ai = love

i worked all day saturday
and then on sunday
i thought
i will just pop in and do a few stitches
and then i will go out and wander somewhere
take a look at Portland

the Dogs had other plans
when i looked outside
it looked like this

that window is my studio

i think it may be
that i am in love with blue
it is a colour that takes me to a quite specific place and time
James Tate wrote beautifully about it
[click on the audio icon to hear the poem being read aloud]
there's a good reason why the Japanese word for blue is the same as the Japanese word for love 

or so i have been told.

today i was thinking about our blue planet
and how the maps we have available are always too small
especially for someone has left footprints on four of the seven continents [gazing at Egypt from the deck of a boat on the Suez Canal as a toddler sadly doesn't count as stepping in Africa]; who keeps a bicycle in New Orleans, a cat in South Australia, her heart in San Francisco and "einen Koffer in Berlin"       ##
 
so
i played around in Photoshop
and made a map that is really useful for planning trips
because
it allows you to compare distance easily with a piece of string [well, except for the curly bits around the poles] and goodness me, what a lot of blue!!!!

got any good maps you'd care to share?



## i plant trees to make up for all this wanton wandering...

eucalyptus uses + studio placements

the genus eucalyptus yields so much more than just dyes

timber, honey, paper, oil

and

a very useful trick for cleaning rust from tools

i bought this lovely implement when i was working on costumes

in Yamaguchi, Japan

nearly seven years ago

it had been lost for some while

and then i found it again. rusty and in need of care

so

knowing that eucalyptus leaves yield acids and oils when heated in water

and that those acids work to assist a rust reduction whereby the red rust

[ferrous oxide] which is quite hard

is turned black and soft [ferric oxide] and is then easy to remove from the tool

i boiled up my little cutter in eucalyptus and water

after tying some string around the handle in case of accidental patterning

[those are not my paws]

after an hour or so

the blade was as black as its shadow

so i dried it and honed it

greased it with lanolin from a scrap of wool

and waxed the handle

so now it's as good as new

+    +    +

which brings me to the second part of this post.

studio placement.

it's the time of year when i am deluged with requests from people who want to come and stay so that in a few short weeks i can teach them everything i know. they say that in return they will help me with my work.
it's kind of y'all to offer

but
i already have all the help i can handle

 and in case you were wondering

the liquid left over from cleaning the tool

...perfect as an iron-rich mordant.

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?

roundabout and roundabout and roundabout we go

early in 2010 i travelled to Japan for the express purpose of studying the textiles on show at the Amuse Museum
the Boro cloths were marvellous indeed and i wrote about the visit here
but
there was something i didn't mention
something i kept close to my heart while i was waiting to see where it might lead
- that something was the weaving of cloth

a skill i had not used for some forty years
rediscovered thanks to a friendly weaver working on the top floor of the Museum
who was happy for me to take her photograph
[my apologies, i do not have her name]
and who kindly invited me to try weaving at her loom

in doing so
she lit a small flame that has been gradually growing.
and while i've been keeping my weaving fairly quiet
it will play some role in the exhibition "muddy waters"
to be shown at the Murray Bridge Regional Gallery in March 2013
along with paper and cloth, felted/stitched/dyed marks


i've never much taken to being limited by labels and i can't for the life of me see any reason for restricting my practice to a particular medium
- i want to tell my story the best way i can
and will utilize whatever is necessary to do so

and while i admit to showing "finished objects" when presenting work publicly
it's really not about that at all
the "things" that are shown
merely tell a Reader's Digest version of the bigger story
and that bigger story is all to do with the process of the work

...stitching on another plane the night before last
the woman to my left asked "what's it going to be?"
and was i think a little confused when i said "it might not be anything, it's what it is now that's important"
then wanted to know whether i was using a pattern

my response was "well, no, i'm just drawing with a needle and thread"
and she took her arm off the arm-rest and reduced herself into the middle of her seat
and focussed on her crossword puzzle.

maybe she thought it was contagious.

but back to weaving. i realised it was in the bones
[literally handed on in a long chain from mother via grandmother via great-grandmother and so on]
and that it had been subtly in my work anyway
woven pages in books, interwoven photographs
interlaced cloth pieces embedded in felt,
in making rag and stick and wire fences in our tiny garden on the Andamooka Opal Fields
so i dived back in

there are many weavers whose work i admire and respect
[Sandra Brownlee is one of them
Chiyoko Tanaka is another, along with Jun Tomita]
but i have no intention of trying to copy any of them
- i will be weaving my own path
in my own way

lucky for me
when i need to know something about weaving
i can still ask my Ma

 the last words for today go to Frank Lloyd Wright

"The longer I live the more beautiful life becomes"

intangibly treasured

at about 3.30 this morning

Morpheus kicked aside the covers

and went somewhere else

leaving me sleepless

so i dangled a hand over the edge of the bed

 and fished up the nearest piece of reading material

which happened to be

an excellent text sent to me by

Janet de Boer

organiser of the Geelong Textile Forum

where Miyoko Kawahito will be teaching later this year

pootling through the pages i learned something new [several, really]

that in Japan, certain processes may be denoted Intangible Treasures. and then there are also Tangible Treasures.

and 

that there is actually a proper Japanese descriptor for the process of beating leaves into cloth. Miyoko Kawahito calls it tataki-zome, whereas i gave it the label hapa-zome [back in 2006 when i sat in the green room of the Yamaguchi Performing Arts Centre, beating leaves from roadside weeds and cemetery prunings into a 6 metre x 6 metre floorcloth for a scene in "Wanderlust"]

the funny thing is that hapa-zome has become part of the dye vocabulary and i've even seen it referred to [in print] as "the ancient art of hapa-zome". the art may indeed be ancient but the appellation certainly isn't.

anyway, for the record

tataki means "beaten"

whereas hapa means "leaf"

Martha was busy digesting a mouse

and couldn't care less

one thousand little birds

please click here to read more about this project

on the bright side

the last few posts have been a bit grumbly
not a good look
time to count a few blessings instead
and to direct you to these pages
at Ode Magazine

there's a lot of really good writing there

i've particularly savoured Anne Thomas' contributions
documenting life in Japan since the earthquake and tsunami
her inspirational "letter from Sendai" has been doing the rounds
- seek out the rest of her writing if you have time
or think about making time to do so

to do list

1. dye the travel blanket that is going to Alison [thank you Alison and everybody else for your generous donations to the Canterbury Earthquake appeal - nearly AUD$2000 was gathered through your kindness]
2. make up little parcels for the other donors too
3. work out exactly what is going to go into the exhibition at Orange Regional Gallery next month
4. post some of the pictures of 'breathe' taken by Joshua Penley
5. try and stop feeling so utterly baffled by the whirled

number 4 can be sorted immediately, then i'll close the time vampire and go and attempt to deal with the rest
[and some other pix can be found here]

home run running home

on the home run now

there are places where being honey coloured

is an advantage

1960s Melbourne wasn't one of them

neither

truth be told

is Japan 2010

that i am large

up and down

as well as

side to side [sigh]

isn't terribly helpful either.

much as i like the country

gardens, architecture, food, textiles

and other treasures of Japan

the pointing and laughing

[my coat doesn't help]

does wear a little thin after a while

one man craned his head to watch me

a look of utter amazement on his face

he he

it was my turn to giggle

when he very nearly crashed his bicycle

into a lamp post

sadly schadenfreude doesn't fit well

with vaguely Buddhist aspirations

in Aotearoa no-one raises an eyebrow

they just assume i'm

"from the coast"

that said

if you have a chance to visit Tokyo

and see the Boro exhibition

stay at the

Ryokan Shigetsu

absolutely lovely

warm and friendly staff

who will help you with the language

and the Japanese breakfast [delicious and different each morning]

is not to be missed

sustains you for a whole day of walking

even from Hindode Pier to

Shinjuku

and the Ryokan is only

5 minutes delightful walk

from the Amuse Museum

[make sure you use their lovely bath on the 6th floor]

still walking

i tried, believe me i tried, to make those journal pages match up

they're all the same dimension across

but

i guess blogger makes up it's own mind

how the shopfront should look.

and yes, the last two lines of the last page have a few similarities

and need editing

ps i just noticed that Elis Vermeulen has kindly named me in her blog. it's a tag thing where one has to reveal seven things about oneself and recommend seven other bloggers.

i'm not really into the whole award thing

but it's very kind of Elis to have thought of me

so i'll just recommend all of the folks in my blogroll

[you'll have to scroll down a ways to find it]

more than seven

and as to revealing?

well the handwriting above probably gives away far too much as it is....

afterthought....i've written cherry blossom! they were plum blossoms....