speechless

I have been silent for a long time. Here, and in my telling, also. A speechless storyteller. I can tell you, that is anxiety producing.

I want to sincerely thank those of you that contacted me in concern.

I can write, it seems, in little bits.

maybe I'll tell a story in little bits

little dots and circles of words patchworked together

a stitching story

a scrap story

not weaving

no long interwoven threads of images, meaning, words, actions

fragments

making rhythm, sound.

sound story, rhythm story

can I teel an epic in little sound bits?

maybe this is what the world is about today

a bombardment of scraps of information

a piling up of rags

(I cannot help myself- images flash through- bodies, bombs, body parts, plane crashes, earthquake, fire, destruction)

ok I will do it in little bits then

it is like learning language from the beginning

putting words into silence

it is like

being born again

once more

being born

http://www.flickr.com/photos/43866587@N07/
this is the link to my photostream on flickr where I have fotos of my work with felt

and the down side

the riot police are back. in fullforce. they are afraid a handful of villagers will stop the bulldozers.

a moment in paradise

it is not all burnt. on the way my boys asked me a thousand times, watching the blackened trunks, are you sure it is green where we are going?and when we climbed out of the car and started walking, their joy was tangible. oh, it smells good they said, over and over again. I realised how hard it is for them to live with the evidence of the catastrophe of their environment around us. the outing was an exploration of new storywalks for the museum, because we cant take children to the old ones.
and of course a dyeplant hunting excursion for me. see the cotinus coggyria (smoke tree) lower left in the above foto

and joy of joys madder, madder madder everywhere. it is like a second spring, we have warm weather after rains, sprouts seeds and flowers all together on the same plants. I hope the winter is not too harsh

these are wild pistachio galls, source of tannins and yellow dye which is very lightfast, according to D. Cardon. The bushes are full of them.

I opened one, it was full of aphids. Cardon says they were used before the insects broke out. I promised the boys we'll explore properly during the weekend, I see me dyeing next week

:-)

felt fun 2

this is a bag made as a result of improvisation. I wanted to see how the "native" wool would combine with fabric, so I laid it out on a sheet of cotton. It is quite coarse(the wool), and I was happy to see that the hairs were passing through the fabric- happy because they were visible, also because lots of them had passed through, it was quite stable without being at all fulled. when I started to throw it and drop it I decided to make something out of it, and not have just another flat sample of felt. I sewed two sides together, one short and one long, making a cylinder, closed on one side. I threw it around some more. I love this part, spraying soapy water all around, massaging my woolly fabric and stroking it so the hairs felt into the others and not rising up. It was just beginning to get crinkly when I thought it might be a good idea to strengthen the seams. I cut merino commercial prefelt into strips and laid it over the seams, rubbing a little bit. after throwing and squishing some more it dawned on me that it would be uneven, with more wool on the seams, so i started "collaging" more prefelt on to the fabric, until it was covered. It is good that this wool doesnt felt quickly, so I had time to wait for inspiration while squishing. I get my best ideas when working with my hands- it would be easier to cut a strip of prefelt as large as the fabric and lay it out on the other side from the beginning, but now I know eh?
After rolling and squishing and wetting and soaping and then hitting and really rubbing hard and dancing with the felt I had a cylinder, closed on one end. And it stayed on the kitchen table all night long with no identity, just possibilities. I wasn't making a bag, just a nuno sample. Next day, the boys were asking what it is. I told them it is a hat and wore it on my head. they laughed. but it did look good, and I saw it could take many shapes with blocking. As I was playing around with form, I saw that it would make a nice pouch. so I made cords, using the black wool and some merino roving dyed the same as the prefelt I had used for the inside, and because it was looking good and I was enjoying the rolling, I made a second one, long, soft and coarse at the same time. I cut holes near the top of the bag, rubbed them well, the felt hardened more there- I think with manual felting there is always the possibility to felt some more-, I passed one of the cords through the holes. Now I had to attach it to the lower corner. I made a small palm-felt, hard and strong, and opened holes - two widely spaced and two closer together. passing the cords through that, I saw that it is good for pushing against the rim of the bag to keep the cords tight to close the opening- like the pieces of wood with two holes that keep the tent strings taut- so I kept that for a closing mechanism and made another one for the bottom end. I passed the cords through the second one, made a nice flattish knot. Then I put some wool behind it, stitched a few holding stitches with wool yarn and rubbed it until it was fused with the body of the bag. I liked the second cord too much not to use it, so I wove it around the first one around the rim of the bag. It is now my handbag.

My mother when she saw it said that she especially likes the combination of sugar white and caramel beige........so now I am going to make one for her. But she doesn't like sac-like bags, she wants compartments, so I have to practice using resists. Then I'm going to start selling them for a lot of money and be mythically rich so that I can play around with sheep hair and soapy water all I want without worrying about the bills :-)))))))))))))))

these are my future experiments soaking in various indescribable liquids. I will have many metres of different light weaves of cotton to play with. when I am rich, there will be silk also.
this one began as an exploration of karagouniko (my native fleecewool)on linen. I did measure it to make a wallet for the packet of rolling tobacco, the measuring worked- I allowed for it to be half the size when finished. it is harder than I would want for wearing, but fine for a bag or slippers.the breakthrough on this one is how much I enjoyed stitching. I couldn't stop- it still needs a bobble or something to keep it closed, but I like it. the yarn is wool from the same kind of sheep, sold as rug yarn - i bought it some time ago.

and, a whatif- another one! A piece of fabric died with seedpods from a bush that is prolific on our land, acacia leaves and the remnants of a eucalyptus bark dyebath. so whatif I made a bag with this inside? which side would be nicer? would the dyes keep? this hasn't had time to cure- but the colouring is so bold I think something will stay. here it is stiched on two sides- should I say basted?i decided to use the gray fleece, to see how it felts. it has very long hairs and is very coarse.I made a resist out of cereal box cardboard, taped an opened plastic bag and bubblewrap around it.I put it inside and sewed the top closed. that is more sewing than I have done in the past thirty years, and there's more to come.fibres laid out on one side. they took a lot of water. both sides wetted out and tucked in. I rolled it up and rolled away bouncing it a little bit, the bubblewrap on the inside helped the bouncing. I hated not being able to look inside to see whether the fibres are passing through the fabric. so I decided to trust it. and roll softly and a lot, to make sure.I opened it when it began to get crinkly, you can see where I made the cuts. the colours on the cloth were lighter, but they look good with the greythis is the inside of the finished purse, interesting markings on the cloth, but not as bold as before. So I got bold with the stitching-


backside

frontside open

closed



I'm enjoying the embellishment, stitching, sewing sooooooo much I don't believe it. I was the worst pupil in "home economics" when it came to stitching I managed to nearly fail this unfailable course in high school

the teacher didn't like it that my hands were always inky from writing with a fountain pen

she didn't like it that I made stitching drawings instead of straight lines

now revenge is mine

I will stitch and embroider rough wooly felt in a rough wooly way to my hearts content.

It is a pity that I refused to touch a needle for more than 30 years

maybe I will enjoy it more for that

for this new joy of stitching I want to thank jude hill of spiritcloth I read every post, visit her favourite sites, and admire her work

the idea of whatifs is from her site too

I think everything I do is a whatif, much of my everyday life is a whatif now that I am growing older and can appreciate the fun

when I found myself looking at needles in the shop I knew new worlds were opening for me

since I started searching the internet to learn about dyes from plants last spring I feel that I have opened the door to a great place to be

I'm so grateful

how I love my washing line

the last of the unwashed fleeces now washed in the sea, rinsed with water at home, now drying next to a compost dyed sweater.

rose leaf bundled cotton washed after curing for a couple of months. I want to do this with felt.

the same next to a compost dyed cotton scarf. I love the khaki colour my compost gives, i wash it out very very well, and I wear the scarves. there is no unpleasant smell, the colours are washfast, I sometimes put them in the washing machine on purpose or by mistake, the colours from the compost have not changed. it is my "dye"compost, I throw plant matter and remnants of dyepots in a metal barrel that is beginning to rust.

these are my summer experiments with bundling fabric with plants from around here and scrap metal. these are cotton and linen, cured for at least a month and rinsed after. I washed with olive oil soap, and there was very little colour in the water, and the fading was untraceable in the fabric. The washing did soften the contours of the prints, a pleasing result. these fabrics were premordanted with ash water (uncalibrated) and either yoghurt or soy milk with repeated dippings and dryings. It makes a huge difference to the fastness and brightness of the colours.

bundle print on linen, eucalypt bark tie-dye with elastic bands (smells lovely)cotton

and, yes, I worked for a day picking grapes. Back- breaking work, hot and dirty, but holding the bunch of grapes in my hand, the juices running along my arm... mmm I was dead tired after the first hour, but went on for six more. lunch was under an oak tree, the best tasting cheese and olives I've ever had. And yes, there were galls in that tree- I'm going to pick them one of these days.

the pay at the end of the day was good, too.

the hills in the background are all burnt.

the bunches of grapes weigh more than a kilo- bountiful little wizened shrubs
the knife they gave me had a lizard on it
and I got to take some grapes home. Luka is being very good- she knows they're there.. the fleece is the one I washed at home, it got quite felted with the repeated rinsing, and I used an awful lot of water- The sea every time from now on for the first cleaning, I'll only rinse the salt out at home with the fresh water because it makes them harsh to the touch.

I'm off to Marathon now, to check the post. Please take a look at attikasos
(click on the word)later today for updates on arrivals for our fundraising project for reforestation after the fires.

wool, silk, felt

merino extravganza. at last I found my battery-loader refiller plug. you see lots of eucalyptus, some madder, no reds yet but beautiful warm browns and pinkish oranges, the yellow and green are hypericum from the mountains of arkadia, smaller leaves and flowers than what I found here, but sort of perforatum. upper left are fleeces, unwashed, uncarded, just rinsed. the blue is from the incredibly smelly vat made from the first water when you rinse a fleece. top right are prefelts for experiments. the brown in the back is my woolen blanket, commercial. lower left is some purple basil- the purplish blue and the light green, and the orange is coreopsis, just a few flowers. there are quite a few nondescript tans there in the middle that are going back to be enriched, either before or after felting. acloser look at the basil and coreopsis. the basil is extremely sensitive to atmospheric conditions, it keeps on changing colour. I have not tried wetting it and soaping, maybe needlefelt on the inside of a bookcover would preserve it for a little while ;-)

madder in the middle, hypericum to the right, the yellowy in the middle is eucalyptus, a really beautiful colour. I'm really happy with these colours, all of them have survived felting, (except for the purple basil..)some were just thrown in pots and jars haphazardly, the deepest ones were made carefully. Carefully means with heat and time. some have began felting, but of course they were the ones that I kept squeezing to see how the colours are catching.

onion leaves bundled at prefelt stage, felted after. there will be more in the future. Next I'm going to try felting first and dyeing after. It does change the process, it means that you think more in terms of structure of the work, instead of painterly colouring.

Silks- bundled with plant matter. silk is so expensive- cant really experiment all I like. It is so beautiful, whatever you do to it.

eucalyptus bark and ironwater

fig leaves and various

and felt

its all experiments and samples, I really enjoy this.

so this is part of what I've done this summer, B. F. I also have lots of cotton and linen dyesperiments drying on the line. Going to make photos...