents’ houses and parking permits and plane rides, so that after a few days of aggressive bad moods I had exhausted most of my negative emotions. I felt tired but ready to settle, anxious to unpack and get to know my neighborhood and truly embrace living here. 

I arrived on my new side of the country to an apartment I had never seen before, a hot and sticky Rhode Island summer, and silence. Penetrating silence. I found myself wandering without purpose around my humid, half-empty apartment  listening to the quiet. I couldn’t find npr on my radio, and I couldn’t think of any music that wouldn’t make me desperately homesick. I put away books, washed dishes, read the paper, all without any sound save the clanking or rustling of the things I touched. But then something wonderful happened this afternoon. I was sitting on the couch knitting in silence, arguing with myself about whether or not it would be crazy to wear my ipod in my own living room, when the breeze from my open windows picked up and was suddenly cool, and huge heavy drops of rain began to fall. My apartment filled with the thick, soothing sound of rain. I put on an album I accidentally stole from my best friend, and the old familiar songs didn’t sound melancholy against the summer rain. They sounded surreally beautiful, almost cinematic. And so the silence was broken, and I began to feel at home.

issues birthday party

Two Sundays ago, everyone’s favorite newsstand turned two years old. Issues is a godsend to anyone with a niche interest and a desire to shop local. Joe, Noella, and their crew of helpers are hugely invested in the things they sell. They are also astoundingly friendly and will happily keep you at the shop for hours talking curry pot pies and experimental noise. 

Sunday’s party, like last year’s, got pretty crowded. Issues has a lot of fans. Speakeasy Brewery donated a couple of kegs, and people in the close quarters made small talk, sipped on their red cups, and lovingly decimated the store’s formerly neat piles of sale items.

There was also a palm reader, Laura Kennedy, camped out in the corner!

Fat Bottom Bakery provided amazing mint chocolate and vanilla strawberry cupcakes and chocolate chip cookies. They also have an Issues-party roundup on their blog, here.

There’s Natalie!

And Ron! Hi Ron!

When we all assembled for the raffle, the crowd was seriously huge.

Noella looks sneaky…

The party hats were shiny and the prizes were endless. All in all a very successful raffle. I won a gift certificate to Piedmont Avenue’s newest addition, Mercy Vintage! 

And lastly, at the end of the day, the happy store-owners, squint-smiling.

art murmur

On the first Friday of every month, Oakland’s art galleries open their doors after hours to let the locals get a first glimpse at all the new exhibits. With the cramped spaces and massive amounts of people, kids inevitably spill out onto the street, and Art Murmur has quickly morphed into a giant outdoor party, complete with roadblocks, open bottles, chain smoking, and fashion fashion fashion. The sheer number of people has always sent my claustrophobia into hyperdrive and I’ve stayed away for months, repressing my love of hipster clothes and outdoor drinking in favor of my love of not getting pinned against a wall by people who are very aware that they are cooler than I will ever be. Imagine my surprise when I returned last week to find so many things to occupy those without and room to breathe within. 

We walked in past a performance of something like The Little Mermaid, with octopus hats, glittery scales, and a brand new soundtrack. The crowd around the performers kept me from getting a picture, so you’ll just have to imagine tattooed technicolor-clad bike kids belting out songs about crabs and flounders. We rounded the corner to find a combination craft fair, food fair, robot fight-to-the-death fair, and playground. Adults and kids alike played four square, while the rest of the crowd wandered around, taking in the scene, which included group-participation art: a postcard from everyone to no one, and a hut for taking naps in the middle of the street. 

Most important for me, of course, was the food. 

The vegan cupcakes were cute, but really nothing to swoon over – the vanilla one I had was basically just a mouthful of spongy earth balance topped with smooth sugary earth balance. But the cheesecake. OH, oh, the cheesecake. Krista Knudsen currently bakes cheesecake at home and sells it when she can. This girl had better get a storefront soon, because otherwise I am going to invade her kitchen and demand more cheesecake.

She had four offerings: blueberry swirl, kahlua espresso, caramel chocolate, and chocolate peanut butter. I chose the rich, dense chocolate peanut butter, which had an amazingly delicate nutty flavor that didn’t overwhelm the fudgy swirls of chocolate. The crust was perfectly crumbly without losing its shape. I would go to great lengths to have that flavor in my mouth at all times. Criminal lengths. 

I must confess, I was so taken with the street activity that I only made it into three galleries, and none of the art really grabbed me. I did get a glimpse of this window display, however, which I kind of can’t wrap my head around. Is it cute, because it’s plush? Is it creepy, because there are long armlike things curving in between the pots? Is the statement that it’s confusing, or am I confused because there is no statement? I’ve got nothing.

Oh, and someone reached over my shoulder to tag a port-a-potty, which was very exciting to me. Almost as exciting as walking right past a police officer with an open container. Living on the edge, I am.

studio one poetry reading

Thursday night I wandered into a building that I had walked past dozens of times but had never really noticed. The Studio One Art Center, located on the outskirts of Oakland’s Temescal district, looks like any other big beige city building, nothing like the quirky storefronts and offbeat coffee shops and practice spaces-cum-galleries that house most of Oakland’s downtown art. But it does have something wonderful to offer – a monthly poetry reading series that presents local artists in a kind, casual atmosphere. Admission is free but they ask for a small donation (in exchange for red wine or PBR, of course) and maybe that you buy a $3 book or two. 

Mike Young writes his sweetly humorous words in a way that makes him sound like he’s off to the side at a party listening very politely to someone he does not know and quietly translating everything into his own associative, nonlinear language. He has a rare knack of stringing beautiful thoughts together while still sounding perfectly sincere. Read his blog here. He’ll be reading around the Bay Area June 11th-13th, definitely go and say hello. 

Jake Gillespie is a painter and new media artist from Nebraska who now finds himself in the Bay Area. His stop motion films showed several ink and watercolor drawings with lines either emerging from them or piling onto them, evoking sound and movement, growth and withdrawal. Lovely. You can view screenshots here, after the second update. I picked up his dvd, “Almost Almost Almost,” which has two shorts like this and many unlike this. I’m still getting a feel for his oddball humor, but I can say for sure that I love his four-eyed portraits more than I’ve loved any art in a long time.

Geoffrey G. O’Brien, a Berkeley faculty member, read several pages of his rhythmic, epic and, in his words, “tyrannical” latest work. Great interview here, via the SORS people.

My loot for the day – a tour-only chapbook, a dvd, and a renewed love of live art.

addiction

I think I’m addicted.

To this pattern, to these colors, to the process of building rows of garter stitch. Knitting and knitting and knitting. So calming. 

Let’s look at those those rainbow rows again, shall we?

I’m excited to finish my second Silk Kerchief (ravelry link), since I’ve been wearing my first one literally every single day, but I’ll be sad to say goodbye to this project. Luckily, there are lots of lovely patterns in line to keep the garter craze going.

Next up, though, is my first lace shawl: Laminaria, from the Spring ‘08 Knitty, in this gorgeous hand dyed bamboo merino I picked up from Wool Candy’s table at last weekend’s Maker Faire (where they had a sample of this pattern knit in this exact color and oh, I can’t wait to have my own). I guess the colors look a little washed out in this picture, but they are actually cotton-candy mottled and artificial-food-dye bright with a nice bamboo sheen. And in case you weren’t seeing a definite summer color scheme – beige, bright pastels, surging pinks and blues, burnt oranges and yellows – some photographic evidence:

My other Maker Faire finds: Knitty Dirty Girl’s “Dovely,” a worsted weight blend of baby alpaca, superwash merino, sari silk, and bling. KDG’s “Pastel Patchouli,” thick-thin handspun wool. And Kim-X’s lovely “Beeflowers,” a blend of cashmere, merino and nylon around a wool core. All via Urban Fauna.

maker faire

Highlights: learning to crochet with TNNA, making button rings, sipping on amber ale from Devil’s Canyon Brewing Company and tapping along with Mr. December.