in which i went to the Big Smoke

i was invited to Sydney
to give a talk [kindly organised by Dr Lim Chye Hong who besides being a noted scholar of Asian Art designs, makes and wears her own clothing with inimitable style]  
and to hold my nearly shortest ever workshop
[the shortest ever was an hour spent sitting in the street with passing children in Hyderabad, India in 2006, helping them beat leaves into their clothes with a small hammer...Hapa Zome on the run]

i came away having with my cup overflowing
having gazed at the Kamisaka Sekka exhibition
had a small taste of the Sydney Biennale
seen my work in a new book [more of that later]
and met the amazing Erin Manning
i use the adjective advisedly
she is a visual artist+dancer+philosopher+author
and very likely more


who is here with a thought-provoking project on Cockatoo Island


and the Book?

Shibori Recreated by Karen Davis and Pepa Martin
a contemporary look at an ancient craft/art
there's very good company in these pages
and i'm honoured to be included

felt furoshiki and why i live to dye

rather a lot of pictures and all of the same piece

it began as a 'class sample' during the 

enfoldments retreat back in September

went on the to the fieldworks class in Brisbane

where it was my evening stitching amusement

and had its first immersion in the dyepot

using windfalls gathered on an early morning wandering

[that's where it picked up the darker purplish marks]

last week i bundled it up with some 

Eucalyptus crenulata*

a favourite due to its rich spicy fragrance

the reason i'm so excited about this small piece

is that the leaves have printed quite different colours

where they cross fibres of different provenance

deep red on wool stitching

and

oddly

green across some of the silks [even though they are also protein fibres]

the whirled is full of marvellous mysteries 

miss martha doesn't give tuppence for any of this nonsense
she has better things to do



* this species is beloved of gardeners but endangered in its natural habitat...the Acheron Valley in Victoria 

similar but not the same

looking through my photos i was struck by the similarity in pattern between Madeleine Delany's exquisite shibori-zome sample [below] and the inner part of a black taro leaf [above]

the cloth was dyed using Paulownia leaves in a copper pot

straying from the usual path

remember that scene in 'Harry met Sally'...the "i'll have what she's having scene"?

few people will even admit to seeing the film

tonight's dinner was so good

that i was reminded of Sally

and so

just for once

i thought i'd share it

virtually if not actually

take a bunch of fresh spinach

wash and chop

then add

one finely chopped habanero chili

two finely chopped cloves of garlic

pepper

a pound of feta cheese [that's half a kilo for metrics]

a couple of eggs [we got ours from HennyPenny out in the fowlyard]

squish it all together with your hand

until it becomes a lovely greenish mess

like

the picture up above

then

melt a bit of salted butter

NOT margarine [only fit for greasing wheels]

and a splash of olive oil

together

add some zatar

and a good grinding of pepper

nip out to the garden for a biggish sprig

of rosemary

this will be your pastry brush for the evening

unfold a packet of fillo pastry

using the rosemary twig pastry brush

spread a little of the butterOlive oil mix on the first sheet

fold a good blob of the green stuff in

and wrap up up

in triangular fashion

[shibori-zome practitioners will be good at this]

work diligently through the pile of pastry

once the packets [spanakopitas, more or less]

have all been neatly folded

fling the pastry brush on top

bake in a warmish oven until golden

and seductively aromatic

serve

and tuck in

bon appetit

for the record, we washed ours down with

a cleanskin sparkling shiraz

from the wine shop

near the old Mount Lofty Railway station

Big Girl's Ribena

[sorry, statesiders, that one is too hard to explain]

mmm i'll have what she's having....

Boro: Rags and Tatters from the Far North of Japan

gentle readers,

does anybody out there have a copy of this book that they would be prepared to part with?

Boro:

Rags and Tatters from the Far North of Japan

i'd be happy to give it a good home in exchange for money or if you prefer, a length of ecoprint silk or wool

please leave me a comment if you have it or know where i can find it

Readings Bookstore have just advised they are unable to source this book after all...does anybody have a copy they'd be willing to trade?

unbound

for those of you who were curious to know what emerged from the recent cauldron, here it is.
a little like a rough woollen landscape, which sadly becomes a bit of a mudslide when hung on a dummy. back to the drawing board, i think, and another attempt with a lighter weight cloth...those leprotic-looking circles were supposed to be wee pointy peaks that retained their shape! my suspicion is that this cloth has been treated with 'superwash', a process that while it doesn't inhibit dye take-up certainly plays merry hell with the other attributes of wool, particularly that one of wool remembering the shape it was dried in; vital to creating a sculpted form!

fire burn and cauldron bubble

today i am treating a rather nice piece of wool with exceptional brutality. it arrived last week, about 3 metres of loosely woven fine blanketish stuff, to be transformed for the 'sculpted packages' exhibition being curated by Denise Sprynskyj and Peter Boyd as a contribution to the 7th World Shibori Symposium being held in Paris, France in November this year

'sculpted packages' is partly sponsored by Australian Wool Innovations through the donation of wool cloth. each of the selected designers has been issued a length, to be transformed using shibori-zome techniques

i began by sewing a garment from my cloth and have used all but a small fragment (about 10 x 30 cm)...that piece was used for the initial dye test

after stitching was complete, the garment looked a bit like this (guess who forgot to take a photograph)



it was bundled with windfalls for a layer of leafprints

and then i spent a day wrapping individual spikes into the fabric, so that the last immersion would fix the shape (rather different to the image above)...right now it's drowning in a boiling cauldron redolent of eucalyptus and wreathed in steamwraiths.



suspect this one will need two trees planted as eco-compensation, rather than the usual one-for-one... i console myself with the thought that the twigs burning in my fire would have generated exactly the same volume of carbon had they been left rotting on the paddock and that the well-meaning eco-nazi burning a stand of pine trees a few miles down the road has probably done more environmental damage in a day than i'm likely to achieve in a lifetime




the wasteland here looks like Isengard after Saruman started his own little industrial revolution.