Up Date

Yes I have been busy. No, I haven't been blogging. Or taking pictures. Or doing anything beside being busy. 

I have worked at our little shop. 

I have taught a morning workshop in paper weaving to 7-10 year old kids. 

I have taught a weekend workshop in temari balls to 6 adults. 

I did 6 hours of spinning and dyeing demonstration for the New Brunswick Crafts Council at their summer shop. 

I spent a hot sunny day washing clothes and hanging them on the neighbours clothes line because my dryer broke.

I don't want to talk about it. 

I've cooked and cleaned and tried to wrestle with some of the piles of things in my house.

I got a call that my grandmother lost her battle with cancer. 

I have ignored the big garden and tried half heartedly to do something about my irises that are rotting because of all the wet and weeds. 

I am scheduled to start my Fredericton Arts Alliance Artist in Residence week tomorrow so I have been getting ready for that.

I found out that I start back to work a week earlier than I thought. August 24 instead of August 31. 

I feel like my summer hasn't happened and now I am looking at it being over in three weeks. 

I am tired. 

And in case you haven't noticed, I haven't felt very much like blogging.

I feel slightly over extended.

Having said all of that, I think that I am going to take a small break from blogging. 

Maybe something will show up here before Sept 1, but more than likely not.

Thanks for all your love and support and I'll see you in September

Made With Love

Welcome to "Made With Love". It is the name of the shop that I am in this summer. Some of you may remember that I was part of an Artist in Residency program the past couple of years. Along the same boardwalk are other shops that are filled with local craftspeople and artisans. This year I am in one of them with six other people. Several of my casemate mates were in the same spot last year and I was invited in by Erin, who was a student at the Craft College.

Welcome to "Made With Love".....
In no particular order.....

Chelsey, who is a self confessed bead-aholic. She makes all her own findings (which are the posts, clips, jump rings, ear wires etc.)
Then there is Yolande. She and her husband do twice yearly wood firings. They have built an anagama kiln on their property in the north of New Brunswick. They are doing a firing RIGHT NOW! and I can hardly wait to see the new pots that she brings in over the next couple of weeks! Most of what you see here are electric fired. The wood fired pottery is truly special.
Next up is me. Because I have such a diverse offering, it takes several photos. First are my hand-dyed yarns and origami cranes. You can also see a few of my Temari Balls on the tree. I am giving a workshop in temari this summer as part of the edventures workshop series.
I also make origami cards.
Then there are my silk scarves and hand woven, hand dyed scarves.

Hand dyed, hand spun, hand woven scarves. And silk velvet and silk satin scarves as well as my hand spun yarn.


Amy La Loon is another potter whose bowls look as if they will scurry away with your cereal or soup. On the top right, you can see her "corset tea pot". I can almost hear it singing "I'm a little tea pot.."


Ashley is a graduate of the fashion and textiles departments . Ashley is very dedicated to the environment and uses only organic cotton and fibers whose production are easy on the environment.
Erica's designs are all inspired by nature and she uses mostly sterling silver. I suppose that I should have done a few detail shots. Believe me when I say that they are beautiful!
And then there is Erin. Erin is also a graduate of the Textiles Department.
Her main products are hankies, including these with instructions,

And hand knit owls. I had to turn this one around because like befts, they all like to go to the left.

Thanks for stopping by. And if you are in the neighbourhood, please stop by in person!

Industrial What?

My desk at work acts as a catch all. And not just from my hand. It is often home to assignments left by students for part time instructors. And things that people need to pick up for a variety of reasons.

Like the 5 animal skulls that someone left for a night time teacher. They were suppose to be picked up on Thursday evening but the classes were cancelled because of a snow storm. I hope that they are gone when I get back. Not that I find them revolting or disturbing. It is just that they take up a fair amount of space and I can't really jam them in a drawer.

Every now and then I give up and clean. Things get shuffled and sorted.

A couple of weeks ago, I made new labels for some drawers in the Fashion studio. There were a couple of duplicates and they were emptied out of my apron pocket and left on my desk. And during the shuffle of cleanup ended up on my bunch of bananas.

Needless to say, I didn't believe the label.

When we last spoke

of the things I do, I was doing some heat setting experimentation. On the whole I was not really all that keen on the heat setting. Part of the problem was that the elastics/rubber bands that I was using were in fact the ouchless ones that I found out were plastic. They didn't withstand the heat of the heat setting machine. As a result, about halfway through the heat setting phase, the elastics would give way and the fabric would relax making my forms less than crisp.
My first reaction to my samples was "oh. look. wrinkled fabric"
Then I wrapped some around a pole in a traditional shibori technique and found something that I was able to get a little more excited about. I also did the nail fabric which I also found to be quite exciting. I was looking in a magazine for something totally unrelated and found an article on heat setting where they use a steamer. I tried it with my wrapped pollen fabric and it worked wonderfully! I am working on my pollen still but I need to tweak it a bit. I am not 100% pleased with my results so far. More on that later.

While I was sitting around waiting for my fabric to melt and harden, I did a bit of dyeing of scarves. There are never enough hours in the day to do all of the things that I want to get done, so I managed to multi task a couple of days.



I was also asked to work a couple of extra nights last week because the night time blanket weaving class that is happening now is coming to a close (two weeks left) and a lot of the students will not be finished on time. It was thought that while other classes were happening in the evening and the security guard was there that the blanket weaving students could come and work on getting their blankets on the looms. They are also able to come during the day while classes are happening (and I am there to help) but some people work during the day and were given the night time option. Some took advantage of my being there and progressed quite nicely. Others are still behind. We will see how it all turns out.

Last Wednesday I was also asked if I was putting a piece in the New Brunswick Crafts Council show. The show's theme is "Traces of Architecture": Inspiration from New Brunswick Architecture. When I said that I hadn't thought to, I was encouraged by the curator to submit something. So I started to think and came up with a couple of ideas. The one that I chose is a direct interpretation of the theme. I decided to make a life-size doorway based on the doors is my house. I started with silk dupioni which I cut into doorway shape and sewed the edges. I knew that I would be dyeing it so I wanted to use a type of thread that would dye like the silk. Polyester thread was out, and so was cotton because cotton takes fiber reactive dyes slightly differently than silk. I decided that some of the weft thread would work well.
Ha! After faithfully pulling about 30 yards of weft thread out, putting it on sewing bobbins and trying to sew with it, I came to the conclusion (after about 10 breaks in the thread) that the weft thread wasn't spun enough.
What to do? 10 pm on a Friday night, I knew that in order to have the piece ready for Monday I had to sew it that night, no stores are open (and if they were would they even carry silk thread?)
And then I remembered some fine spun silk yarn that a friend gave me thinking that I could ply with it. I thought that I would dig it out and try it. And it WORKED! Just like thread. I was so pleased, and it was a joy to work with after the cursing that I did using the other silk. I cursed some more when I decided to pick out all of the stitches of the first attempt. But I am happy with the result.

Here are the pieces ready to dye.


In order to dye them, I first stretched them on stretcher frames and painted them with fiber reactive dyes. I had to let them sit for 24 hours and then wash and dry them. Then sew them together. I don't have a picture of the finished piece yet because I haven't seen it all assembled. The opening is this Friday 5-7 at the Charlotte Street Art Center if anyone is interested.

I hope to get a good photo of it hanging for all of you that can't be there in person.

So that is partially why I haven't been posting much. Who has time?

The College Playoffs

Craft College style.


Some intrepid soul at work decided that enough was enough. Too many complaints about the cold and snow. Too many people moaning about the winter. Something was desperately need to chase away the winter blahs.
So the Photo department challenged the Graphics department to a ball hockey game at lunch last Tuesday. There were many interested players.

And many interested spectators. I watched most of the game from the comfort of a second floor classroom. Which is why there is a grid in the second picture. It is the window screen.


Photo won and was challenged by Fashion. That game went down yesterday but unfortunately, I didn't get to see any of it as I was kept running over my lunch hour. I'll let you know next week when the winner plays another challenger.

Halloween 3

Or...What the teacher wore

Head of Metals as a witch doctor with three Mexican exchange students.

Ellen and Joanne, Fashion Ladies as a bumble bee and a butterfly. They were deep in discussion about marks or students or something serious. Since they are used to seeing me wander in and out of the classrooms on various errands they didn't say anything until my camera gave me away by making the little ringing sound that it makes when it starts up. Then they laughed.
Mitch the store keeper talking to Sally from Nightmare before Christmas . I think that they were discussing her stitching job. She is looking for a refund.
Jan, Harriet, and Linda. Harriet and Jan, from Fabric Surface, had a Hogwarts theme going on. Jan is from England and she really went all out and decorated not only herself, but also her office. She made badges for everyone in the studio. Harriet was the professor of Herbology (can you tell?) Jan was the defense against the dark Arts Teacher (who ever that would be in any given year) Linda was Johnny Depp. Not Hogwarts but Pirates. It is all good.

Here is Jan's office (note the bookshelf)

The bookshelf

(please click on the picture to get a bigger version so that you can read the titles )

And here were the judges for the contest. From Left to Right... Michael, the principal, Laura May, head of accounting who also does 10,000 other things that I couldn't explain, Jane, head of Design who also wears many many hats, and Joe, Maintenance Supervisor and my boss, and if he wasn't around the school would fall apart around our ears (not kidding). They did a great job and I heard a little tale that there was some arm wrestling that happened over who should get second prize.
Is it any wonder that I couldn't stay away?

Halloween 2

More from the Craft College...

Peter (head of the Photography Department) This fellow is the technician from the photography department. He had a lot of fun imitating Peter. And we all had a lot of fun laughing.

Mortitia Adams (as in The Adam's Family)(tied 3rd place)

Minnie Mouse (honorable mention)

mime (Not in contest)

Marie Antoinette and the Foxy Lady (Marie was a prototype for a commission for a play. My co-worker made 8 more masks that were used in the play (all different but along the same lines) and unfortunately, 6 of the 8 were lost in a fire two weeks ago)

Scary Nurse

Sailor moon and her beau (damned if I can remember his name) I am sure that sailor will tell me on Monday

Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf

Tomorrow.... What my co-workers were up to.....

Halloween at the Craft College

Or, another reason that I like my place of employment

Today is Halloween, as most of you know. Although I didn't have to work today, I did have some business downtown that took me near the school around noon.

O.K. I'll admit it. I planned my errands around being downtown around noon so that I could be at the school for the annual parade and contest of costumes. About 75% of the people that were around today were dressed up. Some had subtle costumes, and some went all out.

I took a lot of pictures and so I am going to spread them out over the next few days. South America celebrates the Day of the Dead over several days, so I don't think that it is president setting.

And here in no particular order are some of the costumes. A lot of them were made by the individual wearing them. The students really are a creative bunch.

Lily Geisha (tied 2nd place)

Killbot (honorable mention)

Poison Ivy (1st place)

Ghost (not in contest)

Foxy Lady, Rachel (who is going as a Cougar tonight) and Sally from Nightmare Before Christmas

Eve (note the apple)

Cow (in case you didn't guess)

Captain Haddock (Blistering Barnacles)

Cougar in Waiting, and C as.....I'm not sure what. I have to admit that the noose kind of threw me for a loop (no pun intended)

Funky Fairy (tied 2nd place), Bride of Frankenstein (ties 3rd place) and Twister

Black Bunny of Halloween and Steve the Retired Reaper

Batman

Tune back later for more from the crazy place that I call work......

String Theory

Welcome to String Theory. The year end fiber arts show at The Gallery.

Denise had three sections for her felting class this year. One was the full time fiber arts students and the two others sections were students from other studios who chose to take felting as an elective.
Denise had them do two major projects based around the different techniques that she taught them. The first was "ethnographic samples". The students were required to come up with a symbol that meant something to them and, using different techniques covered in class, make three different personal symbols. Bellow are the best of the 17 students that took the felting class. From left to right their symbols are Paisley, Wheat, Blossom, Eye of Horus, Honey.
And then there was Katie. Katie is an over achiever and we are so thrilled to have her in our program. She finishes her assigned projects early and then puts on other project to do in her "spare time". We really really really like students like Katie. She also came and helped us to set up the show. And if any of you have ever had anything to do with setting up a show in a gallery, you know how helpful a spare set of hands can be. I could have the random thought of "ARGH! I didn't put the table clothes for the food table in the dryer!" and ask her to do it, and she would. Ahhh.

Katie's symbol was "Comet".


The first year students also made blankets. There were four full time students and one part time student. Left is Rosie and right is Christine.

Left is Celine, and right is Katie. And in the foreground is Keith. Keith is our part time student. Keith was a prosecutor for the provincial government before he retired. He became interested in genealogy and while researching his family tree discovered that his family was from Scotland and not from Ireland as his grandmother has insisted. But as he said "No one dared to contradict Granny". In any case, he decided to design a family tartan and have it registered with the tartan authority in Scotland, but he needed a sample of fabric. And upon having a hard time finding someone to weave his tartan for him, he decided to weave it himself. He designed both a dress and a hunting tartan and they have been accepted by the Tartan Authority in Scotland. He has also decided the he likes weaving and I have been coaxing him to come back next fall to take second year weaving.

The first years also did a section in tapestry. Here are some of their results. I had brought in a small tapestry that I did of a drawing that Mira did when she was about 5 to show the students an example of a small tapestry. I left it in the office and unknown to me it was included. It is the rooster on the far left.


There was also an elective book binding class and many people decided to take this also. There were many different types of books that were explored and the diversity was amazing.


Here are a few more.
The second major project that Denise the Felting Queen had her students do was boots. The students worked about five weeks on their boots. They were encouraged to really play with the idea of footwear. The first are the best of the best.


And here are some of the others. Not every one's boot made it into the show. They were all told that it was a juried show and that only the best would be shown.
Stacey is a graduate from last year that came back for advanced studies. Next year she is off to NSCAD to further her education. I will miss her dearly. She has such wonderful ideas and works mostly with wire embellished with other materials. She had a show of her work last year along with another graduating student and her work really pushed the boundaries. I will watch her career with great interest.
When you get close to the mask and look in the eye, this is what you see....

Next are some complex weave scarves by the third years. If anyone would like to see the details, just ask. I didn't want to post too many photos in one post.


Pippi (called Paula by her mom) was a true victim of the flood. She was working feverishly away on her tapestry of the world when we were locked out of the school for almost two weeks. There was no way that she would be able to finish her tapestry in less than two days to have it ready in time for the opening. Then Micheal, our new director, posed the question "Why don't we just bring the whole loom down to the gallery and present it as a work in progress?" Why not indeed!
Here is a detail. All of the yarns are dyed by Pip with natural dyes and most of the ocean is hand spun as well. If I had several thousand dollars hanging around, I would buy this from her when she was finished it. It is truly a work of art.

Congratulations to all of the students! You all make me proud!

Note: The show is at The Gallery at the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design at 457 Queen Street In Fredericton New Brunswick.