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an interesting life

i lead an interesting life
and
because i find endless fascination in the wonderments of the whirled
am delighted to be able to assure my readers that
boredom is not something that afflicts me.
ever.
it can be a life of extremes
i hang out with fascinating people
like
Bumble and Felix [while pruning roses]

as well as with my No1 son-in-law [an excellent shearer and generally very helpful chap]

you can't really see him...he's standing behind that pile of wool that somehow hid in the woods and escaped shearing last year

and at the end of the day
Johnniecat is always happy to discuss philosophies

in between writing and teaching
weaving, dyeing, stitching and dreaming
there isn't much spare time

that said,
i made time a while ago
to sew/dye/embellish a frock for someone
who said they wanted it for a red carpet event
and in rather a hurry
it involved several fittings [with long drives back and forth to town]
and some extended nights of handstitching
no payment was offered
and [yes, silly me] i was too shy to ask
sadly i cannot find any images of it being worn anywhere
[and none have been sent]
so the only pictures i have of it
are blurry phone-snaps.

i hope it doesn't end up in an op-shop somewhere.

it was an interesting experience
that momentarily left me feeling not quite "the lucky one"

[altgough other recent life events have reminded me just how lucky i really am]

anyways


the next special frock i make
will be for me
for an event at the Art Gallery of New South Wales
where I have been asked to come and tell stories
as part of the events arranged for a spectacular exhibition

Kamisaka Sekka - dawn of modern Japanese Design

maybe i will see some of you there?

alabama chanin organic cotton

some while ago the kind folk at Alabama Chanin
sent me a piece of their lovely organic cotton jersey
so that i could play on it with colour
it feels like whipped cream
i was so delighted with it
that i immediately ordered Natalie Chanin's latest book
which is simply wonderful on all counts - content, design, philosophy
[there's a wonderful line in it about "loving your thread"]

i cut some of it into smaller pieces [the jersey, not the book]
pre-soaked and marked and drew on them with
various substances [mostly from the kitchen]
and some from those brews of metal and vinegar
that fester away in jars
rowed along the wall of workroom

a few months have intervened
[life getting in the way etc]
allowing the mordants to cure very nicely

today i am dyeing
fortunately [and just like Anne of Green Gables]
with an 'e'

musing on international orange under blue skies

there was a time
when i was small
...blue and orange
were my favourite colours

they still make my heart sing

if your heart needs singing practice
you could try taking it to Melbourne
where it could exult in the Fred Williams retrospective
'infinite horizons'
the paintings are so vibrant
they seem backlit

Debbie Herd writes about her experience here
Fiona Morgan shows more images here
if you can't visit the exhibition in person
consider investing in the catalogue
worth every cent.

studio assistance/assistants

meet Bumble
she's been hanging around me a bit of late
looking for entertainment

Martha is usually close by as well
here she is, sorting out some important studio stuff

today Bumble ventured into the workroom
to make sure i wasn't just reading a book by the fire

[yes the pix are gloomy, i didn't want to fry her retinae with a flash]
but there wasn't anything good to eat
or
particularly exciting going on

so she went back out to play with Martha instead

cold in them thar hills

"there's no such thing as bad weather, only the wrong choice of clothes'
thus spake Billy Connolly
waxing lyrical about the land of his birth

it's so cold here in the Deep South that things need to be dried by a fire

even books

and having made a fire
i figure i might as well use the warmth to heat a dyepot

luckily it has been raining
so i don't need to go far for water
it's provided right outside the workroom
in bowls that aren't too heavy to carry
[thank you Dogs Above]

some contain mordants as well
[not of the canine kind, quiet in the stalls!]

while i'm watching the paper dry
and feeding twigs to the flames

i can stitch another book

knot a fringe

be grateful for small treasures

play with amusing filters on my pocket pinhole camera

and be grateful i woke up breathing on such a lovely day
or
any day, really

and on the seventh day

Saturday and Sunday are generally regarded as days of rest
but i had things to do

a warp to wind
text to tame
a book to bind
and some serious weeding

somehow my morning walk
became an evening walk

and unsurprisingly i found diversion in the cow paddock
where the stones were just too tempting
and made a very nice pile
with an elegant cantilever detail

i wasn't carrying the pocket rocket though
so trotted back to the house to get it

by the time i returned to take an image
the moon, bless her
had decided to take a seat

drinking stillness

on the spinning of yarns and the weaving of tales

the mention of weaving in the last post
sparked a flood of private correspondence
in addition to all the kind comments

apparently

the zeitgeist is afoot
[weaving links around the whirled]
it appears many are either discovering weaving
returning to it
have been dreaming of it
or
been weaving their dreams

weaving is so embedded in our culture
and even in our language
we spin a yarn [or tell a story] - our maternal ancestry was referred to as "the distaff side" -
weave elements into a tale
weave our way through traffic

i suspect each and every one of us
could find a weaver in our ancestry
if we looked back far enough

and there are certainly plenty in the garden

artist Nina Katchadourian describes the mending of webs
helpfully using red thread

many webs are short-lived
but the 75th anniversary of a famous web
was marked last weekend
[there's a video of a wonderful firework display on the link]