The Closet of Lulu Persnickety

My husband and I have been making and selling juggling sticks for a few years. He designed them and we both worked hard making them. Every spring we head over to the leather shop to pick up our leather, and then we make a mass order for other supplies and make about 200 sets.














So far, these are a winner! Boys and girls, young and old. Everyone enjoy tossing the sticks about! We have personally sold them at outdoor markets.

















We have also sold them to toy stores. We currently have them in a friend's shop. Yet another craft that I enjoy to make.












Yet another craft...

Every one needs a good Mad Hatter hat around for kicks, right? This was made during my hat making class. Unfortunately this one didn't come out as wonderfully as I had hoped. I mean it looks good, and most of the construction was solid, but the "lid" just didn't come out as planned. The top of the hat is removable, to serve as a tray for the magically procured tea set. My hopes were to glue down a toy tea set to the inside but the hat didn't live long enough. It was crushed while moving. It was made of buckram and covered with green velvet. R.I.P.

Here's my son's first Halloween costume. He's soooo cute! This was a store bought pattern for a renaissance style jester costume that I put together. Here he is playing his fist game of billiards.

This was a Vogue pattern I found in the fall 2005 issue. I had no real idea how to knit then but I bought the magazine anyway. I asked for help from a few knitters but they were no help (I know too many people who aren't very helpful!!!) I had so many people tell me that they never heard of the decorative stitch that was used in this project: the twisted float garter stitch. So I waited and found some hats to make in the meanwhile. After the Christmas 2005 present making rush, I sat down and figured out the damn stitch. The twisted float garter stitch is where you knit with two contrasting yarns and alternate knitting stitches in the same row A B A B, and all the while you twist the two yarns together to make a neat 3D texture. So this is my first ever sweater I made. It was marked as the most difficult pattern to make in that magazine. It took me about 2 and a half months of fighting with the yarn and the circular needles but I did it!

My Dad requested a hat for Christmas of 2005. I had been knitting gifts for most people I knew. It was the first time I had taken on such an endeavor. I made this hat and gave it to my dad for his Father's Day present cuz I made it just after christmas. It was my frist project attempt at cabeling. Several years ago, I bought this book VIKING PATTERNS FOR KNITTING by Elsebeth Lavold. I was hoping that owning a book like that would inspire me to learn how to knit. I showed this book to several people I knew who knitted and even their eyes crossed! So I was persuaded to wait. I finally got "whole hog" on the knitting wagon for the Christmas season of 2005.





I had a few attempts with scrap yarn and my first one (the blue sample) didn't come out. I had no idea what I was doing. I had never read a chart in my life. I seemed to understand the charts a lot better when I made the yellow swatch. By the time I knitted the red swatch I was confident to make my first project.

Here's a few things I hammered out in a jewelry making class. I LOVE working with metal. If I could I'd do it all the live long day. It certainly work the stress out of you to bang on metal and play with fire. The tree was inspired by my husbands obsession with Norse myth. The Ygdrassil tree was a small challenge. It was hammered out from one piece of copper. The star/eye is one of my favorite pieces. It is what I call my "Evil Eye," which is actually a talisman to avoid "evil" or negative energies. It has served me well. The eye is brass and the star is nickel-silver. The Art Nouveau style belt buckle has not been used. I'm too afraid that the pieces I used for the belt parts are too flimsy, but it sure is gorgeous. The background is brass and the design is copper.

HATS! HATS! HATS!

Here is my stash of hats I made in college. This was a 15 week course. I poured my heart and soul into every hat I made. I didn't think I'd like this course. At first I thought "Oh great, underwater basket weaving for theater!" But after the first few projects I really fell in love with working with fabric, wire, and ribbons. The mop cap was a fun project. The assignment was to find a not so typical mop cap style in history and recreate it. So I looked in my favorite era, the renaissance, and found this little cutie. I think I loved working the wire framed hats best. I loved how I could create any shape and cover it. The red one is a Victorian style hat and the blue one is what I call my "Alien from France" hat. The straw bonnet was an interesting project. We could do any style hat and so I went for a Victorian look with a twist. Some day, I'll make the dress to match. I imagine a green and yellow striped bustle dress. The felt crowns were a lot of work, but they really did come out great. I wound up selling the Byzantine style crown on eBay. The crowns are made in layers of laces and trims to create texture, and then covered in paint. My ultimate beauty, though, was my draped buckram hat. A modernized renaissance style bridal veil. I've worn this one to the fair a few times and I've had people come up to me asking where I bought it! That's a huge compliment to my skills.

This is my favorite self portrait. I had a deaf friend in college that I met in a boarding house that I lived in. We would get into all kinds of great discussions at first but then we started to argue a lot about our philisophical ideas. When he didn't like to see what I had to say, he would turn away from me . One arguement we had, I got so mad that all I did was sit there in front of him not moving or signing or anything. He pleaded with me to rejoin the conversation. I went to my room and was inspired to create this portrait. I feel that it really expressed to him how I felt about how he cut me off from him.

For years I've been creating things. I was in college, I discovered that I was good at making a lot of different kinds of things. I could sew, dye, paint, draw, and bend metal. Now that some time has passed since college, I've learned to manipulate yarn and beads and a few other things. I came up with my creative persona one day as I was joking around with some friends. I wanted to sell my stuff at concerts and stuff. So I was trying to come up with a name for the company and all I could do was incorporate my name in a shoddy way. So after some time I came up with The Closet of Lulu Persnickety. I hope to share pics and descriptions of all the wonderful and not-so-hot things I made through out the years and the up coming projects as well. I don't have college any more to assign me projects, but after pokeing around the net I've found many a things to keep me busy.