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!

Colour My World

Well, yesterday was definitely a good day to dye! And it took me nearly all day too. First up we have the On Your Toes bamboo/nylon sock yarn (that will not be socks!):

And I got the deep warm red that I wanted with Procion MX fibre reactive dyes. I used quite a deep percentage – 3.5% of the 200g WOF: 3g of some old Scarlet, 2g of Carmine (a colour I can’t get locally anymore but it’s a fairly true red), 1g of new Scarlet (a different dye from the old one), .5g Black and .5g Gold Yellow = 7g total. It might have been overkill but I was determined to get a rich colour. The nylon seems to have taken the dye at least somewhat and the yarn held up very well to all the stirring and rinsing/simmering/rinsing. This is going to be my Ishbel scarf & tam.

Next I dyed the Papyrine wrap. I pre-soaked it in 2 litres of water with 2 tbsp of soda ash for half an hour (while I got the bamboo yarn going). Then I covered my long work table with plastic wrap and spread out the wrap. It just fit with the leaves and roots hanging off the edge! I mixed up the dyes without measuring very carefully, each about 1/2 tsp in 1/2 cup of water. I used Chino (from ProChem) and Rust, Brown and Moss (proprietary mixes from Maiwa). I painted the dye on with sponge brushes and then wrapped it up using more plastic wrap, popped it in a bucket in case of drips and put it under the grow lights for heat. I left it for a couple of hours and then rinsed, cold water first and then warmer. It didn’t take too many changes of water to run clear.

I blocked it with my new blocking wires on the rubber mats. That worked quite well though I had to be careful not to tear the paper when threading the wire through the tips of the leaves. After I got it all pinned out to my satisfaction I noticed:

Yes, that is indeed a hole! Right in the middle. Sigh. I plan to fix it with some dyed paper yarn cannibalised from my earlier swatch (luckily I used the same dyes!) and a little glue to prevent it from coming apart again. I also had a couple of ends that escaped to be rethreaded back in. Otherwise I’m pretty happy with it.

I haven’t yet rescued it from its blocking wires so you’ll have to forgive the crappy photos, with (gasp!) flash. I can’t get the whole thing stretched out in one shot. The detail is the more accurate colour BTW.

So then I had a bunch of dye leftovers and I don’t like to waste it. I didn’t have anything else of a cellulose nature to be dyed so I quickly wound 5 balls of white Smart superwash DK into skeins and used the Procion like an acid dye. Mixing all the leftovers together I got the colour of brown hair (not too exciting) so I added some red dyestock I had (more leftovers) and got a rich red-brown:

This yarn will become a sweater for Stargazer for his 2.5 birthday in June. Yes, he still has half-birthdays because of his real birthday’s proximity to Christmas and New Years. So far he’s not old enough to discover this ruse. We’ll see how long it lasts, won’t we?

All in all I dyed nearly a pound of fibre and pretty much got the colours I was after. Then I went outside and dug in the front garden some more.

Damselfy’s Delights Is Four!

Yup – it’s been four years since I created my blog on Blogspot and (with a lot of trepidation) started to post my craft projects, book and magazine reviews, gardening exploits, musings, and general babblings. I never thought I would keep it up for more than a couple of months, never mind Four Whole Years! I’m pretty impressed with me. I know I don’t post every day since real life does sometimes intervene. But I do my best to get on here at least a couple of times a week. And I also know that some posts are more informative than others but, hey, who can be that exciting so often. Except maybe the Yarn Harlot. But she’s special.

Speaking of whom, you know that weaving has hit the mainstream when the Yarn Harlot gets a loom and weaves her first scarf! Can’t be long before gazillions more follow her lead if they haven’t done so already. Yes, little rigid heddle looms are real weaving looms! And a lot of knitters are discovering how much faster the stash gets used up with weaving. Amazing how many crafts are accomplished using yarn, huh? Must be a “gateway drug” or something…

Moving right along, I put the pedal to the metal yesterday and finished knitting the main body of the Papyrine Wrap. OK – it was more like paper to the metal…needles. I was sooooo happy to bind that sucker off, let me tell you! There is probably already about 50 hours work in this thing.

That’s all one continuous 4mm strip of paper, folks! Now I’m knitting several separate leaves to attach at the “top” of the “tree” and some I-cord “roots” for the bottom. Yeah, I know. Just bear with me here. After I attach those bits then I get to dyepaint the whole thing with Procion MX. There may be some actual paint involved also. We’ll see. This is going to be Art. I hope. At least it’s actually wearable even if ever-so-slightly impractical.

In other news, I went to my audiologist today to take my hearing aids in. The right ear has been a bit quieter than it should be for a couple of weeks. I cleaned it and changed out the rubber ear tip and the little tube that works as an earwax guard but it was still not loud enough. Then when I went to see my GP (for something else) I got him to check for earwax but nope, clean and clear there. This morning before I left, I opened the little hatch where the battery goes and blew inside gently and I think I got out whatever it was. But I still went to get them checked by the professionals who pronounced them just fine. Sheesh! I should have done that ages ago and saved myself an hour and half walking there and back, but for some reason I didn’t think blowing into where the computer chip is located would be a good idea. Silly me! At least it didn’t cost me anything but some exercise. Note that my hearing aids originally cost as much as five computers like the little Acer netbook that I’m typing this on! Anybody think that there’s something odd about that?

Big congratulations to my friend and neighbour Suzanne for being the first to comment on my blogiversary! Too bad she had to do it on yesterday’s post because it took me so dang long to get this one up! Anyone else out there?

Off to prepare my “finger food” to take to the Jane Kenyon lecture this evening. I usually tend to go for savoury over sweet.

Here I Am

It’s been awhile, I know. Spring finally gave us some warm sunny days here so we had to get out in the garden. You never know when it will get cold and rainy again. Like, say, tomorrow or the next day. T-Man took yesterday off work and has been working on replacing the fence and I’ve been digging and planting. I’ve planted my little fingerling potatoes (they sprouted in the kitchen drawer so they were good candidates) and transplanted my rapini (two kinds: Italian and Chinese – the latter is milder in flavour). I’ve got even more little seedlings in the greenhouse now. See?

The tomatoes have already grown twice the size since I transplanted them into pots. There’s broccoli, lettuce, lobelia and purple alyssum and also marigolds and coreopsis for both decoration and dye. (At least that’s what I’m trying to convince T-Man who doesn’t like it when I pick the flowers!) I tried to save the seeds of the totally mahogany-coloured coreopsis I got last year to see if I can produce more of them. They were really pretty! We’ll see if they breed true or if they continue to be variable, which is much more likely the case.

I really believe more people should try growing things. It teaches you so much! Patience (waiting for the right time to plant and for things to grow), observation (watching the weather, the soil, nutrients, insects, growth habits, the light etc.), enjoyment (nothing like the taste of a veggie before it realises that it’s been picked and eaten!) and exercise (preferably without hurting yourself). Nurturing living things makes you realise that there is something outside of yourself that needs your care and attention. Yes, sometimes growing a garden is frustrating, when the weather isn’t cooperating or bugs eat your tender seedlings or whatever. But that is usually overwhelmed by the feeling of satisfaction when things do well under your care. The yummy eating and pretty dye colours are a bonus!

I was thinking about how I learned to garden. It was my dad who had a fondness for flowers: roses and dahlias and sweet peas and gladiolus. I remember him begging old nylon stockings from my mom to cut up for soft plant ties and using pieces of the TV antenna that got blown off the roof by Hurricane Frieda for uprights to hold his sweet pea nets. He would offer me a whole 10 cents (big money!) to weed a patch of his garden for him – and then tell me not to spend it all in one place. I loved to watch for worms when he dug in the compost and our compost box today looks pretty much like his did in the 1950’s. Thanks, Dad, for teaching me that dirt under my fingernails is a good thing.

T-Man also learned about gardening from his parents. His mom is in her 80’s and still gets out in her garden almost daily. When his dad was alive they had a similar arrangement to ours: He does the “big” stuff (heavy pruning, mowing, digging) and She does the “little” stuff (planting, weeding, deadheading, harvesting). Of course there’s some overlap but T is much stronger than I am and I like fiddly stuff like planting tiny seeds and pulling little weeds better than he does. Our kids are getting more into gardening too, now that they all have some dirt of their own to play with. One of the reasons I plant so many seedlings is to have extras for them.

“A weed is a plant that has mastered every survival skill - except for learning how to grow in rows.”
    -  Doug Larson

On the knitting front, I’m slowly plugging away at the Papyrine Wrap:

Notice I changed its name again. I didn’t really like “stole” and “shawl” has been done to death so I decided “wrap” was better. After all, you wrap things in paper, right? This wrapping paper is for shoulders. I’m currently running behind on my One Repeat Per Day promise though. I’ll need to do several repeats for a couple of days to catch up.

Sadly I had to frog over an inch of one of my Monkey socks due to a mistake that I couldn’t otherwise fix. Darn. I wish I had noticed the problem sooner but that’s what I get for knitting on the bus, in semi-darkened rooms and while reading. But it’s supposed to be my “relaxing” knitting for when I get tired of the paper piece. I have the Monkey pattern memorised now but obviously I still need to actually look at it once in awhile. What’s up with that, huh?

So the grandkids may be coming over later today, but I won’t be babysitting. Just visiting. Apparently Stargazer has to go get his foot x-rayed this morning to see if he has a cracked or broken bone. He was playing at a park with bigger kids yesterday (including his sister) and ended up being the bottom of a heap at the end of the slide. His dad took him to Emergency but it was busy (of course) and the triage nurse didn’t think anything was really wrong. Unfortunately the little guy had a bad night and can’t put weight on the foot this morning. He’s only two and can’t really explain exactly what’s hurting. Hopefully it’s not too serious.

New Beginning

In the last couple of days I managed to get a couple of repeats done on the Papyrine Stole project. As I’ve mentioned before the paper yarn is not easy or fast to knit with but it’s kind of a fun challenge. I spent quite a bit of time trying out different stitch markers. I didn’t want anything too fancy or heavy or with dangly bits to catch on the paper. On the top right are the rubber o-rings which were too thick and stuck to the needles too much. On the left are the tiny hair elastics that were thin enough but also stuck just enough so they were hard to move from needle tip to needle tip. (They seem to work better on wood or bamboo needles.) On the Addi lace needles are the ones I ended up using: split rings, 3 dark-coloured and one silver to mark the beginning of the right side.

I also drew the stitch marker locations on the chart and it’s now much easier to follow. The centre section is mostly stockinette separated from the edging of leaves by garter bands. The centre is textured with random patches of reverse stockinette, garter and moss stitch to simulate bark. I plan to increase the width until it is wide enough and then work straight for awhile and finally decrease again toward the end. Like most knitting, even paper doesn’t look that great until it’s blocked! That will happen in the dye-painting process at the end. Stay with me here!

I’m also working on another pair of Monkey Socks (called Monkey See Monkey Too Socks) in Confetti Seta which has some silk in with the wool and nylon content. They’re coming out fine and I’m most of the way down the leg on one and partway on the other. I made the mistake of leaving out a row of st st in one sock so I repeated it in the other so they would match better. Now I’m more careful to count the 3 rows to make sure I’ve got them all before starting the first row with the purls (row 2). Sorry, Cookie A, but I would have put all 3 plain rows together on the chart for ease of following. Even if that meant starting the sock with 3 plain rows after the top rib instead of one. Apparently my brain keeps wanting to begin the repeat on row 2, the first one where something different is happening.

What else? Still schlepping the little plants in and out. It’s been too cold most nights to leave them in the greenhouse yet. It’s getting old really fast but in a couple of days there will be more transplants to start hardening off the same way. That will add considerably to the back-and-forthing if I can’t leave some out so it had better warm up a bit more. Now. At least no frost would be good.