Be My Valentine, FiberArts Magazine!

At the very last minute I sent off one of my knit postcards to the annual FiberArts Magazine fiber postcard valentine competition. It didn't win any prizes, but it did manage to make it into the April/May issue!


Ok, so every year you send a pre-addressed/stamped hand-made, fibers postcard to the Interweave studio and they mail it back to you via their local post office in Loveland, Colorado... which also means that this was the perfect opportunity for me to test the real world mail-ability of my postcards! (Note the just-in-case $1 stamp. Y'know.. just in case.) But it arrived at the Viv Pickle studio in fine condition! Yay!


Happy Universal Love Day to All! Check out my postcard in the spread:


OOoooooh... sooo exciting! I hope I didn't offend any of those fibers ladies with my roughly knitted language. :0)

You can see all of the entries from the magazine here at the FiberArts magazine website!

Text/Textile Show Opening This Weekend!

Come and see my art in a local textile show! Here's all the information for the opening:

"This exhibit at Da Vinci Art Alliance aims to complement various citywide exhibits happening in conjunction with Philagrafika 2010, a multi-sited international festival of contemporary art (www. Philagrafika.org). Participating artists for "TEXT/TEXTILE" were encouraged to think text, grid, language, words, script, graphics; and think texture, technique, tradition, innovation!!!

As curator, I want to represent what is happening in Philadelphia's own studios w/in the context of this specific challenge: text/textile. Studio artists, teaching artists, student artists, professional artisans, and exquisite crafters... all inclined to find & create a link with the concept/context of text/textile were invited to submit work, from which I chose select pieces, for this salon-style exhibition."

I decided to submit my knit postcards to the Text/Textile show:


And although presentation/installation is, ahem, NOT my strong point... I am lucky enough to be surrounded by other, talented artists to help me out. (Even at the last minute... thank goodness for overnight shipping.)

Eileen made me crazy amazing little individual shelves for the cards! They're made of masonite cut by the magical laser machine at SAIC.

(They smelled of wood fires and looked like mission-style furniture!) They were PERFECT and I can't wait to see how the cards look hung in the gallery. Thanks, Eileen!

The show looks super interesting: I can't wait to see all the art installed. Also, Philagraphika looks amazing!! If you're in the Philly area, or planning on visiting any time in the next THREE MONTHS you should check out some of the million and a half events going on around the city! Overwhelming calendar of awesome events! There's even an exhibition by one of my absolute favorite artists, Lisa Anne Auerbach!! Although I've been inspired by her knit pieces for years, the piece she has set up here is print-based. Oooooh, I can't wait to check it out!

Soo... yeah! if you're in Philly on Sunday, and the snow doesn't bury you in too deeply, come and see me at the opening! (Opening is from 1-5pm, I'll probably be there between 2 and 4pm.)

Renegade Craft Fair, Chicago: This Weekend!

Hey there friends and family- It's that time of year again: the Walmart and Macy's have opened their doors to the thousands of screaming (do they scream?) Black Friday shoppers, "Cyber Monday" sales have been perused, and economists are already calculating the profits. But this holiday season, wouldn't you rather support individual artists by purchasing their handmade goods? Of course you would!! Which is why you should all take the time out of your busy weekends to come to the Renegade Craft Fair in Chicago! Now, I know that some of you will claim that you live "too far" to come all the way to Illinois to buy my pretty things... but that's no excuse. (Well, actually, it's a pretty fair excuse but I'm feeling unforgiving.) So, those of you who are able to make it will have to make up for all of you who can't by buying even more. :0)


"Over 150 of today’s finest indie-craft and contemporary design talents will be setting up shop at the Renegade Craft Fair Holiday Sale on December 5 + 6 from 11am – 7pm at the Pulaski Park Fieldhouse!

Those looking to shop handmade and support small business this holiday season will surely find something for everyone – from jewelry and clothing, to ceramics and stationary, with everything from bath products, housewares, posters, comics and plush objects in between – at this large-scale, free-to-attend art, craft and design extravaganza!!"

See? All of your shopping needs met in one location!

I will be bringing a bevy of beautiful bags in all shapes and sizes: grocery bags, make-up bags, pencil cases, fanny pack (yes, just one), mini zips, hip/belt bags, i-pod cases... you name it, i've sewn a bag you can put it into. And each one made out of super cute printed fabric and durable, hard-wearing cordura. (Or recycled canvas, in the case of the grocery bags.)

(belt bags with birdies, cute little french animals and robots!)

I'll also be selling pre-ribboned sets of my handkit postcards! (Spoiler: there are still a couple of sets up on Etsy in case some of you non-chicagoans want some...)


I'll be sharing a table with the totally amazing fiber artist extraordinaire, Nellie Kurz, and illustrius author and comic artist, Lucy Knisely! Rock stars! And, to top off all of that excitement, I'm happy to announce a collaboration between Lucy and myself: a series of limited edition bags made by your's truly out of printed fabric designed by Lucy!

(When our powers combine...)

So good, right? I bet you have something tiny that you're just dyin' to put into that baby bag...


So come on down to the Pulaski Park Fieldhouse and see us on Saturday or Sunday! Lucy will be doing little watercolor sketches and Nellie and I will do our best to be equally as entertaining, we promise!

My Deep and Undying Affection for Postcards...

I. Love. Postcards.

I love them. I love sending them, I love receiving them... and there are many, many reasons for my deep affection.

I started sending postcards regularly the first winter I lived in Philadelphia. It started, jokingly, as a way to keep from sending drunk text messages. Instead of getting an incoherent text in the middle of the night, wouldn't a totally illegible postcard be better?! The diagrams alone made them worthwhile... Slowly, I established a pretty good group of postcard pen pals. My summer travels afford me the opportunity to grow those ranks and to start a solid collection of my own...

(One card away from 50! Thanks to everyone who sent me cards!)

So amazing! And all the while, being the good little artist that I am, I was thinking about why I was so enamored with postcards... what about them was so enchanting? I think there's something so... lovingly ambiguous about them. They exist in this hilarious space between public and private- written for one person but open to the world. (Especially postal workers. I keep meaning to ask a postal worker if they read people's postcards...) They are also sort of outdated. We live in a technological era; one of email and text messages and facebook comments.

I was at Haystack when I knit my first postcard. And then I became obsessed.


(Artist Statement:) "The era of love letters has passed. We used to deliberate over affectionate and expressive letters, page after page filled with handwritten expressions of our emotion. But the days of receiving an actual letter, carried to our homes in the hands of a local postal worker are almost completely gone. Today we send text messages- embarrassingly misspelled words in abbreviated sentences- and we think they can successfully communicate complicated emotions.

This series of hand-knit postcards explores the nostalgic nature of mail and the contradiction of the material object with the ambiguous texts they display. The phrases, although easily recognizable as something you might see on a postcard, indicate a slight longing or desperation in a writer who might be veiling their feelings through pithy rhetoric. In the same way that post cards and letters are something of the past, hand knit objects imply a similar sense of tactile nostalgia and emotional devotion. The fact that the post cards were each knit by hand, laboriously stitched to read these words, exposes the writer’s/knitter’s intensity all the while being contradicted by the brevity of the words and the truncated sentiments. "


The objects are hilariously fun.. but, although I haven't tested one out, I have my doubts that the USPS would deliver them... But to deny them the chance to be sent through the mail would be terrible, right? And so...

I had them made into paper postcards.

(oooh, sexy rounded corners!)

Sets of all 6 postcards will for sale at the rapidly upcoming Renegade Craft Show in Chicago! (And then on my etsy account.) Very Exciting.


I'm making more and more stuff for the fair everyday, so all of y'all who live in Chicago, you best be putting that date on your calendars so you can stop by and give me your moneys. I'll trade you amazing things like recycled canvas dropcloth grocery bags and other stuff! And I'm sharing a table with two astounding artists: Lucy Knisley and Nelly Kurz! Come by and say hi!

(I totally stole this AMAZING comic from Lucy's livejournal, so now you all have to go read her super awesome comics! Also, you have no idea how excited I was to be cartoon-ized!!)