House Study/Handmade

My winter artist-in-residence project at Wave Hill has begun. I am now in-residence each Tuesday and Saturday from (at least) 11 am to 3 pm and welcoming visitors during that time. Everyone is invited to come and stay awhile. I am spinning yarn made wool that I am dyeing from both plant dyes and from materials I am collecting from the staff - their tea bags and coffee ground, orange peels, onion skins, and so on. All the yarn I am spinning, I give away to visitors with the agreement that they knit a hat with it and bring the hat back. All the hats will be on display and, in the spring, we will have a hat party. Everyone who knits a hat, gets a hat. Extra hats will be donated to a worthy cause in the Bronx.

I started this past Tuesday and, amazingly enough, I have had a steady flow of visitors. I have been scrambling to keep up with the yarn. Most people leave with a slightly damp skein in hand. I tried to prep for today but again, I was scrambling. Right at 11 am a large group arrived expecting a workshop. I did my best to teach them the basics about wool, carding, and spinning all the while feeling a little panicked about how I was teaching, not spinning. And still people poured in. Fortunately everyone was happy and eager to learn, and happy to wait a little for their yarn.

Unexpectedly, people really love carding, so I have been taking advantage of this phenomena but having visitors card while I spin. Somehow it all works out and no one has gone away without yarn. It is very gratifying to see people, all ages, genders, ethnicities, deeply interested in how to make yarn.

Here is a view from Wave Hill - that little strip of blue is the mighty Hudson River. It is hard to believe we are still within city limits here.

This is the Glyndor Gallery - home to four artists this winter. As you can see, it is not exactly roughing it.

This is the view of my studio space from outside. I have the sunroom.

This is the sunroom from inside. It looks so lovely and peaceful, doesn't it? In a few minutes, it would be chaos. But a good kind of chaos.

Here are some photos of the yarn that has gone out the door.

This skein was carded by two brothers, I am guessing not older than six or so. They picked the most lovely colours. In fact, if I may generalize, boys love carding and spinning. Or so has been my experience so far.

This was the wool table by 3 pm. See, good chaos!

Join me, if you are around. We will have some fun together making good chaos.

13

Lately I have been having flashbacks of a chubby baby, a talkative toddler, a six year old who dressed in a suit and tie at the playground, a Lego fanatic, a young man with a dry wit. Today, we found a hungry teenager.

To what shall
I liken the world?
Moonlight, reflected
In dewdrops,
Shaken from a crane's bill.

Eihei Dogen

A Break From the Navel Gazing

Click here for a list of charities that need our money now to help out those affected by the earthquake in Haiti.

Please do what you can.

Because the World Needs Hundreds of New Spinners

January 11th has been a date I have held onto for several weeks. If I could just make it to today, then all will be well. The prospect of preparing for the exhibition in Peterborough followed immediately by leading two days of workshops at Wave Hill was sometimes a little more than I wanted to think about so I would imagine the leisurely feeling of January 11th. I did sleep in and enjoy my morning cup of tea but many tasks await in addition to the usual schedule of activities of a Monday so we move forward, ready or not.

I did manage to accomplish most everything I intended over the past couple of weeks, thanks, in no small, to Dan stepping in and taking up all the things that I would normally do. Partnership has its advantages. As an added bonus, Finnian admitted to feeling a new sense of appreciation for me after two weeks of Dad Time. You can't buy that kind of thing.

Over the weekend, we had well over 200 people come through the workshops and many of them actually learned to spin on a spindle and/or fingerknit. They were nearly all very enthusiastic and genuinely excited about learning about spinning and all things wooly. I don't think I will ever tire of seeing children become enthralled with how a spinning wheel works. In the age of Wii and iPhones, keeping a child interested in something like a spindle or a wheel for more than 20 seconds feels like victory. I think children liked to learn that spinning was something that children have always done as an important contribution to family life. They want to contribute in a real way and there are so few opportunities these days. And it amuses me to no end to see the dads get juiced about how the wheel works - I had to shoo a couple of them away so the kids could try it.

I have long maintained that we humans have been too clever for our own good in inventing all sorts of automated stuff. I know we can't help it, in a way, but in doing so, we have denied another aspect of our nature - the need to use our hands to make stuff. We need to do it and our lives are better, richer, when we do do it.

Knitting Sprawl at the Art Gallery of Peterborough

The exhibition has a few finishing touches to be done - tweek the lighting, install two small pieces, hang some labels - but it will be done without me. I head back to New York early tomorrow morning. I have lost all perspective on whether or not it is good, bad or ugly. But it is done (mostly).

Here are some sneak preview pictures. I feel like there could be more, better, etc., but I did all I could given the amount of time I had. It is a work in progress.


The main piece, reflecting our travels across southern Ontario. Not so sure about little Ottawa up there. I wanted to take it down but Pam, the curator, wanted it up. The lighting isn't great in this photograph, but in real life, the natural light is actually quite lovely.


A detail....Hamilton.


Here was the shocker - the mile-long ramp. I had no idea this was part of the show. I had two days to make something of it and what I made was a kind of map-like narrative. I cut aerial views of suburban developments out of the papers I had collected on our trip - maps, brochures, directions, even my pattern charts - and connected them with pieces of double crochet.


A detail.


The video installation with three of the ceramic pieces.

If you are in or near Peterborough tomorrow evening and want to see it live, stop by from 7 - 9 p.m. My show is but one of three exhibitions opening tomorrow. In fact, it is a small side light to the main attraction: Allyson Mitchell's Lady Sasquatch.

Safe and Sound and Snowy in Peterborough

I am sure it is only the most important artists who get invited to experience Peterborough in January.


How was the flight, you ask? Flight? Was I flying to Peterborough? Is this a weekday?

At 4 am this morning, I got out of bed, looked on googlemaps at how to get to Peterborough from Sunnyside and made an executive decision - I would drive to Peterborough. The weather looked fine, the ride was listed at 8 hours, which to me is actually somewhat reasonable, and it would allow me to pack more things and not worry about breaking my porcelain pieces. So, by 5 am I was on the road.

I pulled into the Holiday Inn in Peterborough at 3:30 p.m. It snowed most of the way but not enough to cause worry, just slowed things down a little. Actually, it was quite a lovely ride. I am thrilled to be back in Canada - ah, to breathe easy again! But I am a little disappointed in myself for letting my fears get in the way. I need to get over this fear, which is based on irrationality but I guess that why it is a fear, not reality.

But this no time to examine such matters. I walked over to the gallery to check out the space and it is, ahem, much larger than I anticipated. Looks like there will have to be some site-specific work created, pronto. Even in my trip-addled brain, a couple of ideas vaguely poked their way to the surface so I need to get cracking. I'll post some photographs when it looks presentable.


Meanwhile, what growing national chain is glowing across from my window? Hint: should of named their bite sized doughnuts L'il Timmies instead of the stupid name that they did name them.

Before 9 AM

Another early morning. Today I needed to be up early in order to dye 20 skeins of yarn for the family art workshop happening this weekend at Wave Hill (THIS weekend?? Seems like I have a lot to do and far to go before it arrives). I will be sharing a lot of information about wool, sheep, carding, spinning, dyeing and knitting. Everyone should be able to try everything and then we will use this fabulous plant dyed yarn to finger knit and make a little site-specific installation. Fun for all ages!


Got my indigo pot going - it had been sitting for over a month but it got right back to speed and made some gorgeous colours. How can you not love indigo? That florescent pink colour is actually cochineal mordanted with tin. The yarn sat in the mordant water for a month (I am sensing a theme here) and look what happened! Sometimes a little benign neglect can be good.


I had our kitchen stove on full tilt and our basement stove going. Six colours in all: indigo, cochineal, brazilwood, black walnut, tea, onion skins.


I wanted to get all this done and on the drying rack because I still have a bit to finish before heading for Peterborough tomorrow morning.

More Darkness, More Light

Every once in a while I have a little flash of understanding about what it is I think I am doing as an artist. It is kind of unpredictable when these insights will happen - yesterday it happened while reading a magazine at the gym. Oh yeah, a total Zen experience - doing two things at once in an already over-stimulating environment. Nothing like mindlessly moving one's body while surrounded by 10 televisions and loud thumpa-thumpa music to bring up the insights.

Anyway, I was electrolyting or chair mastering or whatever you call it and reading my copy of The New Yorker (hey, I got me a little class). I was reading an article about Van Gogh cutting off his ear - apparently some new sh*t has come to light and some people think Gauguin actually cut his ear off during a dispute on the street in Arles. I guess Van Gogh was actually something of a bore and liked to talk and talk into the night about Big Ideas and Gauguin, who was himself kind of a jerk (and by "kind of a jerk" read: a violent, self-centered, misogynist), got fed up and left in anger. Van Gogh followed him out and when they encountered each other on the street, Gauguin used his fencing foil on Van Gogh's ear. Or so the new version of the story goes.

So anyway, it was that little snippet about the Big Ideas that suddenly got me thinking about what the hell I am doing with all this knitting and mapping and traveling and talking. It hardly fits into any idea that Van Gogh might have had about What is Art. Am I just diddling around? Why do I even do this? It just pisses off my family, interrupts my zazen and yoga time, drains my bank account and generally makes life more difficult.

I didn't really come up with answer to those questions but I did see something. Something about looking deeply at life and recording that process. For me, that means using the experience of living in this family, knitting my stitches, talking to other people about their lives as a way of explaining things. Formal ideas, hard-hitting political ideas, sexy art ideas may or may not ever enter into it, which means that sometimes it doesn't look like art. Even to me. But it feels like something bigger than me. It is dark and I don't understand where I am going - I can't see even my foot as it steps forward.

But there is something there. I'll keep looking.

Time

Time.
What is time?
I haven't got time to tell you.

This poem was written by Gaetano LaRoche back when he was still called Norman. He wrote it when we were students at Cooper Union. We laughed about it then but I have been quoting it ever since.

I have been feeling the pressure of time in the past several days. The metaphor of knit stitch as a marker of time may be overused at this point but I have been sorely aware of this relationship each day this past week. I have felt the frustration of being unable to knit any faster no matter how I try. At moments, I feel like I am barreling towards the deadline of January 5th on the verge of being out of control. The results may not be pretty if anything goes even slightly wrong.

Today, I was even more than frustrated when an idea I spent hours and hours on failed miserably. Precious time! Was it wasted? I didn't want to think so. The mistake forced me to change direction slightly and revealed a way that this piece might actually be ok, if different, from how it was shaping up only yesterday. So that was good, right?

Here is a small piece I finished (ah, sweet sounds!). Porcelain and wool, approx. 10' x 12"

Let the Bells Ring Out

And ring in a new year.


This photograph has nothing really to do with the new year except it feels vaguely victorious. It was taken at the end of a long hike in Gros Morne last summer.

I have been reading lots of blog posts and facebook posts with the general theme of "good riddance 2009". I agree that 2009, on a global scale, was pretty awful but I wonder if it actually contained more misery and suffering than usual. Or is it just that more of it came to our shores and knocked on our doors?

Although it is hard for me to switch gears from my get-the-work-done mode that I have been in for the last week, I did do a little reflection on 2009 and, for me personally, it was actually a pretty good year. It was actually a pretty great year. I feel like I should apologize or something for saying such a thing.

In any case, good year or terrible year, the thing is to keep moving forward. The past is gone, the future has yet to occur, so what is left? We have been given the gift of a new year to answer that question. Let me know what you find out.

A Tiny Glimpse of Work in Progress

Working out the pattern for Ottawa. I use a program called Stitch Painter, which I quite like. Is it totally cheesy that I used a maple leaf? I had to closely examine the teeny tiny one on my permanent residency card so I probably messed it up anyway.



This is one of the ceramic pieces with added elements - pieces of paper I collected along the way with crocheted embellishments. It is actually not finished - still need a couple more things to complete it.


Heading there soon! Did I mention I am flying to Toronto? La la la. No problem about that, no siree. The thrill and exhiliration of pure panic.

Full Knitting Mode

One benefit of having a Zen practice, not often mentioned in books, is that when one needs to be up early and knitting, it is possible to do so without great effort or fanfare. Up early and paying attention to detail.

Could be zazen or it could be one big-ass knitting project.

Workity, Work, Work

This is my big work week. The week in which I play Dan. That is to say, I get up and head out in the morning and don't come back until suppertime or later. Dan plays me, which is to say, he takes care of everything else. It is good to shake up the roles a little now and then but my oh my, how quickly we have adopted each other's stance. Me: grumpy because he doesn't understand the stress of impending deadlines and expects me to come home all happy and ready to join the crowd. Him: grumpy because I am not appreciating how hard he is working to make this all happen. More lessons than, perhaps, we care to learn.

In any case, I am heading out very early this morning and hope that work goes quickly today. Things are shaping up but it still feels like mostly potential. Process is lovely but I need a little product too.

A Season of Love

Yes, there is much pain, suffering and cruelty in the world. But there is much love too.

Right now, I love this.


The woman in the middle knit everyone in her family a bright, colourful sweater. And it made the news! (In Wales.)

From our slightly less colourful family to yours...


May you offer and receive much joy and love as we approach a new year.

Within Darkness There is Light

Unlike many, I love the dark days of winter. There is a kind of enforced hush that falls across the landscape, even here in noisy, bright New York. Maybe it is because I am deep into reading Kristin Lavransdatter, but this year I am really enjoying the light and the lack of light.

This morning, it was particularly lovely.

The Best Laid Plans

You know what they say, right?

Friday night I started to feel increasingly worse and worse - my nose was running non-stop and my throat was getting raw and scratchy. But I managed to maintain a state of deep denial until Saturday morning when I had to admit that spending several hours on a bus in close contact with other people (people I like and admire no less) could be considered something of a public health hazard. I called in to give up my seat on the bus and fully admit that I wasn't going anywhere further than the living room couch.

It was a disappointment on so many levels - no bus ride, no funeral, no seeing Jimon in the costume in action (with lights and music!), no meeting James for the first time, although it turned out that he was sick too. But no attachment, right? It still kinda sucked.

Ever the one to make lemonade from lemons however, I did knit a bit. Ontario is starting to look like something, if not a province exactly.




(This was taken several days ago....it is beginning to be fleshed out).

Work, Play, Life, Death

We passed a major milestone over here. For the first time, Finn and Lucy took the subway on their own. Considering I only just started allowing them to cross the street on their own, without holding my hand, about two years ago - we have come a long way. It still freaks me out more than a little but I know it is important to allow them to have their experiences, make some mistakes, do things correctly, learn firsthand how to navigate their hometown. (I am always amazed when they call NYC their hometown...I am definitely still a foreigner). I guess the hard part is that the possibility for fatal mistakes is so large. It is a big, bad city after all. And yet, most of us manage to get around everyday, mostly without incident. Now they will too. One more string cut, one more step away from the nest. It's great. It hurts!

But what, you say, does that have to do with Ontario? Well, by taking the subway on their own, they allowed me to get in over three hours in my studio to work on Knitting Sprawl - Ontario. Look how big Onatrio is! My fears of not having enough work to show in Peterborough were pushed aside by the flood of ideas that just a little quiet makes possible. Now I just need the time to carry them out. I have my sights set on the time between now and New Year's Day. Sure it is holiday time and all that implies, but to me, it is quiet time.

Tomorrow, however, I will take a step away from all the work and play to attend the funeral service for Daido Roshi in Kingston, NY. This too will be mixture of experiences and emotions - the bus ride up with sangha, the service itself, meeting a friend for dinner, then a performance tribute to him in the evening and a bus ride back to the city. A long day but one that will be fascinating and moving, no doubt.

And I am looking forward to seeing one particular performance in its final state. I assisted Joy Jimon Hintz, a senior monastic and Dharma Holder, with her costume for the dance she has prepared for tomorrow evening. Jimon was a soloist in a well-known dance company before becoming a monastic and it has been very interesting to work with her to create her costume. Not to mention that it has pushed my somewhat rusty sewing skills to a new level.

Then, yesterday she pulled me aside with the words that it was "honesty time." Immediately, I thought, "oh no, here it comes - she will finally reveal me as the fraud of a seamstress that I know I am!" But no, she just wanted my opinion about how the dress looked on her. Oh, there you are my friend, my ego. Maybe Jimon felt that too.

How Sad is That?

Things have been hectic around here, what with holidays and deadlines and such. I don't have any photographs, which are usually the driving force behind blog posts, so I have been quiet.

In the meantime, a couple of fellow Cooper Union alum and I have been having a conversation over on Facebook about the state of representation of women in the NYC art scene. Apparently the 2010 Whitney Biennial is nearly 50/50 split between men and women - a very, very rare thing indeed. I made a snarky "it's about time" sort of comment but the conversation drifted into deeper waters from there.

The truth is, if you check out the NY Times Friday gallery section, you will notice that most, if not all, the exhibitions reviewed are by men. If you look at museum exhibition schedules, they too are still heavily male dominated. Museum collections: check. Major galleries: check. It seems that, even in 2010, women are woefully under represented. But to say that aloud these days is very uncool. Like Feminism happened, you know, back in the 1970s so what's your problem? Still whining about that old thing?

Here is one thing I wrote about this situation:

I remember being in a project at Art in General that included monthly talks by various curators (both men and women). Some of them would talk to me ahead of time to get a little more information about my work. I will never forget the way the whole conversation once just sank and I was instantly dismissed when I mentioned that I wanted to touch on issues of labour, time, women's work, etc.. It was like I said I was using hearts and rainbows to show the joy of life or something. I could almost hear the curator, a guy, erasing the words "serious artist" from next to my name. Naturally I never said that again!

My friend pointed out that she sees a majority of women when she attends artist talks, visits art schools, or goes to grant-related workshops. And often women over 40 (do they even exist? I wonder...). So where are all these women showing their work? Oh, I get it! They're not.

Also, she pointed out that most of her CV is filled with exhibitions curated by women. I find this to be true as well. Do men not like our work? If so, why?

This poster was made by the Guerrilla Girls almost 25 years go, but it is still completely true. How sad is that?

The Warping Thread is Here! The Warping Thread is Here!

Millimeter by millimeter, we get closer to actually using the giant loom that is taking up valuable real estate in our living room.

I'm Just a Girl Who Can't Say No

Here is the start of the Ontario piece. I am creating pieces that go with the porcelain pieces I made for each place we visited. Then the rest of Ontario will be filled in. There is a lot of the rest of Ontario, by the way.

I was rushing to complete at least a small section of this so I could take some photographs for the invite for the Art Gallery of Peterborough exhibition in January. For some reason, everything I have made related to my Knitting Sprawl project has been either crochet or made of paper or ceramic. Hello? It's Knitting Sprawl, not Paper Sprawl or Porcelain Sprawl. But nothing like a deadline to spur a little creativity and problem solving.

I hope I got decent photographs because I will have exactly no time to make further changes until later in the week. Tomorrow is an all-day Boston affair - early morning train to make a late morning class at Simmons, the afternoon spent in their extensive archives (I am looking forward to this!), then back on the train and home by nighttime, if all goes well. I am depending a lot on Amtrak, which is always dicey, but here's hoping.

As I laid awake this morning, trying to imagine how I will complete everything and wondering how it is that I have double and triple booked myself yet again, I realized I need a strategy for saying no. I absolutely LOVE everything I am doing, but I have fears about needing to cut corners to make it all happen, and I don't like cutting corners.

How do you say no and feel good about it? Hint: it is that second part of the question that is the real kicker.

Lucy's Poem

Every evening for the past month or maybe longer, the phone has rung and the caller ID says (literally, the thing talks in weird robotic female voice), Pub Interest Co. Since this sounds suspiciously like someone asking for money, I don't answer it. I give happily and readily to several groups, but not over the phone and not in the middle of supper, thank you very much.

This one caller has been persistent, and regular. We know exactly the time of day when the phone rings and "Pub Interest Co" comes warbling out of the handset - of course right in the middle of supper. Finally, Lucy decided she would answer the call and she started making up reasons why I was unavailable. First it was simply that I was busy but she quickly moved on to more, shall we say, esoteric answers. The last one was along the lines of "getting rid of pollution at this time of year". Please don't ask me what that means.

Yesterday she decided to prepare a list of answers to have at the ready for the inevitable call. Here it is, as written:

Answers
Robyn A. Love is busy:
She is canning in her spare time
She is at a meeting
She is sleeping
She is having lunch
She is a yogini
She is ordering a pizza
She is making a magnet
She is taking a picture of me
She is eating Cheez Whiz

Such a beautiful poem!

But you know what? Last night, they never called. I think my efforts on behalf of reducing pollution at this time of year finally put them off.

Dithering

For all the joriki I may have gathered over the past couple of weeks, I am still finding hard to really dig into what needs to be done in order to meet my deadlines. I always have this issue, I suppose.

I don't really think of myself as someone who procrastinates, and yet...


Here is a cool sock project that has been amusing me to no end. The machine knitted piece was hand painted in the design you see. I marked the halfway point and then began to unravel it and knit it up into a pair of socks. The sock colour pattern was a complete surprise. I have finished one but I think the other will have to wait. The deadlines are pressing just close enough that real panic is setting in.


Or maybe not.

Yesterday, instead of working on Knitting Sprawl, which will be seen as a work-in-progress at The Art Gallery of Peterborough in early January, I decided that I had been off the wagon long enough. I got out my wheel and spun up two sets of fibre from Spunky Electic, then plied them to make a light DK weight yarn - over 400 yds worth. It is a combination of merino, silk and BFL.

This is not for Wee Ball Yarns, which I have set on "Pathetic Mode" over there. I am going to knit it up myself. Someday.

For now, back to my maps and charts and ceramic and yarn. Peterborough is calling me.

An XX Perspective on Sesshin

Over at Dalai Grandma, the author of that blog writes about her experiences studying with Zen teachers who are male and how that can and sometimes has become slippery given the patriarchal history of Zen. It is a problem for most religions, as far as I can tell, but perhaps one encounters it in Zen even more so since the intimate experience of working face-to-face with a teacher is so integral to the practice.

To help shift the balance a little, here is my distinctly female take on sesshin, such as I have experienced it.

When I was in labour with my firstborn, I was scared. I was scared of the pain, the promise of pain and of the whole thing that loomed ahead - the experience of being a parent, a mother. I would go so far as to say that I was so scared of all of it that I was able to will my body into drawing out labour as long as possible. I say this now, in retrospect. At the time I am pretty sure that I thought I wanted it to be over with as quickly as possible but the events of that time seem to suggest otherwise.

I remember hitting a point when things were getting a little hairy and I got into the hot tub at the birth center. This was about 24 hours into labour and after Dan's terrible foot cramp. It is so hard to see the one you love suffer in pain but fortunately he was able to breathe through it. But back to the story...suddenly I realized that, deep down, I had been harbouring a notion that, so long as I promised - really promised - to come back the next day, I would be allowed to go home and take a little rest and then come back and finish this thing up. As I lay in the tub with the contractions hitting me hard I fully and completely realized there was no possible hope of going home, of getting a little rest, of finishing this thing up on my terms. I was there and it was happening. Once I was able to really and truly dispel the idea that I had an out, I was able to just be in my body and ride the waves. I even managed to fall asleep between contractions. Not surprisingly, two hours later, we had a baby.

My experience at my first sesshin was a lot like that. About 24 hours in, as we began the afternoon session, I found myself feeling backed against a wall with nowhere to go. I realized that I had been keeping a little escape plan in the back of my mind the whole time and the moment had come to face it - I could give up and walk out (this is where the metaphor is a little weak - technically I could have left the sesshin whereas in childbirth, one is truly stuck there) but for me, walking out wasn't really an option. I had looked too long and hard for this place and I knew it was the right one for me. So I had to do just what I did in labour - face it full on, no holding back, no escape routes. Ride the waves. I might have slept a little there too, but don't tell anyone.

This past sesshin I had another childbirth/zazen metaphorical experience, along somewhat similar lines. Again, I had been struggling and finally settled down to really be there, really see what was there. What I found reminded me of that moment right before the baby's head comes out. It sometimes is called the Ring of Fire, although I am pretty sure Johnny Cash has nothing to do with it in either instance. That moment in childbirth was one when I felt strongly and powerfully connected to something so profoundly human that it felt almost animalistic. It touched on the thing that makes us human, not in an intellectual sense, but a full body and mind sense. Sitting with the breath and bringing awareness to the hara touched that same place. Only, you know, with less body fluids and no baby at the end.

Amazingly, it was there the whole time, just waiting for me to find it (again).

Knitting Sprawl - Ontario

While still feeling the energy and focus of my post-sesshin buzz, I made my way to the studio yesterday for a couple of hours as part of a ten-hour subway marathon day. My studio hasn't seen much use as an actual art studio recently despite all the best intentions in the world. Last year, it was part yoga studio and homeschooling play rehearsal space. Before that it served mainly as yarn and fabric storage. But given the amount of work to be done (insert whimper here), I have been straining to get there and to start really working on Knitting Sprawl and the other projects lined up on the calendar.

I brought with me the porcelain pieces I have been working on during our weekly class at Greenwich House Pottery. While traveling around Ontario, and for some reason especially while in Toronto, I began to have visions of mixing my ceramic work with my knitting. I decided to make the leap and include some of it in the Ontario piece (or pieces as it is turning out to be).

Here is a sneak peek at what has been cooking.


This is the shape of the city of Toronto. I painted our experiences on it in terms of geography. I like the "terra incognita" reference, as if what we don't see must not exist. This piece will be a stand alone with some crochet added, attached to the holes. I hesitate to say more for fear of botching up my ideas which are still rather fluid. Fluid, but gathering focus.


This is the same shape - the city of Toronto - this time in terms of how the city itself was rather unimportant and served only as a jumping off place to get to the other places. This will be part of a large piece (I think about 6' x 6') that will be knit. It will be connected, via knitting to discs of porcelain that I made for each stop on our Knitting Sprawl tour.


Here is the one for New Hamburg. The clear glaze made the painting a little blurry, but I like that it makes it look slightly aged or something like that.


Here is the beginning of the layout. The final piece will be, I think, shaped like Ontario, with each piece in its relative spot. I made a little star for Ottawa. Ottawa may also get its own separate piece.

I am also working with maps and written directions and the pile of papers I collected along the way - cutting them up, making them into books, etc.

With all the logistics of traveling and the efforts of simply being in one place and then getting to another, I had forgotten about the joy of feeling my hands work.

First There Was A Mountain

Have you ever felt that you have been scaling the mountain, sweating and working harder than you ever have in your life, only to have the fog clear for a moment to reveal that you have only actually reached the smallest of foothills, and that the mountain is still far, far away?

Fortunately the view from the top of the foothill, however limited and tiny, is still pretty damn nice.

Sesshin

This coming week I will be up at the Zen Mountain Monastery for sesshin. I will be back next Sunday afternoon.

See you then!

Hungry For More

Some may know that my brother-in-law, David (yes, that David with the new Ph.D and new sweater) and I are working, very slowly, on a film about grinders.

It started as kind of a joke playing off the fact that I have a video camera and am not afraid to use it and he has a seemingly unlimited amount of knowledge, insight and interest in the topic. I won't insult you with a link or define what grinders are because I know that you know that they are sandwiches made on long bread and filled with (usually) cold cuts and provolone cheese, shredded lettuce and oil and vinegar, among other things. Some places call them subs or submarine sandwiches, some places call them hoagies, some even call them torpedoes (I mean, whatever). In southern Rhode Island and parts of southeastern Connecticut, they are called grinders because they were sandwiches made by Italian immigrants who worked in the shipyards as, yes, grinders. But you knew that, right?

This is Dan with a grinder-like sandwich purchased in Quebec City.  

Pas mal, Quebec, but keep trying.

Work on the film has been sporadic in the way you might expect for two people with rather busy lives but we certainly like to talk about the project and there have been some efforts to commit our passion to film. We even held a GrinderFest back in 2005 in which four grinder shops in Westerly, RI and Norwich, CT participated. Ok, it was really that we purchased grinders from each of the shops and had an official taste test competition involving David and his family, which to our credit, is rather large and could possibly constitute a majority vote in certain circumstances in Rhode Island.

Also, we made t-shirts.

We have actually filmed at three grinder shops: Ritacco's (the winner of the GrinderFest taste tests, btw) and Reale's in Westerly and Antonio's in Pawcatuck, CT. And we have done a fair bit of research into other places in the US where the term grinder is in use. Much to our surprise, parts of the greater Los Angeles area also use the term grinder, as do places in Michigan, western Massachusetts, and rumour has it, part of Ohio. Our dream is to go to all these places to film and really take this topic to the next level. It's not really a dream we ever do much about but, as I mentioned, we do like to talk about doing it.

The other thing we imagine is expanding on GrinderFest by convincing Westerly to host a larger competition involving many of the local and not-so-local grinder shops in beautiful Wilcox Park, which is right in the center of town. In the evening, we could screen our movie that now has the working title, Grinder Sutra. David actually contacted the Westerly town offices with this proposal in mind but got, shall we say, minimal interest.

There is so much to do to bring this important project to fruition and to fully realize the important part grinders play in local, mostly Rhode Island, culture. For our research shows that it is residents of Rhode Island and southeastern Connecticut who have travelled abroad to places such as Orange County, CA, bringing with them the grinder recipe and name. Yes, there is so much to do.

It is with this in mind that I cracked open the newspaper this morning and found this article about how New Orleans is preserving po'boy culture with a large festival that expects thousands.

Surely the grinder is as important to Rhode Island's social, economic and gastronomic culture as the po'boy is to New Orleans. C'mon Westerly! We can do this!

Winnipeg or Saskatchewan or Where Ever You Are

I have put my money where my mouth is and booked an RV for five weeks in late May/June 2010. We will head north and then west and finish the travel part of Knitting Sprawl.

After our fall travels, I found the expense of hotels and meals were so great that I needed to look for an alternative way of finishing up the trip. At a certain point the idea of a rental RV crossed my mind and I began to have visions of us as homeschooling hippies: travellin' and learnin' (and knittin' and talkin'). Also, I liked the idea that we would be a little more in charge of our schedule so if something good came up we could take advantage of it, as opposed to be locked into reservations at various places.

Thus, we are officially booked with our Class C vehicle, with generator.

Should be interestin'.

Bumper Crop

While Gillams may be under snow about now, here in Sunnyside we had a glorious day of sunshine and warmth. I took advantage of this to harvest our jerusalem artichoke crop. Why do you have a jerusalem artichoke crop, you may ask. Truthfully, I never really wanted one but when a neighbor plants something new in their backyard, chances are that, for better or worse, we will be harvesting that plant soon enough as well. One of our neighbors many "experiments" was jerusalem artichokes, so now we also have them.



Hey, if you can't beat'em, join 'em.

Here are some heirloom tomatoes that may ripen a bit more off the vine to be a cheery yellow colour.



I think that might be the last of them.

Colour

Some of the results of the dyeing workshop:


Black walnut on merino yarn, I used yarn that had been mordanted with alum but I know I didn't have to use any mordant since the tannins in the walnut are enough. I am not a huge fan of brown, but this one really catches my eye.


Some BFL fleece, unmordanted, in black walnut.


Onion skins with alum mordant.


Onion skins with tin mordant. I added too much tin to the pot so while the colour is amazing, the mordant is breaking down the fibre. A stupid mistake that comes from not knowing much about tin mordanting. Now I know.


That fibre in the middle is mohair dyed with tea. I collected every tea bag I used for about a month in a large jar filled with water. It got quite...um...fermented. The results were well worth it, however. The colour is so gorgeous, especially on this glossy mohair. Again, no mordanting since tea also has a lot of tannin.

Such fall colours! Such fun! I want to get back at those dye pots.

Context is Everything

Wave Hill was alive with colour yesterday. Although the skies were grey, the landscape was beautiful and it served as a lovely backdrop to our experiments with colour from the dye pots. A small group that came by for the workshop/demo but, to me, it was just the right size. I had pots of indigo, onion skins, red cabbage, black tea, and black walnut going and people could try out fibre I had or they could bring their own, which a few did. I also had mordanted fibre and yarn with alum and tin so people could experiment with how they create different shades.

Owen, a boy of about seven, came with his parents and stayed the whole time with great enthusiasm. It was wonderful to see him so excited by how you can make colour from ordinary plants and household leftovers. Brece and Helen both came, which also was wonderful because I got to visit a little with them and because they both bring a great deal of knowledge of all things fibre-y so the workshop became a real sharing of information.

The indigo pot did not fail to inspire many oohs and ahhs for its magic but the black walnuts were not far behind. I had them soaking for three days before the workshop and they made an amazing dye - the most gorgeous warm reddish brown. And it was one time when the smell was actually kind of lovely, like taking a deep breath from the forest floor.

I was able to do a little PR for my residency project that will happen in the winter, encouraging interested people to come back and knit or spin with me. The project is growing or perhaps deepening is a better term. I want to explore the mutual relationships between people and the natural environment at Wave Hill and the institutional relationship between Wave Hill and its audience. I think of it as a study of two ecologies that overlap in many ways. While I was hashing these ideas out, I learned that ecology actually means "house study" which seemed very appropriate for what I wanted to do. Thus the project is called House Study/Handmade.

As I have started collecting things to dye, I noticed that the staff have communal coffee and tea and a little kitchen space, so I asked them to save their tea bags, etc., so that I can dye not only with the plants but with the things that the people their use in their daily routines. I like that I am collecting these items, as well as the leaves and twigs, to make a kind of portrait in dyes of Wave Hill. Same thing, only different.

After that day of colour and context, I saw this over on Wild Fox Zen and it could not have been more appropriate.

Remember: don't believe everything you see.

Yesterday, Today

The Mirror Ball Suit was a big success - Lucy hated to take it off. One person even recognized it. Finnian finally decided to be a chef, complete with a slightly bloody butcher's knife. Thus costumed, we made our way to Hoboken, NJ, for a party and trick or treating - a two-hour journey via public transport. I was moaning and groaning about combining two of my least favourite things - Halloween and New Jersey - when Lucy said to me, through clenched teeth, " Do not ruin my Halloween." She was right. I shut up and we had a good time. Although trying to get back home along with about a million people all ready to party at the annual Greenwich Village Halloween parade was not so, whaddayacallit, fun.

Ah, New Jersey.

But today is The Bronx: natural dyeing at Wave Hill from 1 - 3 p.m. Looks like it will be indoors in Armor Hall at Wave Hill House. I plan on having an indigo pot going, along with some other pots of suprises. Emphasis will be on having fun. If this sounds like your thing, then come on over and join me. Plus Wave Hill is looking pretty spectacular in its fall colours. I don't think you can go wrong.