I have been feeling a bit sorry for myself over the last few days – just recovering from a killer cold (definitely not swine flu, I hasten to add!) & single-handedly keeping the tissue industry afloat. But happily, my post-lady has been going above and beyond the call of duty bringing me lovely things from the outside world to cheer me up. 🙂 (there will be lots of smile-y faces in this post)
First and foremost, I have to say a HUGE thank you to Arteth Gray, one of my original D.I.Y. Weaving Club members, for the most awesome piece of mail art. She actually wove one of the cards from the Postcard Recycling Kit, and dared to trust it to the postal service. There’s a bit of a gap in the weaving, and I can feel dried glue there, so I do strongly suspect that perhaps an original part of this mini-masterpiece is missing, but still, I was so happy to receive it. 🙂 It’s one of the most exciting pieces of post I’ve ever received! I’m so impressed that it made it through, relatively unscathed. I haven’t been weaving much lately (although I have still been working on Telaic Fantasy #4, so do keep watching this space…!), but this has really motivated me to get weaving and mail some art out into the world :-).Another fun piece of unexpected mail art also came my way today – a mail art game from Misti Ko called ‘It Starts With a Pencil‘. The game starts with an ATC blank, printed with a pencil, and the sender’s name and address on the reverse (I should really have scanned the blank ATC to show you, but I was so eager to start playing the game, I had already drawn on it, before that thought occurred to me…). The first recipient (in this case, me) adds something to the design on the front of the ATC, adds their own name and address to the reverse, then forwards the ATC to a 3rd person. The 3rd person adds a final element to the overall ATC design, adds their own name and address to the reverse, then returns the ATC to the first name on the card (in this case, Misti Ko). Misti is compiling a mail art mini-zine showing off the completed cards, and each person who has filled their name & address on an ATC will receive a copy. How cool is that? You can check out the completed cards online here.
I was almost (but not quite) as excited about receiving this game as I was about the handwoven postcard! I was just finishing off a zine about doodling (more on that to follow shortly) while the pencil game ATC was sitting on the arm of my chair, and in the end I just had to give in and play. 
I started of with an inkblot & a couple of stray inkspots (I know it’s a pencil, but I was using artistic license 😉 ), then doodled around the shape to fill an area of the card. It was a completely random inkblot & doodling, but now it’s finished, don’t you think it looks kind of like a fish face, with a pencil-dinner in mind…? But perhaps more importantly, what do you think it will look like once it’s finished? And perhaps more relevant still, which of my correspondents will be the one to make the decision? I’ll be sending it on this weekend, so watch your letterbox!
And as if that wasn’t enough (!) I have also just received the August Issue of Craft Leftovers. I’m totally loving it! The zine is themed all about drawing, and includes a pattern to sew your own ‘Pencils to Go’ pencil wrap. My favourite part, though, is the complete kit to bind your own sketchbook, with boards, papers, binding thread, and the cutest mini-zine, ‘Stitch n’ Sketch – how to bind your own sketch book codex style’. If you’ve ever thought about binding your own books but not known where to start, buying this issue of Craft Leftovers is definitely the first step you should take! Honestly, subscribing to CLM is so much fun – every month just seems to get better and better! 🙂
Anyway, get thee hence & go and create some mail art of your own – it’s certainly cheered me up! 🙂
Over the last couple of days, I have been weaving yet more postcards. Why? I hear you wondering… Well, partly to try out some different yarns, partly to try out some alternative woven postage ideas, and partly for…another reason. Where are the postcards going? What are they for? Well, this time I’m not sending them to myself, but I won’t say more than that for now – look out for updates!
My postcard from a couple of weeks ago (right) was woven with an aran weight knitting yarn. The ‘stamp’ was a very basic surface needle-weave which hid the background weaving nicely. The more recent postcards, however, were woven with a less bulky (dk) yarn – largely because I simply could not find the blues I was looking for in a heavier weight. (I always find it surprising that despite the vast array of yarns out there, sometimes it’s impossible to find one that matches the colour in my mind’s eye…)
I soon discovered that the same simple needleweaving came nowhere close to covering the background. I got around this by weaving diagonally (both directions) across the grid that was formed, and this did the trick.
tanglecrafts.wordpress.com 