A bit of bunting

Bunting is very fashionable in the crafty-internet world and I have succumbed to its charms. These are fairly large flags that I patchworked together from a variety of scraps of fabrics too good to stuff into a pouf.  My second pouf is sewn but only half filled, its yawning mouth greedy for more stuffing but there is a hierarchy to fabric scraps and only those which can't be used more visibly go into the pouf. Also manky old t shirts and anything polar fleece (as I'm trying to do my bit to remove polar fleece from circulation where it sheds plankton sized flecks of plastic into the waterways every time we wash it).

This bunting is making itself useful by helping as a privacy screen. When I had the large pittosporum removed to let some sunlight onto the main vegetable beds, the back deck suddenly was suddenly opened up to the neighbour's main door and hanging out spot. It will take more than one strand of bunting to achieve the level of privacy I'd like from it, and I'm already working on the next set using a different set of attractive scrap fabrics.  

Antarctica Unpacked

There's a lot of gaps in my new house.  After years of dedicated anti-consumerism, simplicity and travelling I simply don't own enough possessions to fill all the shelves and cupboards now at my disposal.

One thing I do have in sufficiency is art to hang. I have taken My Antarctica out of its storage box and placed it in my small blue bedroom where it does much to lighten the intensity of the dark walls.

Note the almost empty book shelves! I need more stuff

My bedroom also features sections of an installation that I've shown a couple of times called Membranes. (The other half of Membranes is hanging near the dining table, also providing some privacy towards the same neighbouring property.)  It looks a very dark room in these morning photos, but in the afternoon sunlight streams in (not onto the wall with My Antarctica- I don't want it to fade- or melt ;-)).

I like living with Antarctica for the first time since I finished making it about two years ago.  I finally have enough distance to really feel it as a whole object, rather than a series of imperfections in my work.  Despite being such a big strong piece it actually works really well in a bedroom, where the blankets feel right at home.

Planned Pouf

I have planned this pouf for at least three years.   I found the pattern online so long ago that I've lost the link and it no longer comes up in a search, replaced by other, more recently posted, pouf patterns.

Since I moved back to New Zealand I've been saving every snip of thread and scrap of blanket and other materials for the stuffing.  Filling the cavity this afternoon was a trip through nearly four years of stitching projects.  I packed all the scraps in so tight that the overflowing bale in which I'd been collecting scraps is now almost empty.



I spend ages looking for the right cover fabric and eventually found a couple of metres of this sturdy cotton print in an op shop for just a few dollars. Then there was a long wait to find a home big enough to use the pouf, as I didn't want to make it just to put in storage (as happened to so many projects created in my last place).  Finally, after moving to my new spacious home  a few weeks ago, I needed some dedicated time for sewing something so long anticipated.

Finally today was the day it all came together.

I'm not completely sure why I sustained such a long engagement with this pouf.  As a person with almost no furniture of my own, a pouf is affordable (mine was about five bucks) and versatile (it can be a seat/footstool/coffee table/yoga bolster).  I do love to look at poufs in shops, especially those Indian import shops where each cushion is a luscious patchwork of colourful silks.  But more than I coveted the owning of those beautiful imported poufs I wanted the gratification of making it myself. Indeed, so gratifying is this pouf, both in the making and the sitting, that I think I'll start planning another one.

Introducing Shine, my flatmate's dog and my regular daytime companion

Poems of the Plateaux

I'm sorry that the blog  is being neglected even more than usual. I'm moving right now (well I moved last weekend, but its taking a while to sort myself from one room into a whole house). So no time to blog.

Besides I'm not making any art at the moment, just making home which is itself an art. When things look a bit nicer I promise I'll give you a tour. Right now there's not much to see but piles of boxes and stray bits of furniture sitting forlornly in odd places waiting for their new assignments.

While you are waiting Bibliophila to resume regular posting I highly recommend this collection of poems about Denniston and Stockton Plateaux by the late Leicester Kyle. I have to thank Bronwyn Lloyd for letting me know about this site because the poems really resonated for me.

Memorial

My Memorial to the 29 miners who died in the Pike River Coal Mine is finished after one hundred-plus hours  of stitching over several months. It was quite a sad piece to be working on and I'm glad its done now.  

I feel for the families whose sadness has no end, who are still waiting and wishing for the bodies of their men to be recovered.

I entered Memorial for an art award but it wasn't selected, so now its packed away waiting for me to figure out another way to share it out into the world.  Because it is an installation that takes up a lot of floorspace I guess its not easy to slip into a gallery programme.  

Despite the sombre subject and its political implications I think Memorial is beautiful to look at, with so many cones repeating, varied by subtle shades of grey and constructed with deliberately irregular stitching.

Denniston Sampler

In the spirit of the crocheted coral reef I made a few years ago, I'm working on a vocabulary of stitches to represent the mosses, lichens and ferns of Denniston Plateuau. The fragile and unique ecosystem, which seems likely to be lost to opencast coal mining soon, is too delicate for yarn. Instead, I'm working with embroidery floss and stitches, and fine crocheted lace. 

I've been playing around with the stitches on a felt rock that I made for the purpose, a deliberately misshapen slab imitating Denniston's flakey sandstone.  Most of my mosses are pretty straight foward knots, French and Bullion as they are perfect for imitating this kind of low velvety moss.

I also played around with a long looped stitch, cut like a shag pile rug for a spikey moss like the one in the centre of this little clump.

This is the little clump that Robin looked at while we were on Denniston in June, and she said, can you make me this? And I said yes but it turned out a bit sparser than the real thing. Partly as I was impatient to finish it for Robin's birthday (and then I missed it anyway) and partly because I've been distracted by the house and garden that I'm moving to in two weeks.



Also, my crocheted lace green ferns looked ridiculous on the felt rock so I'm using them for something else.  And I couldn't resist adding my own favourite bit of Denniston flora, this low white fluffy thing that I am not sure whether its a fern or a moss or a lichen. If you know, please tell me, I hate my ignorance.

Mysterious Denniston species 

My version of the Denniston white fluffy thing looks like this. It's crocheted lace in a stitch I invented (of course someone probably already invented it, but I was following my intuition rather than a pattern so I can't acknowledge anyone else's version).

Denniston lace on the rock

I made short lengths of the crocheted lace, then starched and pinned it to dry stiff, then ruffled it as I was stitching it to the felt rock base to get the clumpy effect of the original. I do think its a pretty lace stretched out and I might find some other use for this easy and attractive pattern which allows it to be seen better.  Perhaps a gift for a soon-to-be-bride that I know.

Denniston lace: starched and stretched.

How to make a flokati-style rug

Sewing  a Woolrest into a flokati-style rug

 I'm moving to a house in a few weeks. That's right, a real house with rooms with doors, a garden, an oven, a laundry, a bathtub and a separate studio.  I won't know myself after 2 1/2 years living and working in one room, making do without an oven or washing machine, turning my bed into a sofa every single morning, playing Rubics Cube with my possessions every time I want to find or make something.

I have such a crush on the idea of my new home that I think about it all the time. Since I found out about it in early June my imaginative, creative energy has been increasingly absorbed with planning the practicalities and pleasures of setting up my life and work in a much larger space. I've tried to be constructive with the imaginative power of the long lag between knowing and moving with various anticipatory projects such as my 'flokati-style' rug.

I want a warm soft rug in the living room on the polished wooden floor and looked into all sorts of options for making rugs, since buying a nice one is out of my reach.  I was considering various kinds of rag rugs to make with my stash of blanket scraps when I came upon an old Woolrest mattress cover in an op shop for $7.  And suddenly I saw a shaggy sheepy rug as the cosy centre piece of my new lounge.

Woolrest before washing

The single woolrest was a bit tired and grubby when I got it, so the first job was to wash it by gently stomping warm soapy water through it in a bathtub and then rinsing thoroughly with more gentle stomping. I drenched a few big towels squeezing the water out.  After being thoroughly air dried, it came up creamy, fluffy and inviting.   I love the fact my rug is New Zealand wool because I really didn't want an acrylic rug.

I trimmed off the elastic (in good condition so saved for future projects) and label.  Then I backed the woolrest with a heavy coarse woven wool blanket that I'd been given but which was too stained to use for art.  I cut the blanket about 5cm bigger around than the woolrest, which was lucky as during the sewing they magically ended up the same size with very little trimming required!

Woolrests are made of wool staples hooked through a loose wool weave so I could sew between the rows relatively easily.  It was slow going though because I had to make sure the long staples didn't get caught up in the machine foot, or sewn flat.  The weight and bulk of the rug meant I couldn't reach the middle of the rug with my sewing machine so I sewed three rows parallel to each edge starting as near the centre as I could get (about 30cm).I sewed two straight stitched lines inset from the edge and finally zigzagged around the perimeter (overlocking would have been even better).    I kept checking to make sure the blanket was flat and smooth, occasionally unpicking where puckers or bubbles crept in. I need the rug to sit flat and not be tripping hazard!

Stitching between the rows of wool staples

The final step was hand stitching wide strips of old yoga mat onto the back around the edges so it won't slip around on the polished wood. I put out a call on Freecycle if anyone had an old yoga mat, and was given a worn, stained mat that was almost ideal (a white mat would have been more perfect but lavender is good enough).  The yoga mat was molded with rows of tiny holes so I sewed through the holes, catching the blanket but not the woolrest.  I used an upholstery needle for a big running stitch and it wasn't as difficult or slow as I expected.

The whole project, including washing the rug and the yoga mat took about 9 hours (compared to 60+ for a rag rug). The cost was $8 including thread (real flokati rugs cost hundreds).  It will be a no-shoes and no-food rug because flokatis don't vacuum well and I don't want to have to beat it clean too often. It looks beautiful spread out in my tiny current home where I like to dig my bare toes into the pile and imagine lounging on it, in front of the wood burner of my future home.  22 sleeps to moving day!

My newly completed snuggly, cosy, soft and warm 'flotaki-style' rug.

 PS This is my first attempt at blogging a tutorial-style post. I am learning lots from generous tutorials on other people's blogs (at the moment mostly gardening, machine-sewing and DIY decorating). I want to contribute back to the amazing pool of shared knowledge. Since I couldn't find any tutorials already online on this topic this is my gift back to the internet craft/DIY community. Please let me know what you think, especially if you try making yourself a rug like this.

Dazzling

A surprise in my letterbox yesterday: a beautiful little book published by Sanderson Gallery, looking back over its first 10 years.  The biggest, and most delightful surprise of the book, is that my Dispersant installation was the photo they chose to illustrate the section on their Outeredge Project.  The text describes Dispersant as "completely dazzling" which is very nice.

I will be showing work again at Sanderson Gallery this month in their 150x150x150 group show (opening on 7 August). The works are all 150cm2, all priced at $150. A great opportunity to purchase affordable contemporary art.  I used the show as an opportunity to experiment with stitching straight onto stretched canvas.



I blogged earlier about my Yellowcake Uranium piece, for which I couched curls of yellow yarn. I've actually made two of these and sent the second one to Sanderson as it is on the same kind of stretcher as the Asbestos, and I wanted them to be matching.  If you can't get to Sanderson's exhibition or miss out (I hear work sells quick at these shows) I might let you have the other Yellowcake which I actually think is prettier (its the one featured in this blog post)

I also made a piece of Blue Asbestos.  The Asbestos also uses the couching technique but this time with bundles white cotton crochet thread. Yes, I know its not blue, but I used as my model a photo of a kind of asbestos called fibrous tremolite which is in the amphibole blue category of asbestos.

Lace practice

This is one of the very first exercises I tried from Clark's Needle Lace, a nontraditional net (even before the snail). It was useful to attach it to paper and have that firm surface to work on while I was learning the basics. It was also useful to work with quite a coarse crochet cotton, and fun to play with colour a little. I'm pleased enough to have it pasted into my journal.  But I don't really like the look of that loose net stitch, which is a shame because it really is the easiest.

Right now I'm focused on expanding my repertoire of stitches for my next exercise in detatched lace.  I learn each new stitch attached to aida cloth, because the set up for making detatched lace is so time consuming and challenging. Once I'm confident enough to add them to the detatched project, that's where I'll do the hours of practice that it will take for me to develop enough skill to produce the quality I want for my work.  


It turns out the snail was a really good symbol to choose for learning to make lace.

Learning lace

My first complete detatched lace motif,  8cm wide (about 3 inches).
The net fillings are a sampler of different kinds of stitches.

I've been thinking about making lace for years: wanting to, wishing and yet always putting it off. I needed the incentive of a particular project to help me overcome feeling intimidated.  I can't tell you yet about the project but I'll tell you about the learning.

Crochet lace, which I thought was hard to learn...
 and then I started on needle lace and realised that crochet lace is a piece of cake

After gaining some competence with crochet lace I realised it wasn't suitable for the project I have in mind. What next?  Bobbin or pillow lace requires a serious committment to a lot of expensive kit (bobbins, bobbin winder, pillows and pins). It seemed easier (ha!) to start out with needle lace. Needle lace has a history at least as long and illustrious as bobbin lace but only requires a fine tapestry needle to get started.

So about three weeks ago I started teaching myself to make needle lace and now I have finally completed my first little piece of Venetian Point-style lace. I've been following this excellent tutorial online and practicing stitches from Needle Lace-Techniques and Inspiration by Jill Nordfors Clark and  Therese De Dillmont's famous The Complete Encyclopedia of Needlework.  


It is, without doubt, one of the most difficult things I've ever learned, certainly the most difficult textile technique in my wide repetoire.  I've been joking to friends that it's like learning brain surgery, (but thankfully no one can be killed by my poor technique).

Proof of how terrible my first lace really is.  My eyesight (and most people's) isn't good enough to notice most of these messy details even on close inspection, but macro photographs reveals every imperfection. 

Early on a single stitch would take me several minutes, and then be so bad that I unpicked it anyway. Every few stitches I had to stop, get up, and move around to release the tension in my body and mind before returning to the task. But then after some dozen or so hours over of sweating and swearing I imperceptibly crossed a line. Now I wasn't struggling over every individual stitch, but  instead was frustrated by trying to make them into a pattern. And then another dozen or so hours later, some of the patterns started to look better than a stoned spiderweb.

And eventually my little lace snail was finished in all its misshapen glory. My needle lace is lumpy, uneven and a little grubby, as you would expect for a first attempt.  I'm so proud, and yet so ready to start the next little piece so I can work on getting my tension consistent, changing threads smoothly (and keeping the work clean).  I can't wait to take these basic skills and develop a wider vocabulary of stitches and techniques.  And one day my cordonettes will flow and my nets will float.   
  

I'm a bit embarrassed to share these photos which reveal my beginners's clumsiness but I intend to eventually get good enough to make a  beautiful brain out of lace. 

(in transition)

Crochet lace on wet felted object

Many people say they need a deadline to be productive.  I always find deadlines very limiting and to be avoided as much as possible.  I am so much more creative, and just as busy and productive, when I don't feel pressured.   I take more risks, I play more, I'm more imaginative and experimental. I write and draw and daydream.

This post-South Island winter (with only a couple of of low pressure deadlines) is proving a fertile season with new ideas almost every day, some in my dreams, some in the half sleep of dawn, some as I learn techniques or see other people's work.  My journal pages fill fast with sketches, scrawled notes, lists and stories and samples of stitches.

There are too many ideas for me to ever take all of them up but it is not difficult to know where I want to channel all this fecundity.  I came back from my South Island trip with a very clear sense of what's next.  The coal of Stockton Mine, the flora of Denniston Plateau and the rock and ice of Franz Joseph Glacier, together with the sense of transformation that each place is undergoing are proving very powerful influences.  

It's not just thinking, writing and drawing round here. As usual my hands are constantly busy with needles, hooks, threads and wool. My work table is a jumble of multiple projects all  in high rotation.  But it is too soon to talk about what will come next as I float 'Extraction' out in a new direction.  Sometimes is dangerous to share too soon, when the ideas are still so malleable, my confidence in them not quite firm enough to withstand 'helpful suggestions' or critique.

If interrogated, perhaps I shyly mumble words like:

tender

vessel

cradle

cherish

I will say there won't be blankets-I've been wanting to wean my work away from them for a while, despite the sensual pleasures. Instead, I'm teaching myself to make lace which is about the hardest textile skill I've ever tackled.  I'm also teaching myself to wet-felt which is easy in comparison. Both techniques are extremely enjoyable ways to extend myself. Embroidery (in various textures with the unlovely name of stumpwork) has also reasserted itself into my practice.

Alongside the new developments, I'm still spending more time that I would like finishing off prior obligations. I'm also waiting to move into a much bigger home and studio on 31 August.  I've postponed tackling large scale projects while I am cramped into this increasingly claustrophobic space, with the weather too inclement to work outside.


Snuggled among the clutter of my busy studio, this last winter before I move is proving a time of exhilarating inspiration and steep learning.

Water moves rocks

This post wraps up my South Island trip: in which I visit a glacier, admire weather stations, spot charismatic megafauna and visit an earthquake struck city.

Franz Joseph Glacier- only a few years ago, the ice extended past the place I was taking the photo.

During my 'Antarctic period' I became tangentially fascinated by glaciers, not only those in Antarctica but elsewhere.  I dreamed about them, I wrote poems about them, I tried to imagine how I would make one but  I'd never actually seen one for myself until last month.

Dirty glacier grinding up the mountain and leaving a big mess of rocks. A bit like a mine, but slower and well, a natural process.

 I found my necessarily-rushed visit to Franz Joseph Glacier to be every bit as exciting and inspiring as I could have hoped for.  I will be going back someday, somehow, for more.

The terminal face from 500m which is the closest we could get with out a guide. Those crevasses are scary looking!  I love how the ice is blue where its been recently exposed by a fall.

Even though the Glacier visit was a sort of last minute add-on to our trip, it turned out to be the key that unlocked my thinking about how to respond to mining issues through my art.  I was struck by the similarities and differences between mining and the natural processes that slowly grind down mountains into rocks and gravel carried across away the landscape.

Rock striated by being dragged down the mountain by the glacier.  I'm restraining myself from posting many more great rock photos from my South Island trip. Rocks were definitely the highlight for me- the West Coast is a geology-geek paradise.

I've already started working on developing ways to express these ideas with needle and thread, and my next posts will be full of those explorations.  In the meantime, here's some photos to give you a flavour of the rest of our week in the South Island.

At snowy Arthur's Pass, four kea were hanging around the railway workmen's barrel fire.

One of the cheeky kea found a workman's satchel, opened the flap, moved the thermos flask and unwrapped his sandwiches!

My travel companion had her own agenda for the trip (to check out monitoring stations), fortunately highly compatible with my mining obsession.  Here Robin inspects the Arthur's Pass weather station.  Under her influence I have become so adept at identifying weather stations in the scenery that sometimes I can spot them even before Robin! (Note my restraint in not posting numerous weather station photos on this blog)

We spend our final few days in Christchurch, staying in the Eastern suburbs on a street with more houses abandoned than occupied.  In many parts of the city this kind of scene (actually in Kaiapoi) is common.  It is heart rending to see how damaged the city remains over a year after the big quakes.

Christchurch's devastation is also pocketed with determinedly cheerful community projects transforming the empty lots and ubiquitous shipping containers into street art.  This is a project in Sumner  that I contributed a couple of crocheted squared to, along with hundreds of other crafters around the world.  

Denniston Moss

Denniston lichens and mosses

The day after our tour of Stockton Mine, Robin and I visited the next plateau south: Denniston. The rich seams of Denniston coal were extensively and famously pit-mined for nearly a century. Denniston's mining history has been romantically immortalised in a couple of popular novels which in turn support some excellent visitor resources on the Plateau.

Top of the Incline (once touted as the 8th wonder of the world!) at Denniston

I like looking at bits of rusty old mining kit as much as the next girl but I really wanted to get a feel for the natural landscape that is (probably) soon going to be open cast mined like Stockton.  The landscape is very similar to what Stockton would have been like before Solid Energy started blasting the surface away. I also really wanted to meet one of the famous snails. 

Looking South from Stockton onto Denniston Plateau

The Arctic has polar bears. The Sumatran rainforest has orangutans.  Every endangered ecosystem needs at least one charismatic megafauna to rally support for habitat conservation. The Buller coal plateau (which includes Stockton and Denniston Plateaux) is an endangered ecosystem so harsh that the most charismatic megafauna it can offer is a giant carnivorous land snail that sucks up live worms like spaghetti.  Unfortunately, as defenders of the plateau have found, snails have a repuation that make most people consider them a slightly ludicrous animal to bother saving.  It's difficult, even for a lifelong greenie like myself, to not secretly snigger just a little about saving snails.

Powelliphanta patrickensis (photo from Forest and Bird)

Of course its not just unique and remarkable snails that are at risk, but an entire unique and remarkable ecosystem (of which snails are a near-top-level predator, much like the polar bear in the Arctic, but infinitely less cuddly-looking). Denniston Plateau's environment is based on a layer of concrete-like sandstone with almost no soil; 6m p/a rainfall with no drainage, at a high altitude between mountains and sea, blasted almost year round with icy Southern winds. 

Typical Denniston landscape- exposed rock with a few short tough plants clinging to tiny nooks and hollows

The tallest trees grow to about knee height in most places.  Most of the animal life is invertebrate, with a few rare birds and lizards who survive there because it is too harsh an environment for the kind of pests that have demolished most of the rest of NZ's native animals. 

My favourite Denniston plant

I didn't see any snails. Or other insects, though I turned over a few rocks looking. No birds, no lizards, nothing but the most enchanting clumps of moss and lichen. We did meet lots of mining vehicles thundering along the narrow twisty gravel roads to and on the Plateau. Bathurst (the company granted consent to open cut on Denniston Plateau) is already open cut mining out the back at Cascade Mine, accessed across Denniston.  

Reminds me of the saucer gardens I used to make when I was a child

This environment is so fragile, so tenuously maintained on the hard sandstone cap that lies above the coal, that I just can't see how Bathurst  can possibly pretend they will be able to restore it after mining.  Like Solid Energy's efforts at Stockton Mine, they may go to a great deal of trouble to make sure the landscape looks green and tidy, (which is admittedly an improvement on pre-RMA mining companies leaving a big toxic mess as at Tui). I mean, look at these pictures.  The ecosystem that is there now is unique to the sandstone cap and can't be replicated on top of blasted rubble with manufactured soil, grass seed and native plantings.  It may very well be a parkland afterwards, but it won't be much like it is now.

Charismatic microflora.  Could a Save the Moss campaign work? It is kind of cuddly looking. 

Coal mining in the bad old days was difficult, dirty and dangerous. Miners died underground in explosions, fires, collapses and gassy pockets. They died overground in machinery failures. If they survived the immediate dangers many still died young of black lung from inhaling coal dust.

Denniston Miners (photos from the interpretive boards on site)

Today coal mining continues to be difficult, dirty and dangerous.  I'm still stitching my memorials to the men who died at Pike River few miles from Denniston not even two years ago.

New Zealand Coal Mining Disasters remembered at Denniston

An open cut mine in a regulated industry is undoubtably less dangerous for workers who spend most of their days inside the comfortable cabs of heavy machinery. But the dangers to the environment from coal mining are both localised and global, immediate and long term. Blasting a landscape, filling the air with dust and acidifying streams are bad enough but burning coal into greenhouse gases is inherently dirty. Clean coal is a dirty lie.  The only clean coal is in the hole.


The difficulty is overcoming the greed of coal mining directors and shareholders who deny that climate change is their problem (yet Colorado burns up as I write this).  The difficulty lies in changing a whole global economic system entirely based on digging up sequestered carbon and releasing it into the atmosphere.

"As new processes evolve, future generations might wonder why their ancestors wastefully burnt so much of this rare and precious fossil fuel."