Pack Rat is going cold turkey as we quit our addiction to cold turkey.

Bonjour, mis amies. I feel like that is probably not spelled correctly, but I took Spanish in school, not French, so just considered it a best guess. If you are easing into the dog days of summer, and you’re looking for some footwear that will reflect your laid-back lifestyle, head over to Lady Harvatine’s blog and check out the sweet tutorial for summer slippers. (They’re like flip flops, but softer! and more cozy!) They are super stylish, and won’t make your feet sweat in the summer heat.

And this has absolutely nothing to do with anything, but blogger Liz Harvatine is originally from Connecticut. And as someone else originally from CT, this pleases me. There, I’ve said it. I’m a nutmegger.

Photo courtsey of Liz Harvatine

Pack Rat’s grandma flipped her ‘vette.

I’m listening to Nick Swardson’s Party album as I type this, so I apologize for any typos that may be the result of laughing. So, most of you are probably familiar with the old school internet phenomenon, the Flying Spaghetti Monster. If you are not, here is a snippet from the wikipedia entry:

“The religion was founded in 2005 by Bobby Henderson to protest the decision by the Kansas State Board of Education to require the teaching of intelligent design as an alternative to biological evolution. Because intelligent design implies the existence of an intelligent but not necessarily omnipotent or omniscient designer, some, like Henderson, argued that this designer could be anything imaginable…Henderson parodies the concept of an intelligent designer by professing belief in a supernatural creator called the Flying Spaghetti Monster which resembles spaghetti and meatballs. He furthermore calls for the “Pastafarian” theory of creation to be taught in science classrooms.

People took this idea and ran with it. I, personally, never saw the humor in it. Sure, intelligent design has no place in the classroom, and yes, Henderson made his point, but really people, it’s not that funny. That being said, the blogger at HistoryWeaver has provided a crochet pattern for a delightful, bendable FSM stuffed animal. She also, in Flat Stanley fashion, has her FSM roaming the country. My favorite is the one below of her FSM double fisting two pints of beer. Use her pattern to make your own traveling friend.

(photo by HistoryWeaver)

Pack Rat magazine’s alias is Nick Soapdish. It’s French.

Quick update on the magazine. Perhaps unsurprisingly we are running behind schedule. This time we have a pretty good excuse though, as we had a major computer crash and ongoing computer bugs that we are trying to deal with. We hope to have the July/August issue to you asap.

To that end, I’m going to keep these next few blogs brief. I found a “how-to” for these cunning oil cloth lunch sacks over on Martha Stewart’s website. It is actually the second time today that I have stumbled on to a website or article relating to Martha Stewart, and it’s not yet 10 am. I wonder if it’s some kind of sign?

Pack Rat Magazine knows not to mess with The Luggage

The subject of this blog post comes via Crafty Crafty

If there’s anything the British seem to know, it’s humor. Monty Python, Eddie Izzard, Douglas Adams, the list goes on and on. For all of you über nerds out there, I certainly hope you have read, or are planning to read the books in the Discworld fantasy series by Terry Pratchett (p.s. I just googled über to make sure I was spelling it right, and I read a whole Wikipedia entry devoted to that one word. Talk about obernerdy). The Discworld is a lot like our own…only different. There’s way too much to go into here, but essentially the Discworld is a planet shaped like a disc that is carried on the backs of four elephants who ride atop a giant turtle, floating through space. Trust me, it’s hilarious. I especially love the character of Death, who always speaks ALL IN CAPS and who loves KITTENS AND BAKING.

Anywho, the long and the short of it is that I’m hardly the only person in love with these books. Kimberly Chapman and her husband Corran are also fans and they have expressed their love in the best way possible: cake form. Visit Chapman’s website for the how-to for this scrumptious literary dessert.

Pack Rat Magazine is on the bus

Story time. Gather round kiddies, pull up your sit-upons. Once upon a time I was a teenager. And because the rules of teenagerdom say, nay, decree that you will think you are a) way cooler than anyone who has ever existed and b) the most boring person to ever shlump around the Earth’s surface, I went WAY out of my way to separate myself from “the pack.” This included such outside-of-the-box thinking as: wearing blue lipstick; sporting socks on my arms (a la Tank Girl); strolling around in Cat In the Hat stripped tights; etc. Me and my Hot Topic wardrobe were beyond the status quo. And of course, like every person looking to rebel, I was all about dying my hair. I bought a lot of Manic Panic in those days, but was constantly disappointed when after a week’s worth of showers my Technicolor green hair would fade to a sickly green wash, the kind that kids who spent too much time in cholrinated pools had. But lo, some helpful person turned me on to using Kool-Aid as a dye. Oh the joy! The rapture! The color was intense and the effects permanent. Plus, it was a million times cheaper then the real dyes.

To use Kool-Aid as a hair dye required a microwave, a packet of said summertime fun beverage, and a microwave safe dish that you didn’t mind staining some ridiculous colors. You dumped the full packet of Kool-Aid (the various red flavors worked best) into the microwave safe dish, added about a cup of water, and nuked it for about two minutes, or until the liquid began to boil. Then you dipped your hair in while the whole thing was still hot and voila, you were part of the resistance movement. The sucky part was trying to get it all the way up to your roots. You didn’t want to burn your scalp, but you didn’t want your streak of fire-red hair to only go half way up. I scalded my fingers many a time, trying to figure that one out. I still don’t have any good answers.

Now that I am a million years older, I some times miss those dyed streaks of hair (and hair wraps. Remember hair wraps?), thus I was totally stoked when I came across this tutorial from Snowangels on how to use essentially the same technique to color yarn. She uses both the microwave (for single color skeins) and the stove top (for a tie-dyed look) to create vibrant pallets for all her knitting, crocheting, needle point, etc. needs. Just looking at the photos takes me back. And then I remember that being a teenager was as much fun as getting kicked in the crotch. I am glad that now I can get jazzed up about dying yarn instead of all that other crap. You know what else sucked? Cafeteria pizza. I’m just saying.

Pack Rat Magazine likes its sugar with coffee and cream

I was grokking out over Super Naturale today (an online DIY magazine, and producers of Craftivity–40 Projects for the DIY Lifestyle [Collins, Oct. 2006], among other things), and I came across this ultra nerdy, wicked cool crochet project. Called the Sculptural Crochet Primer this tutorial is written by the wonderfully analytical Wunderkammer. Here’s a quick sample of the text:

The primary quality that recommends crochet as three dimensional medium is the fact that crochet stitches are not unlike pixels - discrete units that combine to facet the surface of a form. The size of those stitches, and the number of their neighbors in the rows above and below, determines the shape of the work. As such, your design can be quantified as a pattern and easily shared with others. Aside from certain intangibles – tension of the working yarn principal among them – a piece produced faithfully from a pattern will be identical to the original. If you like, you can think of a crochet pattern as a program for highly individual human fabbers.

How cool is that? I hyperlinked fabbers if–like me–you’re not as smart as Wunderkammer and you need some explanation. But I just love how into crochet this author is, how seriously she/he takes it. It’s not very often that you read a passage on crochet that reads like a textbook and I truly enjoy the fact that someone is taking that much time to write articulately and professional about a subject that’s often dimissed. And double bonus, look how remarkable the finished project is!

Pack Rat Magazine separates the wheat from the chaff. And then we ditch it all for some fried dough.

Let me walk you through what a day of searching for a blog topic is like. So I start out with a list of websites that I have on file…stuff I haven’t written about yet for one reason or another. It’s a long list, compiled of many a Stumble Upon and Google search. I close my eyes and randomly select a site. Today I landed on Hello Indie, a shopping ‘zine for indie goods. I really enjoy the articles in this ‘zine and have almost mentioned it a few times in the past, but I hesitated because they look like they haven’t put out a new issue since 2006.

Today I read through their archives, looking for something I could highlight, and I came across their article from Issue #2 called “Out Of Control Photography” about a new trend (movement?) in digital photography. The artists take their cameras and toss them into the air so that the resulting photographs are a surreal blur of light and shapes. The article linked to photographer Ryan Gallagher, so I clicked on his link and went to his flickr page. But I didn’t poke around there very long before I saw that he had his own blog called Camera Toss (The Blog) where he showcases his own “kinetic photographs” and his general musings about photography and life. I found the how-to guide for camera tossing to be particularly interesting. But I wanted to get a better sense of what this technique could accomplish, so I headed back to the flickr pool and I found some photos to share with y’all. They are from left to right: Kinetic 1023 by mtnrockdhh; Cameratoss from the archives by Beer 30; and Toss 109 by AKA33

And that, my peeps, is a sneak peek into the web sluething I do to bring you blog postings every day.

Pat Rack Magazine knows that beer is the cause of–and solution to–all of life’s problems.

Now, that I’ve got those Simpsons references out of my system. I, as I’m sure you are all aware by now, am not a knitter. But I love it. Think about it. Tie a knot, make a loop and its one thing. Tie hundreds of knots, make thousands of loops, and if you do it in the correct pattern, a hat, or glove, or shawl begins to appear. Or, in the case of this free pattern I found through The Daily Knitter, a super cute sweater vest. Now like I said, I’m not a knitter myself, but The Daily Knitter appears to be a pretty good resource, with links to tons of free patterns, a large yarn directory, reviews on knitting books and guides and more. If you click needles together, let me know what you think of it. I’d be curious to see how this holds up under some serious knitter’s scrutiny.

Pack Rat Magazine has 364 days to train for the Boston Marathon.

Weddings are a funny thing. They start out being about two people sharing their love with their closest family and friends, and then they typically become these monster projects that are more focused grouped then a prime time sitcom. In the attempt to please everyone, sometimes no one is happy. One of the alternatives? Don’t half ass it, embrace the things you love, like this totally Knitted Wedding of Freddie and Ben, devotees of knitting and members of the UK group, Cast Off. Flipping through the gallery photos of their wedding, I’m floored by the amount of labor and love that went into this thing. Everything, absolutely everything is knitted. The wedding dress, the bouquet, the obscenely long train, the bridesmaids’ dresses, the food, the cameras, even the cans tied to the back of their “Just Married” bike. Such an outpouring of effort and community love…you can even hear the needles still clicking away. My absolutely favorite moment is when the happy couple come out of the church, under a battalion of over-sized knitting needles held like swords above their heads. If this idea gets your idea box a-thrumming, check out these starter directions for flowers and food and more and make your own knit wedding (mock or otherwise).

It’s Pack Rat Magazine, b*tches!

Okay, so I know I’ve been awol recently and I’m sure you’ve all be struggling to find the will to live without my sage words of advice (JK) but I’m back and the reason for my prolonged absence and subsequent return is that I’ve been working diligently on producing for you all (or y’all where appropriate) issue numero quatro of Pack Rat. This issue we help the Earth in the spirit of Earth Day by doing what we do best: recycled crafts and lots of them. We also talk with jewelry designer Becky Houle, a.k.a. The Vicious Kitty, look into what this whole letterbox craze is all about and, with the help of Cat Morley from Cut Out + Keep make our own letterbox stampers, hit the thrifts for some inexpensive crafting supplies, and just about a zillion things more. Head over to www.packratmag.com/zine to get in on the action. I missed you all and I’m glad to be back. Happy crafting!