You may remember the woolly garden wonder of the knitted shed I wrote about last year. Well the crafty sheddies are back. And this time they're going disco.
Sheddie, Sarah McManus is planning on sequinning an entire shed from top to bottom as part of her third year Fine Art student studying at Swansea Metropolitan University. Her recent project Tool Shelf shows a glittering example of shed innards gone sparkly and now she's taking the leap from the tools to the bigger picture.
You can help her if you have some spare sequins to shove her way. Give her a wave on the Shedblog or comment on her DeviantArt page to help her create a shimmering shed.
Australian artist Sera Walters is a visual artist and arts writer based in Adelaide, South Australia. Her artworks take the decorative mediums of fabric, felt, lace, cross-stitch sequins and beads and use them to illustrate the darker side of life.
In her own words she uses the "language of stitch, using French-knots, silk-shading, beads or black-work" to "pierce fabrics with recollections of drama, disaster, misdemeanours and petty crime".
Her crafty art brings to life the effect she imagines that surburban dramas have on the homes they happen in. So the soft furnishings, curtains and every day fabrics of home have a more sinister story stitched on them.
Her Buthering series, featuring stitched and sequinned cuts of meat and ice crystals along with a rather sinister knife and cleaver sewn with elements of glow-in-the-dark thread, is unsettlingly lovely.
Debbie Stoller's Stitch and Bitch is the book that launched a million knitters. There are very few people with sticks and string who aren't aware of the book and its follow on Stitch and Bitch Nation and Son of Stitch and Bitch. So when Ms Stoller does something people take notice.
Recently Debbie released Stitch Nation, her own brand of yarn. The knitting world is abuzz once more. She teamed up with Red Heart Yarn to make a range that is "100% natural and 100% affordable".
It comes three types Full o' Sheep (Peruvian wool single ply), Bamboo Ewe (bamboo and wool) and Alpaca Love (80% Wool, 20% Alpaca) and the colours are fresh, zingy and varied.
The site also features a few free patterns to get your started on your Stitch Nation stitching.
Stitch Nation is only available in the US at the moment. Here's hoping it comes to the UK soon.
No one ever said that embroidery was boring; the word itself means to decorate, but as with a lot of handcrafts it has a bit of a twee image. Happily there are artists like Louise Riley out there who take their needle and thread and make jaw-dropping view-challenging art.
Working with embroidery, paint, string, canvas and beads Louise conjures up some unexpected examples of handcraft. Her recent Blood, Sweat and Tears exhibition in London featured fascinating embroidered figures lying on mattresses fashioned from some heart-stoppingly lovely fabrics.
Her handmade badges, seen in her Other Work section are awesome too. The heart-toting Berlin Bear and colourful Bike Life badges are tiny works of embroidered brilliance.
For some indulging in a sneaky souvenir can help keep those memories fresh when the holiday is over. A cocktail glass from Vegas, a Do Not Disturb sign in Italian from your hotel door, a fluffy white bathrobe from a Singapore luxury room. You're not supposed to take them but people do and go on to live guilt free for the rest of their lives.
But taking a piece of Ancient Egypt home with you? Maybe not as easy to live with.
Artist Andy Holden's art installation, The Pyramid Piece and his Return of the Pyramid Piece video, deal with just that guilt. Holden stole a rock from the Great Pyramid of Cheops, Giza when he was a young, light-fingered urchin. Years later in 2008 he returned the piece to its rightful place.
He then launched into knitting a massive replica of the stone. The giant-size replica, machine-knitted in a gruelling process that caused the breaking of two knitting machines, conveys Holden's feeling of peering up in awe at the giant pyramids themselves all those years ago.
The free Art Now: Andy Holden Pyramid Piece and Return of the Pyramid Piece exhibition is open 9 January - 10 April 2010 at Tate Britain, London.
Go and see it. I did. It's a wonder to behold but may make your joints ache in stitching sympathy when you see all that knitting.
Yarnstorming, the less-violent and more eco-friendly name for knitting graffiti, sees the bar raised again as hooking hero Howie Woo storms Vancouver and cheers up some rather damp Vancouverites with his Stringing in the rain yarnstorm.
Howie, whose Woo Work website is a treasure trove of crochet gold, chose to yarnstorm the Davie Village Community Garden. The site was yarnstormed last summer by Jessica Glesby, and his theme was his pride in the Vancouver rain and his fine city.
You can see more photos and a video of the yarnstorm on Howie's blog.
Howie also gives a nod to rainy day stitchers and UK yarnstorming pioneers Knit the City in his comments too. All yarnstorming being one under the cloudy sky. It's no longer about wrapping bits of the city in yarn. Stories and statements in stitching are taking things to a new level.
Fourteen fabulous raindrop cats and dogs, which each took about four hours to make, now dangle from above as rainswept pedestrains sweep by. Leaving them with a smile and Howie with the honour of bringing woolly sunshine to the city.
Ella Johnston is a London artist turning her interest in natural found objects and beauty discovered in everyday environments into art. I'm a little bit in love with the results; captivating prints and drawings of flowers to cheeky many-coloured British birds.
Ella has exhibited as part of the London Design Festival and at galleries across the UK. Her prints and drawings also grace the covers of music by small independent record label Hard-Graft and for influential London folk club night All Aboard the Mudlark.
Recently Ella joined the crafty crowd with her art. She recently opened her Akaya shop on Folksy offering badges and cards with her original designs on them.
An affordable and crafty way to accessorize and stand out by wearing elegant original art on your sleeve.
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