Hutchins Library News Blog

During National Craft Month, crafters get creative with their supplies. Artisans set to work on a design, and different craftspeople put their skills together to bring an idea to life.

With a broad range of crafts to choose from, National Craft Month inspires all kinds of mediums. From paper and wood to fabrics, paint and metal craft, the month is dedicated to creativity and inspiration.  Whatever motivates you, take your craft from idea to reality this month. If you’ve only been thinking about learning, sign up for a class.

Learning a craft offers many benefits. Expressing one’s creativity provides stress relief and can lower blood pressure much like meditation.  There’s natural positive reinforcement from learning a new skill. With each new step learned, the satisfaction from gaining the skill is rewarding.  Most crafts require fine motor skills. Crafts teach young children these skills as well keep ours sharp as we age.

Crafting with a group becomes a social event. Gather with friends and complete a larger project or several smaller ones. Making items for charity, such as blankets for premature babies or activity bags for the children of veterans, makes your efforts that much more valuable.  When creativity becomes stress relieving and generous, it fills the soul.

Description from:

“National Craft Month - March.” National Day Calendar, 19 Nov. 2018, nationaldaycalendar.com/national-craft-month-march/.

Stitch 'n Bitch by Debbie Stoller

Call Number: 746.43 S875s 2003

Publication Date: 2004-09-03

It's the essential guide for chicks with sticks--because knit happens. From the tools of the trade to the knitty-gritty of techniques and patterns, all with easy-to-follow step-by-step illustrated techniques. Stockinette stitch, rib stitch, seed stitch. Increasing and decreasing. All the bells and whistles: fringes, tassels, cables, intarsia, crab stitch, and Fair Isle. Plus the stitch doctor's own special bag of tricks and how to hook up with other knitters. After the how-tos come the why-to: forty hop, stylish patterns, as good for beginners as they are for purely pros. Featuring: Coney Island fireworks scarf Punk rock backpack Crickets technicolor techno-cozies Pippi knee-stockings Big bad baby blanket To-dye-for sweater Princess Snowball cat bed Queen of Hearts bikini

Paper, Metal and Stitch by Maggie Grey; Jane Wild

Call Number: 746.22 G844p 2004

Publication Date: 2005-10-01

This timely project guide concentrates on two of the key materials being newly incorporated into textiles and fiber arts--paper and metal. Both media are covered in separate sections that describe the unique properties of each, as well as textural methods, adding color, and embellishing with stitches. Paper can be molded, formed, cut, torn, embossed, and stitched; metal adds a new gleam; and additional dimensions of the material are explored with soft sheet metals, meshes, wires, and coils. Concepts build through each section, starting with elemental embroidery and basic, texture-building steps, and moving to exciting finishing ideas for combining and mixing techniques for original and innovative results.

Knitting Without Tears by Elizabeth Zimmerman

Call Number: 746.432 Z73k

Publication Date: 1973-07-01

Do you love to knit-and hate to purl? Have you ever started a sweater without enough yarn from the same dye lot to finish it? When you cast on, do you end up with a tail of yarn that's maddeningly too long or too short? Elizabeth Zimmermann comes to the rescue with clever solutions to frustrating problems and step-by-step instructions for brilliant, timeless designs. In Knitting Without Tears,you'll find elegant designs for: Color-pattern Norwegian ski sweaters Seamless patterned-yoke sweaters Hooded garter-stitch jackets for babies Watch caps, socks, slippers, mittens, and more! This classic and influential book is poised to inspire a whole new generation of knitters who have yet to discover the joys and comforts of knitting. As the lady herself once put it, "properly practiced, knitting soothes the troubled spirit, and it doesn't hurt the untroubled spirit either."

 

Hutchins Library is hosting local photographer Ray LeBlanc's work in our central display area through the month of October 2019. This exhibit is free and open to the public. Note that the photographs are for sale. Anyone interested in purchasing can contact the photographer directly. There is contact information for the artist in the display area.

Selection of photos by Ray LeBlanc featured in the library during October

Press release (by Dodie Murphy) to learn more about the photograher:

An artist’s reception – free and open to the public – for art photographer Ray LeBlanc [was held] from 4 to 7 PM Thursday, Oct. 3, at Hutchins Library on the Berea College campus. Refreshments will be served. The exhibit closes Oct. 31.

     LeBlanc shoots pictures of beauty, things that are loving and make him happy. He specializes in nature’s flora and fauna, clouds, rain and rainbows, tranquil boats – some surrounded by crab traps – as well as old barns, fences and gates, waterscapes, landscapes and cityscapes, and sunrises and sunsets.

     His photographs were taken throughout Kentucky and all over the world. He’s called an artist by people who are artists, “and it’s very humbling to be called an artist by them,” LeBlanc reflected.

     His eyes see art in a split-second, and in another one it reaches his heart. He wants to keep the memories forever. So, that’s what LeBlanc does: he captures love along with happy and beauty, and what he sees he hopes will capture the heart of others as well. “I want to make them happy, too.”

     A Marine platoon sergeant in the Vietnam War, LeBlanc, who is now 72 and lives in Lexington – yet regularly walks and hikes in Berea – retired after a career in real estate and mortgages. Since America honors veterans in November, only a week or so after his exhibit closes. A friend suggested October to showcase how photography by one amateur, a veteran with a camera as his hobby, became an artistic calling. After all, the root of the word amateur is doing something simply for the love of doing it.

     Sixty thousand photographs, more or less, are stored on his computer and memory cards. He had intended to use retirement to cull his collection and save his favorites, the ones he hopes to remember forever, those loved by family and friends. Right now, though, he’s not culling, he’s perusing and pondering, picking and choosing.

     “It’s fair to say I might be selecting or changing photographs while I’m hanging them. Why, I might even exchange ones for others throughout the show.”

     For more information, LeBlanc’s email is trapmar@hotmail.com. He’s available to answer questions, to educate, to hear suggestions about a patron’s idea of beauty. His work also can be seen on etsy.com; his site there is rayleblancphotograph.