Professional Development

In the past month I've had a little flurry of professional development opportunities that have been kind of exciting.  First, I was contacted through my Etsy site by No. 27 Gallery in Rochester, N.H. about having a show of Gyotaku fish prints on rice paper.  I said, "Sure!".  They curate a number of small spaces around Rochester N.H., and we're scheduled to have a show in "The Portable Pantry" in September 2012.  Never done anything like this before, so should be interesting to see what it's like and if it generates any interest in Brian and I's collaborative work.  Between now and then, Brian and I plan to work up some new original fish prints, and I'm thinking I might also like to experiment with some Gyotaku collage or fabric pieces as well.

Next, Brian and I were invited to be vendors at a local Japan Festival this past weekend that was held at Aikido of Champlain Valley in Burlington, VT.  There were several other vendors present focused in traditional Japanese arts including bonsai, origami, and ikebana (flower arranging).  While we sat at our booth selling our Gyotaku wares, we were treated to demonstrations of Taiko drumming and Aikido martial art.  I really liked learning about the philosophy behind Aikido and the focus on being present in one's own life (living in the moment) and maintaining a calm focus during what could be otherwise stressful interactions.  I think I might check a class out sometime, maybe when Henry is a little older and we could do it together. Our booth was next to the Japan America Society of Vermont, and we were invited by their president, Larry Solt, to participate in their Matsuri (festival) next year held at St. Michael's College.  That should be a lot of fun and so interesting to be surrounded by a culture I greatly admire.  I wonder what my great uncle Taka would think?

Lastly, I now have a member profile on the Surface Design Association website.  So, I'm all set to be "discovered"!  I had my Surface Design critique group today, so now I'm all filled with new creative ideas and inspiration - such  a good feeling!

Octo-update!

It's finished! I took advantage of a strangely warm Saturday to put the finishing touches on my octopus rug. It needed one last round of wet felting to smooth things out and firm up a bit more, and being a wet and messy process, I like to do this outside. Even though it was the first week of March, I was comfortable out on the deck without a jacket. Felt good to be working out in the sunshine.
Here's a picture of the rug rolled up in plastic, ready to roll:
And unrolled:
The soapy hot water helps the fibers relax and open up their scales, and the rolling makes them slip past one another and lock on to eachother. Here are some photos of the rug after I finished felting the final time, but still wet and soapy:
A nice place to make some felt:
Meanwhile, back in the house, Willie takes a nap while Henry climbs the stairs. Being a nanny wears Willie out! (Don't worry, Willie wasn't the sole babysitter while I was felting - there were some human adults around!)

I joined a critique group of the local chapter of the Surface Design Association, and brought my octopus rug to the group for feedback a few weeks ago while it was still in progress. I had mentioned that I intended to use the piece as a functional rug, but the group felt it should be a wall piece. Willie had really taken to lying on it while I was working on it, and scratching it up (and undoing my work), so I decided to take the critique group's advice and hang it on the wall. I'll have to make another rug just for Willie. I sewed a dowel onto the back, and voila!

This is the finished piece hanging on a wall:
And a few closeups:
I was surprised that the golden silk threads really faded with the second wet felt. They started out more saturated yellow and became more straw colored. I think perhaps the dye was not fixed well in these reclaimed threads (I did not dye them - they were purchased as a bunch). The magenta threads seemed to hold their color fine. Nevertheless, I still like the effect they give.
This is my favorite section of the rug. I like how the tentacles seem like they are flowing and undulating (at least they are to me).I plan to hang it on my purple wall, next to my eels. Hopefully eels and octopi get along.
And a few more pictures of my beautiful boys, and thanks to Brian for granting me some time to finish my rug!

Felt Landscapes

It feels so good to be starting to experiment with something I have been thinking about for a very long time -- landscapes in felt. It's funny how ideas can stew for a long time, and then all of a sudden, they're ready to pop and I explode into action. I go through cycles like this, where I am not actively creating, but mulling ideas as I drift off to sleep at night. Then something randomly piques my interest (like an inspiring picture or a conversation), and all of a sudden I'll start a new project. Then I become an obsessed insomniac, unable to stop thinking about the project and the next time I'll be able to work on it. Sort of sounds like a scary drug addiction, now that I think about it... I wonder if there are similar chemicals being released in my brain? Guess I'd rather be addicted to art than anything else.

In this particular case, the trigger for starting a new project was a photograph of a gooseneck barnacle I saw on an old nature calendar -- I was intrigued by the colors, patterns and textures of this amazing creature, and started to envision how I would recreate it in felt. It's a bit of a roundabout chain of thoughts that lead me to felt landscapes instead of barnacles, and that's a topic for another day (in the mean time, you should Google gooseneck barnacles if you've never seen one - amazing!). I do intend to work on a gooseneck barnacle project, but that idea is still incubating a little more.

Anyhow, I've been working on some felt landscapes on days I'm not working at my real job and my little one is napping. I figured out the other day that this probably affords me about 4 hours a week to work on artistic endeavors, and although that's less than I'd like, I'm actually kind of impressed with how much I accomplish in that time. I think part of the reason is I spend a lot of time thinking before the actual doing. So when the opportunity arises to work on a project, I know exactly what I want to do.

So, here are some photos of works in progress. These aren't finished pieces, and since this is a new format for me (a smaller wall hanging rather than a big thick rug), I'm experimenting with different techniques.

Laying out the fibers to gauge color combinations (decided against a dark sky):
A mountain landscape taking shape, loosely based on Camel's Hump (or at least the Camel's Hump in my mind - the view from the north, of course):
Adding some foothills and firming things up a bit:

And made smooth with a final wet felting:
I'm thinking that I may add some texture to this with some hand stitching, but am not certain what style I'll use, so am giving it time to stew for a while. I have a second felt landscape in the works where I am experimenting with various embroidery and stitching, and this will probably influence how I approach the Hump piece.

Starting to stitch:
Some detail:
A little more progress on the stitching:

It's difficult to see in the photos, but I like how the stitching makes the felt puff up and add some dimension to the piece. My plan is to stitch more heavily in detail in the foreground, and have less density in stitching towards the background. I think for the sky I will use very small stitches with a single strand of thread and lines emanating from the sun. I'm excited to see how it turns out!

Mountain Goat

Last summer, my friend Sacha did some traveling, hiking, camping etc. in the U.S. Rockies. On one of her hikes, she came upon a little clump of fiber that had shed from a Mountain Goat. Knowing I have a thing for fiber, she brought it back to show me and let me keep a little. Holding it in my fingers, it was fun to imagine the life of the goat who had worn the fiber, scampering over mountain sides, doing things that wild goats do. It was extremely soft, and I could imagine that if I were living off the land as an early human, it was a substance I would seek out and use for clothing and warmth.

I kept twisting it in my fingers, and decided it would be fun to try to spin some into a bit of string. I removed some of the debris that had collected in it, carded it a little with some hand carders, then spun it on my spinning wheel. I then Navajo plied it (a technique that allows you to ply from a single strand instead of two), and voila, I'd made about 10 inches of Mountain Goat yarn. I decided to memorialize it by attaching it to a felted pin cushion I had made in the shape of a mountain. I even made a little mountain goat with pin legs to live on top of the mountain.

I was feeling lazy, and wasn't really sure how I'd attached them, so didn't give him any horns. Poor little hornless Mountain Goat.

I attached the bit of Mountain Goat yarn with a needle felting tool in a spiral around the mountain and outlined the snow cap. I'd originally made the pin cushion to give to Sacha as a little Christmas present, but it wasn't quite finished in time. Now that it had her Mountain Goat yarn attached to it, I knew of all people, she would appreciate it most, and just gave it to her as a random, occasion-less present. The best kind of present to get, in my opinion!

Octo-Progress

For my birthday this year, the only thing I really wanted was a day all to myself to do some felting. My lovely husband granted my wish by being on baby patrol all day, and late last summer I indulged myself in a project I'd been thinking about undertaking for what seemed like an eternity. An octopus rug.

I don't know what it is about me and cephalapods, but I'm just in love with them. Octopus, cuttle fish, nautilus, squid... they're just such amazing and beautiful creatures. I love their color changing abilities, their mysterious life histories, their amazing tactile and cognitive abilities. And the world they inhabit is so foreign and strange from a human perspective, but also incredibly beautiful. Vibrant colors, interesting shapes, bizzaro life forms. I love it. I think some people who are drawn to the aquatic sciences are drawn there because they feel at home in the water -- and on one level that is true for me, especially fresh water. But on another level, I am drawn to water because it terrifies me, the ocean especially. It's like an alien world right here on our planet. I'll never forget an experience I had while snorkeling in Hawaii -- I was swimming over a reef near the shore watching the schools of tangs and butterfly fish, when all of a sudden I found my self floating over an abyss. The ocean floor had dropped out from beneath me and there was nothing below me but hundreds of feet of dark, crystal-clear water - a shade of blue so rich and pure it is imprinted in my memory. I had this panicky feeling similar to what I imagine I might feel if all of a sudden I found myself floating in outer space. So vulnerable and small. And while it was frightening, it was also exhilarating.

Anyway, back to the rug. I'd been thinking about an octopus rug for a while and had been slowly dyeing fiber in the colors I thought I would want to use. I started my day by looking at some pictures of octopi on-line and made a very quick sketch of a very general layout I had in mind.

Next came the task of preparing the fiber. For the base I wanted to use a mix of brown Navajo-churro (given to me by friends Ben and Grace of Tamarack Tunis) and some Montadale-cross (from my sister's farm) I had dyed purply-blue. This is a picture of the mixture prior to carding it.
These are some pictures of the carding in process.
In addition to the base fiber, I carded some orange and yellow Montadale-cross fiber for the octopus body. This is a picture of the prepped fiber, ready to wet-felt:
After wet felting several layers of the base fiber to create thickness to the rug, I was ready to layout the top layer that would have the main design of the octopus.
I also interspersed the wool with some salvaged silk threads I bought on a whim at Northeast Fiber Arts Center. I love that place -- I have to be careful when I go there as I could easily spend my entire life savings. My thought was that the silk threads would create a wispy underwater feel of an octopus swishing its tentacles through murky water. After the layout was complete, I continued with the wet felting process. This entails putting hot soapy water on the rug, rolling it up, and agitating it by rolling it back and forth - over and over and over and over... It takes a while for the fiber to start to have a firm felt consistency. I knew I planned to give the rug some needle-felt finishing details, so didn't worry about getting it fully felted -- just enough for it to hold together well. Here it is after I stopped wet felting and laid it out to dry:
This is the first time I've tried laying-in some of the top design during the wet felting process rather than doing all of the top detail with a needle after wet felting the base. It results in less-crisp edges, but it saves a lot of time, and for aquatic subject matter, I think the effect is suiting. To me it has a fluid, underwater appeal.And there it sat for months. Tropical storm Irene had come to visit, walloping Vermont's rivers, and making work at my real job as a State river scientist crazy and stressful. Between that and using my "free" time trying to increase inventories for holiday markets, harvesting the garden, making Christmas presents for family, and oh, there's that wonderful little boy in my life... anyhow, the octopus rug project got shelved for a little while. Until yesterday.

Yesterday I started needle felting in some of the details -- the eye and suckers, as well as making the rug firmer in general. Here's how it looks so far:
After I finish the suckers and firming it up, I'll wet felt it one more time to create a smoother finish. I'm excited and pleased with how it is turning out. My intention is for this to be a functional rug -- that is, actually use it as a rug instead of a wall hanging. I'll post an update when it is complete.

Henry's Wooly Leggings

This is a guest blog by Henry. He wanted to tell you about his new hand-knit wooly leggings:

Hi there. I'm Henry. I'm almost 11 months old. My mom just finished knitting me these super-warm leggings, and I wanted to show them to you. She tells me she started knitting them before I was even born... it' s taken a while to finish them. But luckily they fit just right. And it's a brisk 5 degrees Fahrenheit outside, so they're keeping me toasty.

I decided to test them out in all the things I like to do. Sort of a test drive.

Good for sitting and playing with toys? Check.

Good for crawling? Check.

Good for climbing? Check.

Good for standing? Check.
Good for doing lunges? Check.

Good for reading? Check.

Good for being upside down? Check.
Good for spying on Dad in the bathtub? Check.

Do they make my bum look cute? Of course.
Hey Mom, these leggings check out. Thanks, Mom!