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This Wednesday, January 29th, 2014 from 9pm to midnight (or later) at Akbar, it’s CRAFTNIGHT!!!
Project: Horsin’ Around for Year of the Horse
$2 Donation, por favor
$4 DRINK SPECIAL!!! >>> Could be the Lyla, could be a cosmo… only your bartender knows for sure. 

Pony up to the bar, 2014 marks the year of the wooden horse, which is great, because I could only find wooden horses for us to decorate. And some of you will just have to settle for unicorns, I have quite a variety.

A foal can stand up about 10 minutes after being born, and just barely after that, it can walk around, ready to roam. This should give you a little bit of an idea for what the Chinese zodiac has to say about people born in the horse year.

Apparently, this year starts out of the gate with a formidable velocity, and if you’re wanting to do some traveling, or adventuring, or if you want a high-intensity, high productivity kind of year, this is it.
CraftNight has a wooden horse (or unicorn) waiting for you, and you can write or paint or decorate your big ideas onto your steed, and keep it in view as a reminder of your hopes and wishes until the year of the sheep, which will be way more introspective and thinky than 2014’s unbridled explosion of speed and power. So get stuff done NOW, you can relax next year.

It’s Superbowl XLVII this Groundhog Day, and since it is the year of the horse, signs point to a Broncos victory, but maybe we should ask a football-watching groundhog to make an official prediction.
Groundhog Day is the only holiday specifically dedicated to animal behavior, specifically: underground marsupials and their innate powers of weather prognostication!

See you at the Craft Table,
JP Craft Captain

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Celebrate Chinese New Year 

This temple in China Town will be holding a special ceremony to welcome The Year of the Horse from 10pm until midnight on January 30th.

Check out the super fun 115th Golden Dragon Parade and Chinese New Year Festival on February 1st!

On February 2nd you can go on The Great China Town Hunt involving mini tasks and unique quests in a madcap adventure to win the race!

We’re Havin’ a Drought

Read about Graywater Systems and how to build one!

Get a water conservation kit and help save water today!

Here are 100 Ways to Conserve Water… 

This Wednesday (TONIGHT!) January 22nd, 2014 from 9pm to midnight (or later) at Akbar, it’s CRAFTNIGHT!!!
Project: Placemat for Your Facemat
$2 Donation, por favor
$4 DRINK SPECIAL!!! >>> The Lyla! Come to where the flavor is! \

It’s 2014, do you know where your private information is? Well don’t worry, there is stress-detecting technology in this email that has identified your habits.
We have finally figured out how to calm you down.
Do not fear, our data is encrypted with the best pie crusts, none of it has been pinched, rolled or made into a pie, to our knowledge. At this point, we’ve covertly culled enough statistics about your daily routines to surmise that what you could really use right now is crafts.
There is a very convincing report over here showing that attending this week’s CraftNight will fill you with a sense of camaraderie, as well as instill an appreciation for slowing down and playing with pipe cleaners.
Have you heard of contact paper?
Recently, I acquired a rather large clear roll of it, which means you can sandwich stuff in between the pieces and perform a sort of “cold lamination”
procedure. It’s perfect for placemats, and placemats are perfect for life. You can really let yourself go and preserve a variety of writings, drawings,
designs, collage, photos, and protect its quality for years to come. Here are a few things you can make this Wednesday Night:

1. Make a placemat commemorating International SnowMobile Safety and Awareness Week (January 18 – 25)
2. Answer all of your cat’s burning questions by writing the answers on a special placemat for your cat to read while the cat eats.
3. Screw placemats, make COASTERS, YEOW!!!
4. List Antov Chekhov’s 8 Qualities of Cultured People. Frequently misspell “Anton Chekhov.”
5. Bring pictures of a friend, and immortalize them in a clear plastic placemat for posterity. Give placemat to another friend who knows this person.

Our premium spyware has revealed that you will enjoy this CraftNight very much, in fact, we’re trying to partner with Target, so that the more CraftNights you attend, points will be added to your Target Cartwheel account, which will make available to you an entire list of credit card numbers and account information for you to use and purchase anything you want in Target stores! Man, a teenager wouldn’t even think of something that cool!
FYI, while you were reading this, we found out from three subliminal online personality tests that most of you are Snape from Harry Potter, a third of you should be living in Portland, Oregon, and everyone is Beaker from the The Muppets. The enjoyment experienced from being categorized in a totally non-threatening way is directly proportionate to the smarminess of this shamelessly garish one-dimensional play upon your anxieties (that may or may not be) concerned with actual internet surveillance.

Tell your smartphone to remind you to come see us, and we’ll glue a googly eye to your smartphone!
See you at the Craft Table,
JP Craft Captain

Crafters Who Make Stuff Are Selling Their Wares! Git You Somma That! 

CraftNight enthusiast, Xtine draws AMAZING things that will melt your brain, including a fantastic series of presidents eating hot dogs!  Visit her Etsy Page and get a truly original, beautifully rendered piece of art for that special someone (that’s right, I’m talkin’ about YOU because it’s JanYOUary, hahhahahaha.)

Crafter extraordinaire, Kristen Erickson’s got some ceramics over at Fifth Floor Gallery in China Town, but you can view more of her stuff on Coroflot (not just ceramics, print, graphics, more!) too, our household owns some of her bowls and goblets, they are lovely to look at, and wonderful to use.

You gotta take your Vitamin Cats, and Angie Cho, another excited crafter, has a whole crazy Etsy store just waiting for you to get a few!

 

This Wednesday, January 15th, 2013 from 9pm to midnight (or later) at Akbar, it’s CRAFTNIGHT!!!
Project: Attack of the Clothes Pegs
$2 Donation, por favor
$4 DRINK SPECIAL!!! >>> The Lyla! Whiskey and Ginger Beer, give a cheer!

Leave it to the Shakers, with their durable and stark precision furniture, to invent the plain wooden clothes peg in the 1700s. I began this post not knowing much about clothes pegs, and boy lemme tell you, a wormhole in the internet has since informed me to the gills about this under-celebrated harbinger of usefulness.

This primitive stick with a slit in the end and the ball on top has been the subject of patent wars, federal law, museum exhibits, oddball collections, monuments and the bona fide survival of millions. We’ve done some projects with the spring-loaded model of clothes pins before, but this will be the first time we’ve ever used the classic, non-metal variety. The unsung beauty of this type of peg is that it is fashioned out of one piece of wood, and there is no metal that could rust, it’s clean, simple, spartan. And because its design is so uncluttered by apparati, it leaves much room for adding your own complications!

You can make owls, mermaids, butterflies and characters, all from wooden clothes pegs. You can add magnets, paper, googly eyes, pipe cleaners and whatever else to build just about anything! There will be paint, and felt, and ribbon, and even some ideas for you to peruse, in case you’re having a creative clothes peg block.

January 15th is Martin Luther King’s Birthday, many of you will have MLK Day (third Monday in January) off, this observance is the least favorite among factories and manufacturers, and the most popular amongst non-profit organizations. Here are a few ways to celebrate MLK this week:

The 29th Annual Kingdom Day Parade starting at Leimert Park, this is the largest parade in the country honoring the late Dr. King (over 150 floats!)

Visit The African American Firefighter Museum, the first and only freestanding museum of its kind, and it’s just across the street from the historic Coca Cola building on south central avenue in LA! I do believe it’s closed on Monday though (duh) but check the hours, it’s got a lot of really cool old engines and firefighter stuff.

Long Beach’s “Peace and Unity” Parade on January 18th will have floats, bands, music, and “Dreamland” an area dedicated to upholding the legacy of Dr. King, with free carnival rides, arts and crafts and entertainment.

LACMA and The Autry Museum are FREE on Monday!

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MOVIES  you Might Wanna See, If You Feel Like Seeing Them!

Take yourself to the “Sing-a-Long” Mary Poppins situation over at the El Capitan, and sing your heart out! Through January 20th, larger than life, technicolor-crazy-lovely-marvelous!

All there’s a noir double feature at the New Beverly Cinema, Kansas City Confidential and 99 River Street (the picture that lays it on the line!) both directed by Phil Karlson and starring John Payne.

Ever checked out the HEAVY MIDNIGHTS section of Cinefamily? OMG then please do, as this upcoming Friday you’ve got a midnight screening of Ghost World, and on January 21st it’s Scavenger Hunt and coming up two weeks after that for Valentine’s Day is Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. 

Annnnd if you’re in the mood for “The Truffle Shuffle”, from the comfort of your very own vehicle, the Electric Dusk Drive-In  is showing The Goonies on Saturday Night (Jan, 18th)!!!!

See you at the Craft Table,

JP Craft Captain

TONIGHT! Wednesday January 8th, 2013 from 9pm to midnight (or later) at Akbar, it’s CRAFTNIGHT!!!
Project: Winter Craft Mugs-n-Stuffs
$2 Donation, por favor
$4 DRINK SPECIAL!!! >>> The Lyla! A Ginger Beer and Whiskey so you can feel Frisky! 

Here we are, in the year of 2014, and now that I’m over the flu, BOY will I be happy to see YOU! I’m going to break out the drawing stuff and the colored paper and put out some DIY mugs, because I have a bunch of those. But don’t worry, if you were here for that night, and you already HAVE a DIY mug, I’ll have something else up my sleeve for you to do.

January 8th is Argyle Day, I’d wear my argyle sweater, but I think it made me look too much like an old geezer, so it was donated to a thrift store. Someone else can look like an old geezer… and be warm.  January 8th is also National Bubble Bath Day, which I think is perfect now that the holidays are over and it’s time to breathe. The Ancient Greeks and Romans, the Japanese, the Chinese, the uptight Victorians, basically every culture through the ages knew that sometimes you just have to calm down and sit in hot water. If you haven’t taken a bath in awhile, give it a whirl, it’s a cheap way to feel 5-star in 5 minutes, and if you don’t have a tub, check out Wii Spa or Century Spa or any o’ those $15 dollar treasures in Korea Town that has all the luxury and none of the nonsense. Because this is that time of year when soaking around is warranted.

Then there’s toffee. It’s also National Toffee Day, a confection that didn’t have any record in our lexicon until the year 1825. In Wales, it was apparently a thing to invite people over during the holidays and make toffee in a pot on the fire! Gonna have to try that sometime, but until Akbar gets that big chimney hearth they’re always talking about, I think I’ll try to locate some good toffee to share for us this evening.  

WORKSHOPS for YOUR SHINY NEW 2014 LIFE

•  Also, were you thinking of taking ceramics? Kristen Lee Erickson is teaching it out in La Cañada at the Community Center! 

• Or were you thinking about “Getting More Gay” in one of Ian MacKinnon’s gay liberation creative workshop series? 

• And also in your town is the I + We Collective Movement Workshop with Human Resources coming up mid month!

See you at the Craft Table,

JP Craft Captain