Leah Kramer is the mastermind behind the craftster forum. She’ll be in the Bay Area this week to promote her book, “The Craftster Guide to Nifty, Thrifty, and Kitschy Crafts”, and SFist has a copy for one lucky, crafty reader.

Leah has submitted to the SFist interview process and has revealed some of the inner workings of craftster as well as providing a crafty guide to her beloved Boston:

You can meet Leah this week at Tuesday July 25, 7:00 pm at the Craft Gym in SF or in Oakland on Wednesday July 26, 7:00 pm at Diesel Books

Favorite project EVER on craftster:
This is always an excruciating question for me. It's harder than coming up with my favorite song or favorite food. There are just so many awesome projects and they are awesome for so many different reasons. Every month I come up with a dozen "new featured projects" which are determined by member votes and whatever catches my eye. Of the recent featured projects I've picked, my favorite is this lamp made by a member named "Fidget." She used an old 8-track cassette player -- home stereo type not car type -- as the base of the lamp and then stacked up colorful 8-track cassettes on top as the neck of the lamp. She topped it off with an appropriately tacky lampshade. Besides the clever reuse of these 1970s relics, the best thing about this project is that you can still
play cassettes in it!

What kind of things do you make the most?
I tend to be inspired by taking eye-catching old things and remaking them into new things so they can live on in some new form. So for example, I collect these 1960s Betty Crocker recipe cards with gorgeous super-saturated photos of things like bacon-wrapped-hotdog casseroles and I make greeting cards and notebooks out of them. I also love anything plastic-y and kitschy. So I collect weird old plastic charms and cake toppers and make things like jewelry and fridge magnets out of them.

What kinds of techniques/projects/ideas have impressed you the most over the years?
Generally speaking, I love modern-day Japanese fashion and style -- everything from Hello Kitty to Fruits-style fashion. To me, looking at modern Japanese craft books is like being a kid in a candy store. There's this new type of crochet that a lot of people are doing called here and in Japan called "Amigurami" which basically is the most adorable stuffed crocheted animals with rolly-polly spherical shapes.

Another thing I'm impressed and surprised by is how many people are getting back to the foundations of crafting. For example taking raw wool and dying and spinning their own yarn.

What is your favorite thing about craftster?
I love when I meet people or get emails from people and they tell me how much Craftster has inspired them to be more creative or even to get in touch with their creative side in the first place.

What is the most quintessentially San Francisco project to come across craftster?
This is a tricky question. I'm sure there's something "quintessentially San Francisco" on Craftster somewhere. There are so many hundreds of things posted every day that it's impossible to keep up with it all. But there is one
project that jumped to mind. Every month I hold a "Craft Challenge" where there's a theme given and people have a month to make a project. Then they post it and everyone votes for a winner. The range of things that people come up with is amazing. One month the theme was "DIY Twin" where you could use whatever craft technique you want to make a likeness of yourself. A member named "stevenjames" made one of those doll cakes where the dome-shaped cake is the skirt and there's a plastic doll sticking out of the top. The twist was that it was a "drag" doll cake using a hunky GI Joe as the doll. Here was his explanation:

"So a few years ago some friends and I decided to do drag for Halloween - I know, a safe time to dress up like a woman and no one bats an eye - plus it's mandatory if you live in San Francisco."

Whatever his reasoning for this project, I'm just glad I was able to witness the beauty of a "drag" doll cake!

Everybody should by your new book because:
...because if it does well I get to write more and more and more books! Just kidding. But not really.

I'm really happy with the book. The projects themselves are from vintage craft books or are vintage-inspired. They range from hysterically tacky to cleverly eco-friendly to just plain cool. You'll get as much a kick out of looking at it as you will making the projects. The graphic designer did a stunning job, it's full color, and the photographs are big and detailed. These are things that I love in a craft book and I'm so happy I was able to find a publisher who understood this.

It's the kind of success story many dream about, having a simple idea and turning it into a successful venture. Grace Welch, local inventor, businesswoman, and first and foremost, mom, did just that. Her patented, award-winning invention is called the Patemm pad--a mobile diaper-changing pad that is notable, among other things, for being round (pic above). It's sold (along with other baby-related products) on her Web site, patemm.com.

Grace was kind enough to send us a Patemm pad for review purposes; in the two weeks we've been taking it for a spin, we've found it to be a simple-yet-clever idea. It's one of those products that we didn't know we wanted until we had it--now we don't travel without it when we're bringing the baby anywhere. It folds up to be small, rectangular, and easily portable (it could fairly easily fit into a mid-sized diaper bag). The pad has internal pockets in which to fit your diaper-changing accessories (diapers, wipes, etc.). The round shape is advantageous, as babies tend to be squirmy. Believe us--a few days ago, we were forced to change our Judah on the less-than-sanitary floor of a restaurant bathroom; the round shape helped keep the little guy on the pad.

The Patemm pads have garnered a good amount of national attention and many celebrities are noted to use it. However, in our opinion, the Patemm isn't just a fashion accessory of some kind -- it really suits our lifestyle. For a couple like us -- urban, with no vehicle (thus at the mercy of public transportation), and a tendency to end up far away from baby-friendly establishments -- the Patemm pad has proven thus far to be a huge help.

How did Grace Welch come up with this idea? And where is her company going from here? We had a chance to ask this local entrepreneur a few questions.

I wanted to be an SFist contributor because
I needed the structure.

Name
The TruthMaker. My glass is always half empty, deal with it.

Age and Occupation
Youngish late thirties. Laborer.

Home Town
Eastern San Diego County, CA

How long have you lived in the Bay Area and Where
Seven years. Guerrero Street; coastal mid-peninsula.

Favorite website
I mostly use the Web for information, rarely for entertainment, so I don't really have a site; my most viewed sites are Washingtonpost.com and ESPN.com.

But we digress. If you haven’t listened to Film School’s latest album, get it here (or maybe here, if you want to be the lucky billionth listener). It’s good. Normally SFist refrains from quoting other music reviews, but this one from Spin was just too suh-weet to pass up: “more balls than Sigur Ros and less eccentricity than Moby” Ha! What we’d say is that you should listen to the album despite that review. Hey, we’ve been right all along about La Taqueria, and we’re right about this too ;)

How has San Francisco influenced Film School's Music?
It's a great city to experiment and figure out your own sound. Because it's not bogged down with industry and hype there's a lack of pressure to conform in San Francisco. Lots of bands play for enjoyment and don't really worry about being the next big thing. It's also a city of very diverse bands and independent-minded people. It's not a city where there's one sound that's in and if you're not part of it you won't be part of the SF "scene".

Where was your first show?
Stork Club in Oakland. Just me on acoustic guitar/synth and a drummer.

Have the fans changed since then?
There were no Film School fans at that show, I'm pretty sure about that.

Dream venue to play?
Red Rocks with a younger U2 playing Under a Blood Red Sky.

Where are the best fans?
San Francisco, of course! ;)

What do you like best about your new album?
That it's an album from start to finish and not a collection of singles.

Catch Paco's show at the Makeout Room the last Wed. of the month.

Did you catch Of Montreal at BOTH? Tell us about it in the comments.

For everyone who is working on MLK day (and who isn’t really), we suggest taking a five-minute personal vacation to watch this video. Pepito is a former member of The Clarendon Hills, and the clip was made about their 50th show. Best part is Pepito and co have no idea who the “manager" is, or where he got is new Mercedes. Hilarious.

How did you get involved with Yerba Buena?
I have been in the arts world for the last 5 years. I started out at a large regional theatre planning fundraising events. There was an opening for an events coordinator at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, I applied and I got it.

What has been your favorite show to come through?
Perfect Spaces: Pictures and Films by Oliver Boberg. Boberg creates these scalar models of industrial sites and then blows them up in massive photos and films, they are stunning. The exhibition was up while I was in the midst of doing some serious fundraising and planning for the Bay Area Now 4 exhibition. I needed a quiet place where I could catch my breath. I would leave my cube, head into the dark gallery and escape.

What artist/ genre/ group of artists would you most like to have show there?
More music/bands in our spaces! We are in our second year of our YBCA Presents Season and we have had incredible performers on our stages. This spring we will have Kronos Quartet with Matmos and Walter Kitundu. I would love for us to become a venue known to present bands and musicians (in addition to the entertainers I book for our Opening Night Parties and our rental events). I just noticed that the UCLA Hammer Museum is presenting this puppet rock-opera with music by Japanther, wow. Yeah we should do stuff like that too. . .

What's your take on the Bay Area art scene?
I love how collaborative it is. This year we have been looking into artist collectives in our upstairs galleries, and it has been wonderful to see these diverse artists share knowledge and resources.

Advice for artists out there?
Find a mentor. I believe that we can learn best from those who have done what we want to do. I would love to start a non-profit that would match mentors and mentees in the arts.

Ted Weinstein is a fierce proponent of the Bay Area’s literature scene. He is also good at getting the authors he represents to finish their manuscripts. His methods are a trade secret, but let’s just say both carrots and sticks are used. And he was kind enough to submit to an SFist interview.

You are described (by yourself among others) as "one of SF's best, coolest, funniest lit'ry agents"...why would they say this?
Because I pay them. The current administration has demonstrated how
important it is to fund good stories about oneself in the media...

Is it true?
Welllll, I do think I have the best job in the world and it was a good fit as soon as I started - I work with all these talented authors writing books about all kinds of fascinating topics. One of my roles is to keep them adequately supplied with caffeine, chocolate, alcohol, or whatever else it takes so they can actually finish their books. We seem to have fun together along the journey.

How did you decide to focus on Non-Fiction for Adults?
It's fun to shock my parents by telling them I work in "adult media," plus this way I can read novels just for fun, without having to analyze and evaluate.

Who is the "author who got away"?
They never get away - I keep clients chained in my basement, away from all distractions, working diligently on their book proposals or manuscripts.

What's your take on the literary scene in San Francisco/ Bay Area?
Best in the country. New ideas and voices need to get validated by the national media outlets eventually, most of which are centered in NYC, but fresh perspectives rarely spring up in that small, provincial town east of the Hudson River. SF has been a magnet for inventive, creative people for centuries and the literary scene out here (authors, editors, agents, publishers) is breathtakingly wonderful. We will tell our grandchildren about this golden age.

Do you write yourself?
Hi, my name is Ted - I'm a recovering writer. ("Hi, Ted") I used to be a music critic for All Things Considered and the Chronicle, and late last century I took a year off to write a book, from which I conclusively learned I belong on the business side of publishing.

Any advice to the struggling writers out there?
Treat your writing like a real career. Hard work, discipline and professionalism are what separate successful authors from the otherwise talented writers who are just sitting in cafes kvetching that they aren't succeeding.

Tell us the war story that makes you the most proud?
Hmmm, maybe the time I took on a new client (www.skepdic.com) and sold his book () to an editor who had turned it down two years earlier when the author pitched it himself, or maybe the client (www.bobwelch.net) who had been turned down by 27 other agents before I saw the potential in his project and got him a deal with a major publisher as well as a recent movie deal (American Nightingale).

Which of your authors should we be looking out for?
All of them, of course! Several with great books that were recently published are NPR's "Math Guy," Keith Devlin, author of THE MATH INSTINCT, a fun book for non-math people all about the innate math talents of all kinds of animals (including humans), and Craig Conley, whose ONE-LETTER WORDS: A DICTIONARY is an amazingly fun treat for Scrabble players or any word nerd, all about the 1,000+ definitions of the 26 letters in the alphabet.

Today’s interview subject, Elbert Chang, appreciates Fry’s. Which is what you might expect from someone who will repair friend’s guitar amps for free. When he’s not winning friends and influencing people thusly Elbert can probably be found at the El Grullense Taco Truck, E.14th @ 29th Ave Oakland.

Ahh, the allure of the world wide web. How well SFist remembers those first months out of college, working a real job. While we were being trained we had an inordinate amount of time to explore the web and all the wonderful sites on it. Our love affair with the web has dulled somewhat over the years, as being chained to a computer for twelve hours a day has lost some of its appeal. Occasionally we still come across something that makes us fall in love with the web all over again.

Today Jason Shiga provides a reason to be on the web more (check out his favorite website tip). As if Jason hasn’t given enough to all of us already—amazing comic strips like "Fleep", books like "BookHunter" and the joy of knowing that all that genius was born in Oakland. East Bay represent! On a more personal level, SFist is thrilled that someone who has been profiled by Time Magazine would do an interview with us. If you’ve never read Jason’s comics, you’ve been missing out. But that’s what New Year’s resolutions are all about.