ATCs Etc.

Remember a couple of weeks ago when I made a dozen Artist Trading Cards for a swap at my weavers’ guild? I forgot to show you what I got in exchange!

The one on the bottom is mine and I have a couple of them left over. Some of these are real handwoven fabric (the 3 on the right) and some are reproductions of fibre art (the 3 on the left). The centre top one is a cute tiny quilt and the middle one is my favourite: hand-dyed and stamped silk with a collaged piece of handwoven fabric on top. What a nice start to my ATC collection!

At the guild meeting, potluck and schmooze-fest we also had door prizes and I won a book:

Not a favourite. Because it was published way back in 2001, it’s kind of dated with boxy styles. I doubt I’ll ever make anything out of it which is probably why I don’t already own it. I sadly did NOT win the gift certificate for Sweet Georgia. Oh well. I almost never win anything or if I do, it’s never anything I really wanted to win. Of course I couldn’t complain too much because I was wearing my fabulous scarf that I won in a draw a couple of years ago (along with a whole pile of other lovely items). It was super-finely woven, shibori-tied, dyed and painted by my dear friend Jo Anne. Once in a rare while I do get lucky!

Meanwhile, instead of sewing I spent the entire day yesterday backing up my two computers to my portable terabyte hard drive. I feel better now. I’ve been putting off that little chore but you’d think I would know better. I have already lost 2 computers with all their data, one to a thief and one to a stuck drive. My little netbook is particularly vulnerable and it’s also the computer I use most often. It contains a lot of files I would rather not lose! I do tend to back it up to the big desktop fairly often but then not back that up in turn. This time I’ve saved the lot. <pats herself on the back>

It’s a holiday weekend here in Canada (Victoria Day, aka May Long Weekend) and of course we’re into the second rainy day after several weeks of glorious sunshine. It feels odd to hear the pattering on the roof. Hopefully soon it will clear up and warm up and my garden will take off like gangbusters. If the happy slugs don’t have a huge party in it first! They were kind of scarce while the weather was dry but they were only lurking in the shadows waiting for their opportunity to return. Slimy critters.

I Am An Arteeest

Have you ever tried to write an Artist’s Statement? I usually find it enough trouble just trying to read and understand somebody else’s! It is so hard not to make it sound pompous, twee or just plain stupid. Here’s the one I came up with. Laugh if you will. It’s still subject to change, which of course will probably make it even worse.

Papyrine (Tree-Hugger)

I think my passion for fibre was born with me. I learned to knit as a little girl and have never stopped making things using all the many techniques I’ve absorbed over the years. When challenged to create a piece using paper, I took up my knitting needles and turned the thin continuous strip back into a tree, complete with roots and leaves. Painting the plain white shape with fibre-reactive dyes gave it colours to blend into the forest. Now it is capable of wrapping around and bestowing a hug.

Are you rolling around on the floor busting a gut yet? Note that I absolutely hate “artspeak” so I was trying for straightforward simplicity. I had an even harder time with the CV that’s also required to submit my piece. Too much happening over too long a time span with nothing really standing out as worth boasting about. Told you I wasn’t really an artist. Craftspeople don’t have to justify their work. It speaks for itself. However if I want this piece to get in the show, I have to fake it somehow!

For those who live close enough or will be visiting Vancouver, here is some of the information on the exhibit:

BC – Jeonju Hanji Culture Festival – 2009
Fibre, Naturally
Paper Like You Have Never Seen it Before

The exhibit, Fibre, Naturally, will take place at Emily Carr University, Granville Island, in the Concourse Gallery from August 10 through 16, 2009. Pieces from the exhibit will then travel to the Port Coquitlam Visual Arts Centre for 3 weeks, and to Fibre Works Gallery on the Sunshine Coast also for 3 weeks, through to Sept 13, 2009.

The Craft Council of BC will host a Gala Fundraiser in the Concourse Gallery on Tuesday evening, August 11. On the Wednesday evening the Canadian Society for Asian Arts will present a free lecture on Hanji paper, given by Sang Jae Nam, and there will be demonstrations of the joomchi paper making process in the foyer of the Concourse Gallery. There will also be a fashion show featuring extraordinary paper garments, including many specially brought from Korea, at Emily Carr Theatre on Granville Island, Thursday, August 13 at 7:30pm. Tickets are $20.00 and will go on sale to the general public in June.

We are exhorted to go to the Crafts Council of BC website for more information but it seems not to be up-to-date. The link for the Hanji exhibit is broken. And there is no information on the Emily Carr University website either. What is going on? Don’t they want anyone to know about this? Bug them, will ya? If Papyrine gets in, I want somebody to go see it!

Paper Work

I spent the better part of yesterday knitting swatches with my hanji paper yarn. Grrrr… It took several aborted attempts (yes, I was calling them “abortions”) to get the proposed pattern correct. Here’s the final swatch, all blocked and dry:


Kinda weird, eh? It’s an embryo. And here’s the aborted attempts:


I now have new and renewed respect for pattern designers for sure! It’s not easy to get what’s in your mind’s eye to come out in the knitting. Especially when this is to be an “art” piece so it has to have a little something special going for it. Not to mention the fact that it’s being knit with a skinny strip of paper! Ever tried to execute a Make 1 (I tried 3 different kinds), SSP (slip, slip, purl) or a sk2po (slip, k2tog, psso) with something that not only has absolutely no stretch but that will break if you force it just a little bit too far? It’s exciting, I tell you. Takes a lot more concentration than normal. You can’t even jerk the yarn off the cone but must gently unwind more as you go. Delicate, mindful, zen knitting. Zzzzz...

I must have been worth it, because I think I now have the beginnings of what I need to get started on the real piece. It’s going to be a stole, roughly a very long oval shape but with funky ends (one innie and one outie). The edges will be scalloped with lace leaves and there will be further leaves dangling from the ends. Maybe. The centre will be a random bark effect using garter, st st, reverse st st and moss stitches. I still need a name for my creation and I don’t seem to be having much inspiration in that direction. How about “Papyrine”? Or is that too obvious? Sounds pretty.

Meanwhile, I’ve been knitting on Milady’s Gloves for relief from the paper stuff. The Regia Kaffe Fassett yarn is surprising me with how the colours are knitting up. There is less blue and red and more olive and brown and it’s more muted than I first supposed. I got all the way up to the top of the thumb gusset before I even caught sight of the beginning of the repeat. It’s really a very unexpected and original colourway which I suppose one must expect from Colour-Master Kaffe. I love it but I’m not sure about Milady Daughter. She says she likes them but hasn’t actually seen them in person yet. Hope she does because these are too large for me. Though if I’m lucky I might be able to get some fingerless mitts out of the remains.

Never a dull moment around here, eh? Knit knit spin spin type type. That’s my excuse for not doing housework anyhow.

It's All My Fault

That will teach me to mention the S-Word yesterday. You know – that white stuff that falls from the sky? This morning I woke up to what I thought was S-Word but really it was liberally mixed with hail. Little fluffy white balls. That lovely nearly-spring-like photo from yesterday? Today, not so much. Back to winter. Most of it has melted already making me feel not quite so bad for causing it to happen. No more S-Word, right?

Speaking of my big mouth – no, the real one – I’ve been having the runaround lately trying to find out if a white area on my tongue is a bad thing or nothing to worry about. First noticed by my dentist, she took photos and then suggested strongly that I go see my doctor if it didn’t go away. The Holidays happened in the middle so I finally go to the doc (not my fave regular one but a sub since he was unavailable due to a family emergency) and she says the words “leucoplakia” and “could be pre-cancerous”. And then sends me to the specialist, which is where I went today. Dr. Eye-Ear-Nose-Throat is totally old-school, right down to the reflector on his head! Haven’t seen one of those since I was a girl and that was a looooonnnng time ago. (I tried not to laugh.) In about 3 minutes flat he told me that since I don’t smoke (never have), the white spot is not a problem but to keep an eye on it anyway. Slam-bam-thankyoumam. Good to know it’s nothing to worry about but jeepers, I feel a “what was that all about?” head-spinning now. Guess I was a bit more concerned than I thought but I’m still not really satisfied, if you know what I mean. At least it doesn’t hurt or anything. Just looks a little weird when I stick out my tongue. No, I’m not going to show you. Pfffftttthhh!

Meanwhile the hanji paper yarn came all the way from Korea and I knitted up a swatch:


If you remember, this is for the paper stole I’m making to submit for a Hanji Exhibit for which both my local weavers and fibre arts guilds are working with Korean paper artists. Deadline for entry is June 1st so I have time to play still. Since the yarn I received is not the original yarn that I used in my first swatch, I’ve had to rethink the project a bit. The stuff I ended up with is much finer and less like paper raffia. For this second swatch (which is not the actual design but just something I made up) I used 3 different sizes of Addi Lace cable needles: 3.25, 3 & 2.75mm. And then yesterday I dyed it:


I used Procion MX and first soaked the swatch in salt (2ml) and soda ash (.5ml) solution (1/2 cup of warm water) for 15 minutes, squeezed it out and laid it carefully on plastic wrap. The dyes (Maiwa’s proprietary mixes Rust and Moss and some of my precious ProChem Chino) were mixed without really measuring, maybe .5ml or so (dry measuring spoon) to 15ml warm water. Fairly strong concentrations of around 3-4%. I painted it on with sponge brushes and wrapped the piece in the plastic and put it in the sunny window to batch for a couple of hours. Because I presoaked the paper knitting, the dye didn’t wick very far or mix very much. It dried quite a few shades lighter which made me glad I used a strong solution because I wanted a fairly deep colour but not too dark. The paper held up just fine to all the soaking and rinsing, even in very hot water.

Next I’ve been revising my pattern I need to make yet another swatch, this time closer to the real pattern, before I start on the Real Thing. I love how the knitted paper fabric feels – crispy and light, airy and yet more durable than you’d think. This is turning into quite a fun and interesting project. I need to think up a suitable name for it, don’t I? Hanji, like the Japanese kozo, is made from paper mulberry (Broussonetia papyrifera, syn. Morus papyrifera L.) and my design includes leaves and bark. Kind of beginning as a tree and turning it back into something tree-ish again.

Cooking The Books

Or at least one book, my journal. It looks a wee bit different on the outside now because I learned how to do a Coptic headband:


The instructions are in Suzanne Tourtillott’s “Making & Keeping Creative Journals” (Lark, 2002, still in print) and it seems to be the only reference available. This book has some good information on the different Coptic stitches to join book sections together: one needle (the way I did it), two needles and 4 needle versions. The illustrations and written instructions are a little dicey, occasionally a bit vague or confusing, but believe me there aren’t many other better options in print to learn the techniques. Except maybe the more “professional” books by Keith Smith which I don’t have (though I think the public library does). I should borrow a copy sometime.

You might ask why I used Coptic binding anyway. For starters, I love the look of the exposed binding stitches! It’s fairly easy to accomplish without specialized tools and equipment and has a textile-y quality that appeals to me. Plus the pages can be flexed far open without damaging the spine and they will stay open fairly well, even with heavy paper like I used in my journal. Now why did I add a headband on the top and bottom of my finished book? Besides the fact that it looks even more cool, it strengthens the ends and holds them together a bit better. I can’t say I did the world’s best stitching job though so don’t pay any attention to the unevenness. With the dark days we’ve been having and black waxed linen thread, it was really hard to see where my needle had to go next even with my magnifier light on the subject. So it’s not perfect – much like the rest of the book itself.

I’ve also been playing with some of the inside pages. I got a few more art supplies when we went out on Saturday (in the pouring rain wearing full-length rain gear and carrying umbrellas). So I was able to spray workable fixative on my “frottage” experiments, aka rubbings made with soft pencil on surfaces all over my house:


You sometimes can’t even imagine how a texture is going to turn out. The fridge and the wall in my stairway were particularly interesting. Then there’s the experimenting with watercolour paint and covering the wet paint with plastic wrap (left) and salt crystals (right):


These weren’t totally successful (because some of the paint dried too soon) but informative. I also tested out all the colours I have so far of the fluid acrylics:


Notice I left a space or two for future purchases. I tried to create an idea of what the colours look like as a shaded wash. It was harder to do than I thought! The Quinacridone/Nickel Azo Gold (top row, right) is a particularly interesting colour. When it’s thick it looks rusty orange like the Transparent Red Iron Oxide (second row, centre) but when washed down it looks like the Yellow Ochre (top row, centre) but more luminous. Also the Quinacridone Burnt Orange (second row, left) is much more red than you might suspect from its name. Which is why it’s a bit out of sequence. Payne’s Gray (fourth row, right) is more blue than I would have expected. The metallics (bottom row) still have a bit of sparkle even when washed out, but I don’t think you can see it in the photo. That was a fun exercise. How come I want even more jars of this stuff now? At least two more to fill in the gaps on the page, right?

Other art supplies I got included more colours of the PITT brush pens, protective spray for inkjet prints, soft gel medium and absorbent ground. The latter is useful to turn a surface into one that will allow watercolour painting. It was originally designed to help a watercolourist who wanted to paint on gessoed canvas. The watercolours only slide off the acrylic gesso ground but the absorbent ground works more like paper. That’s the theory anyway but I haven’t tried it yet. More playtime coming up.

So what’s the point of all this arty stuff? No point at all! I’m just experimenting with some of my toys. Anyway, while playing with some other toys (those pointy sticks) – I’ve got one finger on each of the gloves done and promptly ran out of enough yarn to do even one more finger. However I did locate some more yarn that I dyed myself that might do ok for the rest of the fingers. There will be more Frankensteining going on! Many joins will ensue. Also I’m up to the heel flaps on my bro-in-law’s socks. They’re coming along just fine so I work on them when I get frustrated with the gloves. Which seems to be happening often or I’d be done with them by now.

Speaking of cooking – well it was in the title, remember? While we were out wading around in the rain we got some local sidestripe shrimp at the Granville Island Market. They went down very well with garlic butter and I saved the cooking broth for today’s seafood soup. Unfortunately I didn’t save any shrimp because they were much too good! Slurp. I’ll have to put some barbequed salmon in the soup instead. And some twice-smoked bacon, also from the Market. I’m going out right now to see if my leeks are still edible since I can finally see where they are in the snow. Doncha wish you were having supper with us tonight?

New-Vember

Yes, it’s about time that I got around to posting again, huh? Weekends are a tough one because often we’re busy doing stuff and this weekend was no exception. Saturday we went shopping. No, really. Actually shopping, as opposed to walking to the magazine shop and then picking up a few groceries on the way home. We took the car even. And drove almost completely across town from one end to the other. Our house is pretty much in the geographic centre too.

For once I had fun buying some new clothes because most of the things I tried on actually fit me. Mark’s Work Wearhouse doesn’t sound like a stylin’ shop but I don’t care. I like simple casual things that last through many washings and wearings. And yes, at least half of the store’s items are meant for the female of the species. I’m somewhat sad to say that most of the garments are made overseas but we don’t have much of a garment industry in Canada so unless I make it myself, it’ll likely have been made elsewhere. But politics aside, the quality is good and the prices are very reasonable especially when most of the things I wanted were on sale. I got two zip-front cotton rib sweaters (black and red), a lovely black “touch of cashmere” hoodie, a waffle-knit Henley-style t-shirt in a natural oatmeal colour, black microfibre long-johns, 2 pairs of black heavy cotton & stretch yoga pants (with a cute little zip pocket in the left pant leg) and a pair of black sweatpants. T-Man even got into the act and got a few t-shirts, a cotton casual long-sleeved shirt for work and a pair of plaid pajama bottoms for lounging. We are doing our little bit to keep the economy moving. OK, I just like buying my own birthday presents!

Yes, yesterday was my birthday and I got a bunch of lovely birthday wishes from family and friends. We were invited out to Milady Daughter and her Lord’s for dinner but first we had to meet them at a weaver’s house to pick up a free loom. The weaver had bought herself a new Louet Spring loom and wanted to find a home for this honking older Swedish-made Glimakra. Really it’s not that big since it’s the same size as my loom, being the model that John Low used for the original Woolhouse countermarch. However, this one came with all the trimmings – if we can only find out how to put them together and make them work. Apparently included in the large pile of lumber and string there is not only an 8-shaft 10-treadle countermarch but the counterbalance conversion, a second warp beam and, most amazingly of all, a drawloom attachment! No idea what kind or whether all the parts are there though. That will take some future research. (Hint: it might possibly fit my loom.) Meanwhile we got the big beast about 2/3 assembled in regular countermarch mode before dinner. Our immediate goal is for her to be able to weave some cloth on it and leave the complications for later. If that’s as far as we get it was still free! The previous owner was not happy with her ability to get a good shed but I’m hoping that my experience with my own loom will be helpful in solving whatever problems she might have had. The Weaver’s loss is Milady’s gain.

Today I babysat the Cutie-Pie Monsters while their parents went to see “Paschendale” at the movie theatre. They are more fun the older they become! This time there was a distinctly better level of cooperation and barely any fighting over the toys. Just about the time I was wearing out, their grandpa got home from work and took over from me for a rousing game of hide-and-seek. I so appreciate the fact that the kids live close enough for us to be a real presence in the grandkids’ lives. But I’m also grateful that I don’t get them more often than once every week or two. Whew!

Before I end, I want to correct my error about the paper yarn. The one I was using to knit the sample swatch is actually a strip about 15mm wide that’s folded in 3 to create a thicker and stronger 4-5mm tape. I didn’t even realize that while I was working with it. Here’s the swatch after washing and blocking:


I think it has some interesting possibilities.

My Journal Begins

I got my book assembled today. Apart from trying to remember how to stitch the signatures together, it went fine. There’s a tutorial here and another one here if you want to see how to do it. As far as I can tell everyone stitches just a little bit differently. The Coptic binding is exposed showing off the interesting stitching and it opens flat. It’s also a little bit loose no matter how hard you try to get an even tension. That really helps when you are adding collage elements inside. To make even more room, I added some spacers cut from some of the paper. These can come in handy to attach items to or punch holes and thread in yarn or whatever.

The journal cost me around $12 for the two pads of 9” x 12” paper. One was 140lb. watercolour paper (on sale!) and the other was a grayscale selection for dry media in a similar weight. I folded the pages in half to make a 6” x 9” book with 8 signatures. I used the pads’ backing boards for the covers (cut to size slightly larger than the paper) and the front pages with printing on them for the inside covers and a pocket in the back. The front and back boards were covered with pieces of my paste paper and glued with PVA glue then weighted down overnight between waxed paper. My thread was black waxed linen and for the first time I tried stitching with a curved needle which was much easier to use than a straight one.


I’m quite happy with the results. Now I need to use it! That’s much harder for me than making the journal itself. I’m always afraid to “mess it up” but I’m determined to get over that “precious” thing and just have fun.

What else? I finally started another pair of socks. I swear that was the longest time for years not having socks on my needles! A whole week. Whew. These ones are for granddaughter Princess Pink and I’m using up the hand-dyed leftovers from the Purple Passion socks that I made in August for my sister-in-law. Since PP’s mom liked the ruffles I made on a past pair of girly-socks, I’m including them and then going into the double lace rib that I used on the Purple Passions. So far, so cute! Not enough knit yet though to show off. And I’ve been too busy to touch my Seaweed Shawl or the Bronze Ribbon Scarf or even to carry on with the weaving on my loom.

Moving Right Along

I’ve been somewhat remiss in my posting of late, but I’m sure you don’t want to hear about all the mundane things in my life. As much as I don’t really want to write them. I’m probably boring enough at times already, eh? Besides I haven’t really accomplished that much, just plodding along and hoping the direction I’m heading in is forward and not back. Guess I shouldn’t be so introspective when the sun is shining so brightly! It’s just that time of year when things are winding up to a big climax and I deliberately leave myself out of much of the kafuffle.

However today I plan to make things a little more festive around here, even if the only ones to see it will be me and T-Man. He already put up our red and blue lights outside and the nifty red/blue shimmering ones that tease my eyes are on the back porch where I can see them from the kitchen. I will put up my Christmas tree — the one my birth mom made. It hangs on the wall in a frame with branches made from glued-on green glass (broken wine bottles!) and junk jewelry decorations. Real lights protrude through holes my brother drilled in the back and the cord hangs down so you can plug it in. It is so amazingly tacky that I love it! Mother made one for each of her kids but we do vary in how much we appreciate the effort. As you might imagine, kitsch is not everyone’s decorating style.

The other thing I did was to put my badass handspun handknitted teddy bear, Black Jack, in his Santa hat and fake beard. Then I put him in the basket on the front door so he can freeze his fuzz off! Heh! Meany, aren’t I? I threw in a few of the wooly pears and some greenery and pyracantha. (Complete with prickles — look out, Black Jack!) I’ll take a photo when I’ve got it just the way I want it. I’m not quite happy with the arrangement yet and it’s too darn cold out there today to hang out fussing around. I have to work on it in stages. I’m not sure I’ll get around to much more fancy stuff but we’ll see.

Yeah, I know my version of holiday decorating isn’t cute or pretty or even particularly traditional. So? I’m in a transitional phase regarding this particular season. I’m trying to ease out of the commercial and religious stuff and get down to the basics of lighting up the darkest days of the year and celebrating the return of the sun. Well, I know it doesn’t actually “return” but you know what I mean.

Changing the subject, my Spectrum Study Group met on Saturday and we had quite a productive day. One of our members took a class at the Maiwa Symposium back in October on making a Miao sewing kit. The Miao indigenous people of China do wonderful elaborate embroidery and they have an ingenious little booklet made from paper and cloth that holds their needles, threads and patterns. Here are some old ones in a couple of photos that she took in class:



The inside has many pockets folded from a special durable mulberry paper. We couldn’t get the same thing (apparently it would have been about $25 a sheet) but settled for a substitute at half the price. The outside is supposed to be the beautiful polished indigo cloth that the Miao use in their clothing. It’s very stiff and feels more like heavy paper than cloth. However, we all plan to use something different for each of our kits. I think I’ll use a piece of Chinese brocade in copper with gold and blue dragons. I already have a suitable kumihimo braid for the tie that matches very well. We only got as far as cutting out the variously-sized pieces of paper from our large sheet and to begin the folding which is similar to origami but also includes gluing. This is her prototype that we were to duplicate:



I may or may not get it finished on my own before the next meeting in January. You’ll be the first to know. Right after me! Oh, I forgot to show you the pot luck dishes many of us brought all wrapped in Japanese furoshiki. Festive, huh? We didn’t actually plan it that way on purpose. The green one is mine.

I got the Pink Froth Socks done this morning. They’re quite cute and I’m sure they’ll fit at least for awhile. I like to put lots of ribbing in kids socks because it stretches more than plain knitting. The socks are currently drying so no pics until tomorrow. Now I can go back to knitting on T’s OYT Socks. I have another pair of men’s socks to make my son The Ninja who’s birthday is in January. I already have the wool but I’m debating on whether or not to overdye the boring grey marl. Probably. I can’t help myself sometimes.