It's the "Summer of the Bicycle" in the Dutch city of Eindhoven, but no way was the hometown of the design academies of design academies going to settle for pedaling drowsily up and down the Lichtplein. Instead, they erected a roller-coaster for bikes, out of used wooden scaffolding no less (watch out for splinters...and imminent death!). The "sensational roller coaster for daring bikers" was conceptualized and nailed together by artist Lagombra (a.k.a. Anders Jakobsen) and is a project of the MU Art Center, which is sponsoring its exhibit amidst office buildings through July 27, which overlaps with Friday's European Championship for bike couriers, also in Eindhoven. MU invites helmet-wearing and "experienced mountain bikers and BMXers to come and master the track," at your own risk, of course. And that's just the beginning of the dangerous fun! Also on view is "Fundamentals," an exhibition about the "legal and less legal ways of using our playgrounds." And to think we've always considered jumping off of moving swings daring!

As New York City--nay, the world--gears up for the International Contemporary Furniture Fair, our friends at the American Craft Council (the organization behind American Craft magazine, among other beautifully made initiatives) are hosting the first in a summer series of conversations "in craft and beyond" in the council's historic library in SoHo. Kicking off the series this Thursday will be Tyler Hays of the New York- and Philadelphia-based furniture company BDDW, who will discuss "the beginnings of his company, his unique and often awe-inducing designs, and the company's relationship with industry and the handmade," according to Monica Hampton, director of education for the American Craft Council. The talk is entitled "The Industrial Complex," which makes us think of Dwight D. Eisenhower, if Ike had been less less enamored with the military and more with heirloom-quality handmade furniture and hand-rubbed dark oil finishes.

Later this summer, jeweler, educator, writer, and provocateur Bruce Metcalf and crafty graphic designer and artist Chanel Kennebrew will chat about the complicated relationships between the broad spectrum of craft makers. Come September, things get political, when Murketing's Rob Walker leads a conversation with makers Sabrina Gschwandtner and Liz Collins on craft's relationship to politics, strange bedfellows to be sure, but beneath a lovingly hand-embroidered duvet. The talks, and the wine and (we suspect) artisanal cheese receptions that follow them are free, but you've got to RSVP, and fast. American Craft editor-in-chief Andrew Wagner tells us that spots are going fast.

Not many in the U.S. even know what a milliner is. It's not someone in the military. No, it's someone who knows how to make hats! Millinery or hat-designing is a profitable, full-time business for many in Europe and Australia. Ask Philip Treacy. (You need a fashionable hat to win a prize at the local horse races.) Here in the U.S., you have to travel wide and far to learn more about the hat biz. If you're in the Midwest, you're in luck. Talented Chicago milliner Laura Hubka will be heading up a workshop at Judith M Millinery in Lagrange, Ind. on July 18 and 19. For the uninitiated, she will be teaching unorthodox things to do with the leftover pieces of straw hatbodies, sinamay, and felt. You can try your hand at creating a whimsey (whatever that is) or birdcage veil. If all else fails, you can make elaborate flowers, leaves and other trims out of scraps. The number of participants is limited, so put your thinking cap on and figure out your vacation plans now.

It's hard to believe that on the first day of May that summer is on its way. Soon the heat will be bearing down like you wouldn't believe, and you won't be able to shed your layers and slap on the fake tanner fast enough. Which brings this writer to the next topic. What hobbies do you explore during the summer? Is jewelry-making wise at the beach? Knitting a wool blanket smart to do at a family picnic? We're thinking there's a happy medium somewhere. We personally like the notion of knitting something lightweight in a cotton fiber. So we were naturally thrilled when the Summer edition of Interweave Knits came across our way while at a local knitting shop the other day. Of course, we had to check out Interweave's Knitting Daily blog, headed up by Sandi Wisehart, to see how what's inside the magazine's glossy page actually fits real people (in other words, not paid models.) It's fascinating to see how apparel fits different human beings in this case, actual Interweave employees in a range of sizes. For example, the drawstring raglan by Margery Winter, looks great on this staffer, but not so great on Sandi. This particular garment with its lacy edging actually fit Bertha the dress form, best.

Martha Stewart might be a little bit behind the curve since the ombre (shaded fabric) trend has been with us for more than a few nanoseconds already this year, but if you're not sick of skirts, dresses, and shoes that look like they've been dipped into an ink bottle, here are some crafty projects for your home with that same theme. While this shot here it is just a little too blue and depressing for our taste, we did like the simplicity of dyed linen panels hanging on a wall in another picture on this page. Go take a look, you know you want to. (Thank you, Craftzine.com, for the heads-up.)

While other crafty magazines may give you step-by-step instructions for making a fetching windbreaker out of discarded FedEx envelopes or creating a kitschy fishbowl out of that Apple IIe monitor sitting idle in the basement, American Craft puts down the Mod Podge and focuses on the creators themselves. The magazine "celebrates the modern makers who shape the world around us" and in doing so, aims to connect the worlds of art, industry, fashion, architecture, and design.

Under the leadership of editor-in-chief Andrew Wagner (a founding editor of Dwell), the 65-year-old, New York City-based magazine has been reborn. The October/November 2007 issue marked the publication's relaunch and full-scale redesign, right down to the new satin 60-pound paper stock on which it is printed. In answering our seven questions, below, Wagner discusses the American Craft of today, his forthcoming book of writings by the late Ettore Sottsass, and a recent scuffle with goldsmiths.

1. You're the editor-in-chief of American Craft. How do you define "craft"?
I like to think of craft as the root of all creative endeavors -- the very thing that gives life to ideas and techniques of making. To steal a few lines from a story by writer Marc Kristal from our last issue ("The Hand Meets High Tech," April/May 2008), "craft has less to do with the tools of making than with the sensibility that controls them. Or, as [fashion designer] Natalie Chanin puts it, 'Craft is a state of mind.'"

2. What were the goals for the magazine's fall '07 relaunch and how did you go about achieving them?
American Craft is one of the longest running, continually published magazines in the United States. In it's 65 years of publishing it has had seven editors. The last editor, Lois Moran, had been with the magazine for nearly 30 years and the last creative director, Kiyoshi Kanai, had been with the magazine nearly as long. When they retired I was brought in to take a fresh look at the magazine and to reexamine the how, what, when, where, and why of craft in the current global context.

Not surprisingly, craft was everywhere and on the tips of everyone's tongues across artistic disciplines and professional boundaries. From food to fashion to art, architecture and design, people were really starting to gravitate towards the "making" of cultural output. How are things put together? Where do they come from? What are the materials? Essentially, it's the question 'how does what we consume end up in our hands?' that becomes interesting when we have been so removed from that process for years now. To keep things short and sweet, I went about incorporating this very large idea into the magazine by being able to work with incredible people (writers, photographers, editors, etc.) who truly can "see the forest for the trees." Also, I've been able to work with one of the most talented design teams out there, creative director Jeanette Abbink and senior designer Emily CM Anderson.

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Here at UnBeige, we celebrate Easter with our own version of an egg hunt that involves scouring the Internet for bargain-priced Arne Jacobsen chairs. But now Martha Stewart has us thinking twice about more traditional festivities. Today on the special Easter edition of her talk show, she blew us away with her ability to rapidly translate Prada's big fall '08 runway revelation (lace, lace, and more lace!) to the medium of Easter eggs! That's right, this year all you need is a bit of lace to make your eggs look superior to those of less innovative types who are now scooping up PAAS kits and readying their glitter shakers.

Martha walked the audience through the wrap/dip/dry process (details here), in which the lace pattern becomes imprinted on the egg. "It doesn't matter what kind of lace you use," she assured them, before rattling off some options: "black, ecru, Chantilly, Alencon" (and we love the fact that she could have gone on naming varieties of lace for the remainder of the show!). Of course, not wanting to alienate members of her audience who haven't already strategized based on last month's Milan shows, Martha didn't actually mention the Prada link, but we nonetheless salute her holiday wink at Miuccia -- and a mere month after the runway show.

We had an old boss who was way into astrology who used to say, "Mercury is in retrograde" whenever old friends start popping up again. We still don't have any idea of what that means, but Mercury must be up to something, as we also heard from our old friend Andrew Wagner from American Craft magazine, who sent us a note about his first hand experience giving a presentation at the Society of North American Goldsmiths (SNAG) conference last week at the Savannah College of Art and Design. He was there to talk about the hipster craft movement, where that weird phenomenon has taken place over the last couple of years, getting the youngsters interested in things like knitting, and, generally, just making stuff purchased from craft supply stores (yeah, it still kinda boggles our minds too). What he got instead was, after having a successful talk at the conference, finding out that he'd landed right in the middle of a big debate among the craft-y community about a guy named Bruce Metcalf, a jeweler and artist who had helped put together the SNAG event and who, from reading Andrew's report, is just about the most divisive figure living in that world today. If you're at all interested in subcultures within the greater "design" blanket, it's a great read. Here's a bit from one angry person:

"How in the world does Bruce Metcalf have the power to make so many people from so many groups so pissed off? Bruce addressed the NCECA ceramics conference last year with a huge 'the sky is falling' speech that had smoke coming out of my ears. He was totally territorial about craft and preaching about how schools needed to circle the wagons in their ceramics, fiber and metal programs to keep the evil 'artists' away. He described an interdisciplinary circle of Dante's Purgatorio in which evil Department Heads and Deans enslaved the Craft faculty as galley slaves in the service of dilettante students who wanted to dabble in craft in the same way they dabble in plaster, plexiglass or sausage casings."

We happen to adore Martha Stewart. Perhaps it's her insatiable appetite for knowledge, her preferred shade of green, or simply the fact that she allocates parcels of time to things like dipping the handles of her tools in enamel (for a variety of excellent reasons that we don't have time to get into here). But while we can name all of Stewart's houses and and at least half of her pets (oh, that Paw Paw!), our age-matched peers tend to demonize the domestic diva. But this is particularly tricky for the growing demographic of young, crafty types, for whom it is all but impossible to escape the influence of Stewart, the ur-crafter.

Jamie Passaro explores this cruel irony in the March/April issue of the Utne Reader (you know, the favorite magazine of Lisa Simpson?). After admitting that she both associates Stewart "with baby-boomer corporate badness" and regularly reads Living, Passaro parses the distinct generations of DIY and concludes:

Perhaps the association with Stewart or the stereotype that links domestic craft with housewives is what has prompted a lot of today's crafters to make items that are imperfect or a little shocking to Grandma: a knitted vibrator cozy or a baby hat embroidered with a skull and crossbones.

But subtract the irony, and the crocheted sushi, knitted sweater vests, and latch-hooked pornography of DIY crafts don't look that different from the items displayed in county fair textiles exhibits. They use the same techniques and derive from the same impulse: to make things with one's own hands.

Have you ever wanted a souped-up beetle? No, not the Volkswagen variety. We're talking about insects (order Coleoptera, for all you Linnaeus fans out there). Artist Mike Libby has made a specialty out of "customizing" real (dead) insects with antique watch parts and mechanical components, offering one-of-a-kind pieces through his Insect Lab. Libby calls his works, which are presented in black shadow boxes or beneath glass domes, a "celebration of natural and manmade function."

Over at our brother blog, GalleyCat, Ron Hogan spotted a Libby bug on the cover of The New Weird, a just-published book of writing in a new hybrid fantasy/sci-fi/horror genre. "We all wanted a clean, modern look, but also to convey the idea of something fantastical, bizarre, and intriguing," notes Jeff VanderMeer, who edited the book with his wife, Ann. "When I saw Mike Libby's work at the Insect Lab, it seemed to fit perfectly, and [graphic designer] Ann Monn created a great cover using it."

And the fun doesn't stop with beetles. Libby also tinkers with dead arachnids, bees, dragonflies, and wasps. Our personal favorites (and here we reveal our longtime obsession with/affinity for Vladimir Nabokov) are the butterflies, to which Libby adds brass and steel gears, springs, and even LEDs. What's the toughest part of insect customization? According to the artist, "Making sure the legs don't fall off and the wings don't break!"