Women's Equality Day

Today, August 26th, is Women's Equality Day.

On August 26th, 1920, the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution granted women the right to vote. In addition to commemorating the passage of the 19th Amendment, Women's Equality Day emphasizes the continuing effort toward full equality.

http://www.nwhp.org/resourcecenter/equalityday.php

Here is an article about Bella Abzug who instituted Women's Equality Day in 1971.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/judi-jennings/womens-equality-day-aug_b_61780.html

"I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is; I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat."
-- Rebecca West 1913

I Totally Fixed My Bike!

This is my bike. I used to have a rockin green one, but it was stolen years ago.



I finally got my bike to my new place and pumped up the tires! That was enough of an adventure in itself, getting a pump, getting a bike rack, getting pliers to take the cap off, etc. When I went to ride it the front brake was rubbing on the wheel on one side. It turns out that when someone (not naming names) tried to take off the front wheel to put it in my trunk even though I was saying it won't fit, that someone didn't bother to put the wheel back on correctly. So the front wheel was crooked, causing the brake to rub.

This is the front axel of the bike. I took off the bolts, centered the wheel and put them back on.


This is the front brake. See the bolt on the right side? It controls how close the brakes are to the wheel and how tight the brakes are when you squeeze the handle. I adjusted that so the brakes are the right distance from the wheel.


This is the back brakes for comparison.

Top view of the back brakes.


I took it for a test ride today and it worked great! Wooo! I can ride my bike again!

Webcomics

I was doing some catchup with some of my favorite webcomics and thought I share them with you, plus it'll be convenient to have them in one place.

http://www.megatokyo.com/
http://www.thedreamlandchronicles.com/
http://www.seraph-inn.com/index.html
http://www.earthsongsaga.com/index.html
http://www.9thelsewhere.com/

Upcycled Bag

This is a purse I made out of plastic grocery bags. I ironed them together to form the "seams." It makes a thicker sturdier plastic.
This is great for anyone who likes recycling/upcycling or safeway. :p

Etsy at the Beach

I'm going to Etsy at the Beach in Lincoln City, Oregon on September 1st! There are lots of great Etsy sellers signed up so I hope you can make it! :)

It is at the Cultural Center in Lincoln City, OR 10am to 6pm

The Vase is Done :)

Here is the vase after I took it out of the washer. I think it turned out pretty good. :)

Knitting a Vase

I had this idea to knit a vase, obviously not one that you'd put fresh flowers with water in. It is art. It is a sculpture done in yarn. I thought there would be more patterns out there with all the excitment over fulling knits, but I didn't find any that I thought suited this project. So I bought some wool yarn, made my swatch (I needed to know how much it would shrink) and then started knitting.

The swatch shrunk about 1/4 in horizonataly and 1/2 in vertically for a 2 in section. If you can see the pink thread in the picture, they started 2 in apart.

Here it is on the needles. I added some stripes where I felt like it. :p

I really like magic loop. It's great for something that changes diameter like this.

Here it is in all its floppiness waiting to be fulled in the wash. I hope I like how it turns out. I have more ideas for unexpected knit sculptures.

Moonlit Garden Handspun Yarn

For my Moonlit Garden Yarn I started with these:

top left is my handdyed River Garden Roving, top right is some cotton yarn, bottom left is sparkly gold tinsel, and bottom right is shetland roving.


and spun them into this:

My Moonlit Garden Handspun Yarn! Starting with my River Garden handdyed wool roving I spun a thick and thin single. I spun another single with a cotton yarn, white shetland roving and gold sparkle tinsel and I plied those together.

This is an entry in the EtsyFast AugustChallenge.

ETSY FAST'S AUGUST CHALLENGE - CELESTIAL THEME:Fast stands for Fiber Arts Street Team. We work together to promote our fiber art and the Etsy site. Just for fun, we pick a challenge each month for all of us to be involved in. The August Challenge is anything celestial, suggested because we will have both a meteor shower and a total lunar eclipse this month. If you would like to enjoy our submissions Search either "etsyfast" or "augustchallenge".