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...