updated yarn

A yarn can be something that you knit or weave or even stitch with, or it can be a tangled tale with twists and turns and little diversions along the way.

The first meaning is obviously what the image below is all about. Yes, a little while ago I treated myself to some lovely Noro yarn, on sale in a very fine wool shop near where I live, which was closing down. Both my loss and my gain. Then a couple of weeks ago I went out with beloved daughter to buy a dress for her for our wedding, and was lured into buying yet more yarn, as one is from time to time. 

I felt it only right that the less recent purchase should be knitted up first, so here is the knitting in progress, along with the pattern.

I have to say, I don't think I'll look anything like as fey and girlish in my version, but (and this is very important to me) the cardigan will be symmetrical across the front, not all skew whiff like the illustration in their pattern book. I have puzzled over this for some time; why oh why are all Noro patterns knitted up all any old how in relation to the (absolutely beautiful) colour changes in the yarns? A brief bit of research online found me this little gem of a phrase from the "blurb" on their website.

"Harmonize natural unevenness, asymmetric pattern and complex color to portray the beauty of the nature. Taking sufficient time to dye and yarn natural flavors and tenderness of materials to preserve their original characters"

Well - apart from the delighfully idiosyncratic translation from the Japanese, I guess the "asymmetric pattern and complex colour" explains the lack of symmetry. But when did you last see an asymmetric butterfly, or flower, or bird's wing pattern, or tabby cat's stripes? 

Nope, just can't be doing with all of that. My cardigan will have, I hope, perfectly matched colour changes across the front and the sleeves, which will give me great satsifaction. Yes that does require hunting through the remaining balls to find the one which starts as near as possible to the end of the previous one, and cutting out the excess but I can use that up in the collar, so no waste there! And what satisfaction when I finally sew it all together and the colour bands flow across my imperfect body in perfect symmetry!!

So, to my second yarn, the tale of the Damn Bloody Mouse - known as DBM hereafter. Yes, there is a link with the following pictures I promise.

We have two lovely cats, Rum and Raisin, who have shared our lives for the past ten or so years. We love them dearly, and feed them far too many biscuits but they are cats, and they do what cats do; catch things. Rum's catches ususally get crunched up on the lawn, though occasionally they are brought in for consumption overnight, with little bits left by the Man's chair in case he's peckish in the morning. Raisin, however, is a bit more squeamish. Once the excitement of the chase and catch is over, he's not quite sure what he should do with this poor wriggling furry thing. So in he comes clattering through the cat flap, a scurry, a yowl or two, and I rush into the kitchen to find a mouse (DBM) cowering under the dresser (where all good mice should hide) and a grumpy fat cat doing his best to get under the dresser. A cat and mouse impasse. I removed the cat, and found things to block up the ends of the dresser so that DBM couldn't escape. However, DBM had escaped already, to hide beneath the bookshelf in the sitting room. Aha, I thought, I can block up the wavy front esdge of the bookshelf with "more things", heavy enough and malleable enough to fit under the wavy bits and leave one small space for DBM to come out. The one small space was, of course, cleverly adapted with a humane mouse trap, baited with rather nice nuts and chocolate biscuits. No problem I thought.

Two days later, having sat each morning listening to little mouse scrabbles, and thinking, "oh, he'll be out soon, tidily captured in the mouse trap" I came down to find that two of the "things" used to block all exits had been wriggeld through and there was no DBM any more. And, to add insult to injury, DBM had been very grateful for the nice feast I'd supplied him, easily accessed by nibbling through the soft corduroy cover that ennables wheat packs to be heated up in microwaves before being applied to sore necks. Perhaps not my best choice for a mouse barrier!

So what does this have to do with the pictures below?

Well, for the next two nights I was awoken several times by little scrabbles and scuttlings in my bedroom. Ye Gods, I thought, DBM has found it's way upstairs and is negotiating the maze of boxes and whotnot under my bed. This is definitely Not Good. The first task, obviously, was to buy more humane mouse traps; the second to move all the boxes out from under the bed, then crawl about, with no thought of dignity, with torch and long poky thing to find the whereabouts of the DBM.

What did I find? A great deal of dust; a pen I'd lost; a single sock; a bookmark; an empy pack of aspirin. I also reacquainted myself with the precious contents of these many and various boxes: old writing cases belonging to Ganna and Mum, stuffed with letters, diaries, account books and the like; a complete handwritten draft of one of Gannas novels, along with the typewritten version that Mum did for her to send to the publishers; a small suitcase with a set of old reel to reel tapes which I know have all of us (me, Mum, Dad, Ganna and Grandad) talking many many years ago in Petersfield when Dad was still alive and playing with his new Grundig tape recorder. And this very fine collection of rug yarns, complete with the canvas (3' x 6') and a handwritten list of the amounts of every yarn there. 

Some were easy - just count the drums and you know how many pieces you've got, but I had a vision of Mum sitting and patiently counting out 929 pieces of green, 482 pale pink, 33 dark blue, 2 khaki ...... as all those below were just small remainders, carefully packed into plastic bags to keep them safe.

They have sat there I'd guess, for the best part of the last 40 odd years, kept for "one day" when she would have time to make the next rug. One day never came - it often doesn't, so here they still are, awaiting a hand and a design to make the best use of them, along with the list of amounts, and calculations of how many pieces would be needed to fill that canvas.

But what of the DBM? Not a sign, not the merest twitch of a whisker, nothing. But still, occasionally, I hear a little scratch and scrabble in the middle of the night. Not in my room, no no, in the walls of my room. I assume the wretched creature has found its way in somehow, and is now searching the fabric of the house for more tasty morsels. All we can hope is that a) it doesn't start trying to eat the wires, b) it finds its way outside somehow, without encountering an enthusaustic feline on its journeys and c) it does so very soon, as I'm rather tired of sleeping with one ear cocked just in case it finds its way onto the bed!!

very slow Homage

I was rather taken aback to see that I have been stitching this piece, albeit very intermittently, for more than years now. That seems to be taking slow stitch to a new level entirely! I have started, and sometimes finished, several other things in between, and have begun a new phase at Studio 11, having had a rather unproductive year last year for a variety of reasons. Christine and I discussed working to a theme, and seeing how I can express that theme in cloth and stitch. So, something I have had as an interest, and read around for many years - Mesopotamia. I will, hopefully, talk more about that later, but for now, just a few images of my little homage cloth, which still needs a few more stitches to feel complete, but has progressed since my last post.

raindrops - or are they tears?

those extra seeds drifting in the breeze

Nearly there

I hope life is being generous to you.

Alice Fox at Studio 11

We had the pleasure of Alice Fox teaching at Studio 11 last weekend at one of the studio's "Re-Treats". It was the hottest weekend of the year, but that didn't stop us from enjoying ourselves.

We were 8 students plus Alice, and Christine was there to greet us, and to provide us with a lovely lunch each day. The participants ranged widely in experience and practice from my still very novice, to artists who exhibit nationally and internationally. We were asked to talk about ourselves and what "our thing" was to start with. It was really interesting to hear different people's paths to textiles, though I had to confess that I was still trying to find my "thing". Alice talked to us about the way she looks on using found materials as deeply bound up with her desire to tread lightly on the earth and work with the places and things that life brings her.

We spent some time on each of the first three days wandering by the seaside picking up items that could be used for rust printing, eco printing or monoprinting, hence the title of the workshop "Printing the Coast". The first day was spent on Eastbourne beach, on day two it was off to Cuckmere Haven, and day three was foraging at Birling Gap - where I inadvertently discovered the nudist part of the beach. I felt very overdressed! The weather each day was wonderful, the sky pure blue and the sea gentle on the shoreline.

Each trip involved collecting; collecting objects, impressions, marks, feelings, sensations. Alice encouraged us to just sit and be with the place we were exploring, and it was such a delight to do this; to walk and absorb the locality, looking closely, asking ourselves how this place feels, and collecting things to work with later. We took little folded books, which Alice showed us how to make, and used these to record thoughts and impressions; using local materials to colour the paper, making quick sketches, noting down marks on the landscape.

These, along with the things we collected, and other papers and fabrics we had brought, were what we worked with back in the studio. A period of each day was spent with a different process, and with preparing materials for the following day's foraging.

On the first day we explored rust dyeing. Alice noted that although lots of instructions online suggest using vinegar for this, you can also use tea of all sorts - the tannic acid being a more sympathetic catalyst on the collected metals. Vinegar tends to just give you tones of orange, whereas tea will bring all sorts of other greys and deep tones to the mix.

An important element is serendipity - different fabrics will take the marks differently - here a slik noil above, and a dupion silk below show quite a variation in the type and colour in the impression from rusty nails and "stuff"

On the second day we were taught eco printing, using the plant materials we had collected, bundled with fabrics, pressed between the leaves of our books, and placed in the steamer to do its magic. I experimented a bit more this at home. The colours here slightly more subtle than in real life, on a fine weave silk cotton mix whihc really shows the detail from maple and hawthorn

and silk noil again with ash leaves from the Cuckmere walk over rust prints from the beach

The third day was spent monoprinting with the objects we had collected. Mine were mostly made using plant materials and feathers. Other used the printing press in the studio to create collagraphs.

On day four we brought all these things together, using our fabrics, booklets and printed materials to create slightly bigger books. In my case one of them turned into a bit of a monster, albeit a small monster, since each signature is only 7.5x10 cm, but there are twelve of them bound together.

You can see pictures of all our work here, though you may have to scroll down a bit if it's been a while since the course.

As with all previous courses I've been on, along with the teaching, one of the great pleasures is meeting others, seeing what inspires them and enjoying the company of like minded souls. One of the things we commented on during one lunch break was the prevalence of women on this sort of course. Alice said she'd only had a couple of male participants on her previous courses. Something to ponder I think - are we women more willing to integrate creativity into our "ordinary" lives, rather than needing the kudos of being part of a bigger commercial artistic (or sporting) movement? Do we enjoy the participatory and non competitive nature of this sort of artistic expression, or are we simply a self-selected group whose minds and lives move with and are moved by this sort of making? I think a long conversation could ensue - perhaps I'll suggest it to Christine for one of our studio discussions.

So, a wonderful four days, some great fun, many new ideas to absorb and work with, all mediated by Alice's generous teaching and willingness to share. If you want to know more, I recommend her book Natural Processes in Textile Art. It is one of those books I will read and re-read to glean ideas and inspiration.

Thank you Alice and Christine for such a lovely Re-Treat.

Holiday dyeing

I've been doing some holiday dyeing - which of course means the laundry and houswork are way overdue! I had some left over dye from a previous experiment, and wanted to see if it really was spent. So, a torn off bit of one of the endless "Connie and Harry sheets", soda soaked, folded and wrapped, the dye applied from the bottles it has been sitting in since I last used it - it all looked rather promising; lovely vivid shades, couldn't wait to unwrap

However, the dye really was spent, and most of it washed out - very pretty, but definitely not vivid; more delicately faded.

Christine's mantra is, "you can always stick it in a bucket of black" so, treating this as a test piece, out came the plumbers pipe and string and a bit of "sort of" arashi shibori. I'm not sure if I can really call it this, since arashi normally involves wrapping the fabric diagonally along the length of the pole. In this case I've placed it so the centre of the piece is over the end of the pole, folded it carefully down the sides, then spiral bound with thread. Into the dye vat it went - a mixture of turquiose, a touch of royal blue and black. I had hoped that the plastic bag on the end, firmly tied and elastic banded, would work as a cap to preserve the yellow centre but I may not have tied it tightly enough because the dye managed to soak through.

This is where I got to with stage two - notice how much more of the first layer of colour washed out with this second process. An interesting pattern though, and I'm learning all the time, but the delicacy of the inital image has been lost, both because of the first colour fading and because the second process has produced a much more definite pattern

I thought this looked a bit neither one thing or the other, in fact, a bit "meh" as my daughter would say so, back in the soda solution and on to stage three, and a stage one for a second piece of sheet - just to use up the second batch of dye

Refolded and bound in a similar way to the first process but this time with elastic bands rather than thread - they were harder to tie tightly, but I'm a bit wary of elastic bands!! Again, Christine's advice is; for multiple layers, using the same or a similar process allows the layers of colour to have some relationship with each other.

And the second piece of cotton, pulled out along its diagonal from corner to corner, roughly pleated and bound with thread, closely, criss crossed and more loosely as I worked along the length.

More dye applied, this time freshly brewed - and then the wait .....

Well, vivid has returned, and I think has integrated the arashi pattern better, it has more balance now - and the second piece makes me think of summer sunbursts and ice cream - I rather like it, and can see where the binding, tight or loose, has affected the pattern of the dye - more white where it was tightly bound - more learning

but what on earth to do with them both now?

I'm off to Studio11 tomorrow, so a bit of show and tell discussion might help.

I year of choosing threads

How you choose your threads?

We had this discussion at Studio11 recently. Several of us are following, and stitching for, the 2017 project and so had a brief discussion at our lunchtime gathering about choosing threads to stitch with.

You can see from some of the beautiful posts in the Facebook group that a huge variety of threads are being used as designs evolve. That suggests, and we also found in our discussson, that some of us are planning carefully, some following a pattern perhaps, with colours laid out at the start, some are plucking randomly from a bag of thread, pre selected for colour, or not preselected at all, allowing chance to choose and going with that. 

I have a plan, which allows for seasonal colour change within a foundation of static shades. As these shades also change with the moon's lightness or darkness, I have to have some kind of order or I'd lose the plot completely

Here is my palette in its current incarnation. I've got to Spring green with my seasonal colours; Winter was blue - only two cycles so far of blue - I'm saving the final winter blue until November; Summer will be warm red and gold; Autumn will be rust and cool purple.

Here are my little symbols for the new moon and first quater ; the pinholes are my record of using that colour, the numbers are the number of days after the new moon. This is from some days ago - I;ve not reached the first quarter here, and full moon is now past.

I still don't know how I'm going to fit all these in! I suspect I'll find myself filling in the spaces with ever denser stitching - I want to do this all on one hoop .....

....... and then I took a break for over a week, being stricken with toothache, but I'm catching up slowly now, back on the light side but still eight days adrift

Filling in with more Spring green, 

Full moon

and I'm starting with the back, because they are always interesting - I like to keep mine reasonably tidy

and the the front.

the tufts of thread you see on the surface are from starting off - two tiny stitches somewhere that is going to be covered up, and a loose tail to cut off when the thread is secure on the back

tentative leaves and buds are starting to show

and a little memorial to a lost loved one - last seed heads drifting off amongst the buds of new life

Weaving progress and goodbye

I'm very much enjoying my weaving. I keep having to unweave and reweave as I go wrong. But I'm happy with where this is going, and am learning a lot. 

Because I'm doing the 1YearofStitches2017 project it is an easy transition moving from one thing to the next: because you are in the same room; because you see it awaiting your touch; because you have awoken the inner whatever; because colour and texture are there calling to you. 

Part of that daily practice opening doors.

We had the funeral service for Cecil this week, a gentle saying goodbye for a very few of us. Pen lead the service, as she did for Mum. She is exactly who you want to help say goodbye to someone you've loved; her kind heart shines out, she is reverent, firm, gentle in her words, gently humorous too, all expressed through the foundation of being that is her faith.

When I stitched that afternoon, I nestled in some last seeds, dispersing in the spring breeze amongst the ripe buds of new beginnings, life always arising in the release of old life passing. Part of letting go of a beautiful person, adding a little memorial - not to remember her by, she is engraved on my heart, but to say

"this person meant something"