Just cause I feel that I should post at least 1 thing for 2016......

I = Rock
Rock=I
A statement on how humans resemble rocks in that rocks naturally have certain attributes and when an outside force is introduced they can become something else. A rock/words/whispers/intentions thrown in anger/hate/frustration can become a weapon.
This piece was part of "Pride of Place" 2016 Staff and Faculty show from New Brunswick College of Craft and Design. Opening at Saint John Art Centre January 13, 2017.

Autumnal Progression
An observance of the progression of the changes of the appearance of the Autumn hillsides covered with trees. 

Photos

I had a bit of a busy week.
Most of the instructors at work are on contracts. There are only 8 or 9 permanent full-time positions. And there are between 35 and 40 full and part time instructors. The person that held the permanent position in our studio moved into administration and the position had been vacant for a few years. It came up for competition last month and I, and all of my colleagues in the studio, applied.
We all got interviews and had to prepare a portfolio of both our work and student work.
Here are some of the images that I submitted.

Genere Mutatio Fructificatio Corpora

(Genetically Modified Fruiting Body)

This is a piece that I did for the New Brunswick Crafts Council show "Otherworldly". I was thinking about genetically modified things, food especially,  and was wondering how far it is going to go.

What are these things? They sort of look like grapes, sort of like a bunch of cluster tomatoes but are each the size of a grapefruit. And the purple. Interesting and perhaps a bit disturbing.

Here they are hung. 

What remains with details

In 2007, Charlotte Glencross died. She left me her loom and her husband John gifted me with her yarn stash. Charlotte was a very talented tapestry artist. As she was making her tapestries, she would wind multiple strands of coloured yarns on paper bobbins. You always wind more than you need and so over the years, she amassed quite a collection of these yarn filled bobbins. I used these bobbins to create “What Remains” over the space of ten days, weaving on average between 8-10 hours a day. This piece was my submission for the Fibre Arts Network exhibition “The Thread That Binds”, in honor of Charlotte. I learned a lot from using that what had Charlotte left behind.

Superwash Merino Huck lace sacrf

 The scarves sort of speak for themselves.

Hand dyed hand spun hand woven superwash merino scarf

Handwoven original design Tencel scarf

Hand dyed and hand woven rayon scarf

Me and my felted blueberries

Sometimes I just feel like felting. So I do. Sometimes the finished product sits for a while before I decide what they will become. Sometimes they tell me. This was one of those times when the little felt balls screamed that they wanted to become blueberries. I started out with 7 but that was not enough. So I made more and it still wasn't enough. Then I had to make a bowl to put them in. And the first bowl was too small. So I made a bigger bowl which necessitated making more blueberries. So I made more...and more....and more! Eventually I decided that 37 was enough. And it was good.

Oh, I had my interview. There were 7 or 8 people who had also applied. The interview was ok but I really messed up one of the questions. We will all find out who gets the position in 4 to 6 weeks.

The Thing That Happened

A few weeks ago, I was asked to take part in a video that was being created to celebrate the year of Craft and the opening of the New Brunswick Crafts Council show called The Thing That Happened.
Here is the video
http://www1.bellaliant.net/communityone/video/?channelId=1fbcdcb25abc4922b966db8173a4c46f&channelListId=eba2a376b98b4e988108a4df59ad79d7&mediaId=aa12a76130fe48f6a6f60aea199fa4cb


And here is me next to my piece "Expansion"

 

I'm glad that I sound OK during the video. I was hoping that I wouldn't come out sounding like an idiot! Matt Brown was the videographer and he was great and did a great job editing. But almost two hours of filming and adjusting to get around 5 minutes of final video. I never would have guessed.

The week in review

Sunday May 18- finished knotting back of red and black tapestry #1
Monday May 19- Trip to Woodstock to see Grandma and Grandpa. In the car worked on fringing rag rug samples. Decided that one of the techniques was something that I was going to NOT recommend to my students because it was tedious and horrid to work on.
Tuesday May 20- Made new cotton seine twine tapestry warp. Started to put it on the loom
Wednesday May 21- finished dressing the loom with new warp.
Thursday May 22-Made a new small warp for yet another rag rug sample. This one is a double bind technique.
Friday May 23- Dressed loom with the new rag rug sample warp.
Saturday May 24-we were having people over Saturday night so spent the day cleaning and cooking. I cleaned under and around my looms so that will have to be my craft related thing for the day. That and cooking can be considered crafty work, right?
Sunday May 25- Dug through some of my bins of yarns and picked the colours and textures for the first bit of my tapestry.
Monday May 26- Trip to Woodstock to visit Grandpa and wish him a happy 91st birthday. In the car I fringed the rest of my finished rag rug samples
Tuesday May 27- Started winding some of the skeins of yarn for the tapestry into balls. This was definitely a case of "even 5 minutes counts. I also ran (mostly) 7.25 k tonight and am off to reward myself with a soak in the tub.

Tuesday May 13-
A bit more designing on tapestry.

Wednesday May 14-
Borrowed a 27 inch loom from the school to weave the tapestry.
Started to dress the loom

Thursday May 15-
Continued to dress the loom. Tied on the warp and did a test weave. Didn't really like the results and decided to sleep on it. Reminded my self that unweaving is part of weaving.

Friday May 16-
Spent most of the day at the school dressing another warp for a new rag rug technique. I also got some of my homework done for my online class.
When I got home, I took a look at my tapestry warp and in the harsh light of day, realized that not only was the sett incorrect for what I wanted to do, but the warp was also starting to shred and wouldn't hold up to the abuse that I was about to inflict. So I took the warp off to be used for another project on another day. I tucked the experience away to drag to later when I have to explain to my students that sometimes "Plan B" means starting over.

Saturday May 17-
Knotted the back and trimmed the ends of red and black tapestry #1.

update

Thursday May 1-
Wove on Blue Hiro warp

Friday May 2-
Last day of work-
Wove on Blue Hiro
Mapped out a new project involving all my colleagues
Started the warp for the above project

Saturday May 3-
Wove on Blue Hiro. This warp is so slow weaving. It is an silk i-cord yarn and very stretchy. It takes dye beautifully and I want to keep the colours of the warp from being muddied with the weft, so I am using a fine 20/2 silk in blue. Each weft shot needs to be slowly beat in place. The selvedge threads are super stretchy too and subject to a lot of draw-in. I wove a sample with this material before, but I paired it with stripes of closely sett 20/2 silk and it was much easier to maintain an even beat. I have one more Hiro warp so I may have to consider making a sister warp out of the fine silk and pairing the two.

Sunday May 4-
Spinning about an hour
Sewing in ends on tensel scarves

Monday May 5-
Wove on blue hiro scarves and finished the first one! Started to fringe it.
Designing of new tapestry based on colours picked by my colleagues

Tuesday May 6-
Decided that I didn't like the warp that I made for the tapestry on Friday, so I rewound it onto the bobbins and started a new warp from two tones of purple linen.
Cut strips for a couple of rag rug samples for a workshop that I am teaching this summer.
Felted a small green piece of felt to cut into pins.

Wednesday May 7-
Made a small rag rug sample warp. Used the strips I cut yesterday for a new rag rug technique where you lay two different coloured strips of fabric back to back and flip them over mid way through the warp so that you change colours. Dressed a loom at work and wove one sample.

Thursday May 8-
Wove two more samples on the rag rug warp. I made the warp extra long so that the students could try the technique before settling on it.

Friday May 9-
Made another small sample warp for a new technique for rag rug workshop. Dressed a second loom at work and wove two samples. Let enough warp for students to try this sample also.
Worked on design for tapestry. Gathered a couple of more colours from a few people from whom I hadn't received answers to the question "pick a colour"

Saturday May 10-
Trip to Woodstock today to visit Grandma and Grandpa. In the car I finished one side of my tapestry making knots and sewing in ends. Started second side. Brought Dorset loom (with blue hiro warp on) to the lake for the summer.

Sunday May 11-
Finished second side and knotted all the ends on the back of two tapestries.

Monday May 12-
Wove on Red Hiro scarves.

Challenge update

Before I begin, just a note to let you now that my posts for a bit will probably consist of just a list of what I have done. It helps me to track my progress.

Monday April 28-
Felted blue fleece that was laid out Sunday
Cut 45 hearts and 1 sun out of the red felt. Soft felted the edges and set them to dry
Tuesday April 29-
Knotted the fringe of one scarf
Started twisting the fringe of a second scarf.
Wednesday April 30-
More fringing on my brown tencel scarves.

Sunday April 27

Sunday April 27-
Finished the leather moulding workshop.
Laid out and felted a new piece of felt for pins.
Sewed experimental cloth which was felt on a woven structure that didn't felt together quite as much as I would have liked it. It was originally a left over bit of warp that I just had to weave off rather than waste all of that yarn. Then I had the idea of felting on it and making a new cover for my foot stool. Unfortunately, it shrunk (as felt tends to do) just a little too much and is now about 2 inches too small to use as a cover. It will become something else.

And here are my tapestries that I have finally finish weaving. The first two have been finished for about 8 months. The last gathered dust on the loom for about the same length of time. I worked on it sporadically in the fall and then my interest level dropped as I found myself weaving scarves for sale. Then the January slump. Which turned into the February slump. And March was just as bad as, if not worst than February because Although the calendar changed, the brutal February weather did not.
But I am finished weaving it now and only need a long car trip to get the ends of the last one knotted and darned in.

Tapestries that I have FINALLY finished weaving.

I am still playing with placement. 

I will post more pictures as I get back into the habit of actually taking pictures while I am doing things.

craft update

Friday April 25- spinning 45 minutes
Saturday April 26- Leather moulding workshop. Felted fleece that I laid out last week. This felt will be destined for heart pins. Heart pins are one of those wonderful driving projects (so long as I am a passenger). I can embellish them with stitches or buttons or whatever and because most of the stitching is simply attaching the pins to the back, my dexterity doesn't need to be all that great. Or my eyesight. Which, because I am a woman of a certain age, is starting to be less sharp and focused.

7 day craft challenge

I was in my office at lunch the other day when my buddy Rachel stopped by and brought some fleece and a spinning wheel. We chatted and he spun and she told me about her 60 day craft challenge. The basic idea is to do something craft oriented every day. The only other rule is that even 5 minutes counts. She said that it was a great way to get some ideas that were in her head out in to the real world. And she said that it had ben working well.
I have decided to join her. I have started small with a 7 day craft challenge and so far it has been successful.
Friday April 18- Finished brown warp that seemed to last forever. It was put on in February. Started to warp the Leclerc 8 harness loom with red hand dyed Hiro warp.
Saturday April 19- Worked on third of three tapestries that has also been on the 4 harness Dorset loom for around 8 months. Wound red Hiro onto Leclerc.
Sunday April 20- Wove on tapestry on Dorset. Rewound Hiro onto Leclerc as my ends were very uneven and the Hiro is VERY stretchy and I was concerned about tension issues.
Monday April 21- Finished tapestry on Dorset! Wahoo! Threaded red Hiro on Leclerc and wove a sample. Dressed Dorset with blue and green Hiro. This was two warps that were dyed differently and combined. I usually warp back to front, but for this warp, I combined the two warps in the reed and dressed the loom front to back.
Tuesday April 22- Finished threading blue green Hiro warp. Wound it on
Wednesday April 23- Tied the blue green Hiro warp on and started to weave.
Thursday April 24- Wove on blue green Hiro warp. It is very slow going as it is a mainly warp faced fabric and I have to place the weft very gently or it will get beaten down too much. I also laid out some fleece approximately 14X20 inches to felt later. The purpose of this felt is to cut up to make pins.
So far so good! I will extend this to a 2 week challenge!

June Vessel

I confess.

I am a bad blogger.

I have been working away, doing things, and just not sharing them.

I will try and rectify that.

Here is June.

In March.

I know.

June's inspiration came from the Craft College's Graduation ceremony. We have a Native Art's program and last year we had a Native Elder give a blessing at the ceremony. She spoke of the Mother Earth and how we were all part of the trees and the sky and the water. We are one with them and they are one with us.
I thought that it was lovely and made a vessel that somewhat reflected the idea.
I laid out the fleece in the approximate colours and shapes of trees and sky. Some of the trees are closer and those I stitched to give a little definition.
This one was in a gallery show and was actually purchased.
It was wonderfully validating.

May

It is June 1st, so it is time to reveal the May vessel!

I conceived of the idea for May early in the month but just never got around to doing the vessel until just the other day.

When felting with a flat pattern, which is how I make my vessels, you have to be very careful about how you work the edges. If you rub too hard, too quickly, you can end up with something that looks like Saturn, with a rim around the center instead of a smooth, round form. I thought that I would take this idea and push it a little.

Here is the beginning. I started by laying out what would be the bottom and adding a piece of bubble wrap into which I had cut a circle. This was laid down and a rim of fleece was added to make what would hopefully be a ruffle. The flat pattern was then put down and more fleece added.

Then more layers of bubble wrap and more fleece. You can see that there are quite a few layers here!

I wet everything down and felted. And felted. And rubbed. And felted. And so on and so on and so on...... There were a few areas that burst their seams and required some patching. And more felting.

Here is the final vessel. I will be honest in saying that it was not quite what I was expecting. I was hoping that it would end up being taller and the ruffles a little more...well...ruffly!

I was hoping to get something reminiscent of a Spanish dancer and ended up with a sumo wrestler playing dress up.

I think that this is an idea that wants to be revisited in the future.

and just cause "666" freaks me out....

I am posting number 667 right on it's heels.

As you may know, we moved in the fall. Fall was rough to say the least and I really didn't get a look at what was in the flower beds or in the yard. I did note that there was a bed out front with bush like things in it and a small bed in the back yard. And then I started to deal with the inside of the house and teaching for the first time and life in general and didn't give the outside a second thought.

Fast forward to spring and this is what the front bed looks like. Ick. Some nice hostas, a burning bush, false spirea, a couple of cute box woods, a hydrangea that has seen better days, along with a smattering of wood chips of some sort and exposed landscape cloth. The people that we bought the place from bought it 5 years ago and I am assuming that the people that they bought it from had a little landscaping done to give the house "curb appeal". And that was the end of doing anything (short of mowing) in the yard.

And the neglect shows. No curb appeal from this vantage point.

We need to have the drain tiles cleaned out and may of may not have to dig up this corner of the house so I am leaving this bed until we find out how much digging needs to be done.

In the back I was able to start digging some of the weeds out of the bed. I waited until I could get an idea of what was in there and other than the bush in the middle, nothing but weeds have appeared. Well, there was a brave showing from a tiny bit of creeping flox but not enough to have my heart singing. The soil in the bed is very depleted ( I only saw two worms) and we will get some manure to make it happier.

 We are going to lengthen it and make it a bit wider and plant things that need to be picked in a timely manner. Like lettuce and cherry tomatoes and spinach and maybe even a special place with lots of sand for carrots! And my herbs. Parsley, sage, thyme, basil, oregano, and tarragon. Rosemary will go into a pot as she can come inside for the winter.

And look! I have lilacs!

Journal April

After the failure of March, I am happy to say that April is finished, and even happier to say that I am pleased.

I was having a hard time being inspired after the disappointment of March, so I put out a call on Face Book which said "Waiting for inspiration........"  and one of my friends (thanks Mel) pointed me here.

And I found this.

My original inspiration. This was lifted from the internet but was uncredited so in the highly unlikely event that it is yours and you would like credit, let me know and I will do so.

April started out as a regular white vessel into which I cut irregular holes.

Freshly cut vessel

I felt that the cut edge was a little rough

sharp edges

 so I soaked it out and felted them a little more to soften them up a bit.

Poor soggy vessel

 After I had finished felting it, I rinsed it well and squeezed out the excess water but I was left with a floppy pile of felt.

Rung out but still floppy

So I decided that the best way to make it full and round again was to insert a balloon to give it some structure. I just happened to have a balloon hanging about because I also just happen to have an 8 year old who loves balloons!

the best way to puff up wet felt

When I first saw the picture that was the inspiration for April, I dropped it on my desktop and didn't look at it again. I had a vague memory of something in the center and something spherical. I had a small red vessel left over from a previous project and I thought that it would look lovely in the centre.

April!


If you scroll back up to the funky fungus, you can see that there is no red, but there is something inside and something something somewhat spherical. 

I put the small red vessel inside and had fun stitching it in place.

close up of the internal ball

Now I need to get going on May! The month is half over and I have no idea what May will be!

Disappointing

I am sorry to have been so silent lately in terms of my Felted Vessel Project, but it turns out that March is an abject failure. Well, maybe I should be quite so harsh. I did learn a lot. Isn't that usually the way though.

If you remember (it was so long ago in time, but only a few posts) March was inspired by seeing street lights at night from an airplane. This necessitated finding streets upon which to set some lights.

Google maps came to the rescue. I started in Ottawa and "flew" towards Montreal ( the one place even I recognised from the air) and stopped when I found a particularly pleasing arrangement of streets. Just as I had no idea what towns I was flying over, I have no idea of the name of the particular town that I used. A print out and a couple of enlargements later, I had my streets. I had to do a bit of creative rearrangement to make a flat town fit on a curved surface, but through diligent application of scissors, managed to come up with a pleasing arrangement.

Through trial and error, I decided that the best way to mark out my town was to lay "lights" along the streets, and some how mark them.

preparation of pattern pieces

Enter the tiny hole punch (1/8th of and inch) and dressmakers chalk.

Patterns, chalk, and holes

Next came the punching. Hundreds of little holes. To punch effectively, I put a dowel into the vice, the vessel onto the dowel, and with my trusty hammer, beat the thing into submission.

Punching holes like nobody's business

After a while, the center of the dowel would be so chewed up as to not actually work as an effective brace against which to punch, so I also had to saw the end off the dowel several times.  Actually, this was a job that I pawned off on my wonderful husband.

A pooped punch pole

I was left with a bunch of small felt plugs. Every 5 or 6 holes, I would have to stop pounding and dig the plugs out of my punch. I ended up buying a couple of more punches, which turned out to be a good thing because I damaged my first punch a short while later.

Doughnut holes

and the doughnut

Next, I started to stitch the beads in. This in itself was a trial. I had finished the punching the night before I, my mother, and my friend Sarah were scheduled to leave for a Fibre Arts Retreat in Nova Scotia. The drive was about 5 hours and I felt safe that between going and coming home, I would have enough time to stitch my vessel. Not to mention that there would be time to stitch when I was not spinning, eating, etc.

I was right. I had plenty of time to stitch. I thought that I might not have enough beads so before we left, I ran to the store and found some more gold beads. What I didn't figure was that the beads were a slightly different gold. Not much of a difference, but enough of a difference that I couldn't use them.
If I had been at home, I could have taken the beads out of my trial piece, or run back to the store to see if I could find the right gold colour. As it was, I ripped the beads out and started to stitch with the new beads. I managed to get most of the stitching finished on the drive home (thanks Mamoo for driving!)

Finished....or is it?

Beads all in, and all of the same colour, it was done, but all of the manipulation that it gone through had left it somewhat.....floppy.  No worries, I thought. I'll pop a balloon into it and give it a quick felt to firm it up a bit.

Smart eh?

Not so much. It seems that there were a few places where I had punched the holes a little too closely and with the further manipulation the holes actually ended up acting like perforations in paper.

They tore a bit.

And created holes.

@#&^%$% holes!

As you can see in the "finished?" picture, there was still snow on the ground. It was actually just a couple of days into April when this happened and I have to say that with everything else that has been happening in my life, it acted as a bit of a gumption trap. It took me a couple of weeks to decide how to proceed.

First was to decide to start on April without having satisfactorily finished March.
Second was to decided on April.
Third was to accept that I will be redoing all this work and using my hard earned knowledge of what not to do, hopefully end up with a successful piece.

But give me a couple of months to get up the gumption to punch all those holes again!

Weaving Books

Hey All You Weavers Out There.....


I was wondering if you would let me in on your favourite weaving books. I am teaching weaving at NBCCD next year and have a few dollars that I can spend on books.

So if you can gave me a suggestion and tell me what you like about it, I would be grateful!

Fibre Arts RETREAT

Courtesy of my mother, I have pictures of the most recent retreat that we attended. The Fibre Arts Retreat happens in Nova Scotia at the end of March/beginning of April. It is for anyone interested in Fibre Arts of any sort. My buddy Sarah found out about the FAR somewhere and said "Let's go!" Never one to give up an opportunity to spin with fellow Fibre Enthusiasts,  I replied "When do we leave?"
With Piggy as out faithful co-pilot

Mamoo behind the wheel,

Sarah as the relaxing beauty in the back seat,

and me.....well, just being me

Off we set!

This will be the third time that I have been and it just keeps getting bigger and better! The first year we were in one half of the "ballroom". There was a wedding in the other half (the dividing doors were closed) and so we were rather entertained.
Last year we had taken over the rest of the ballroom because there as so much more interest.

This year, about half of the spinners ended up in the foyer between the ballroom and a smaller conference room.

I was a little miffed at first, but I quickly came to accept our move as A Good Thing. We had comfy chairs. We were closer to the bathroom and the refueling station. And on Saturday night when everyone else was kicked out of the big room at 10 pm so that they could lock everything up, we were told that we could just lock the door behind us. Some of us had gone for a quick dip in the pool and a quick soak in the hot tub (heaven!) and so we had a late night pajama party.

Inside the big room were the rest of the spinners, quilters, hookers, weavers (table looms only) felters (needle only), tatters, and this one lady who had a display and was giving a demo on bobbin lace making. Amazing!

Here are out fearless organizers! A huge thank you goes out to Sharon and Richard!

Next years retreat takes place April 5,6,7, 2013! If anyone out there is interested, let me know and I will put you in touch with Sharon.