It was FANTASTIC. I couldn’t have imagined a better class. In the first part we covered:

• Recommended tools/materials and what you use them for
• How stitches are formed – in precise detail
• The key to correct insertion and threading of needles on any machine
• All about needles and their history; tracing sewing problems to the needle
• All about thread; tracing sewing problems to thread
• Cleaning and lubricating machines; detecting and removing varnish (sticky residue from old oil and dust/lint)
• Testing machines including the clutch and externally-mounted motors; checking parts for wear and tear (and for being correct in the first place)
• Clutch assembly
• Feed dog timing, height, and orientation
• Pendulum timing (for zigzag stitch), cams and cam stacks
• Bobbin hook timing and how problems there cause skipped stitches
• Causes for skipped stitches that have nothing to do with the hook
• Needle bar height
• All about bobbins: winding, cases, tension, insertion
• Top threading general principles
• Diagnosing tension and apparent tension problems
• Check spring timing
• Escapement (how top thread passes around the bobbin without the bobbin case being completely loose)
• Dealer calibration of tensioners (if the number for correct tension is way off of the standard 4-5, how to change it)

We also went through all the machines in the room three times, once to find parts and adjustment points for clutch, feed dogs, and pendulum timing, once to look at the bobbin hook and its adjustment points, and once to look at the check spring timing, escapement, and tension calibration. It meant we weren’t limited to our own machines plus the ones Ray demoed on at the front of the room – we had a wide variety of machines to look at.

Ray’s approach is to teach you how machines work in general, what each part is supposed to be doing, and how to trace out the location to adjust each part on any given machine so you’re not dependent on having the exact service manual. The phrase of the week was “now, this looks different, but don’t let that confuse you – it works exactly the same as on every other machine.” It was perfect for me both because it matches how I learn best and because at the Sew-op we don’t necessarily have the operator manual, much less the service manual.

In the first three days I learned more about sewing machine operation than I’d managed to learn in my 25+ years of serious sewing and self-study. The formation of a stitch is finally not just magic to me! Ray is incredibly knowledgeable and clear, and he has great visual aids.

The second part was more of a guided work session, where we put what we’d learned into practice (we did some work in the first part, but there was a lot of lecture and demo time) with individual help from Ray and his assistant Cathy, and mini lessons on topics that came up from a given student’s work. During that part we had lessons on sergers, motor wiring, and foot pedals, and I learned more about diagnosing hook timing problems.

Before the class I was unsure how many machines to bring, and it’s hard to give advice on it because the number of machines you want will depend a lot on how much work each one ends up requiring. Ultimately I brought six: two that needed basically no work as far as I knew, two that I knew or suspected needed something moderate adjusted, and two that seemed likely to need significant work. It was the perfect amount, as it turned out. We had two no-show students and I was sitting next to one of the empty places, so I was able to have two machines out at a time. That way I could work on one till I got stuck (or until I needed to give oil time to penetrate) and then switch to the other until Ray or Cathy made it around to me to help me through my stuck point.

Here’s what I did (all machines got general cleaning and lubrication, and upper tension adjustments to balance the stitch):

1. Extra work to clean and lubricate where handwheel mounts on main shaft (fixed clutch problems); adjusted bobbin tension
2. Feed dog timing adjustment (fixed what looked like tension problems)
3. Lowered bobbin tension (this machine had feed problems but they were cured by cleaning packed lint out of the feed dogs)
4. Extra work to clean and lubricate where handwheel mounts on main shaft; replaced belt connecting handwheel and motor; re-bent bobbin case tension spring to increase tension (Ray did that); adjusted feed dog height (ditto)
5. Oiled motor shaft (motor was seized); moved feed dogs forward (they were hitting in back on long stitches); adjusted bobbin hook timing (twice; went too far the first time); adjusted check spring timing; adjusted bobbin tension; recalibrated top tension knob
6. Recalibrated top tension knob; tightened presser foot pressure dial (Ray did that, apparently just by turning it as tight as it would go – after that you could loosen it without it just spinning as it had before)

Those machines are in order of work I thought was needed – very little on the first two, a moderate amount on the second two, and a lot on the last two – so you can see my estimates were not always the best!

If pressed for advice, I’d probably say to bring as many machines as is practical for you but not expect to necessarily get through all of them. Since the class involves going through all the machines in the room multiple times, you don’t have to worry about trying to bring some kind of representative sample. You may have classmates with extras, too. At least two people in the room borrowed machines from other students, and there was a third person with extras to offer. Ray is also happy to make “adjustments” to your machine that mess up the sewing so you have to diagnose and fix the problem. Quite happy.

Other advice would be to bring your checkbook, not just a prewritten check – a few people in the class did that, and then they had to get cash out because they wanted to purchase the myriad tools and supplies Ray makes available.

I think I got a lot more out of the class because of taking apart the Morse last summer (post on that adventure still forthcoming) as well as cleaning and oiling so many machines at the Sew-op. I had better context for what Ray was teaching; I knew what the guts actually looked like so I had some scaffolding instead of everything being new.

It was so very fun, too. At the morning break the first day I texted my husband, “I have found my people.” I never ate (or even drove to) lunch alone, and we laughed and made nerdy sewing machine comments and geeked out on each other’s cool machines.

The post Sewing Machine Repair Class appeared first on ReveDreams.com.

I decided to put the cards in their own box and keep the stickers and die cuts together in another container. I thought about some kind of plastic envelopes in a binder, but found they were priced above my pain point. There were kinds that were a bit cheaper but didn’t have the panel with hole punches for a binder. Finally, when looking for ideas on making things “binder-able,” I stumbled upon an Instructables about making a pencil pouch. Essentially, you cover a shortened gallon zip-top bag with duct tape. I wanted to be able to see what was in the pouch, though, at least a little, so I bought generic unprinted bags and applied duct tape just around the edges. That should improve the longevity and help avoid the bags getting crumpled up.

To make them the right size for a binder, instead of cutting off the bottom I folded it up: first to the top of the hole-punched panel, then that section in half, and then the whole folded section up again and taped near each end. That should keep any stickers or die cuts from getting pushed down into a sticky section. The small bags, of course, are just as-is, taped around the outside and with a duct tape extension at the bottom for the hole punches.

The tape along each side is a single length folded over, and the tape along the bottom is full width, two lengths stuck to each other. I didn’t take a photo of it, but when I duct-taped the gallon bags, I made sure the tape came up a little above the folded part.

Note that if you use scissors on your duct tape you’ll be saying goodbye to them for the duration of the project. In fact, if you make as many bags as I did (20 of each size), you’ll need to clean the scissors at least once during the project, because they’ll get too sticky to use. I used Citrasolv, which worked wonders, and then dish soap because the Citrasolv left them oily.

One roll of patterned duct tape will do just over 9 gallon bags, or (I estimate) at least a baker’s dozen sandwich bags. Ten gallon and ten sandwich bags took most of two rolls – the photo below shows what I had after finishing the first 20 bags, done with most of two rolls of duct tape.

Next up is my favorite part: reorganizing the contents. I also need to figure out a new storage system for my cards.

The post Storing stickers appeared first on ReveDreams.com.

I have clues 1-4 of 8 in my possession and they will continue to come out every Friday through the middle of August. I’ve stitched the first two clues over the past ten days, eating up far more yarn than I normally would in that time. The first lesson I’ve had to learn is how to deal with 16 skeins of yarn, 9 of which are double-size and at least 4 of which are “active” at any given time (I’ve gotten up to 6: one dark purple tied up in a motif whose instructions are spread over multiple clues and two more so I could do a spiral that had two dark purple strands). I also have to do something with the motifs finished so far. I’ve decided that, after photographing, I’m going to close the motifs for each clue in a plastic bag and label it with the clue number. Everything “inactive” is getting stored in the box the yarn was shipped in, which currently is just sitting on the floor in my sewing room (note: that doesn’t make it in any way unique among my craft supplies).

There’s a complication to this afghan that isn’t present in my other long-term project, the blackwork embroidery map: the materials in use at any given time are bulky and in many pieces. Usually I have one project bag with materials for several projects in it simultaneously – the life of an amigurumi designer! For this project I got out a smallish bag for the multi-clue motif and its active yarn, another for small amounts of yarn left at the end of skeins (just in case), and a larger bag that holds those two as well as the full or mostly full skeins of yarn. I’m considering buying a large basket to put them in so all three bags are still together but I have space in the large one for finished motifs of a clue still in progress. If I do, I’ll also keep the embroidery project in the basket.

Such a system not only looks neater, it makes it easier to move the project around if it’s in the way, which is bound to happen multiple times over such a long stretch. The soonest I could finish the afghan is late August, simply because I won’t have all the clues until the 15th. However, this brings us to the other lesson of this project: pacing myself. Each clue so far has taken at least 8 hours of stitching, and I’m two clues behind. My other considerations are that I’d like to finish the blackwork by some time this fall, write every other week for the local fibercraft blog, and keep up with my monthly goals here. I also need a substantial amount of time (30+ hours per week) to dedicate to my web development job. That’s not to mention that I want to continue to have a social life, spend time online, and read books. Something’s got to give in that scenario, and it’s the afghan. I’ve decided to spread out the stitching to a third of a clue per week, plus two towns on the blackwork map. That gets the map finished in mid-October (just in time for making Halloween costumes) and the afghan done by Thanksgiving, unless joining and edging take a very long time (just in time for making Christmas presents). Afghan and map work should run 4-5 hours per week, dropping down to 3ish hours when the map is done — though by then I may have a new long term project.

Delayed gratification and responsible time management are the watchwords. It’s the right thing to do for my goals and priorities. It just feels so slow!

The post Lessons from large projects appeared first on ReveDreams.com.

Getting Started

Before making my first PDF, I read about page layout and graphic design; The Non-Designer’s Design and Type Books taught me a lot of fundamentals at large and small scales, and various sites online chimed in about grids for page layout, style guides, and branding (I still have yet to crack open Brand Against the Machine, though, and Amazon tells me I bought it two years ago).

As part of branding I chose colors (“Stumpy Green”, a pale blue, and originally “Hugs White” but that was replaced with true white), developed my logo (which took a long time, and then a quick inspiration, and then another long time), and chose fonts: Janda Elegant Handwriting for my logo and Rotis Semi-Serif for my pattern text (you can also see it in the header image on this blog). Overkill perhaps, but I wanted all the pieces in place as though I were a huge company, because then they will all just be there as I proceed.

I also needed an appropriate program. As a former mathematician, I first turned to LaTeX, but I simply couldn’t get it to easily do what I wanted in this case. I like open source as a philosophy and also wanted to minimize my start-up costs, and the combination led me to Scribus, a desktop publishing program. More on all the software I use has already appeared here; I’ll just mention that it took me some time to discover the existence of WooCommerce. I actually found it by reading 1-star reviews of a different WordPress e-commerce plugin, where someone said they wished they could have a do-over and use WooCommerce instead.

Layout and Style

At this point I had some ideas about good page design, wanted a grid for consistency with flexibility, and wanted a style guide for additional consistency. I also realized that the standard portrait-oriented full sheet of paper could be improved upon (in my obviously not-so-humble opinion) for sitting in a chair and stitching. My patterns are on landscape-oriented paper split into two portrait-oriented halves. They will spread across a lap or can be folded in half and set on one leg or on the arm of a chair.

A lot of work I’ve mostly forgotten went into setting up a Scribus template. First I did a lot of arithmetic; I wanted square photos to fit neatly, not just horizontally but also vertically. Scribus allows you to align your lines of text to a baseline grid, which has adjustable distance between lines (baseline skip) and offset from the top of the page. I worked with the baseline skip as my unit of measurement, so all of my column widths are multiples of that, the gutter between the columns is one baseline skip, and the center margin is three. My grid system is one larger and two smaller columns in each half of the page, with some horizontal guides as well for aligning images. The columns can be combined into two or even one larger column (which they typically are; I’m not sure I have a single pattern that uses them all separately).

The first half of the first page always has the title, main photo, description, materials list, stitch abbreviations and conventions, and logo. It usually has the copyright statement as well, but that can be shifted around if it helps pattern readability. Somewhere else in the pattern is a boxed paragraphs pointing the stitcher to the pattern page for additional photos and stitch instructions. The very top is the same on each sheet: green bars across the top with the pattern name, ReveDreams.com, and “Sheet X of Y” (fortunately Scribus can fill in the appropriate numbers automatically, so I don’t have to tweak this).

As for style, essentially I tried to be very consistent when I made my first five patterns, recorded all the details, and have been (mostly) abiding by and extending that style guide ever since. It covers capitalization, hyphenation, bolding, indentation, punctuation, crochet instruction conventions, and perhaps most importantly, what all I want to include in every pattern. It also has my Scribus page layout information in case I should ever lose it.

Pricing

Now we’re at the last major hurdle. How to price? I first went around to look at some of the major amigurumi designers’ prices, so mine would be in line with the market. They range from $7 down to $2, essentially, and I went through a number of schemes for my own patterns. Price based on whether the pattern makes one item or two? Price based on size of finished item? Price based on difficulty? Finally, during one of our long car trips to visit my family, I thought of pricing based on the length of the PDF. That way, patterns that are more complicated or make larger items automatically have higher prices than patterns that make simpler, more repetitious, or smaller items. It doesn’t necessarily reflect the amount of effort it took for me to develop the pattern, but it’s at least correlated.

I make my patterns self-contained for the intermediate crocheter, with additional material for beginners accessible from the pattern page in the shop, and I am as concise as possible without sacrificing clarity. My actual pricing formula, heretofore unrevealed, is $1 plus $2 per sheet of paper, calculated to the half-sheet. That’s actually a little flexible; I think of my educational materials as $1 per sheet, though all of them are name-your-price, and sometimes that slips in to lower a price that strikes me as a little high.

All decisions (well, almost all) about pricing are taken away, and hence also stress about decisions about pricing. It would be easy to change should I decide inflation has raised the fair price of a pattern, and meanwhile is in line with the market average: my fixed-price patterns are between $3 and $6, with an average of exactly $4.50.

I think that’s all the major decisions that had to be made. I’m very comfortable with my system; it is still time consuming to get a pattern from brain to store, but having a template makes it a lot easier.

The post Business decisions appeared first on ReveDreams.com.

The set-up: I had four yarn hippos: red, yellow, blue, and dark dusty purple. I tried many approaches to photographing them against a white paper background, both separately and together. Unless otherwise noted all light came from a large east-facing window.

The goal: Pure, featureless white background with good color and exposure of the hippos in front. I figure if you can accomplish THX 1138-style unbroken white, other pale backgrounds will be easy.

Vocabulary: I cropped basically everything below, even the shots labeled “unretouched,” but shots so labeled are otherwise as the camera uploaded them. I refer to a color or object “blowing out” to mean the situation where the bright parts are so bright that they’ve taken on an unnatural glow, and maybe even whited out.

All Together:

Position matters. Check out the difference between the unretouched photos below, both taken with the Cloudy setting, evaluative metering (iPhoto calls it pattern), +1 exposure, and 200 ISO (chosen by the camera), within two minutes of each other. The photo area is not square to the window; instead, if the center back of the photo is 12 o’clock, the windows are at 4:30 or 5:00. Putting the blue hippo in more light and the red one in less improved the exposure of both. Unfortunately, that’s about as bright as it gets without blowing out the yellow hippo – I can increase the exposure by about 0.1 in iPhoto.

Backlighting seems to help. I wondered whether brightening the backdrop with my Ottlites (true color craft lights, chosen over my actual photography lights because of the smaller region of illumination) would help get a whiter background without blown-out yellow, and I think it did. It is difficult to compare to the shots above, which were taken on a different day. The photos below (unfortunately I forgot to get a comparison shot with the lights off) are the same shot, taken with the Cloudy setting and evaluative metering at +2/3 exposure, camera-chosen ISO of 80, one unretouched and the other with the exposure raised another 0.6 in iPhoto.

Singly:

Dark on white is easy. I had good luck simply taking photos of the blue and purple hippos as I would usually: raise the exposure on the camera and crop it on the computer. The (unretouched) photos below were taken with the Cloudy white balance and evaluative metering. The blue one has exposure +1 1/3 and camera-selected ISO 100, and the purple has exposure +1 2/3 and ISO 125. Clearly I could have gone yet higher with the exposure of both.

Here’s a brief comparison of some purple hippo photos (though they were not all taken on the same day, so a small grain of salt is in order; in particular, disregard the color differences). The first is the photo above with its exposure raised another 0.68 in iPhoto. The second is a photo taken with spot metering at +1 exposure and ISO 250; it is unretouched. The third is a photo taken with spot metering at +1/3 exposure and ISO 200 (it was taken immediately after the previous shot) with the exposure raised a further 0.46 in iPhoto.

Underexposure helps red. This was my biggest takeaway of the whole experience, although it may not work as well with non-white backgrounds. The theory here is that only a quarter of the color sensors in your camera are for red, so when red is the predominant color the “correct” average exposure tends to blow out the red sensors while the other sensors are barely registering anything. Underexposure was advice I found in a photography forum; your software doesn’t have the physical limitations of the camera, and so when you increase the exposure digitally you don’t have the channel imbalance problem. This doesn’t really mesh with just how easily red blows out, but whether or not the theory is accurately expressed, the method is borderline miraculous. The photos below are the unretouched and retouched versions of a photo taken at -1/3 exposure with evaluative metering and Cloudy white balance, and ISO 80 assigned by the camera. Retouching consisted of raising the exposure until the red blew out and then lowering it again until just below that point, which was somewhere between 2.25 and 2.5 on the exposure slider.

Backlit, underexposed Slow Synchro helps yellow. Here is the main point where more work is needed, but it is already much better than what I had before. There has always been a tight cap on the brightening I can do to a yellow-on-white photo because the yellow blows out so quickly, so the background is perpetually dim. This method uses my camera’s Slow Synchro flash setting, which is intended to photograph people outside at night, using the flash to brighten the foreground and a slow shutter to expose the background adequately. With the curtains closed and room light off, I set up my photo area with two Ottlites pointing at the backdrop and the yellow hippo at the front edge of the pool of light. I angled the lights to get as little shadow under the hippo as possible, which was still quite a bit of shadow, but an item that was not so broad and low would be easier. I used the tripod but in “real” photos would also use the timer to avoid camera shake, because the slow shutter makes it very easy to fuzz the details. My setup is shown below.

Some experimentation showed that the camera’s exposure setting didn’t affect the brightness of the background very much, so I decided to underexpose the shot and brighten it in iPhoto. I could probably have gone lower, but I took the shots at -2/3. The white balance was set to Fluorescent, metering to evaluative, and the camera chose ISO 160. Below are the unretouched shot and the version where I raised the exposure another 1 stop.

Now, flash gets a lot of flack for being too harsh and bright. I tried again with two layers of milk jug plastic over my flash. Each was a rectangle folded the long way into a tent; one was larger than the other so they did not touch except where they met the camera. They were taped on with ordinary clear tape, carefully avoiding the camera’s autofocus beam. I don’t know whether it was the filter, coincidence, or the slightly tighter crop, but I was able to raise the exposure in iPhoto by 1.3 with this one.

Aside from the shadows, the point where more refinement is needed is the gray region in the foreground. I may need to construct a sort of stairstep of background paper, with the hippo on the edge of the cliff, so the flash could do a better job illuminating the foreground paper. This may require the ironing board, a la the Ami Folklore setup shown in the original photograph post. Having a larger, further-away background might reduce the shadow problem as well. Another thing that might help is a more downward angle: extend the legs of the tripod and tilt the camera so the flash is directed more flatly at the paper. Of course that would make it a different photo.

Things that didn’t help:

Green with red. At least not in the quantity I used, which was a tangle of green ribbon. The exposure of the red hippo was identical with and without the ribbon. When I stop to think about it, though, it would be surprising if it helped, since some of the requests for help I found online were from people photographing red flowers on green bushes.
Beach and Snow settings. In hindsight this is obvious, since they want to take down the brightness of the background so the photo isn’t a big glare.
Spot metering. For yellow and red it did nothing, and for the darker hippos evaluative metering produces just as good results for the same amount of work.
Night Snapshot setting. I tried this with the backlit yellow hippo, both with and without the flash, and it didn’t do a lot. It might be useful to try a flash with backlighting even if you don’t have Slow Synchro, and in that case you may want to use this for the color balance, but I’m not certain it buys you anything over the Program setting even in that arena.
My color cards. I have two index cards on which I painted large blocks of color. One is black and white and the other black, white, red, and blue. Knowing what I know now I would make one with green (with or without black, white, and blue) and see if the red hippo could benefit, but as-is (and most likely even with green) they do nothing for any of the hippos, whether removed between focusing and shooting or left in.

A few references:
I found the blog small object photography helpful, though it appears to be defunct. Two posts that are particularly relevant are on custom white balance (if none of your lighting settings are getting it right) and exposure compensation. Though there was never a follow-up post, Etsy Italia has a nice explanation of the difficulty of photographing red with ideas for mitigating it.

A note on the ‘1’ in the title: Eventually there will be a follow-up with a black background, which was trickier – and less important to me – for the darker hippos than white was for the yellow hippo. If I have enough to say to merit an additional post about white backgrounds, I’ll do that too. There may also be later parts on different aspects of photography, but they are far off.

The post Better Photography 1: color and contrast on white appeared first on ReveDreams.com.

With this post I inaugurate the craft blog ReveDreams.com. The posts will largely be about sewing and crochet, with a healthy dose of quilting and embroidery, and smatterings of other fiber and non-fiber crafts. The current schedule has me posting Mondays and Thursdays, and I hope to have a good mix of completed projects, works in progress, tutorials and patterns, links elsewhere, and contemplations of practical matters (from systematic investigation of technique to useful ways to store materials). I welcome comments, suggestions, and questions, even if they come a long time after the original post, and whether or not they are relevant to the post at hand!

Other than the posting schedule, this is still current; it’s just not concrete enough to plan around. Over the last month I’ve thought a lot about my purpose in blogging, prompted partly by the full-tilt schedule I’ve kept recently. This is my 53rd post of 2014 and we’re 90 days in — that’s over four per week! I like having new posts every other day, but that rate does not allow consistent high quality. Since it is also easy to have neither frequency nor quality, my paring back needs to be purposeful.

I’ve also been thinking about what would be best for me in terms of site organization and navigation, Ravelry, and Facebook. One thing at a time, though. Today let’s just talk about posting goals. This doubles as a recap of many of my favorite posts from the past year.

ReveDreams Posting Goals

1. A new pattern in the store monthly: Not only a new pattern, but a pattern presented with creative photos a la the Sluggos, Snouty Hippos, and Big and Little Pi.
   
    
2. An in-depth technical or educational post or series monthly: This could be as simple as exploring the needle join or identifying a mystery stitch. However, I like to really dig in and produce pieces that compare a variety of methods, such as double crochet turning chain modifications or ways to work single crochet in the round (in particular, ways to join those rounds), or that teach techniques in depth, such as useful knots for crafting or how to embroider crochet pieces.
   
   
    
3. Something fun monthly: This could be a free pattern or tutorial, quick and easy (magic chain in crochet, back seat cupholders) or more involved (miniature Christmas trees with decorations, bicycle handlebar saddlebags). It might be a free extension to a pattern for sale, like the One-Eyed Sluggos. Or it might be a photo spread, like the recent Ami Folklore pair or the more distant Assyrian Monsters shoot (of which most of the photos are on Stumpy’s Facebook page).
   
   
    
4. Web curation monthly and behind the scenes: There is a lot of useful, interesting, and inspiring material in the World Wide Web, and especially if I had to spend a lot of time separating the wheat from the chaff on a particular subject, I like to share my findings with you. This is a key component of most of my static pages: Learn Crochet is self-contained as long as you don’t want videos, but I link out not only to videos but to additional instructions given with words, photos, and diagrams, as mine are. I plan to continue to expand and refine that resource as well as Sewing Tidbits, Scrap Users, and Learn Hand Embroidery. Although I include relevant links in many of my posts, on the blog my curation is concentrated in my First Friday posts, of which I most want to emulate two done in the last six months: art journaling with fiber, which featured other crafters’ work, and mythical origin stories of crafts, which involved a lot of needle-in-haystack research (pun intended, but only retroactively). Look for more descriptive titles on those posts henceforth.
   
    
5. Spontaneous, irregular posts of projects and thoughts worth sharing: This will form the remainder of my posts, with no quota. I want to share my creations and experiences, but will apply the Mr. Ed Rule and speak only when I have something to say. I’d expect very occasional posts on productivity, organization, teaching, or other ancillary subjects, and for most of the posts in this category to be projects. A few favorites from the last year: first overlay crochet project (and pattern review), bassist monster, and embroideries from my husband’s drawings.
   

Incidentally, the part about comments from my initial post is still true — don’t be shy, even if the post is almost as old as the blog itself!

The post Happy blogiversary, ReveDreams appeared first on ReveDreams.com.

Once there were three little pigs whose mother could not afford their keep, so she sent them out into the world.

In looking for materials to build a home, the first pig met a man selling bales of straw. The second met a man selling bundles of sticks, and the third pig met a man selling loads of bricks. Each built a home and lived happily, for a time.

Eventually a wolf came to town and approached the first little pig’s house of straw. “Little pig, little pig, let me come in!” he called. “Not by the hairs of my chinny chin chin!” the pig called back. “Then I’ll huff, and I’ll puff, and I’ll blow your house in!”

And he did. The pig ran off to the house of wood, but the next day the wolf came calling there. “Little pig, little pig, let me come in!” he called. “Not by the hairs of my chinny chin chin!” the pig called back. “Then I’ll huff, and I’ll puff, and I’ll blow your house in!”

And he did. Both pigs ran off to the house of brick, where the wolf came calling the day after. “Little pig, little pig, let me come in!” he called. “Not by the hairs of my chinny chin chin!” the pig called back. “Then I’ll huff, and I’ll puff, and I’ll blow your house in!”

And he huffed, and he puffed, but he could not blow the house in. He called out again, “Could I come in, little pigs? My allergies are killing me out here. I’ll order a pizza!”

That sounded good to the little pigs, so they let the wolf in. Indoors he soon stopped huffing and puffing, and they all ate pizza.

In brief, the credits from The Sorcerer’s Apprentice are to Stumpy and Cirrus Monster, D.L. Ashliman, CopyCatFilms, and Dieter Steffman.

The post Ami Folklore 2 appeared first on ReveDreams.com.

The sorcerer’s apprentice was left alone with instructions to have the floor clean before the sorcerer’s return.

The sorcerer’s apprentice felt rather put upon to constantly be mopping the floor, and although he’d been explicitly instructed not to try magic, he decided to use a spell he’d seen the sorcerer use, and bring the broom to life to mop for him.

It worked! The broom began industriously mopping the floor.

…too industriously. Water began to collect. “Stop! Stop!” cried the sorcerer’s apprentice. He racked his brain for the magic word to change the broom back to an inanimate object, but it would not come to him.

Finally he resorted to an axe. He chopped the broom in half and was relieved to see the pieces fall to the floor.

His relief lasted but a moment, however, as the broken pieces sprang to life as two full brooms and began again to mop.

The apprentice had decided to run away and hide forever when the sorcerer appeared at the door. With one word the brooms were stopped. The apprentice turned to the sorcerer. “About all that water….”

D.L. Ashliman is a professor emeritus of the University of Pittsburgh with an extensive index of folktales and mythology. It was very helpful in picking stories to retell, and I recommend the page for casual reading as well.

CopyCatFilms generously provided a blank intertitle card to the interwebs, which I’ve used to begin and end this story.

Dieter Steffman designed the font I used on the title cards, Chelsea, and many other wonderful fonts available without charge.

Edit: There’s more of this nonsense now.

The post Ami Folklore appeared first on ReveDreams.com.

• Think it all through – Before ever teaching your first class, pay close attention to what you do when you craft. Pull out all the little steps that you’ve forgotten about because they’re so automatic.
• Get some perspective – What’s vital to doing the craft successfully? What’s just a matter of taste? What is in-between: not vital, but desirable to take your work to the next level? The students don’t necessarily have any way to distinguish those levels of importance, so do so for them.
• Be systematic, but flexible – Perspective is part of this, since you have to choose a way to teach things when there may be many ways to do them, but I am thinking of class organization. Write a lesson plan and cover things in a sensible order, but respond to your students’ needs and wants. I usually have the first session of my crochet class fully planned out, but about a class and a half worth of material prepared for the second session so I can adapt it to the students’ desired use for crochet.
• Mind your notes – Even in classes I’ve taught numerous times I refer to my notes regularly to make sure I’m not getting ahead of myself.
• Have samples – Finished and in-progress examples that can be touched and manipulated are one benefit of an in-person class.
• Remind them we’re not used to this sort of activity – In the US nowadays we don’t tend to grow up with handcraft, and the necessary motions and manipulations are very different from, say, typing. Remind them to go easy on themselves and allow time to get comfortable with it.
• Be hands-on – If you only give visual and verbal instruction, even if it includes feedback it’s missing a key element of in-person instruction. Try not to be grabby, but do move things into place for students who are not seeing it. I had an embroidery student once who was such a kinesthetic learner that placing the needle for her and having her complete the motion was the only way she could click with certain stitches.
• Keep it moving, but relaxed – The students are there to be directed, not to tell you when to move on. Definitely ask along the way whether they are comfortable with what you’ve covered, but don’t expect them to volunteer how they are getting along. Some will, of course, but not many. Push them a bit, but be sure it stays enjoyable. Almost everyone will be in a craft class because they want to learn or expand a hobby, and any few who have other purposes will push themselves as hard as necessary.
• Allow plenty of practice time – But don’t expect everyone to have it down pat before moving on. This is one significant example of the previous point. With any activity of substance there is a need for practice beyond what’s allowed in the limited time of a class.
• Let them struggle a bit – Sometimes the only way to learn is to just muck about with it. Try not to let a student do a stitch incorrectly several times, or do something to the sewing machine that is potentially damaging, but don’t leap in preemptively.
• Watch but don’t stare – This takes practice. You want to see whether they are struggling, and almost more so whether they don’t think they’re struggling but are making some error, but without looming over them and making them uncomfortable.
• Silence is not golden – If the room is too quiet, play some soft classical music. By soft, I mean almost subliminal; don’t have it loud enough to need to talk over it, just make sure there is some background noise. This serves two purposes: to help keep students from tensing up while they practice, and to ease the act of asking questions by eliminating the need to break silence by doing so.

What’s your best advice?

The post Craft teaching advice appeared first on ReveDreams.com.

The current notebook is a clearance Staples purchase, college ruled with a classy and non-flashy cover. It came into use in a fit of envy over Carrose Creation’s Filofaux project, but with the knowledge that in November a new calendar is either a waste of money or an exercise in extreme patience. I added some stickers and a ribbon bookmark (also pictured: my “reporter’s notebook” for the Upper Valley Fiber Crafts blog, prior to getting its own ribbon bookmark).

Obviously this picture was taken a while ago, before tomorrow’s page filled with tasks.

I wanted something prettier for my next one, although time will tell whether that’s what I really want. So I went through my paper collection and asked my sister and mother for any contributions they might have, of paper lightweight and light-colored enough to use in a notebook, at least 6″x8″ in size. I ended with 17 distinct papers and a cover cut from a textbook advertising flyer, and bought 4 more so that I’d have 21*4 = 84 pages, an even 12 weeks. I used stamps on the plain backs that most of the pages had. I’ve been busy so I wasn’t as thoughtful with it as I had hoped, but if I like it I’ll make the next starting more in advance. This notebook got a ribbon bookmark too, added before assembly, and I pasted striped tissue paper over it and the text on the inside of the cover.

After folding each page in half and aligning them, I stapled them with my husband’s booklet stapler and then trimmed the edges, more carefully than with my blog planner. Then I discovered it was really too much for the stapler, so I added two more staples outside in and one inside out. Hopefully it will stay together; otherwise I’ll have to sew it. I made my own washi tape with masking tape and Sharpies as described on DIYSara (whose blog I found while searching out handmade planner resources, fittingly enough) to cover the short edges of the cover, to give it a little protection and also to keep the tissue paper from getting scraped off.

My scissors make an appearance because it doesn’t lie flat very well and I didn’t want to manhandle it too much. I’m hoping it breaks in easily.

This isn’t really an FYDP because I deliberately waited until after Christmas, but I did leave it late – I prefer being able to write tasks into the next week’s lists. Now to date all the pages and put in the tasks and dates I already know. Onward!

The post New notebook appeared first on ReveDreams.com.