saturday slave labor. i insisted that i get these done before i headed outside into the sunshine and newly budding trees.
these will be attached to each of the thesis knits with the story of the knit and yarn written inside. more slave labor to come this coming week! i’m off for a walk… to a thrift store of course. have a great weekend.
yipee! i finally put the button on the bonnet and decided not the tack down the ears on the square hat because the fabric is a bit thick. there are other shots of these (some on heads) over in my thesis group on flickr… they just wouldn’t have shown up well in the mosaic because of the cropping.
the show has now been moved back to the gallery! appearantly the gallery is never being constructed on, but there were some crossed wires… and you know. i went in this week and talked about space with the higher ups and it should work brilliantly. yeehaw! the only issue is that the main staircase is being constructed on and thus is blocked off, so we have to use a back staircase. if you decide to come to the show, just follow the hoards (since there are three of us, i’m sure there will be hoards!). hopefully i’ll have the invites in hand next week to post and be all official about it.
yesterday i volunteered at the MCC thrift store in my neighborhood. in general, i do this once a week. this week was a good one for finding interesting gems amongst the 1980′s dresses, so i thought i’d share. i found this lovely pin, these buttons (the button woman was there), and this huge ball of heathered green wool (which made me very very happy)… not to mention a couple of dresses- one i think from the 60s and one from the 70s. i love the fun, interesting, affordable stuff i find at thrift stores… and all of my money to a good cause. you can’t beat that.
i spent several hours this morning writing the book (after knitting for it for several days). it’s starting to feel more real and scary and exciting as i write words that will try to communicate to all of you knitters out there.
overall, i don’t think that i have too much work to do (thesis, book, paper, presentation, etc) but rather that they are all big things that need to come together in the end. my current life looks like this: get up, decide what to work on today and do it. as a person who firmly believes that i am like a small child who needs a schedule, this is a very strange way to live. two big things though – i’m enjoying myself and i’m getting stuff done. maybe i’m a bit less like a small child than i thought… or a bit less like a small child than i was 3 years ago when we moved here.
there has been a wee bit of spinning happening here also. a failure on my part to play with the plying of different colorways, but i adore it just the way it is. a side note to the title, i didn’t really like popcorn and rarely ate it before i met ben. then i slowly transitioned from saying no, to eating a little, to now eating it nearly every time he makes it.
it’s funny how change sneaks up on you. i don’t even think i noticed the popcorn change. the other change, it seems to me is what all artists have to fight for. i’ve been fighting towards it for a while – learning slowly that art (maybe creativity?) is my good work. with the thesis, the book, and the shop, i’ve learned that it is not only good work, but work that i might actually have time for and be able to survive doing. novel thought, that one!
p.s. these pics of color texture and yarn (including the photo above) were taken to be used in the ad for my show. i’m interested to see which one they use because i told them i had no preference, whichever works best. my section is a long thing rectangle. which would you choose?
p.p.s. ha! this just in – looks like i’ll have to make myself even more of a schedule over the next 2 weeks. it’s not that easter isn’t a busy time for my organist husband, but he just picked up a couple of more gigs! for the next four days i won’t see him but for an hour or two a day… at least i already have a date on friday with my friend amanda.
we went snowshoeing today with some friends on mount seymour… it was lovely and you can see several other silly pictures on flickr.
if you know nothing about vancouver, it is coastal, but has huge mountains to the north. it has been spring down below since february, but drive an hour and you’re in a completely different world. on another side note, it always surprises me how these mountains are so different than the rockies that i grew up in.
we even had sun for a bit!
i taught someone on the bus, verbally, how to knit a basic hat today. then we ended up talking about the holy spirit and giftings (long conversation). i did not tell her that i think my gifting is fiber art. i think that she was probably a very different kind of christian than i am and thus has a different idea of the gifts of the holy spirit. i have no problem with that and am always interested in meeting new people with different visions. to some extent, what i’ve learned at regent is to appreciate the differences within the body of christ.
a while back, i taught an east indian woman in a headscarf how to purl on the bus.
knitting breaks down barriers of all sorts and i always find this fascinating. finding common ground could be as easy as sharing my knowledge. in the end, we all have basic rounded heads and need for warmth and care.
my favorite bus conversation happened while i was sitting in the back of the bus. a couple of guys in their late teens, early twenties sat down near me and started talking about stupid things (girls, alcohol etc). at one point, one of them looked over at me and said “what are you making.” i said that i was making a hat. he said that his mom knit and crocheted (with some help from me to figure out the terms) and made mostly blankets. i asked if he had one. he said, “yah.”
then there was the construction worker crocheting something for his baby.
and the ex-taxi driver who’s mother stopped making him sweaters because he kept getting into taxi fights and ruining them. apparently she made them in some sort of colorwork… now she has grandchildren she knits for. he recommended i stop because everyone would want things from me otherwise and i’d always be knitting.
i did not say, “no, really, i can live with always knitting.” i just smiled and nodded.
i am officially declaring the mitt portion of this journey done. i may still make another masculine scrap-happy pair of full mittens, but only if i have time and really think it needs it in the end.
what have i learned from this journey? peasant thumb (LOVE), traditional shaping (pointed), i should up my needle size when doing colorwork on small needles with worsted weight wool, i don’t hate all fingerless mitts without gussets, there are several ways to do a gusset, i am still deeply in love with colorwork, i prefer k1p1 ribbing on my mitt cuffs and lastly, working with my own hand dyed wool is like a drug (i’m surprised by how much of this is my own dyed wool).
you can click over to flickr if you want more info on the projects (although it may send you back to the blog, i noticed my mitten link only brought up a couple of these!). better yet, click on the thesis category. that will encompass them all.
well, it was sunny in vancouver yesterday and it’s sunny again today. if there’s anything i’ve learned from the weather here, it’s that you get out while you can because in five minutes it could be raining. on the schedule for today is going to school for a required meeting for all of us leaving (yay! i’m almost done!) and i think i’ll get off of the bus early and walk home up the bike route (beautiful! what is called a green street with lots of lovely plants) and through the huge cemetery (10 blocks long! not to mention across…) in the sunshine. the rest of the list, it’s monday so i’m not pushing my luck. i’m back into book knits designing again and a whole new method of organization solidified in my head a couple of days ago. so – a list would be the agenda. a list of things to get done in the larger picture. and maybe some yoga. i can now add this to the list and cross it off. gotta love that.
hope you have a good monday!
according to one of the customers at the thrift store this morning, we’ve had rain for 21 days this month!?! can anyone beat that? you can see the lovely out-of-doors in this picture.
i spun a lot on friday and as promised, i am playing with the recently dyed stuff. but i must admit, it took all i had not to ply all of these back on themselves. pictured for you here, we have (from left to right)
52 yards, this roving plied back on itself
72 yards, the roving above plus this roving
68 yards, the roving above plus this lovely batt
50 yards the lovely batt above, plied back on itself
52 yards, the batt above plus this one
56 yards, the roving above plied back on itself
what should i do with them?!? any ideas for projects? i’m itching to knit with them and besides, the experiment is not complete without something knit…
you can click on the picture to go over to flickr and then click on the links below it to take you to the person’s photo stream if you’re interested. every friday i post a little mosaic of things that have caught my eye. i’m not sure if i’ll always upload them to the blog, but just so that you know that they are there.
good news on the neck and back front… i think it’s the way i sleep. fetal, twisted, and hunkered from living in cold cold houses while at university. last night i started rectifying that. we’ll see how it goes.
as to the banner change? logged on this morning and the old one was gone, then i tried to upload a new one and it didn’t work. *shrugs* maybe later. for now, white.
they’re done! yay! now to finish writing the paper, but once again, the enflambe muscles. ugh.
here’s what i’m envisioning right now:
the room that my thesis will be in is fairly sterile, but has windows on three out of the four sides. that’s great because people will see the things in the room when they walk by. hopefully that will draw many random people in. the room is by no means huge, but really there’s no way that i could fill it up (the whole thesis fits into two medium sized bags!!). so i’m going to play the sterility to my favor by concentrating my thesis in on particular corner (back right when you walk in). there you will find my spinning wheel, a wooden chair, a lamp, some of the thesis knits, baskets of yarn and fiber, my coffee table draped with fabric. as you get further away from this focal point, the thesis will slowly disipate into the opposite corner where there will be the sterility of the room. around the corner with my wheel, i plan to have more wooden chairs for people to sit in while they look at (and touch!) the knits, so that they can feel like part of the fibery circle. it’s kind of a metaphor for what i’ve been doing as the communtiy part of the thesis- helping the fiber to spill out from my life into the lives of anyone else who would like it. another thing that i’m going to focus on while setting up the show will be trying to create some different levels of space in the room. there is a big table that i will need to deal with. it might be left in the middle of the room, so that it looks like my show is invading the scholarly room that it is. we’ll see. there’s also still a chance that the table could be moved out and maybe the potter will show with me. that would also be fine… our artwork contrasts nicely. but for now, in my head, it’s all mine and this is the current vision.
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