Fun With Sharp Needles

Fianlly, what I started at Geelong Fibre Forum last year has been finished. Well, more or less finished - it is a triptych and I can't decide how to arrange them or finalise the piece.

The work is called (at the moment anyway!) We Look At The Land Through Different Eyes, You and I.

I won't go through every step of the technique I used, as Carolyn Sullivan teaches this and it is definitely not my place to reproduce her class! But I will run through the main steps.

The base for these pieces is wool/viscose felt from Spotlight - good quality and nice to handstitch through. Then I used an embellisher machine to apply bits of hand-dyed scrim (by me) and prefelt (not dyed by me), embellished a few pieces of hand-dyed silk ribbon (not dyed by me either). Then lots of stitching in Appleton's crewel wool, two strands in the needle - mostly kantha stitch and seeding stitch. Then I ran the embellishing machine over the whole piece again to embed the woolen stitches (and make sure the other bits were thoroughly embedded. Finally, lots of kantha and seed stitching in variaged perel cottons (commercially dyed).

The inspiration - we spent a morning sketching views and close-ups near Geelong Grammar, and taking photos too. During the afternoon of fiddling around with our sketches, narrowing down possibilities and in many cases making further sketches from photos, I settled on a sketch I had made of a photo of a eucalypt.

Carolyn helped me to isolate a section of the sketch I had made. While mulling over the final sketch I was suddenly sparked by memories of a lecture the previous night by an artist whose name I have forgotten, and a book I studied for Literature - That Deadman Dance by Kim Scott - and came up with the idea of looking through the tree and seeing the landscape at morning and night out over the water, and in reverse from the sea to the bush and midday. Using the lines of the bark and seeing the background through them - to me it gave me the idea of a 'ghost gum' - not in the sense of the actual gums that are known as ghost gums, but a ghost of the past/present/future of the landscape and the people.

It's another example of slow creating, as it took quite a while, but I can honestly say that I loved every second of doing this work. So much so that I have another one at the design stage, vaguely inspired by Mrs Dalloway - I certainly didn't start out intending to create works based on books I am studying, but it seems to be turning out that way right now!

Edited to add - an embellishing machine is a needlefelting machine - it looks like a sewing machine but is much lighter and has a set of needles (5 in mine) with barbs which mesh threads together when you run it up and down through the fabric. I have the cheapest domestic version.

One Word To Rule Them All

I've read a few blogs around the place about choosing one word to inspire them throughout the year. Apparently many bloggers have done this before. I did idly trace through some links to a website where this idea may have originated, even downloaded the 'worksheet' that was meant to help you define your special word. I then read the four page worksheet and realised that I would be wasting an hour or so to whittle down choices of a word that I would then completely fail to live up to, just like I do with all but the vaguest resolutions.

Damn it all, I thought in disgust, what I need to do is stop dithering around and FOCUS.

Oh, look, there's a word that might be quite useful in organising myself this year. Oops, it seems like I accidentally picked out an appropriate word while railing against the idiocy of trying to pick a word.

So, completely against the grain, I am declaring that my word for the year will be FOCUS.

Focus, to me, includes concentrating on what I actually WANT to do. Obviously there will be things that I NEED to do. But where possible I only want to embark on projects that fulfil a desire including both making and the result.

Despite the post in December about sewing, I realised that I had been dithering about all over the place NOT sewing. I cut out those two patterns, spent some time tissue fitting and writing down alteration stuff, washing and ironing appropriate fabric. Then every time I considered cutting out the fabric and making those alterations, my mind turned into a butterful and my attention was caught by something shiny. Once I started focussing on what it was that was preventing me from sewing these dresses, in fabric that I like and that I actually want to wear, I realised that I did not actually want to sew them. I would have bought those dresses but the process was putting me off.

Consequently I have packed those patterns away and picked some others from the stash, and will have another go at sewing. I feel quite OK about that - I wasted about six weeks of not sewing, but actually applying FOCUS helped me to work out why I had wasted that time. Now I suppose I may have to provide future proof that sewing has happened, so here's hoping!

I have done some baking for the first time in ages - Peasant Bread - which was quite delicious and very easy. It's a no-knead bread that was quite literally easy to mix by hand (in this lovely rustic mixing bowl) even with my weak wrists. You bake it in a Pyrex bowl, which I did, though I might try it in a bread tin next time to see if it gets crustier.

I also started knitting a new little shawl once I finished the Nuvem last year, It is another iteration of  this shawl but this time in a semi solid Woolmeise sock yarn, of which I have 150g so it will be a bit bigger. It's my first time knitting with Woolmeise and it is a bit odd.lovely colour but although being the usual sock mixture of wool and synthetic it feels and knits rather like a cotton yarn. Which does not matter at all as there is no need for gauge in a shawl but I did start off trying to knit socks with it and my gauge was all over the place. It is not really pink like this picture, but a lovely red, I just couldn't get the light right at the time.

2014 and Stuff

Looking back over the last year I realise that I haven't done a lot of things that resulted in Finished Objects. Slow and happy crafting beat rapid gratification.

Oddly this seems to be the only pair of socks I have knitted this year. Could that be true? It's the only photo I can find, anyway. I think it was with a New Zealand sock wool. I call them Clown socks but I can't remember if that was the actual name of the colourway or not. I didn't even get round to putting them on Ravelry. For George, who wears them regularly.

Now this is on Ravelry. It took a VERY LONG TIME. Hence the reference to slow knitting! It finally got finished on holiday in the middle of the year. It is so fine that it fits through my wedding ring - which wasn't intentional but is a good party trick.

This is also on Rav. I haven't worn it yet, as I finished it just before Christmas and it hasn't been cold enough since then, but I look forward to getting the chance. It is greener/bluer than in the photo, which accentuates the purple which is in there but is less dominant in real life - it was very hard to photograph.

As well as slow knitting, I have been embracing slow cooking. Some of the slow cooking is actually quite fast cooking, but I'm using the term to mean more emphasis on fresh ingredients and home cooking and a lot less on processed food and lazy shortcuts. (Using a barbeque is the sort of the shortcut that I consider to be smart not lazy!) Most nights dinner is barbequed protein with salad and nuts. No, we have not gone paleo, and bread or potatoes feature with some of these meals. Risottos, simple Asian dishes with rice, the occasional couscous salad all get a look in from time to time too. The winter saw many hearty casseroles/pot roasts.

There were also holidays.

To Adelaide, where we saw in the New Year at the Hilton, and visited the Hans Heysen museum among other places, where I photographed this plant.

To the Gold Coast over Easter.

During the winter, a trip to Central and South Australia taking in Coober Pedy, Alice Springs and ending up back in Adelaide again.

And then a week in Merimbula to wind down in December.

Most of the year was spent studying for my first year of a Bachelor of Letters at Monash University. I studied Medieval and Renaissance History, and two literature subjects. This year I am doing all literature, a total of six subjects, and I cannot wait! And this year I will try to blog a bit about my studies instead of leaving the blog lonely for months at a time.

What I read in 2014

My Year in Books (according to Goodreads, which will be accurate as I do use it to keep track of my reading).

Some of these were read for university (some of which I had read before); many were read for pleasure; fortunately most of the uni books were pleasurable to read as well! I have also read quite a lot of textile/sewing/craft books - I don't include ones I have skimmed through, only ones I have genuinely read from cover to cover, something I am doing increasingly often these days. (Most probably as a displacement activity instead of actually doing craft!). I am still working my way through the myriad of thrillers/detective novels left behind my my father. Most of them go to the op shop after reading, unless they are by Agatha Christie or Ngaio Marsh, in which case they go into the collection.

I have decided that this year I will include at least a brief post about every university text read, as most of my blog hiatuses were to do with uni study and therefore it would keep the blogging in hand.

And finally, a funny chalkboard I saw outside a pub in Bendigo a few weeks ago: