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

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.

bowls from yarn

Lately I've been crocheting bowls.  Making small dishes and vessels from yarn.

I've been trying different designs.

Different sizes and colours.  But mostly grey.

And green, occasionally.

wearing autumn

vessels made of string

their stitches

 I have been sewing and crocheting things for other people.  An alteration.  A contribution.  A gift.

I love the feeling I get when I make something for someone else. Of course, there's the pressure to perform and the perfectionist in me looms large.  But I like it. 
I like spending hours finding the right thread, I like thinking about the stitches and hoping they will last when they leave my hands.  And I like the challenge of another person's standards rather than my own.

in pursuit of leaves made of yarn

objects and shapes

Attending an online textiles course [and in particular a section on soft sculpture] has got me thinking about forms and shapes and sculpted things. About how to make things 3 dimensional, and how to bring to a picture to life by giving it substance. 

At the moment, I have a struggle between what I want to make and what I actually do make. The ideas I have don't seem to translate into sculptures. 

But then I notice a previously crocheted bit of fabric curling around into a shape, looking a bit like bark peeled from a tree and I am inspired all over again.

when a yarn isn't a yarn

I have been thinking lately about crocheting with different materials: yarns that are not yarns. I started with some garden twine – scratchy, rough and a long way from the soft pure wools that feel luxurious and indulgent to work with.

And it wasn't easy; pulling thick twine through loops gave my arms a workout and it wasn't the relaxing experience that I often find crochet to be. That led me to think about how crocheting a doily from garden twine felt more like 'work' than making the same doily from a soft yarn. As though work could be measured in terms of physical endurance, which it can't and shouldn't. But it did make me think about the physicality of making and the ways in which we measure the validity of the making [and the maker].

 And I know I will come back to these thoughts just as I will carry on with my quest for different yarns, stranger yarns, non-yarns.

just green

a blanket :: mended

Back to the blanket.

I put it away for a while with a faint whiff of failure and a large dollop of despondency.  But this month I got it out and I began the very slow process of mending the blanket. And just like that I remembered that I love slow processes, and I love mending. And it became an almost meditative process – the putting the blanket back together, slowly, and making it stronger than it was. 

 Next winter I will sit under it as I work on something else slowly and I will remember to stop and savour the process. Every part of the process.

a blanket :: broken

Last year I started to crochet a blanket. It was the first big project that I had attempted since teaching myself to crochet. I love the whole process of making something: the inspiration, the designing, the sourcing of materials, the planning, the putting it together. I embrace all aspects of it. 

Except the bit where something goes wrong. I was almost stitching together the last square when I realised that the blanket was unravelling – almost every square was falling apart in my hands. I panicked, I berated myself for not doing it correctly and for allowing this to happen. And then I picked myself up [and the blanket] and I set about trying to find out what had gone wrong. It was very simple and had a lot to do with the differences between functional items made to be prodded/poked/stretched/'used' and objects that are made for their aesthetic value and are designed to hang on a wall or sit on a desk and to be looked at, not touched. 

Where crochet is concerned my experience so far hasn't been about making functional items.  I didn't allow for the prodding and poking when I made the squares. Lesson absolutely learned for next time.