[when] “…the creative force now turns to the place of the soul, you will see how your soul becomes green and how its field bears wonderful fruit.” ~ from Carl Jung’s The Red Book, quoted in The Orphan: A Journey to Wholeness, by Audrey Punnett
I was thirty-eight years old when I picked up yarn again, to make a knitted ball for my children. Sitting in that peaceful place with a peaceful teacher/guide during those early years of growing into parenthood, I found anew a place in me that was creative, that wanted to make, share and give. Seven years have passed since I sat in that rocking chair next to other mothers, most of us knitting, all of us watching our children play. All that has happened in seven years, it’s so much, really.
It is a frequent lamentation of mine that I did not realize how much I love texture and wool, sculpture and cloth when I walked through the Fine Arts Department halls at the university I attended, just shy of thirty years ago. Delivering mail, returning books others borrowed, running errands for the college’s deans, I passed beautiful and audacious fiber art hanging from walls and ceilings. Twine, mesh, weaving and wire sculptures were everywhere. How did this thing that drives me now, this deepest longing to learn all I can in this fibery art and craft world not have been awakened when I traversed those halls? What was I doing!
But here now, just when I worry there won’t be time to learn all I want to learn, I check myself and remember that all there is is this present moment. And it requires full attention. Parenting, relationship, work, creativity, love. And a devotion to tending to and doing what wakes the soul up, what grabs the spirit’s attention.
It’s that devotion that had me untangling a mess of yarn in humid heat today. It’s that tending to that had me sitting next to my loom, solving what continues to be a personal riddle~ getting the warp onto the loom without too much disarray! When will I stop sweating with anxiety when I go to take the warp off the warping board?
It’s the soul that wants to make beautiful things for people I love, and that has grown to weather all of this learning and longing.
Have a wonderful weekend. I hope you get to do things you love.
I sure didn’t mean to drop off for so long but there it is. Time passed with little to show for it on this here site. Sometimes life requires full attention and quiet.
But, in that quiet time I took, I’ve done a whole lot of learning. As I mentioned in my last post, when winter was still hanging on with a mighty grip, I made my way up to Montgomery, Vermont with my friend Susi, of The Felted Gnome Knows, to visit Mountain Fiber Folk. I’ve spoken about the wonderful ladies who fill their co-op store with gorgeous wools, handspun yarns, woven, knitted and needle felted creations. It’s just all so lovely. One of my friends there sold me a loom she’d had tucked away for some time. A four harness, counterbalance, Leclerc Mira Loom from the early 80’s.
Then I spent some time feeling very intimidated and concerned I’d bitten off more than I could chew. But thankfully a fabulous woman answered my call for a teacher to help me! Lausanne Allen demonstrated downright genius when helping me to get to know my loom. Her patience was remarkable.
And now, three projects in and I’m feeling okay, like I might be able to do this weaving thing and like I might need to just stop now with the whole being-afraid-of-math thing.
I’ve been spinning some wool, too, and doing a bit of knitting because knitting wooly things in summer somehow works for me.
I have so much to write to you about and plan on keeping up with my blog again, at least once a week.
I watched my sister’s dog the other day, while she was out with my littles. A trade. With my furry niece, I sat under a tree. Pitch got stuck on my fingers. I realized I need to sit under trees with my children more.
Pumpkins…
And their seeds…
A misty river visit on an afternoon drive. Here, I felt close to many in my family who have passed away. Touching the cold, clear water, I told them all I miss them.
We drove up a mountain. I live in Vermont but I don’t go up very high most of the time. Scared the hell out of me. Not gonna lie.
Wisdom is everywhere. It does pay to go up high every now and then.
A doll I made. It’s me, when I’m old.
Off to a lecture at UVM, and in between events today I’ll work on finishing the second sleeve of my sweater.
I feel like I should just begin each post with: It’s been a while…
Rather than detail all of the reasons why keeping up with writing has been difficult lately, I’ll show you one thing I spent a considerable amount of time on in the last couple of weeks. It’s crafty. It’s funny. It’s… Animal.
Animal from the Muppets~ this is the real puppet, not mine!
Remember Animal, from the Muppets? I loved him when I was a kid, and I love him now, after spending a bunch of time considering all of the subtleties of his face, his expression, his noisy look. Of course, my animal does not come close to Jim Hensen’s, but oh, I love him still.
My son and I got the idea of him dressing up as Animal for Halloween one evening when he was playing the piano, very dramatically. He was cracking me up, swaying his head back and forth, his longish hair flying everywhere. He reminded me of Animal’s crazy drum playing ways and then and there, we decided it needed to happen. My boy needed to be Animal.
There’s no easy way to just get an animal costume. Can you believe that?! There’s not. Once we figured that out, my fantasy was too far in. I couldn’t reverse course. So, noodling around online, I took a gander at other people’s animal costumes. Paper maché seemed to be something folks tried but that intimidated me. I don’t know why but I think it just seems unruly and like I would just make a big heap of mess instead of a mask. I also found a post about a woman using a baseball helmet as part of the head support. It was from that idea that my mask was born.
After ruminating on the costume for a few days, I went to Michael’s craft store and walked around, hoping to find things that looked like they’d work for costume construction. I ended up with: styrofoam balls, three large and two small red feather boas, fun fur, black, red and orange felt, a styrofoam bowl, a red baseball cap, and glue.
First, I stitched the baseball cap to the styrofoam bowl. The idea here was that the head needs to be large, and there is a bit of a lip where Animal’s upper lip and nose protrude. The rim of the baseball cap provided the structure for that. The stitching here was tricky; if I pulled too hard on the needle, the thread would at times pull right through the styrofoam. Knowing it was going to be totally covered with feathers, I didn’t care about it looking great. It just needed to be functional. The cap, by the way, was fitted on my son’s head before I sewed it into the bowl.
Then, I glued the bowl edge onto the rim of the hat. What in the world did people do before glue guns?
Once that was dry, I began the fun process of wrapping and gluing the feather boas around the bowl. A little messy at times, it’s good to have wet paper towel on hand to get glue off fingers. Feathers seem especially attracted to glue.
Once I got the bowl covered, I had to start tinkering with the mouth and how it would attach to both the head and to my kid. I apologize now for the lack of pictures of the rest of the process. I tried a bunch of different things. Finally, I settled on using thick paper plates for the structure of the mouth.
I eye-balled the plate size against the bowl/rim of the baseball hat. The idea was that the mouth would attach to the rim of the hat, and my kid’s face would be behind the mouth. Originally, I thought I’d cut out eye-holes in the black felt I used for the dark part of the mouth, but I changed that later.
I cut a plate in half and then cut out the flat part of the plate, leaving just the rounded edge of the plate. After a couple of experiments, I opted not to trim the rim of the plate itself (this is not pictured).
Then, I eye-balled the orange felt lips Animal has against the rim of the plate, and after that, the black inside of the mouth. Those pieces were glued to the plate rims. Now, below you see the full mouth where I used the black felt. I ended up using black meshy fabric instead. I included both pics here because some might prefer the darker felt for the mouth. I opted to switch to the see-through mesh because I wanted my son’s face to be fairly free and open, and for him to be able to see easily at night. I made the same kind of paper frame for the structure of the mouth, glued the black mesh onto the paper rim, then the orange felt lips on top. I placed black felt just on the bottom half of the mouth, on which the tongue could be glued.
Below is what I ended up with.
Now, the major tricky part was how to make the head full and round looking. Remember, the head up until this point was just the bowl, which only came halfway down the back of my son’s head. The top of the mouth was glued to the rim of the hat (so sorry there are not more detailed pictures). That allowed for the mouth to stay strong and in place. The bottom of the mouth naturally hangs down. After a lot of McGuyver style attempts to complete the mask, I almost gave up. I was really having a hard time figuring out how it would all go, until I talked it through with my step-mom. She suggested attaching it to a hooded sweatshirt and then wrapping the feathers around that way to complete the rounded head. Voila! That’s what I did, and it worked great. I sewed the hood to the baseball cap, and then the edges of the hood to the edge of the mask. Around the hood, back and forth, I was able to add more feathers and bring them around the bottom the the mouth.
Once that structure was complete, it was time for the fun stuff~ the eyes, the nose, the teeth. For the eyes and nose, I wrapped the styrofoam balls in wool, needle felted them to give them a nice fuzzy look and glued them onto the head. I used black felt for the pupils, fun fur for the eyebrows, and marshmallows for the teeth.
Once Animal’s face was on, I felt so relieved! If I were to do it again, I’d needle felt the orange lips using orange wool, instead of the cut-out felt.
Here it is, all finished!
And here I am, having a loving moment with my Animal.
Yesterday evening I took a piece off my rigid heddle loom I’d started weeks ago. September 1st, I think.
I used a yummy mohair yarn and what I’m fairly certain is a kind of thick cotton thread. I love autumn-esque colors. I was going for a shawl that both looks warm and delicate, airy and solid. I also wanted to practice a weaving technique called Leno as described in the book, Inventive Weaving on a Little Loom, by Syne Mitchell.
The cotton thread behaved so much differently than the wool yarn. It is much less forgiving and had almost no elasticity. Sometimes the selveges were a catastrophe. I thought about bailing on the project about halfway through because I was worried it was just a hot mess and I should start over. Then I got stubborn and opted to carry on ~ best case scenario, I reasoned, was that I’d love the shawl and want to show it to the world, imperfections and all. Worst case? That once off the loom I’d lament wasting hours of my life weaving cloth not fit for mouse bedding.
I tried out some things in an effort to minimize loose ends. Oh loose ends! They are part of things, aren’t they?
When I had to switch colors (according to my own pattern; I’d arrange the color changes much differently if I were to make this again) I tried securing the loose threads in the loop of the weft as it was going back through the warp. That worked out pretty well. Wish I’d have figured that out sooner!
Taking the shawl off the loom was nerve wracking! Not sure why. It feels both sturdy and fragile at the same time, and all of the loose ends made me wonder how the hell I’d get them all sewn in without ruining the fabric.
There it is all laid out.
I stayed up until the wee hours last night sewing all the strands in, those that couldn’t be trimmed as they were. It was so worth it.
The shawl isn’t blocked yet but here it is. I’m so happy I kept at it. I learned so much about how different threads behave, selveges, the utter importance of a proper tension in all warp threads (obvious I know, but I thought I’d done that and still there were problems throughout. I think I need to make smaller groups of weft threads in the beginning stages).
Here’s an up-close view of the general pattern.
Here’s some unfortunate selvege proof.
And there’s me, still proud as hell of this piece!
It’s Friday already. And the equinox. Another quarter done, a new one to start. Time keeps on a moving, and it’s sort of reminding me of that ride that was on playgrounds when I was kid. You know the one; the big round platform with metal handles all about it. A group of three or more kids would get that thing going around and around so fast our scrawny legs could barely keep up with the running. Then, we’d gauge it just right, jump on, and hold on for our lives. I remember the feeling so well, fighting against all of that centrifugal force wanting to do other things to my body. I freaking loved that playground ride. And I never got hurt on it. I remember seeing other kids bail so hard or get their feet tripped up as they jumped on or off. I would have a heart attack if I saw my kids on one of those now. OMG.
Anyway, in a week where about 1.5 of the 30 things I’d hoped to accomplish got done, I’m trying to figure out how to keep my adult self on the ride for longer stretches of time and with more focus. My response to centrifugal force is not what it once was. I sure do get knocked down by distractions and colds more than I used to. But, the distractions! Oh man. I’m very interested in genealogy. In particular my own family’s ancestral history, and I spent hours and hours sifting through microfilm at the library earlier this week. When I asked to use their microfilm viewing machine, the guy at the desk looked at me kind of funny and said sure, after he dusted it off! I was basically wedged between a big machine and a filing cabinet where I found the death certificate of my paternal 3rd great-grandfather, who emigrated from Ireland via Liverpool likely sometime around 1844. He had a rough end of his life and to see it all written out on this death certificate from 1874, well… it was powerful. It was like breathing life back into a story that I’ll bet was rarely, if ever, told. I think that’s why I love genealogy so much. When you find someone from way back, who is so long forgotten in the living family memory, it’s like you bring them new life. They aren’t forgotten anymore.
After a couple of days of work, I was hanging around outside after a run and saw a whole bunch of butterflies flittering by high up in the sky. I tried to get a picture but they were too quick! So, I just stared at the blue and thought about all of those folks that came before me. It was pretty fun.
Then I got a wicked bad cold.
There is a new item up on Etsy. You may remember her if you are reader of this blog on a regular basis. Realta the Owl is available. With all of the owls I make, I need to be able to let them go, character and all. I do hope she goes with Sherman, though. They do love one another.
I’ve also signed on to be a vendor at the Champlain Valley Union High School Craft Fair in November, which I am really excited about. I’ve got a lot of making to do, so here’s to staying on that ride!
The air was so warm and soft today. The sounds of late summer drifted through windows and around me as I meandered my way through a day filled with puttering, putting away and listening to children play, laugh and negotiate. Not much got done in the way of handwork other than knitting a few more rows onto my sweater. Slow and steady wins the race, I hope?
I looked outside as I folded laundry and saw this meeting of mushrooms. How had I not seen them before? Or did they just appear suddenly, a faerie ring?
Later, my daughter and her friends showed me this epic spider!
Soon, she had a bee in her web. Gruesome and awe inspiring. Deep respect to Shelob’s kin.
At the start of the weekend a friend had sharp eyes on a mid-afternoon walk. Purple fungus and slithering corn snake offered their colors as inspiration.
All of these moments and more make for a sweet entry into busy work and school week.
I cannot explain it, but this experiment on my circular loom has become rather powerful for me. I’m chipping away at it, round by round, section by section. Easy to do since the rain hasn’t stopped, and I’m obsessed. I’ll post the completed piece soon.
And Day #1 of the Tour de Fleece is under my belt. Merino, fluffy and spongy, met my wheel for close to an hour while I listened to a wonderful podcast of On Being with Krista Tippet interviewing John O’Donohue. Not a bad way to be while spinning beautiful fiber. In fact, the podcast was on Beauty. It was lovely.
Tomorrow I hope to finish this bobbin and then start plying with lovely colorful wool locks in various pinks and purples.
Are you spinning as part of the TdF? How’d it go today?
In recent years, I’ve seen bloggers and other spinners talk about the Tour de Fleece and I’ve thought, “how’d I miss that again?!” Not this year, though! I was prepared and I’ve got heaps of merino waiting to be spun tomorrow.
My goals are simple. I want to spin every day with attitudes of openness, hopefulness, creativity and curiosity. I know without question that spinning wool is good for the nervous system, it helps one achieve a rhythmic and almost meditative state, and it’s fun! I want to dedicate time every night to reading a little and learning more of the details around spinning and enhance my knowledge base, and I want to make some killer art yarn in order to sell and make hats with that are begging to be created. I love knowing that people all over the world are part of the Tour at the same time. A collective spinning hug. How awesome is that?
It is a frequent lamentation of mine that I did not realize how much I love texture and wool, sculpture and cloth when I walked through the Fine Arts Department halls at the university I attended, just shy of thirty years ago. Delivering mail, returning books others borrowed, running errands for the college’s deans, I passed beautiful and audacious fiber art hanging from walls and ceilings. Twine, mesh, weaving and wire sculptures were everywhere. How did this thing that drives me now, this deepest longing to learn all I can in this fibery art and craft world not have been awakened when I traversed those halls? What was I doing!
But here now, just when I worry there won’t be time to learn all I want to learn, I check myself and remember that all there is is this present moment. And it requires full attention. Parenting, relationship, work, creativity, love. And a devotion to tending to and doing what wakes the soul up, what grabs the spirit’s attention.
It’s the soul that wants to make beautiful things for people I love, and that has grown to weather all of this learning and longing.
Healing Handcrafting 