bee creative

knitting family groups

 

"Second Sock Syndrome (SSS) is an extremely common affliction of Knitting and most knitters will contract one or more forms of the disease at some point in their knitting lives...process knitters with the disease often live completely normal lives, even while leaving scads of lonely single socks in their wake. Whether or not a case of SSS keeps you up at night is a good indication of your personality type."   

Stephanie Pearl-McPhee,  from Casts Off

Matching socks. 

Not quite matching.  One way to beat SSS in my mind is to never make the same sock.   I'm not even making pairs of socks anymore, but socks that are in family groups.  I've made four socks now with this the orange-gray variegated yarn, mixing in the odd color and alternating stripes in different ways.

For the next couple weeks I'm going to be spending a lot of time with family...time I'm really looking forward too.  I'm going to have to take a break from blogging, but I'll be back.  My direction for October is "backwards." 

opening to a page

A glass fishing float used to keep nets from sinking.  This one was found on a beach in Alaska. 

Sometimes I like to pick up a book of poetry and just open to a page.  Last night in one of my favorite anthologies, Poetry for the Earth, edited by Sara Dunn with Alan Scholefield,  I found a poem called "Inner" by Liz Lochhead.  I particularly liked this part of the poem:

"we have woken every morning/ for a week/ under the tin roof/ listening to the rain/ walking by the sea/ we find clean bones/ cork floats tiny/ coral branches/ green glass cockleshells/ driftwood a broken/ copper sprinkler rose gone green/ and botched and oxidised/ smooth  pebbles mermaid purses/ things to pick.  a collage on the windowledge./ I'd like/ an art that could somehow marry/ the washed-up manmade/ and the wholly natural/ make a change"

Strange how things sometimes appear.  This reminds me of seaweed, but it's really cotton dyed with apple leaves and iron.  And I see a star...

patches and repairs

Sometimes it is fun to look up the definition of a familiar word...

If I hadn't, I wouldn't have considered the connection of this as a patch (of ground)

with the patches I put on my rain coat and my quilt.  A patch used to repair.  A patch that I am repairing.  So glad that I got to the mowing yesterday, today it's mostly rained. 

Not a patch, but still a repair.  I found this video on string heddles and realized I could do something similar on my loom that has the metal heddle.  A repair of sorts.  Making do.  

This could be a patch...in the right place. 

finds of the day

  The materials to fuel creativity:

Fresh ginger from the farmer's market. 

Two acorns intact, not easy to find around here. 

The apples were ripe.  Spent most of the day outside in the garden.  Glorious sunshine with a brisk wind.  Moving the season along.  

timing

On the way to work this morning.

I can't seem to get a picture of the whole that I like, so this bit will do for now.  I think that means that the timing for the whole just isn't right yet.  This might have something to do with earth and sky (rust and hop dyed and viola dyed, same white cotton to start, plus wool). 

For this month, I never did see more of the full moon than this. 

Flotsam and jetsam

Flotsam and jetsam is a term used to describe things thrown over a ship or boat.  Flotsam would be things meant to be thrown and jetsam are things that are unintentionally thrown. 

I'm finding my favorite kind of yarn to spin is made of little bits of thread or fabric scraps (especially silk) carded into the wool.  There's just a bit of my sea glass collection in this picture, the crystal wasn't from the beach.  

This is the almost full moon.  Tonight it's just about to the top of the trees and it's as dark as can be.  Would flotsam and jetsam be used for space ships? 

A possibility.  Intentional, unintentional.  Wanted and discarded and reclaimed. 

"Finding beauty in a broken world is creating beauty in the world we find."   Terry Tempest Williams (From Finding Beauty in a Broken World). 

garden update: September

A few more precious tomatoes, the first tomatillio, a few squash.  The wool yarn was dyed with elderberry leaves, red cabbage and marigolds (tagetes).  Although it's been a low yield year for vegetables and fruit, I know the garden is moving in the right direction as I'm finding more purpose in it.

 

It's growing in usefulness. 

 

Wind and rain dyed.  I had used these pieces of fabric (both silk) as samples for my hop experimenting (dried versus fresh) and found they made a soft golden yellow.  I left them on the table next to the metal filings I'd been experimenting with.  The wind blew them into the filings, still coated with vinegar water, and left lovely gray patterns.  I rinsed them out and left them on the table to be rinsed by the rain a bit more.  The wind once again blew the fabric into the filings, this time without the vinegar.  And there you have it. Wind and rain dyed.  Next time I'll do it on purpose. 

following threads

Last night Jude posted a link to this video...after watching I just had to go work on something.  This was it:

I've been debating for quite awhile what I wanted to do with the top.  A while back I decided to add a little moon and a drift of cloud.  After thinking about it and watching one of Grace's projects unfolding, I realized I wanted to leave this empty for the most part.  I haven't captured it well, but it looks right to me.  It reminds me that I am content not knowing what is beyond the stars that I can see...  That there is a place for open spaces.  (I had forgotten that Grace had done a moon similar to this one when I stitched mine down.  I don't think I'd have done it differently if I'd been thinking about it though.) 

After visiting Penny's blog, Tanglewood Threads, this morning, I decided there was one more thing I wanted to try with this piece of fabric.  I sprinkled some metal shavings my dad had given me over the top of the fabric and sprayed it with some vinegar water (I keep a bottle handy for cleaning).  Surprise, something showed up.  The outline of the leaf I had tried to get an ecoprint of.  Hmm....

I couldn't wait longer and pulled the silk velvet I was dyeing in the pansy-petunia tea (with a touch of alum).  It's a bit bluer than pictured, I included the white fabric for a bit of contrast.  I hope I'll be able to gather more flowers before the weather changes.  More experimenting to do.  Velma  has a sample too.  And of course, India Flint's book Eco Colour is providing a lot of inspiration! Her "found, stitched and dyed" is a fantastic project. 

I also tried Kaite's ecostring.  I'll have to practice a bit more to have as smooth of a texture as Kaite's, but I think I've got the process down.  I used bearded iris leaves from my garden for this. 

We create in community, this I believe.  I've just pulled a few threads here...so many more directions I could have gone.  And I'm thinking of all the lovely ways that we can use our hands, all the textures there are for us to explore.   Life seems rich with possibilities. 

first fall leaf...last apples

Every fall I pick up an assortment of leaves as I walk to and from places.  This is my first leaf for this year.  I tried to make a print with it but it didn't turn out well. 

I think I'll have much better luck getting some color from the petunia-pansy tea that is steeping at the moment.  It's a lovely shade of blue at the moment. 

Not having good luck with this either.  I think I have a squirrel that is helping himself/herself to snacks in the garden. I didn't mind so much the nibbling on the Yellow Transparent apples, there was enough to share.  The King apples are another story...only about 15 of them on the tree and they are not quite ripe yet.  Not the best year for apples around here. 

when just right happens

One of the interesting things about Autumn Crocus is that the foliage comes up in the spring, grows lush and thick and then dies down.  The flowers come up without foliage in the fall.  I think they wait for just the right temperature, just the right amount of moisture before they pop up.  Just the right combination of something to bring them into being...

What if a blanket happens when just the right combination of fabrics pile up on the table?  What if a blanket was built of a variety of fabrics stacked and stitched together?  The bottom layer is fabric dyed with marigold, the middle a scrap from a shirt, and the stars just a bit cut from yet another scrap.