Dreamer dreams

I just watched a short cartoon about a world called Rarg that is a lovely peaceful place that discovers that it is entirely the creation of one sleeping mans dream. They build a porthole to reality, kidnap him sleeping in his bed and very quietly transport him to a sound proof room so he won't wake up. At this point, the video quit buffering for some reason, but if I remember correctly it ends with the dream changing and all of the Rargians becoming birds. 

It's odd to watch because I have hazy memories of watching this cartoon when I was very young. I wasn't sure if it was real, or if I had dreamed it myself. It's an interesting inside-out kind of fable. Making reality part of the dream instead of the dream into reality. The dream-dwellers are, of course, delusional because anything they do is part of the dream. However, we could also be dreams of course! If we are dreams I suppose it won't matter if I don't do the dishes tonight. 

I have been making more of my dreams a reality lately. It sounds corny to say, but I have been again discovering the importance of taking how I spend my time and energy seriously as it pertains to my goals. I have compiled a list of the things that I can do right now to work towards my goal of supporting myself through making things, and a list of things I need to learn or further develop to move forward. 

My biggest blind spot is business management. Luckily, I can ask Rita Pettey's about this. She owns Yarn Hollow (yarn and fiber dying business that's growing!) and is a smart businesswoman who doesn't make starting a small business look so scary. I took the first part of a small business start up class last fall. I generally exaggeratedly summarize it this way- "You will have no money, time or family. If you do not give every waking second of your life to your probably thankless and not profitable business it will fail! If you are not willing to make it your absolute top priority, you will fail!!" Not awesome for me to hear, have recently moved in with a boyfriend and his two children. Rita presents a different example. She has two grade school children and a husband who get time with her every day, she watches movies, hangs out with friends and her business is growing. She gave me some book recommendations, so hopefully that will help. 

In the meantime, things are going very well in my day to day with some potentially quality of live/work changes coming soon. I feel as though the universe wants me to be happy. The cosmic trickster might just be playing my tune...

tornado warnings

Today might be the day I get started on my first seamstress order! It's an interesting project for a number of reasons. I know the family I'll be sewing for from my Quaker meeting, and they live 'plain'. This superficially means that if you saw them on the street you might think they were Amish. So their clothes are homemade- or in this case, friend-made. I'm more excited about this than the usual responses I've been getting because it's very true to how I'd ideally like my craft to be engaged with in respect to clothing. Their clothing will be paid a fair price for and made by someone they know locally. My needs (in part) will be met by my ability to barter a skill that will meet their needs, which I think is pretty damn cool. 

My significant other, Buddha, and I have already begun some experiments in doing things the "old fashioned way" in the interests in saving money, living healthy, walking lightly on the earth and breaking out of those systems that do not serve us well and are so ubiquitous in this modern life. 

I know it's been said before, but our dependence on fossil fuel is running us headlong into devastating consequences for the planet. Not just our furry/slimy/feathered/microscopic friends and the places they hang out in- this means you and me, fellow human. This is old news, unfortunately. I feel like I've known this all my life, and not a whole lot of progress has been made. I remember making a model of a solar powered house in fourth grade. I knew then we needed to change our wicked ways and the house seemed like a completely reasonable option. That was probably twenty years ago. A fifth of a century. Precious planet saving time squandered while the internet transformed the world and the global economy linked our resources and our histories, but apparently not our needs or efforts.

It seems to me that as a culture we've begun acting like someone with a terminal illness. We understand that our little day-to-day choices are harmful, but we're just sick and tired of being sick and tired. We know we're overweight and under-exercised and exposed to a myriad of toxins, it's just gotten exhausting to keep track of it all and is beginning to feel futile and like deprivation to try. This is true for many individuals and can also be a metaphor for the state of our planet. 

I know that many people have been working hard to make some changes in their personal lives as they can. I also know that personal change is not enough and larger scale forces must also change their ways (especially industrial meat production). I don't think it has to be impossible or terrible, but it does look grim.

I've spent the summer working on a farm, trying to feed a family from scratch as much as possible and trying to put away food for the winter months. We've fallen far short of being wholly prepared- my sarcastic solution, of course, is a diet of ramen noodles and canned soups. One thing I've learned from all this is that people didn't move off the farm, buy processed foods in boxes and shop at huge one-stop grocery stores because they're morally void or lazy. But because this is all really hard work. A person has to be smart, organized, creative and possess a healthy stamina to make a realistic effort. And even then, it calls upon these virtues to a much greater capacity than the available alternatives. 

I've been trying to live up to this. Now Buddha and I are trying together. Hopefully we'll get even more help than this in the not too distant future. We're not Luddites, but we also are not WOWed by every latest gadget guaranteed to identify and fulfill us. One of our major projects from this summer has been learning to can. In the picture above you see our tomatillo salsa, tomatoes, pickled beets and blueberry jam. Almost all the ingredients are from local sources, which we're pretty proud of. 

I know that I'm trying to focus this blog on my art/craft practice, but it really feels connected to these larger issues. My craft and art are part of the larger project of my life, and my life is part of my time/effect on the earth. I have a hard time seeing relevant divisions between these things. I think for now I'm going to get into one of those tomato cans and make us some chili for this stormy day. Then perhaps on to sewing...

I do other stuff goodish too

Friends, I am transitioning out of my 40-hour-a-week job and into the nebulous beyond. This means I might just get a chance to make yet another shot at making my living from what I love to do best- make things. It is an exciting and scary time for me for a number of reasons. You see, I have a hard time actually believing that this is a possibility for me. At the same time, given the state of these troubled times I feel that getting back to trading concrete things for other concrete things might be the best shot we've got.

I studied sculpture as an undergrad and worked a lot in textiles, and I still do. I have a bit of a line drawn between my craft and art practice which I have a hard time maintaining or defining. Functionality is a factor. Conceptual complexity is a factor. Mass appeal is a factor as well. But to what degree and what objects land in which category is not honestly governed by a clear system. So, I'd like to share some pictures and history about my making process as an artist and not just a crafter. 

This piece was part of my BFA thesis show and is titled 'But man is born to trouble, surely as sparks fly upwards' . It is my own arms with lace embedded into the surface and cast in iron. The lace reads like some sort of scarring or tattoos. They each have a channel cut from the armpit to the wrist which was initially intended to keep the weight reasonable, but became an interesting element. 

They are filled with felted roving that bulges out at the joint between the two. The gesture of the arms is meant to be that of carrying firewood, but their position also references kneeling legs. This, in conjunction with the soft joint and lace, make the arms decidedly female and somewhat sexualized. 

The boards they're resting on and the pile of wood both incorporate felt from sweaters. It acts as a stripe on the floor and covers the ends of some of the firewood pieces. The bark had come off some of the pieces of wood and the galleries of the boring insects were exposed and visually echoed the lace of the arms. 

This is the "Other Mother". She is a doll a little less than 2' tall made out of raw fleece, construction cloth, plastic, glass, human hair, cloth, embroidery floss, wood and an unfortunate frog that was plasticized in a pitcher of resin on accident. She comes from a story about a mother who eventually, as threatened, abandons her tricked-into-being-wicked children to the Other Mother with a glass eye and a wooden tail. It's a rather terrifying story, so I tried to create a piece that would also be dreadful. 

She is toughly felted and still smells of sheep and it uncomfortable to hold as her tail see-saws against the rest of her body and her flapping hand legs. 

I've shown her a few times, most recently in the Grand Rapids Festival of the Arts in Grand Rapids, MI. At the moment, she is to precious for me to part with, but I will hopefully be starting some new dolls of comparable impact. 

PS, the date on this is wrong for some reason. Consider this an early October 2010 post.

My own invention

I seem to be venturing off on my own more in the world of knitting lately. For Christmas, I made a caplet for my eleven year old sister with no pattern and only a vague notion of what I was doing. She loved it and wore it the whole time I was visiting for the holidays. It turned out so well that I think I may make a second one and write down what I'm doing this time. 

For my other sister (closer to my age) I made a chunky multi-colored button up collar. For one of my brothers I'm still working on a hat made of pyramids. It's a take-off from Lisa Anne Auerbachs' Bucky-Fuller-inspired hat in the Knit Knit book. It's not very difficult, but involves so many little pieces and a specific way of attaching all of them that it is taking me quite a while to get it finished. It should be pretty impressive once completed. I might try to find a way to do it more efficiently. 

It's been fun working on my own designs. I like the problem-solving aspect of it, but I think I need to get better about writing down what I'm doing. I've got a ravelry.com account and they have a way to share patterns for free, so that would probably be a good way to get some feedback. This new year, I'm going to try to pay attention to my crafting practice more and quit neglecting my etsy shop!

Etsy-tastic

I've finally spent some time photographing and prepping for Etsy several items I made months ago. I always tell myself it will take no time at all, and then, of course it takes all afternoon. Part of the hold up on some of these things was that I told myself I was going to make 10-15 of them for the sake of experiment and design exploration. I stuck to this plan for about two weeks before it began to taper off with a grand total of four completed. I told myself repeatedly that I would continue with the rest, but that hasn't happened yet, so I decided to put what I had up on Etsy since I'm satisfied with them thus far. 

This series of mine is several felted "nest" shapes, akin to an oriels nest, attached to a branch of grape vine curl. The wool is a smokey mix of several fibers and doesn't felt as smoothly as the usual roving. The effect is more organic and I like it. I've been stitching little bright beads into it hoping they'll look like little spoors or seeds or eggs... or.... something like that. They're interesting as necklaces, but I'm thinking of putting them on hair pins as well so it would be as though something had nested in ones hair. 

The woodworking items on Etsy have been taken down at the request of their maker, Chuck. I worked with Chuck at his wood shop, but he's out of business for the time being. I haven't had a chance to talk to him about what happened yet, but I hope it's good news and not bad. 

In reviewing the remaining items, I find myself getting critical of my writing style again. Apparently, writing the product descriptions is the tricky part for most people. In mine, I try to balance candor about how I feel about what I've made while making it interesting and not coming across as patronizing or glib. I'm probably more guilty of over-thinking them! 

Rita has lately had me processing some dyed-in-the-grease wool. I like this sort of thing and how it feels very close to the material. I like the terms for the tools; the doffer, the picker, the flicker, the carder. I also seem to be able to focus for long periods of time on stuff like this-- I get particular about pulling burrs and dense short bits out while carding. She let me take the pulled out bits with me, so now I have dyed wool that is still rather raw in every other way. This will probably be quite interesting to work with...

Follow the Yellow Brick Road

In my quest to know everything there is to know about making stuff, I've begun to learn how to spin. I got to go along to the Michigan Fiber Festival this year with Rita of Yarn Hollow. I already had a neglected drop spindle and had bought a bunch of spinning-roving and used much of it for needle felting (which is a pricey way to do needle felting). I finally got a book, in violation of my usual I'll-figure-it-out-as-I-go method of learning things. This is pretty much how I learned to needle felt, and hang dry wall. I think it was okay with the needle felting and less efficient with the dry walling. 

The book has been quite helpful and I've got one quarter of my roving spun. I was even able to two ply it, which had been a bit of a mystery to me. I understood the twisting in principal, but I didn't understand how one got all of the yarn to do it at once. The Andean method involves a particular way of wrapping  ones hand in yarn and then spinning the two lengths together. 

I mean to get the rest of it spun up soon, but I'm also making socks for a friend of my who's currently in Iraq (and obviously needs socks), and I've got a great idea for a hat (because I obviously need another hat), so focusing on one project at a time is getting tricky. 

Initials inscribed

I packed all ten skeins of yarn for my Dallas trip. On the way down I was very ready for some alone time and, for a while, soundly ignored my fellow passengers attempts to make conversation. I was listening to Naomi Wolf's Give me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries and feeling good about watching the plains go by. Eventually I did get chatty with the other passengers and made a few texan friends. This turned out to be a good thing since my suitcase went missing part way through the trip. I didn't have much in it that I cared much about losing, except for a book I borrowed from a friend and most of the yarn for my sweater. Luckily, one of these new pals of mine discovered it had just been moved into another area- whew! 

By the time I got to my friend John's place, the sweater was about here...

Much of the rest of the sweater was completed at John's apartment during slow quiet mornings and on our road trip to Austin once he finished with work for the week. 

Dallas? Eh. It's okay. When I arrived off the train, John instructed me to find a coffee shop to camp at while he came to fetch me. It was about 4pm and I was in the middle of downtown- and completely unable to find an open coffee shop! I was rather disappointed about this, it doesn't seem very big-city to me to not have some place to camp out at downtown on an afternoon. The district Deep Ellum had some cool sights to see. One could tell they had found Deep Ellum because of the sudden appearance of some very strange and wonderful murals. 

Austin was much cooler. My main argument for the coolness of Austin lies in the discovery that they have the largest urban bat colony in the country. It is a huge bridge that smells like bat shit and it seems to be a popular activity for Austinites to gather at the nearby grassy lawn and watch the exodus of bats in the evening. Other things to like about Austin- one is allowed to ride in the back of pick-up trucks and women are not required to wear shirts. Not that I took advantage of the latter option, but I like options, and I like Austin. We hung out at some very cool galleries/shops/bars/restaurants and went swimming in a river at Red Bud park. My friend Maggie was our lovely guide. I think it was good for John as well. He's based right now in Lawrence, Kansas and Dallas has not been very easy to get used to for the summer. We drove through rural Texas on the way back to Dallas, I knitted, and we talked about many things in a most refreshing way. 

When I got back to Michigan, I had a few inches on one sleeve to go, and of course it took me a week to knit those last few inches and another week to weave the ends in.

Sorry this isn't the best image of it... I learned a new thing about my camera- when one sets the timer, it will take about three or four pictures in quick succession, so as a result I ended up with about 16 pictures of me in various stages of sweater-posing/adjusting my hair/walking/looking at the camera somewhat puzzled as to why is was still clicking. None of them were very good lightingwise, but this one you can see the yolk okay-ish and I'm looking a little blankly confused about the camera, but at least I'm not waving my arms around. So, well, perhaps not the most triumphant imagery, but maybe I can coax a friend into helping me get a better picture later. It still needs to be blocked, but all the same - SWEATER! Ha! Did it! Woooo-hoooo! I don't even care that it hasn't transformed me into that pretty Rowan model. And now I don't feel as intimidated by those long winded patterns.