I decided yesterday to experiment with two additions: gauzy ribbon and scrim.
Gauzy ribbon, the subject of today’s post, breaks one of the rules of felting. This is that synthetic fibres will not usually ‘take’ within the felt . But if the ribbon has gauzy holes in its structure then wool fibres can migrate through the holes. This allows the potential to add shiny stripes which ruche up in the process. This piece using Jacobs wool tops, gauzy ribbon and a few silk bits, shows the potential for tartan style effects.
laying out
dry stage
The ribbon took well and surprisingly quickly but loses a touch of its twinkle as the wool migrates through it. Nevertheless I love the dark, textured shine of the resulting fabric. I’d definitely use this method to make cushion covers.
At the moment I am building up a collection of small pieces of felt using different materials and techniques. I want to collect colour sets for patchwork cushions or to frame. I like the idea of putting favourite pieces in a triptych frame like these.
It seems to me that the idea of a triptych is to achieve both linkage and difference; in this case of texture and colour through the three pieces. That could be difficult. Perhaps a challenge to other felters and artists? Can you create a triptych?
The idea would work well to showcase natural fibres.
Just to remind you this is what Wikipedia has to say on the subject of the Triptych. The idea always makes me think of Pre-Raphaelite art.
I’m in a lull. Perhaps working up to some more significant creative activity. Perhaps because there has been a lot of stress. Thank goodness for my friends.
This interim piece is going to need a bit more elbow grease, a backing piece and the edges neatening. I made it to to go with the bowl I made the other week to top a chest of drawers. I think I’ve played with skeleton leaves enough with slightly mixed results. But I love the effect of felting with hand-dyed silkworm silk and Wenslydale locks. The dark Jacobs top is lovely to work colour into. The colours help.
This small piece of felt made with snips from a silk hanky reminds me of those crystallised violets used for cake decoration and those soapy tubes of sweets!
Today I would like to honour the ceramic work of a close friend Nicola Field who has taught me so much about creation and finding meaning in the experience of being a disabled person.
Her current work HOW TO BE STRONG is a mixed media art installation project. The central piece is a collection of ceramic bowls in varying states of fragility and strength, disintegration and wholeness.
Together their struggle to hold together in a state of being becomes a discourse on the experience of disabled people in a Society where they are under constant attack from a series of welfare reforms which threaten the very centre of their existence.
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
Watch them for a while. The bowls evoke our own feelings of fragility, threat, and the struggle for strength in a very profound way. The more I make contact with the piece and touch and hold the bowls the more moving I find it. I personally feel very honoured to have been made my own bowl which with its relative strength and smooth wholeness speaks to me of the gift, and shared strength, of friendship.
An associated work in progress from Nicola is a book which explores the acts of reparation and holding (both symbolically within the art therapy and in an exploration of meaning through the words of a prose poem) which have been required to allow the bowls to hold together and come into being. Thus this becomes a discourse on the self and the processes of splitting and disintegration, reintegration, holding, containment and relative wholeness which can be experienced within a therapeutic exploration of self.
As I have recently started work on a series of felted bowl sets and containers we jokingly said we might look at a joint work with hard and fragile ceramic structures embraced in soft, warm felt to explore the feelings that evokes. For many of us it is necessary to turn to art to find meaning for the harder aspects of experience. In engaging in art or with a craft in a therapeutic way we are trying to make sense of what we find.
Just been having a quiet three-day weekend consisting of
one visitor
Who showed me lots of interesting photos
one exercise class
We always have a good time in our group, even if we can’t walk so well – at the National Institute of Conductive Education Follow my link and learn more about the wonderful work this organisation does with people with neurological disorders like Stroke, Parkinson’s or M S and, most importantly, with children with conditions like cerebral palsy.
one jazz concert
There’s nothing like Jazzlines in Birmingham; the best place for free jazz and a Friday night drink one film A Late Quartet This film is about a fictional string quartet. On the eve of their 25th anniversary season their beloved cellist is diagnosed with Parkinson’s. His planned departure brings out latent tensions in the group which threaten to disrupt the quartets’ future.
Whilst I loved the quiet dignity of the central character in handling his diagnosis, disease and exit and this film is fine for some easy enjoyment, lovers of An Equal Music by Vikram Seth will be a little mystified, and a touch outraged, at how this copycat plot came into being.
But anyway that is not my point. it’s odd how this weekend mixed music and neurological themes. The message of the film expresses the sadness and loss of diagnosis but suggests there is little life beyond. The philosophies and teaching of Conductive Education provide a way on; to live a life. A way to continue to put one foot in front of another, for just as long as possible.
During a week when Margaret Thatcher dominated the scene, I would like to pay tribute to the writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala who also died recently. I read her novels about India avidly as a teenager; Heat and Dust being a favourite. She was the author of many excellent screenplays for Merchant and Ivory including the screenplays for some of Henry James’ best novels and, possibly best known, for E. M. Forster’s Howard’s End and A Room with A View. She bought colour and the exotic into my world.
My father was born in India and lived there as a young child. One piece of his writing I love is his memories of monkeys and parrots playing on his window ledge. It is hard to imagine so much colour and noise in the dormant, reluctant spring we have just experienced. But now at last the world is bursting into life.
What shall we make?
Now that I am not strong enough to make large pieces of felt more than occasionally I like to produce small pieces. I have in my mind’s eye the bright jewelled sari colours of gold, yellow, orange, red, purple and emerald just now. So, I have been looking out for coloured bits to work with.
Here are silk hankies in deep purple and tangerine.
Here are some deep purple hand-dyed wenslydale locks.
Add in some black / brown Jacob wool tops.
I don’t often make containers but this little bowl emerged today.
I like to make pretty, characterful personal spaces. Here is my favourite Ikea chest of drawers with a pretty ivy mirror made and decorated by a friend in decoupage and my own felted runner. The lizard has special significance. Above it sits a print of a favourite picture from an art gallery in Denmark.
Felt provides a simple way of decorating all sorts of surfaces. And it is a good protective fabric too.
A commonly used technique in felting, particularly in nuno, is to felt small amounts of natural fibre material into the felt. The hooks on a natural fibre will allow it to attach to the wool.
Synthetic materials often won’t attach because they don’t have natural hooks in the fibre which give that felting potential. But sometimes this resistant capacity can also be used.
This dressing-table runner was made both by adding in pieces of some materials that would felt and using some that would not as small resists and then removing them later. This gives a shiny moulded-out texture to parts of the piece.
Wool was added at different felting stages to achieve special effects. Some wool fibres rested on the resist pieces without being fully felted in. Instead they felted separately above the resists creating web-like effects on the surface when the pieces are removed.
It isn’t an effect you can control perfectly but then what can you with felt? The delight is in the transformation which occurs in the process.
Over Easter we honoured Richard Griffiths by going to see Withnail and I which I enjoyed but at first find it almost impossible to say anything about. I suppose I am just glad I saw it. Why is it a cult film and what makes it a cult film other than the drug scenes? Is it bravery in addressing homosexuality from a comic perspective and a few late sixties haircuts? I don’t know the answer but the scenes in the country cottage are very funny. Perhaps it is the subversive attitude to conventional society?
The other film I enjoyed over the holiday was a documentary about the French wire walker Phillipe Petit who walked a wire between the twin towers in New York. As he says, he did so for absolutely no reason, except perhaps that he could. When the Police came to fetch him off he annoyed them by dancing out on the wire, all those feet high in the sky where they could not get him. He got rough handled a bit as a result but in the end was forgiven and given a lifetime pass to the twin towers observation tower. People serenaded him for bringing a breath of fresh air to a tired society. He said in the documentary that rebellion was important and I do believe that.
There is very little of rebellion in my creative work. That could be thought about I guess. This is, perhaps, what separates true art, from craft. What I do is about playing: a celebration of colour and texture. It began after a withdrawal from political life, somewhat in disgust at the things which were happening. But to play and only play leaves something out. Especially just now when certain groups in Society need both a voice and a way of challenging the tide.
Just a frivolous quickie in honour of Easter. I love the technique of using the silk from silk hankies to add surface iridescence as in the yellow eggs on these cards.
In one of the early spells of deep mid winter I started to work on a large piece of chiffon silk.
Inspired by ice and snow I started by embellishing one side with white alpaca. Part felted this created ice-like structures across the fabric. But I’ve never worked on something so big before. Just handling the piece, let alone rolling it was a challenge. Once dry, it became apparent that the wool had not migrated properly into the silk chiffon.
And as the spells of winter cold kept returning to bite us, I lost my commitment to complete the piece.
It took an OpenTextiles Studio day at The Midlands Art Centre, large tables and the company of others to give me the stamina to finish it. I needed quite a lot of help to fold and roll it after laying out the back in merino. Numerous times I ended up completely tangled in wet fabric and bubble wrap. It took forever to ‘take’. The group awarded me top marks for effort but not wholly for skill! Thank you Oh Emma for your welcome help.
I think I must be wanting to move out of winter. This piece was supposed to be entirely white.
But here it is backed in peach pink merino with noil silk, bamboo and skeleton leaves. Except the back is now the front. The silk worked with wool creates a lovely warm textured drape. And in some ways I do still like the snowy white of the original side best. The peach merino is silky. The white alpaca soft and down-like. And even now it needs a final felting and, I think, ideally some gold stitching. But I really do now want to wrap up this winter. Perhaps I already have.
Spring oh spring – why the false starts? Early spring in Surrey
Sometimes friends are just the truest, kindest, most surprising and generous.
This weekend I enjoyed myself with very special friends.
Sometimes we love to eat our favourite food.
This weekend I ate Chicken Gjoza, Teriyaki Salmon and Red bean Mochi in my favourite Birmingham restaurant. We have gained so much to love from other cultures!
Sometimes it feels right to share love poetry. This is part of a poem by E E Cummings
i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
i fear
no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you.
Birmingham can be very beautiful. Here are some of the things I love about it.
Music
Canals
The light
In the meantime I am a bit frustrated. The weather isn’t quite getting there. Give me something I can go out in. Call THAT ‘the hottest day of the year’.
And I seem to have been knitting this for a long time.
The dark green finishing band seems to go on and on. This bag is now nicknamed Pineapple Poll (see post below) and she needs to be finished soon, partly for a birthday present and also because I am itching to get onto the next thing and to see her felted and finished.
But I have enjoyed knitting it. I think the patterning does somehow remind me of a pineapple. Odd how that happened as I went along! I hope it isn’t ruined at the felting stage.
Inspired by pots of spring flowers I decided to make a small piece of pictorial felt.
Sometimes when you have some very special materials it is hard to open the packages. I just want to enjoy them as they are. These perfect packages contain some hand-dyed Polworth top and silk hankies from Hedgehog fibres. Aren’t they just so beautiful.
I chose some bits and pieces to work with. Making pictures often requires a pre-felt or two to achieve specific shapes so I started by cutting long leaves from a green pre-felt.
This top was quite sticky to work with. I enjoyed laying out my picture. I used dyed neps for texture and made the flower heads from pieces of silk hanky.
This made a very soft, slightly fuzzy piece of fabric. It took a lot of work to get the neps to behave. They ended up all over the floor.
It needed more background and border space and the pre-felt leaves blurred and widened too much as the piece shrank. This difficulty is one of the reasons my pieces are usually abstract, not pictorial. You need to catch the piece at just the right felting stage before the pre-felts bleed too much into the background to keep the shapes.
Nevertheless I like the impressionistic quality of the result. The fuzziness is part of its charm. I recognise something there!
I think one of the hardest things I am learning about is how to deal with phases of inertia or illness and then to move towards recovery and regain energy. I’ve come to the conclusion this is a universal issue but some of us have more difficulty with inertia or illness countering energy and creativity than others. No-one can be creative, productive or positive the whole time. There’s nothing worse than the false positive for sapping energy. Sometimes we just need to be negative. Or ill. FULL STOP.
I really like the blogging community because in someone’s post I so often find a picture or a description or some enthusiasm for the delights of fibre and its capacities which triggers a sense of the universal and of shared human feeling. Other people’s blogs can help move me on.
And it is by being alert to the upswing that we can gain the capacity to be again well, productive and feel a renewed creative burst. Even after a period of illness.
So thank you fellow bloggers.
Here are some of my favourite blogs just now. Thank you for the pleasure you give me. I hope you don’t mind me referencing you.
Away from my felting materials for two weeks I have started work on a new knit felt bag. After all, I haven’t made one for at least four months!
This project has in fact been in gestation for some good time partly inspired by the costumes in Birmingham Royal Ballet’s Peppermint Poll of 2011 and the idea which emerged, with this delightful ballet in mind, of striping a perfect peppermint green, a perfect cream and a vibrant orange.
With the demise of Pastaza I spent forever searching for a good felting wool in a perfect peppermint green but eventually fell upon a North American yarn Louet Riverstone Chunky in shades of glacier, cream and, kumquat. The strength of this yarn is that it comes in more unusual colour shades.
In the end the kumquat came to the fore. Well how could such a shade be resisted?
As I haven’t felted this yarn before I knitted up a sample. Although well-known for felting, the yarn has a slightly soapy shiny texture which worried me a little. I thought it might not make a true felt.
The sample felted surprisingly tightly but still with some stitch definition in the fabric. My intention had been to create distinct classic stripes of colour but when I look at this it is the pearl or wrong side which interests me. So now I am torn between my classic stripes and a multi-coloured effect. It could have to be two bags. One will be knitted in garter stitch with the orange prevalent and one in just peppermint and cream striped bands of stockinette.
I can’t show you the finished articles just yet but here’s a bit of the ballet. The music is by Gilbert and Sullivan and this is the swashbuckling Captain Belaye of the HMS Hot Cross Bun. I would like to have shown you more of Poll but still!
I have started my exploration of natural fibres by experimenting with the felting properties of Icelandic wool tops. The fibre is courser than merino and the felt produced has a slightly shiny, harder, wavelike texture. I decided to make a small sample of decorative felt to see what works.
I added streaks of bamboo fibre, flecks of flax, small pieces of noil silk and skeleton leaves. All these additions are available from George Weil. This traditional craft warehouse is a wonderful discovery.
FLAX
SKELETON LEAVES
I loved the wiggles produced by the caramel-coloured bamboo fibre and the flashes of wiry brown flax. The skeleton leaves would perhaps have shown up better against a finer background fibre. The noil silk was also caramel-coloured and denser than I expected. It took a while to attach and never produced quite the snake-skin texture which a finer silk can give. Overall, I liked the resulting, quite subtle, creamy, textured fabric but would have liked a touch more distinction between background fibre and the additions. I put it aside for a while unsure what it could be used for.
My next experiment was simply to felt some Devon long wool tops. This beautiful wool is the colour of rich Devon cream and it felts with similar properties to the Icelandic to produce a beautiful rich cream silky fabric with beautifully waved fibres. I stopped at a pre-felt stage.
I was playing around with the resulting piece when I realised they were just made to be combined as a simple decorative pouch.
I just need to combine the two, stitch the sides and add a fastening.
It has taken me a while to emerge since the holiday. Partly paralysed limbs hate cold weather and with the arrival of snow days I am happy to extend my hibernation. Windows into the snow provide happy visual stimulation without the frustration faced by those who must de-ice the car and get to work.
This lull has also been a creative break. Uncertain about what I was doing with my blog, about the exact balance I wanted to strike I hit the pause button. But I am lucky. I have a good friend who we shall call my creative mentor. Whenever we speak I am invigorated by belief in the value of what we both are trying to do. Faced with difficult, trying, painful and life-restricting conditions we try through various media to find ways to express our sincere belief that we have something of value to express.
What is it?
We talked of the rhythm of creation. Of the courage sometimes needed in imposed isolation to get up and start the day, operating entirely to your own rhythm because of the restrictions faced. Of finding the self-belief and discipline each day to get out your paper or paints or fibres or clay and work with your hands, perhaps through pain or discomfort, to start a day’s work. We talked of the strength sometimes found when a texture or a phrase or a way of seeing brings meaning and pleasure to the day. We talked of our belief that there were other people out there who are interested in communication about this experience and our belief in its value and the value in sharing.
And what I would wish for 2013 is that we should find ourselves in an era which is better able to hear such alternative voices of meaning.
And I shall leave you with my thoughts of a simple piece of textured felt, inspired by a snow fox and made by binding beautiful layers of white and grey.
PHOTO COURTESY HELEN MAYNARD
Somehow the making of the felt for this piece gave me more deep pleasure than all the coloured items. I am taking it into the new year with the plan to work for a while in the beautiful natural fibres of Icelandic and Alpaca sheep breeds. Where can I go with these perfect soft-strong fibres which share the snow’s timeless shades of brown-black, white and grey?
If you are one of those people who has problems with Christmas sentiment in the face of real World problems and who develops internal beasts as the lights go on and the trees go up, then look no further but go and see a wonderful film called Beasts of the Southern Wild about a little girl who grows through experience of her fathers’ illness and faces the real (or archetypal beasts) of her recently flooded world. It is a beautiful film.
I personally like the decorative side of Christmas and this year need it as an antidote to some of the problems of the world. These felted flowers look both a bit Swedish and a bit oriental to me.
And whilst I was on a Swedish theme I decided to make this little Santa sac to send to a certain daughter in Taiwan only for her to decide to come home and so my handiwork is lost. But I like my pattern.
Today I went to my first Christmas concert by The Midlands Hospital Choir and a brave little girl being treated for cancer went up on the stage in her super hi-tec wheelchair while her Mum talked about her treatment. That is quite a lesson. If she can do it then surely I? Good to think about others, and not just, but perhaps particularly at this time of year. The internal beasts get better. I hope she does too.
It has come to that felt-making is, for me, a transformative art. By that I meant that through the making of felt I am involved in a combined process. At one and the same time I am involved in a working with a material which by physical effort and some skill transforms into something else but at the same time I am through my contact with the materials (the wools and silks) and the labour of fulling the felt engaged in something which gives meaning and which is capable of stimulating transformation within the self.
And if that all sounds like mumbo jumbo to you. Let’s just say I needed something to heal and to help with my loss of work and felting has allowed that to happen. It provides a path through.
I always believed in work. The simple labour of the ordinary man or woman engaged in the ordinary labour of work. When I am rolling felt I am working the muscles of my upper body to achieve something. At first the results are limited but skill can grow. I have purpose.
From the activity of rolling felt, in addition to self-propelling my wheelchair and managing to swim I have upper arm muscles I never had before even whilst I am losing my legs. Odd that!
I blathered on about this to the other half for a bit and far from laughing at me he got all serious and started talking about Joseph Beuys whose art work ‘a brown felt suit’ hangs in the Tate. The Tate reminds us that the properties of the material i.e. it’s warmth and insulating properties are integral to the meaning of the piece and that for him it was a spiritual warmth or the beginning of an evolution.
Well, I will go with that but personally I prefer my felt flowers.
I’ve just spent the weekend In Glasgow visiting a certain young student daughter.
It has to be said I have never felt more conscious of my disability than on the hills and pavements of this otherwise very beautiful city! My husband, strengthened by a breakfast bagel and coffee, nobly pushed me in my wheelchair up the immensely steep incline which is the street from Sauchiehall Street up to the Mackintosh Glasgow School of Art building and I feared for both our lives. But we made it and the tour of this interesting and beautiful building made it all worth while. We also spent several happy hours in the University’s Hunterian gallery which has the most beautiful collection of Scottish art. I fell in love with an unfinished painting by Whistler Harmony in Brown: The Felt Hat as well as the work of The Glasgow Boys and The Scottish Colourists. How much there always is to learn. I wish I could join the textiles students and learn techniques with them.
At the moment I am still exploring the potential of silk hankies. I have discovered a much more satisfactory way of using them as part of a silk on silk pre-felt. This is a piece of silk voile fabric with a very fine layer of wool top fibre felted to the back. The front is skimmed with just enough wool top to hold the fibre from the hand-dyed silk hanky. This is the method I plan to take further.
Meanwhile, I was asked to combine the inspirations of Where the Wild Things Are and a beautiful photograph of a snow fox and make an animal hood for Halloweeen. The challenge was to make a student daughter something which would suggest costume and yet allow her to look alluringly cute at the same time.
This was my first attempt at a hat shape using the resist technique in felting. I always wanted to be a hat maker so, it was about time. On the first attempt I did not allow nearly enough for felt shrinkage so in the end we had to take scissors to the job and improvise. In the end it shrank so much we had to pin it on her head.
However the felt made from layers of white on grey and then skimmed with a few coarser grey fibres did make a beautiful soft textured felt reminiscent of the fox fur on season’s turn. Once again, now I know what I should do next time. The thicker the felt the further it shrinks.
I’ll leave you with a glimpse of the colours in my silk pre-felt. I feel the same about this as I do about Glasgow artists like J.D. Fergusson: that there is so much colour and in that there is something that is delightfully escapist.
As well as my own crafts I have a weakness for other people’s. On the Sunday just gone we went to an open day at The Royal Birmingham Society of Artists and visited the Craft Gallery as well as the open exhibition. I fell for this pretty little metal brooch. My husband bought a portrait from the Birmingham Heartland of Culture exhibition so no guilt for me.
I’m still busy with textile activity. I am hoping to create a really special piece of felt for a special person and at the moment I am experimenting before putting in the elbow grease required for a larger piece.
One of my favourite techniques is felting small pieces of silk fabric into wool tops. Like wool, natural silk fibre has a hooking capacity in the fibres and so can be added to decorative felt to create additional colour and texture.
Now the other day I came across ‘silk hankies’ on a yarn website which specialises in hand-dyed yarns and silkworm products.
No, not to blow your nose on!
These are fine tissue like layers of hand-dyed silk fabric made from the silk from home kept silk worms. The silk is taken directly from a cocoon and spread across a frame and dyed in exciting colour mixes. They can be incorporated in a piece of knitting or used in decorative felt. I’ve never used them before so today I am going to learn a bit about them.
Here is my beautiful stack of hankies! Thank you Hedgehogfibres. They were a complete extravagance. You can see that they look beautiful but not how wonderful this stuff feels. It is like tissue and disappears into nothing. So will this work?
First I tried some knitting. To make this into fibre you pull off a layer and create a thumb hole through the middle. Gradually, you stretch the fibre out into a loop, longer and longer until either it breaks or you cut it. It is amazingly strong when stretched.
I liked my piece of knitting. You could make a little luxury bag out of this easily but I want to try using the hankies in felt.
Within felt, what you can do is to bunch a tissue layer, by holding it up from the middle and then inverting it like a flower. The colours intensify when bought together.
I threw everything into my sampler including some bits of silk I wanted to test to see if they would ‘take’ in the felt. Some failed being either too dense, or synthetic, so I pulled them out later. I used stripes of the silk fibre, silk ‘flower’ bunches and the knitting sample.
The silk surprised me because when wet it behaved more like silk fabric than fibre. It was quite hard to control and tended to slip over the edges as I felted. The effect is quite pleasing; much like a Japanese painting but the flower effect is not as specific as I expected. The knitting just isn’t as beautiful felted. It went a bit sludgy in the wet stage and looks a bit like armadillo skin.
So now I know. And I know just what I want to try next.
On a trip into my local town I found a (new to me) craft shop full of small pieces; buttons, ribbons, embroidery threads, beads and so on. It was a veritable treasure trove. I stocked up on a few bits and bobs in preparation for a day put aside for making Christmas cards. I was also delighted to find a few pre-felted items including these leaves and flowers. I couldn’t resist making a few test cards to try them out and to celebrate autumn..
Out came the wool tops.
Then the bubble wrap and my bar of olive oil soap.
With these I hardly felted them, but rather worked the wool top a bit with my fingers!
The pre-felts were a bit stubborn about sticking so I used a roller just a little.
I used their natural shapes, just trimming off any fluff after they had dried.
Whilst working on a decorative felt section for this website I have also been stocking up with yarn and knitting patterns for the autumn. Greedily, I have collected so many patterns for potential projects that I couldn’t decide where to start. I have recently fallen in love with the knitting designer Kate Davies and had a good look at attempting something of hers but some of her stuff is hard for someone like me with m s affected hands. She must have fantastic eyesight as she seems to achieve a gauge which is tiny, tiny. I am going to have to persuade someone else to do something significant of hers, for me, while I tackle some of the less daunting projects.
I am also considering making Alana Dakos and Hannah Fettig’s Wildflower Cardigan from their fabulous book Coastal Knits. This is also available on Ravelry. I intended to order some Madelintosh Pashmina for this but got distracted by some hand-dyed, corn-coloured blue-faced Leicester. Will it be suitable?
So undecided, I went back to my now dwindling supply of Cascade Pastaza. I had three beautiful skeins left in the darkest green, birch green and yellow which perfectly reflect both my mood as well the colours of the world, just now. I knocked up this mini bag in just two days, for a present.
This is based on one of the designs from the Noni Cross Over Bags pattern which is a good essential pattern for bag-making offering several adaptable designs, perfect for presents. I added the button closing with some i cord because I never can face sewing in zips and I love buttons. I’m adding a Tips section to this site shortly showing how to make the closing.
When my dwindling Pastaza supply is finally used up I have some Filzi in a beautiful red wine colour. This is a new yarn for me which I hope might become an alternative for these projects. This is a good strong merlot but I am not ready for it just yet. I realise how much we are influenced by the light and the colours of the changing season. I am still reluctant to let go of yellows and greens. I am renewing my autumn love affair with amber, gold and bronze but as yet red wine is a step too far. So, I’ve put aside my Filzi for winter slippers.
I am also knitting the Jared Flood Wayfarer scarf in some apple green Pastaza. This pattern is a delight. The garter stitch rolls off the needles and I really like the geometrically patterned result with great stitch definition. The only problem is my tendency to go into reverie and purl stitches which should be slipped. This too, would make a perfect present, perhaps with a matching pair of fingerless gloves. In honesty, I think the heathered birch yarn of the pattern recommendation is perfect for this, and also for autumn. This really deserves a yarn which is just a touch crisper and less fluffy than Pastaza. This looks well but I am impatient to get it done and get onto two other projects. I’ve got a good way to go yet!
I often have two or three projects on the go in the autumn; One easy, one long-term and one in planning. My second just now is also an easy project. I bought this amazingly rich nutmeg, bronze and green singles yarn from Hedgehog fibres specifically to make a Stephen West cowl to go with my favourite tweed autumn jacket. This yarn is so beautiful I eat the wool with my eyes. This is where my heart is just now.
But this is inside stuff. Now it is time to water the pots on my balcony.
Later I find myself thinking about how all the consumption of colour, wool and projects reflects my relationship to life. I discovered the textile and visual artist in me only over the last five years whilst fighting some progression in my m s. I feel an urgent need to consume all the colours of the world.
Another thing which distracts me is film. I knew there was a reason why we headed for the city this weekend. Keira Knightley in Anna Karenina is showing!
I am a reluctant fan of hers. In fact, I am not sure you would call me a fan at all I am so reluctant to admit she is good. But she has a habit of turning up in the films I want to see. It began with Atonement. Just then Mckewan was my favourite author, Atonement my favourite book, and yes, I admit she was stunning in the fountain and library scenes. Then, there she was again, irritatingly, in The Edge of Love about the loves of the poet Dylan Thomas but I was less convinced. The Duchess was a great film but, for me, the most memorable performance in it was Ralph Fiennes as the intolerable husband. Keira seemed to me then to be about blockbusters. Perhaps, I thought, she would soon stop invading the literary dramas or turning what should be art films into blockbusters?
But no, it is not to be.
It is her Sabina Spielrein in A Dangerous Method to which I finally succumbed. Arguably she overplayed the hysteria and the accent. Aspects though quite possibly true to the actuality, were certainly played out to sell the film. But there was something about her performance as this angst ridden patient, mistress of Carl Jung’s and later psychoanalyst which made both the character’s pathology and her strength able to co-exist. The scenes of Zurich and Vienna in this film have led me to yearn to visit those cities but her acting was the true centre. And now, I finally admit it. I WANT to see YOU Keira Knightley as the great Russian heroine Anna Karenina. So don’t let me down.
And of course, she didn’t. Tom Stoppard you are a genius. This film is spellbinding. But I won’t spoil it. The other one I will be watching out for is a film starring Penelope Cruz called Twice Born which has been described as a homage to all motherhood. And, in motherhood, there is certainly creativity!
It is my favourite time of year; still warm enough to breakfast outside but the air is cooler now. The morning sun falls onto late flowers and catches twinkling dewdrops and shimmering spiderwebs. The light forms interesting shadows. Friends have been sharing their photos of kids smart and stoical in school uniform for the first time; looking forward to getting on with it. It is the season of new text books, notebooks or indeed just lovely, lovely books! My children are older so with one abroad studying, there is only one to help pack up for the University term. Nostalgia!
ARTSFEST
The beginning of September in my home Midlands City of Birmingham brings us to Artsfest. This is as much a family festival as an arts festival with lots going on around Birmingham’s community arts venues. I feel anticipation as the big stage goes up in Centenary Square in front of the Rep theatre, Symphony Hall and the new Library building. To digress, the latter, which is just being finished, looks a bit like a cross between a wedding present and wedding cake with its metal lace wrapping. Every time we go by my husband says ‘isn’t it wonderful?’ but I am not absolutely convinced it fits the category of iconic architecture. It does, somehow, suit Birmingham though.
Anyway, back to Artsfest. Birmingham’s weekend festival isn’t so much fringe as eclectic and above all, multi-cultural; every arts provider, little or major, may feature on the weekend programme. On this stage you may see a full- scale symphony orchestra, a steel band, hip – hop, classical ballet, jazz, an Asian theatre troupe and many more. For me, there is nothing like seeing Birmingham’s wonderful Royal Ballet performing out there on an open stage for the Saturday evening assembled crowd while people mingle and munch on goat curry, sushi or balti.
The RSC AND FORESTS
We went instead to FORESTS At Birmingham’s Old Repertory Theatre produced by the Rep in association with Teatre Internacionale de Barcelona and directed by Calixto Bieito. We have been avid followers of the Shakespeare World Festival, seeing Roses for Richard, Romeo and Juliet in Baghdad and Troilus and Cressida. For me this was the most memorable production. Based on Shakespearean verse from As You Like It, Macbeth and King Lear spoken beautifully and with great power in both Catalan and English the actors took us on a powerful and challenging journey in the Forest from childhood through to to old age, Purgatory and Hell. It had the feel of an epic journey or poem, like Nordic verse,and engaged powerful archetypal emotions. The acting was entrancing. A tree mound was shredded and chucked about the stage. We were made witness to the vulnerability of shocking rape and murder and much of the time were not sure quite what we were witnessing but the power of Shakespeare’s best speeches gave the strength to carry us from the lightest moments of childhood through to the darkest aspects of death and decay. When the strongest scenes were finally lightened with red balloons it was a relief. They had been only players after all.
