until next year, foliage and yarn

  

back soon

swatching grey

seablanket

Seablanket is complete.  Three months of slow crochet.  

 My intention was to use the colour palette of the coast, just a short walk from here.  This blanket is how I see the seaside.  Blue skies // grey skies // darker grey skies // green seaweed // blue sea // green sea // brown pebbles // beige sand.

I am surprised by how much blue there is now that it is finished - that wasn't my intention. I claim to dislike blue but I'm not sure that's true anymore.

a week of green yarns

grey day, muted yarn

quiet january + seaside crochet

I wanted this space to be an honest document of my creativity – I didn't ever want to post something for the sake of it.  And in real life, sometimes there are periods when not a lot of making or artfulness is happening. 

And that's OK.  There hasn't been much studio time, so there hasn't been much to show.  I'm hoping that will change soon but until then I've been slowly working on a blanket.  It's the perfect project to pick up and crochet little bits here and there.  I'm calling it Seablanket and it is inspired by the colours of a grey day at the seaside.

winter nesting

yarn gathering

december, suddenly

This space has been too quiet recently.  Not much to share, for now.   

mending clothes, mending leaves

Lately I have been taking part in Slow Fashion Style: an online workshop run by Katrina Rodabaugh. I had high hopes as I've taken online classes with Katrina before and loved them.

 I haven't been disappointed - it's been thought provoking and encouraging and packed full of creative ideas.  My fellow participants have been equally as inspiring and there has been a great sense of community filled with like-minded people.

The first part of the workshop involved visible mending.  I used sashiko stitching to patch a hole in some old jeans.  I have also begun an ongoing mend of a holey cardigan by crocheting with grey yarn - I can see that I will keep coming back to it and fill more areas as it gets more worn.  

 In art, I am often drawn to the imperfect and decayed - I have written here before about mending natural objects and my ongoing project of collecting damaged and broken leaves that I then try to mend with crochet.  Thinking about the mending of functional items has been an interesting accompaniment to this.

felt playing

One of the things that I like about crochet is that it creates a fabric.  It seems obvious, but the fact that a ball of yarn can become something tangible and hold it's shape is thrilling to me. 

And following on from my new obsession with making bowls from yarn, the next logical step would  be to felt them.  I wanted the bowls to have more shape and for the stitches to blend in with each other.

I crocheted a bowl made of 100% wool and popped it in the washing machine on a normal wash - this seems the most basic way to create the felted effect and the results weren't spectacular.

I think that felting by hand might be more suited to me and that is where I'm heading with this newly crocheted bowl.