Very Wild Berry Mead

Raw local honey
Blaeberries (Vaccinium myrtillus)
Brambles (Rubus fruticosus)
Geans (Prunus avium)
Ling Heather flowers (Calluna vulgaris)
Water
Wild yeasts from all of the above

The alchemy of wild fermentation transforming and interweaving these wild ingredients into The Blood of Life

The smell wafting from the airlock is promising, the outcome utterly unpredictable and unrepeatable... Only time will tell if this is something wonderful or something minging!

Blaeberry Mead step 2

Straining off the must

 Fermentation is properly under way and I have strained the the juice out of the berries. It's smelling good, looking good and bubbling through the airlock convincingly...

First ferment with airlock

Blaeberry Mead

Fermentation slowly begins...
Perhaps the wild yeast is shy? I will be patient, wait and watch, keep it warm and stir regularly.

Gathering Blaeberries

Testing birch polypore plaster

 Interesting to see how the polypore stood up to being worn in bed over night, wetted with blaeberry juice, scraped by heather twigs and generally coping with rough usage while I was out wild gathering. It's looking a little ragged and has lost some of its width, but its still covering and protecting the wee cut on my finger.

Blaeberry Gathering film still

Fine Art Foraging

Expanding on my exploration of primitive ways, a new aspect of my art practice this term is foraging. As I found last year, it's the Process that is the Art, any object is just evidence of the Work.

My plan is to make a Blaeberry mead, using wild yeast off the berries to start the process, local honey for extra sugar and some heather flowers for extra flavour... The magic of fermentation transforming ordinary to extraordinary. Another form of alchemy.

As usual while out gathering, my eye is open for anything I can work with or eat. This time I picked up a young Birch Polypore off a fallen branch, thinking that I would have a go at making tinder or a knife strop. However, as I dinged my finger off of something it came in handy as a first aid plaster instead!

Warp-weighted loom

My warp-weighted driftwood loom has been part of my practice for ages now, but has been rather in the background for some time. On bringing it back into my studio after the summer away I decided to finish weaving the length of fabric as I no longer need it part done in my installation. I am really smitten with the colour and texture of my hand-spun Zwartble yarn, and the warm, live feel of it under my hands from the tensioning.

New Highland Contemporaries 2

My loom and film installation is on view in the New Highland Contemporaries 2 exhibition in Nairn this week!

 For details of times and dates please see here

Blanket recycling

 Not fashionable, not attractive, but oh so WARM! Some Scottish summer days just call for that bit extra warmth and I had this lovely thick blanket, partly made into a cloak, stowed away in my fabric stash... A bit of chopping, sewed it up with my lovely old singer and slung it on! I don't think I'll be wearing it in public, but to curl up on the couch in the evening, yes.

Boro paper!

Boro - with a difference

I first saw this idea on pinterest (while hunting for images of fabric boro) in a fascinating picture of Japanese pawn shop wrapping paper made by pasting together old ledger pages. For images of the real deal please follow this link to Sri Threads.

I tucked the image away in the back of my mind for a rainy day, or even a holiday! Time was at a premium as I was in the midst of term time focus.

Finally I have some free time and got to try out this way of recycling paper the other day.

Boro paper

Piano hinge/coptic binding on my dye sample books

I really like the textural surface of these pasted layers, the random scraps of text and image that I allowed to remain or purposefully included, and the tone on tone of white, off white and cream.

I am smitten with the results! Here comes my next sketch book: 100% recycled from receipts, offcuts, old envelopes, posters, odds and ends, and old shopping lists.

My intention is to use a hybrid piano hinge/coptic binding technique which I developed as I find this emulates the flexibility of spiral bindings but has the added advantage of never sticking at odd angles when you try to open or close it. For me this is of supreme importance as it bugs me hugely when my sketch books don't open and close smoothly!

Good bye third year

Time to pack up and go home

I took down, packed up and emptied out everything from my college studio today and took it all home into my wee house. I will miss the lovely space I've had this year.

A Red Thread of Words

 Here's a wee glimpse of how my studio looked all set up for marking. Sadly I haven't got a picture with the projector on the go as I was sharing it with another student. It should be standing on the white platform hanging from red cords and projecting film onto the white silk warp.

Installation view

The marks of wear

Just noticed these tender tracings left behind; darker blue lines left behind where the sheltering red thread has worn out.

Make-do

It's not just my jeans that are a little thread-bare after nearly two years of no chucking out and getting new. This morning as I selected colours I felt like wearing I noticed neck-lines and hem-lines in need of some rescue work.

A job for the summer holidays I think.

There is something unutterably tender and touching about the patterns of wear emerging on my long-suffering clothes. It puts me in mind of Shakespeare's words (in Hamlet I think it was) about 'sleep, that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care.' As sleep can a repair a frazzled mind, so darning can repair a ragged hem.

After a long term of intense (though fascinating and joyful) study it feels like time to do some patching and darning, resting and dreaming.











One more week of extra intense effort to get everything just as I want it (to the best of may ability) in my studio, sketchbooks, and written work, and then I can settle down to knitting up the unravelled sleeves and hems of self and clothes.

One Week Left

Just one week left before all my work has to be spick and span ready for marking for the end of year three. I've spent most of this week sorting out and tidying up, cleaning the space and making final decisions about positions of everything in relation to everything else and sorting out technical problems with light and projector and film sound.

My studio is looking a bit empty in these photos. I've got so used to all the clutter of excess branches, baskets of wool, work table, wood shavings and scraps of fleece. Today I had to get everything possible off the floor so it could be washed. I want my white silk warp to drape and drizzle on the floor and I want it to STAY white!

I still have to get something up to block the sunlight out so that my film projection is visible.... Just as well there's still one week before hand in.

Spun Silk Warp

Stitching the silk warp

Silk warp waterfall

Today I finished warping up my hand-spun silk projector screen and stabilising the top with a red thread stitched through.

The flow of the silk laid over the table caught my eye. It reminds me of currents in a river.

Silk flow 1

Silk flow 2

Boro Evolution

Left leg, 9th October 2013

I was looking through my photos today, and I was struck by how much my jeans have changed. In the first picture here the front of the left leg is almost intact although you can see where I have reinforced the fragile original material with the first layers of patch and boro style stitching.

Left leg, 4th May 2015

The second photo is of the same section of the jeans, but it's almost unrecognisable. Most of the fabric of the original jeans has eroded away and the patch that was hidden in all but the tiny cross-stitched area in the first photo has come to the surface. Many of the first lines of stitching have also got somewhat eroded. I have just added a third internal layer where all the dense red stitching is and once again my cat can't stick his claws through it and into my knee!

Exploring Twist in Wild Fibre

Fine Roots

 Wandering by the Findhorn River on a rare and precious half hour off of essay writing. I can never leave my creative practice behind though. Every where I look I see things I could spin, things that will give my fibre colour, things that make links in my thoughts with my studio practice.

The driftwood piles left by winter floods are full of roots, from the finest grass roots hanging like tufts of sheep's' fleece to huge root balls of mature trees. So many different textures and forms.

This fine wisp had a red roots in it, making me think of my Red Thread/Common Thread. The red was coarser but stronger than the black, brown and sun-bleached blond roots.

Not all make me think of spinning and weaving though. Sometimes there are strange forms that call to me in other ways, like the spoon root I found today. Formed by a tree root forcing itself between two stones then being unable to force them apart in order to grow. When compressed or restricted, life-force distorts, warps and takes on unexpected forms.

A spoon root?

Some of the exposed roots suggest other uses than spinning, perhaps this one may become a dye vat stirrer...

Boro Jeans

It's just over two years since I began mending my one pair of jeans. The first two patches were over the kneecaps: on the left knee is a piece of my godson's traditional Norwegian naming day shirt and on the right a bit of tweed from his sisters' coat. I am very hard on the knees of all my clothes; I always have been as I love getting close to the tiniest details of nature and, for me, that has always meant getting down on my knees.

Third layer going in on the left knee, but the of-cut from my godson's shirt is still strong.

Inside my jeans is a crazy jigsaw of overlapping patches, made from another pair of old worn out jeans that didn't fit me any more. In a few places the old seams still show up with their yellow stitches.

 

Not much of the original fabric is visible from the inside any more.

 I love the visual texture of the boro stitching, particularly on the inside. As an experiment I decided to put one patch on the outside and do the darning from the inside so that the wonderful texture shows. Not a great choice of placement though - right in the middle of my backside!

Back pockets - nearly gone.

 I have a habit of ramming my hands into my back pockets when I'm thinking. If I want to continue having that comforting thinking aid I will need to do some creative mending here... But visually I'm enjoying the disintegration of the fabric unimpeded by mending.

Interesting contrast between new patch and disintegrating original fabric.

The rhythm of stitch blends well with the rhythm of thought: I sit in my studio and muse on next steps for the evolution of my practice and catch both thought and patch into place with neat tight stitches.

Ouch!

Just have to remember not to stitch while thinking or talking about things that make me angry: Blood is always the result! My own I hasten to add...

Spin, Spun, Span

Spun Silk warp

 I am planning on projecting woven film onto this spun silk warp screen... The process onto the produced.

The balls of silk have such a lovely handle although every slight rough patch of skin catches on them. The visual texture of the silk is wonderful: wound into a ball, drizzled on the floor and hung shimmering from the Hazel wood rod.

I am interested in the visual play between the photo of spun roots on the wall, the shimmering spun silk and the wound ball of spun silk.

Spun Silk

Spun silk

Two beautiful skeins of spun silk

Plying Silk

 Finally all my silk is spun, plied and wound into skeins ready for washing, drying and winding into balls... My hands will be glad of the change as silk, so divinely soft and lush to the gently touching hand, is really strong and needs a lot of strength and tough skin to spin. It's easy to cut yourself on the tightly twisting fibres as you try to draw them out to spin a fine thread.

Defining Beauty

True beauty has little or nothing to do with fashion or age and a whole lot to do with being comfortable in your own skin, with your own skin. Folds and crumples and worn bits and all.

My jeans become more and more beautiful to me as they age and evolve.

I know this is contrary to what most of our culture is based on, after all, if people were happy with ageing they couldn't be sold so many products, and people being content with the old and worn would damage the fashion industry.... Can't have that.

Studio wanderings

 Just looking at the interactions between space, shape and colour...

Fresh-cut Alder wood/Crottle dyed yarn

Big loom/tiny looms

soft lines/hard lines

Yarn stretched tight/yarn hanging soft