June events for the Indy Craft Mafia

We've got some exciting things coming up this month and I wanted to remind you all of the details.

Friday, June 5th - 6-9 p.m. at the Harrison Center for the Arts
1505 North Delaware Street, Indianapolis, IN 46202
Outdoor textiles installation, in collaboration with the Yarnburners.
FREE live music by Shirtless Biddles from 6:30 - 7:45 p.m.
+ a bluegrass pickin' circle afterward. (open to all ages and levels of experience, open to the public, not just ICM members)
Please come out and help us hang our work. Even if you were unable to complete a piece for the outdoor installation, join us to meet new members, relax and enjoy the music and camaraderie. Bring a small cooler with beverages (yes, the adult kind are allowed) and snacks. Bring your whole family. If you want to participate in the pickin' circle, bring your favorite instrument and a mind full of tunes you'd like to play. Weather permitting, we will be outside in the Delaware Street courtyard, if not, we will be indoors in the gymnasium.

Saturday, June 13 - 11 a.m. - 10 p.m. at the Harrison Center for the Arts
1505 North Delaware Street, Indianapolis, IN 46202
INDIEana Handicraft Exchange (indoors) in conjunction with the Independent Music + Art Festival (outdoors)
plus, the opening of our Craft Mafia gallery show (indoors in the main gallery)
FREE to the public
Many of our Indy Craft Mafia members have booth space at the INDIEana Handicraft Exchange, and we will have an Indy Craft Mafia table where several of our members will be working to promote our group and show off projects of their own. Please come out to support each and every one of them. If you have not volunteered to hang out at the Indy Craft Mafia table yet and would like to, we could use an extra person on a couple of shifts. The current schedule is as follows:

11 a.m. - 2 p.m. - Melissa Carter
1 p.m. - 4 p.m. – Amy McAdams, Janet Stimac, Andrea McNeely
3 p.m. - 6 p.m. – Earlynn Collier
5:30 p.m. - 8 p.m. – Nikki Hrycak Godersky
7 p.m. - 10 p.m. - Jamie Long

Our Craft Mafia gallery show should be impressive, as well. It will be a small show, but the work is high-quality. Big thanks to Amy McAdams for organizing the gallery show and to all of our members who contributed pieces.

We do have the Indy Craft Mafia t-shirts now, so if you haven't yet picked yours up, let me know and I will bring it to one of the events above. You get a shirt if you joined at the $40 Capo level, $60 Boss level, or if you want to pay $10 for one.

That's what's on the calendar for June. We'll have some casual social meetings at the beginning of July, and another workshop toward the end of July.

Hope to see you all on the 5th!

Take care.
-Amanda
www.IndyCraftMafia.com
www.INDIEanaHandicraftExchange.com

Next meeting: Sunday, May 17

Hello again. I know we have been terrible about updating our blog lately. I apologize. We are attempting to redistribute some duties to make sure updates occur more frequently. Please bear with us. We're still working out some kinks. Our website will be cleaned up/redesigned this summer, as well. www.IndyCraftMafia.com.

First order of business:
Please join us on Sunday, May 17th from 3-6pm, to work on your craffiti creations for the June outdoor textiles installation and gallery opening. As you all know, we have been commissioned to tag the outside of the Harrison Center and, instead of sticking to yarn for our tagging, we invite you to create something using whatever textiles material you feel most comfortable working with. There will be artists working in crochet, macrame, knitting, needle felting, quilting and more. You can wrap a tree branch, door handle, stair railing, etc. Wherever you want to leave your mark. Bring your supplies, snacks and beverage (beer and/or alcohol is welcome, btw) and we'll enjoy great company along with great weather (hopefully). If it's nice, we'll set up outside. If it's raining, we'll head indoors. Either way, it should be a great time to create, collaborate and get to know other creative people.

Also, this would be a good time to bring any extra fabric or supplies that you'd like to swap or donate to the group.

Other Upcoming Events & Important Dates:
- Friday, May 22: all pieces for the Craft Mafia gallery show due to the HCA office or to Amy directly
- Friday, June 5 (from 6-9pm): Install outdoor textiles works ("craffiti creations") at the HCA, live music by Shirtless Biddles, FREE admission
- Saturday, June 13 (from 11am-10pm): INDIEana Handicraft Exchange & Craft Mafia gallery show opening at the HCA, FREE admission (we'd like volunteers to show their current personal projects and work a shift at the Indy Craft Mafia table at the front entrance)
- Monday, July 6 @ 7pm: Indy Craft Mafia Getting to Know You (location TBD, at a bar or restaurant)
- Sunday, July 26 (from 3-6pm): monthly meeting/workshop (activity, location TBD)

INDIEana Handicraft Exchange summer show vendors have been selected

Hello, hello.

I wanted to let you all know that the complete list of vendors is up on the IHE Facebook group (http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=54393736995&ref=mf), as well as links to vendor sites on the MySpace page (http://www.myspace.com/indy_bitchcraft). Images of vendor work will follow soon on the MySpace page and names, logos, and links will hopefully be on the www.INDIEanaHandicraftExchange.com site by next weekend.

Check 'em all out and map out your shopping strategy for the big event in June. Believe me, there will be a number of items you won't want to leave without. We have over 70 makers of fabulous, funky, hip and modern handmade goods.
-Amanda

Rocky Ripple Festival now accepting applications for vendors

The 10th Annual Rocky Ripple Festival in the Park will be held on Saturday, September 26th, 2009. They are currently accepting applications for artists and crafters to reserve booth space. They have spots for only 40 vendors, so act quickly if you are interested. Please check out their website or contact Dhyana Raynor at dhyanar@sbcglobal.net for more information.

www.rockyripple.org/Rocky_Ripple_Festival.html

only 2 DAYS left!...vendor applications for INDIEana Handicraft Exchange due this Saturday, 3/14

The deadline for vendor application submission for the INDIEana Handicraft Exchange is Saturday, March 14, so get yours in soon! Absolutely no late or incomplete applications will be considered.

If you would like to apply, please email your request for an application and an F.A.Q. sheet to Amanda at:
indieana_handicraft_exchange@yahoo.com

You may either fill out your responses on the application form and email it back as a Microsoft Word document, or you may copy and paste the questions into an email and respond there. Don't forget to attach 3-5 jpeg images of your work to accompany the application.

The IHE summer show will be held from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Saturday, June 13, 2009 in conjunction with the Independent Music and Arts Festival(IMAF) at the Harrison Center for the Arts at 1505 North Delaware Street, Indianapolis, IN 46202. The event annually brings out a crowd of 5000+ folks. This year the INDIEana Handicraft Exchange will feature 50+ vendors, a "Craft Mafia" gallery show, an outdoor textiles art installation, live music and entertainment and giveaways for a ton of great raffle prizes donated by our vendors and local business sponsors.

If you are unable to apply for the summer show, we will be having our fall show in October, on the evening of the 2nd and all day on the 3rd. Please mark that show on your calendar now. Applications for that show will be available shortly after the summer show wraps up.

We're looking forward to reading your application and seeing images of your work!
-Amanda Mauer Taflinger
www.INDIEanaHandicraftExchange.com
www.myspace.com/indy_bitchcraft
www.facebook.com/home.php?#/group.php?gid=54393736995
www.IndyCraftMafia.com

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The INDIEana Handicraft Exchange is a D.I.Y. contemporary craft fair that showcases the work of artists and crafters who use traditional crafting techniques mixed with a contemporary edge. Our vendors offer a range of unique handmade goods from wooden jewelry to fanciful undergarments, from custom vintage-inspired western wear to stationery, from plush animals to natural bath and body goodies, from hand-screened rock ‘n’ roll poster art to pop culture icon finger puppets and much, much more. The IHE is the first and only of its kind in Indianapolis and is currently held biannually.
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next meeting: Sunday, March 8

Please join us on March 8th from 3-6 p.m. in the Harrison Center gymnasium to chit chat 'n' craft.

Harrison Center for the Arts
1505 North Delaware Street
Indianapolis, IN 46202

Last time folks were having trouble finding us since the doors at the HCA are locked on Sundays, so please have a cell phone handy to call Allison or Amanda if you cannot get in at the Delaware Street courtyard entrance. We will post someone there to open the door for the first ten minutes, so please try to arrive right around 3.

The agenda:
We need to do a lot of important shop talk at this meeting.

- We will hopefully (fingers crossed) hand out shirts if we have them in hand.

- Discuss the "Craft Mafia" gallery show for June to see who is realistically interested in creating pieces for the show.

- Discuss the outdoor textiles art installation we are doing for June.

- Give anyone interested info on applying for the INDIEana Handicraft Exchange in June (vendor applications due by March 14)

Also, we will be doing a mobile workshop as the main portion of the meeting. Allison Ford will teach everyone how to make paper crane mobiles, and we will discuss a possible future project, potentially for Riley Children's Hospital, or another children's charity, involving the cranes.

For the mobile workshop, everyone needs to bring their own:

- magazines to recycle

- scissors

- long sewing needle

- needlenose pliers

We will provide:

- wire

- fishing line

The meeting following this one will be on Sunday, April 26, also at the Harrison Center for the Arts, from 3-6 p.m. This will be our Contemporary Quilting Bee, with guest speaker Susan Fletcher Conaway. Her work is amazing. The image below is one of her pieces. You can read her blog and view additional images of her quilts at: http://fiberartalmosteveryday.blogspot.com/
Indianapolis Monthly will have a preview for this event in their April issue.


In the meantime, we would like to start having informal, small-group, breakfast, lunch, dinner or coffee meetings. Just spur of the moment (or relatively so) get-togethers at homes, restaurants or coffeeshops to get to know one another better and work on ongoing projects. If anyone would like to propose/host meetings like this, email the info to IndyCraftMafia@yahoo.com and we will post the info on our blog and/or email the info to all members ASAP.

And lastly, please add IndyCraftMafia@yahoo.com to your email address books. We want to be sure all members, and folks who are interested in soon becoming members, receive all info about our gatherings and projects.

Hope to see you all on the 8th!

our AWESOME bird's nest chair

Well, we've completed our chair and have turned it over to the Care for Kids foundation for their silent auction. Big thanks to all who came out to the Harrison Center on Feb. 8 to help us work on the project. It turned out wonderfully. We used an old Papasan chair and went with a bird's nest theme, complete with giant bird and eggs. The finished piece is really quite amazing. And comfy. We let Allison's daughter, Harper, give it a test run and she didn't seem to have any complaints.

All individual artists or groups who donated to the silent auction will receive two tickets to the event. We will give the two we receive for our group to any of the folks who worked on the chair, and who are willing to attend the event to represent the Indy Craft Mafia. First come, first served.

If anyone else would like to purchase tickets to attend the charity event, the information is below. Please come to check out our chair, as well as to see our competition.

***If you cannot attend the event, the Care for Kids Foundation will be bringing our chair, and a couple others, to Allison's studio at the Harrison Center for the First Friday gallery event on March 6. They will be selling tickets and handing out info for their organization, and Indy Craft Mafia members are welcome to stop by and hang out for a bit. Bring your knitting or crochet projects and sit and chat with us for a while. Allison's studio is downstairs, near The Underground. We will be talking to anyone who expresses interest about what the Indy Craft Mafia has done, what we would like to do, and who is in our group. We'd love to see you all there!***

-Amanda, Candice, Allison & Amy, www.IndyCraftMafia.com

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Care for Kids Chair-ity Affair

www.chair-ityaffair.com

Friday, March 20, 2009
6 pm to 10 pm
The Car Room at The Stutz
1060 North Capitol Avenue
Indianapolis, IN 46204
Ticket Price: $50/person

Emcee: Joe Staysniak, WIBC - 93.1 FM

The Care for Kids Chair-ity Affair is a special evening that brings together the arts community, businesses and citizens for a live and silent auction that’s all about CHAIRS! The Car Room at The Stutz will be filled with a variety of chairs including original chairs from the homes of national and local celebrities as well as artist chairs where artists and decorators turn ordinary chairs into original works of art. All chairs will be unique conversation pieces and will make great additions to a home or business. The Chair-ity Affair will feature a strolling dinner, live entertainment, and of course, the live and silent chair auctions.

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INDIEana Handicraft Exchange - accepting vendor apps now!

hello all. we are currently accepting applications for the Saturday, June 13, 2009 show.

the summer craft fair will run from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. in conjunction with the IMAF (Independent Music and Arts Festival) which brings out a crowd of 4000-5000 people each year. the event will be held at the Harrison Center for the Arts at 1505 North Delaware Street, Indianapolis, IN 46202. www.harrisoncenter.org

if you would like to apply to be a vendor in the fair, please send an email to:
indieana_handicraft_exchange@yahoo.com indicating so. we will email you the application and info sheet. we are currently working on our website, and hopefully soon the applications will simply be available for download there to make the process easier.

the deadline for application submissions is Saturday, March 14.

thanks. we're looking forward to receiving your applications and seeing your work!
-amanda
www.IndieanaHandicraftExchange.com
www.myspace.com/indy_bitchcraft
www.IndyCraftMafia.com

Chair-ity Affair Patchwork Party: Sunday, Feb. 8

Apologies for the late notice, but we'd love for you to help us decorate our chair for A Chair-ity Affair, put on by the Care for Kids Foundation. We'll be working on the chair from 3-6pm in the Harrison Center gymnasium. Sunday, February 8.

Free to members. $5 for non-members.

OUR CONCEPT: A Craft Nest.

OUR GAME PLAN: Have each member (and non-member) contribute a portion of the chair. We'll have some spare fabrics and notions for you to dig through. But, if you have something specific in mind, come armed with your choices of thread, needles, notions, etc to make your "patch" for our patchwork nest. All of the patches will be sewn together and will represent our organization. We'll also need a couple of volunteers to create the pillows that will accompany our Craft Nest. We're thinking egg or bird shaped might be appropriate. Felt? Perhaps. Any other ideas are always more than welcome.

So, come armed and ready to dig in and have a great time. It's for a good cause and it's a great way to promote the ICM. And, heck, if our chair wins a prize, the ICM can put money in the bank to go towards upcoming workshops and events.

RECOMMENDATION: When you're thinking about your design, you may keep in mind that portions of the design could be cropped when assembling the overall design. This would effect any text used in a design.

LOCATION: The Harrison Center for the Arts
1505 North Delaware Street, Indianapolis, IN 46202
317.727.6446

guerilla knitting crew to form in Indy

hello all. the information below was forwarded to me and i thought many of you might be interested. if you are unfamiliar with the original knitting graffiti gang, Knitta, check out their website. www.knittaplease.com
-amanda
www.IndieanaHandicraftExchange.com
www.IndyCraftMafia.com

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Wanna be a Knitta? Wanna be a Gangsta? Wanna be Knitta Gangsta?

In urban centers around the world, gangs of knitters have been hitting their cities with soft graffiti. Poles, street signs, trees, and walls have been finding themselves suddenly bombed with soft and fuzzy, yet non-destructive vandalism. It is time that the city of Indianapolis defends itself with its own crew of subversive knitters/writers.

If you are a knitter, crocheter, or a fiber artist, and have some repressed rebellion, you are invited to join us in combining the craft of graffiti and street art with the concept of knitting and interlocking stitches.

Where: Our base is the gymnasium at Harrison Center for the Arts (1505 N. Delaware, Indianapolis , IN 46202 ).
Who: The gang leader/curator is Indianapolis based artist, Beth Eisinger
When: Our rendevouz time is every first Friday of the month (beginning on February 6th) up until the first Friday of May when our first "bombing" will take place.
What: The plan is to first vandalize the entire inside of the Harrison Center (we have permission for this, by the way) with knit graffiti.
What to Expect: In the initial meeting on February 6th (First Friday) knitters will have the chance to meet each other and will have the opportunity to scout out the building and stake out their territory for their first project. Beth will also be bringing numerous images from past Knit Gangs and graffiti artists for inspiration. This time will also be used to brainstorm a large collaborative knit project to work on collectively during our following meetings. Artists will also have a chance to think about his/her "tag" or symbol that will be used to identify his/her artwork.

Additionally, Beth will be holding a pre-meeting on Saturday, January 31st at 7:30 pm at the Harrison Center for anyone who may be interested in working more closely with Beth in making this event and gang happen. The meeting will be a time of crazy brainstorming and planning for what this gang should be called and could become. Bring project ideas and anything related that you are working on!

If you are at all interested in joining or just want more information, write Beth at bethjeisinger@gmail.com or call her at (317)910-9513.

The Knitters are Coming!

Beth Eisinger
The Harrison Center for the Arts!
1505 N. Delaware Street
Indianapolis , IN 46202
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Swap, Crop & Sew

Momma always told us that one person's trash is another person's treasure.

Join the ICM for the 1st Annual Clothing Swap and Reconstruction Workshop. Bring your unwanted clothes, shoes, fabric and accessories to swap for "new to you" items from other Mafia members. Then, stick around to talk, concept and work on existing reconstruction projects.

Don't have any current diy projects? Well, maybe you'll find inspiration from a newly found treasure from the swap.

Sunday, January 18, 3:00PM
Swap: 3-4pm.
Reconstruction Workshop: 4-6pm.

All sizes welcome.
BYOM (Bring your own materials, including your sewing machine).
Workspace and outlets will be provided.
Coffee shop will be open for beverages and treats.

Earth House Collective
237 North East Street
Indianapolis, IN 46204 US
317-727-6446
For information on the location, go to: http://www.earthhousecollective.org