I have been stuck for a long time now when it comes to writing, sharing, etc.
I had a good format going for a while at the first of the year where I was sharing a natural dye tutorial once a week.
I'm still working on dyeing, even more now actually.
Doing a ton of testing samples and dyeing up soft squishy hand spun yarns for my shop.
I thought I'd chime in and share (here and there) what I have been doing when I'm not dyeing.
Over the last few months I've been thinking A LOT about materials I use and what they mean.
To me.
To you.
The environment.
The cost to all- not in a financial way.
Here are my thoughts... though it's taken me a very long time to articulate them well, this is the best i can do for now. And now is when I felt like I should share as the way I use materials are changing.
So here goes.
For several years before going full time with my textile crafting, I've been enjoying just floating along doing what I really enjoyed and not thinking too much about it. You know, not stressing.
Since I went full time in September of 2012, this feeling of otherness has been creeping in.
I wasn't sure what it was and it took me another year and a half to realize it was an empty spaces.
Like those little empty spaces that exist everywhere in our houses. Like in our junk drawers, basements, attics, and living spaces.
All from a result of not using space wisely.
I'm a bit into feng shui. Though I don't know a ton, I do know that when space is not fully utilizied to it's full potenial, an energy drain forms. Draining us of energy.
So you know how when you go through a huge deep cleaning spree and organize and get rid of a ton of things and then your left with all this space? Maybe you feel cleaner and lighter and sharper? This was happening to me in the little crevices of my mind where nuno felting, mitten building, bird felting, dyeing, foraging, painting, sewing, embroidery, weaving, drawing, writing, quilting, and spinning... all existed.
I've been juggling so many things! And I spent way too much time online on Pinterest and Etsy. But you give a crafter an oppertunity to not work for the man but work for herself and gosh, she may be really good at knitting mittens at lightening speed.... but no so much at time management. Or money management. Or muscle managment....
This time last year I was loving all the knitting and the spinning and the dyeing but I worked at crazy frenzy paces. Not eating the best- I had my days- but I actually resented having to stop and feed myself something normal.
Then, last spring I started to look more into the Fibershed and what that was all about.
The more I read and talked about it with other folks, the sudden surge of energy rushed into
those little empty crevices in my mind. Melding with the other like minded ideas in my head. Pushing ideas that didn't fit. Picture Mr. Roger's game of what does not belong... or was that seame street.
Also, because I saw others, mainly women as it happens, doing these things, I simply felt empowered about my own work.
I started to see and feel these long time and new fronds of ideas unfolding in this cleaner and newer environment of my mind.
These thoughts started to pay more attention to other details in my life.
Things I have thought about before but never spent too long on them.
I started to think about where all my clothes comes from.
How many little fingers touched this very fabric?
As Americans, on a whole, for so long, we are taught by the media and marketing to always throw stuff out and buy more and do it with credit.
We are pushed so hard to have certain things and a certain number of things.
So again back to my process.
Over the last several months I've been taking stock in what I use for materials in the items I make for sale on my etsy shop.
The materials I use in one piece of the puzzle.
Another piece is
WHAT am I making
and why.
Side bar:
Since I've been knitting over the last 18 years, I've heard, "I saw this super cute {fill in the blank} thing and I think you should make one too!" if I had a nickle for everytime anyone said that to me, I would be a rich women. Well, maybe a dollar. Nickles don't get you far these days.
Here's the thing though. I was an art major. Not at a typical art school but rather a Christian College with an amazing but rather small visual art program. What I learned there in that department in the four years of college, I give more credit to then the rest of the education in my entire college experience. The principles of all sorts that my 3 professors, Bruce, George, & Z taught me about making art far FAR out weighed everything else I was taught there and actually prepared me very well for this carrer I've chosen for myself in a way that can only come from deep within the creative self. I think for some as parents, hearing their child declare an art major can be filled with all kinds of emotions. Most of which, "how on earth will this child support herself after 4 years if all she does is draw nudes and study color?" But I knew at 6 years old I was an artist and always would be. I didn't choose it actually. Color, form, and texture occupy most of the space in my head and my heart. All. Day. Long.
A memory that has stuck with me since college that I apply to my loney crafting days still;
I think it was my junior year... or senior year of college. All the art majors (there were about 20 of us I think) took a bus to NYC for the day to visit the art museums and galleries. I had never been before. I still remember the amazing series of large oils, all of clouds. I left feeling lighter and enlightened thinking, WOW.... you can paint clouds......
A conversation on the bus back home about various religious paintings other took the time to see, {I had no interest as I was slowly learning, I was not religious in the least} got me thinking about what I painted and was interested in. I have always been so taken with light in nature and color in nature. Always. I expressed to my professor my disapointment in myself or maybe that God had in me for not being interested in religious types of subjects for my work. I had actually been waiting to get that inspriation to paint a suffering religious sence in dark brooding colors, but it never came. I was only interested in the bright colors of Matisse and the soft colors of Casset and Homer and others like them. El Greco and Bacon angered me. All that grool and suffering. I HATED it. What he replied back to me has stuck with me since and has helped me reach my path here. Or rather stay on it.
"The world needs beauty depited too. And that is what you do with your work."
So when it comes to creating something for the shop, myself, or a loved one, it comes from a place deep with in myself. From my childhood under our maples, next to the daffodils, inspecting my favroite rock for lichens and mica treasures. The sparkling sledding hill I raced down and trudged up with my sisters. The need for whole and true communication from each other to the uninterrupted and natural growth of sheep. And the careful harvesting of goldenrod and always leaving plenty for the bees and butterflies to continue on so that they continue to provide us all with food.
It comes from a place of not wanting to support mass production at the expense of the environment or each other.
Acid dyes are created with coal tar, the 5th highest polutant in the world.
And even koolaid, sold as a drink to children, something I so happliy pertook as a child espcially in the form of popscicles. Lime and grape being my favorite!
But it also has dyes and no nutrition value.
In my mind,If I continue to use it as a dye,
the maker of koolaid has no idea why I'm using it
but only that I continue to fund it's making.
And then there is the fabric. All this fabric I have carefully washing ironed and folded and organized by color on my shelves.
Fabric I have collected for years.
How was it all made?
These concepts and facts mean something to some and little to others.
To me, it does mean a great deal where every aspect is from and how it was created.
We do know more know now about the treatment of factory workers than we used to.
I adore fabrics.
However, I'm making a pledge to myself to simply not buy any more fabric with out knowing how it was made.
If I can't figure it out,
I'm not buying it.
I have plenty to last me years I know.
I will use what I have.
And when it is gone it's gone.
When the time comes I will search out a new kind of fabric.
One in which I know the environment in which the plant was grown was not harmed.
Such as not using pestisides on flax and cotton or the mulberry trees where silk worms lived where not sprayed.
I will not buy silk cloth where the silk worms were drowned before they could emerge naturally and gracefully from their cacoons to finish out their life cycle and die in peace.
I will not buy cloth where the people who made it were treated unfarely from the wage they are given, to not being paid their over time work, to not being given breaks, to being forced to work to pay off debts, to how they are treated while working on this cloth, or if children were forced to work, etc.
I will not buy it.
Perhaps your wondering, what is the point? Why bother? Why waste your energy caring about something you can't control and caring about people who have nothing to do with you and you'll never meet.
But that's just it.
I may never meet them, but they have everything to do with how we live.
And we have everything to do with how they live.
The more we continue to buy, the demand for this and that go up.
The more demand goes up, the more the stock market goes up and business people see $$$$.
And that is all they see.
Exploiting humans to feed other humans is an age old practice and I am sure it will go on forever.
But I'm simply and quietly choosing to remove myself out of the cycle, the game, the show and
do my own thing.
I won't ask others to join me, though I do hope my words will encourage others to THINK more about their choices. Where they put there money. How they seek for new ideas.
Because you see, the money we spend is not only to support ourselves and family with food and shelter, which is all a basic human right.
But the money we spend is also a vote for continued manufactured products.
It's as simple as that.
I'm not saying here I'm going to boycott certain store or products, though in a way I am.
What I'm really saying and what I want to share with you is my intention and the reasons behind them when it comes to making, crafting, living.
I love to collect and buy and shop and have. I do.
But I have plenty and I don't need to have much more.
I love to create and I love to share. When I need to obtain more materials, lots of research goes into it before I purchase my madder root and soon my cloth, for example.
So, what am I to do with all this yarn I've been collecting over the years.... and all this nuno felting material dyed with acid dyes and who knows what other chemicals went into the roving process????
Let's lighten things up a bit.
In an effort to destash all my lovely commerically dyed and mill spun yarns,
this is happening:
When it comes to lots and lots of different colors, my mind goes in to C.O.M.
That's what I call, color obsessive mode.
I can't turn it off and I can't do much until my color oganizing idea sparks are quenched.
So this fine rainbow of a beasty will be a studio poncho for me as I work this winter out in the red shed on my oil painting. It is so much fun to knit.
When my hand isn't cramping.
This is how I'm knitting it, and I'll show progress photos later.
I hold togther about 3-4 strands of one color type of a and work 2 rows across the 200+ sticthes I cast onto my largest and longest circlar needle.
I could use a longer needle.
Before when I didn't know what to do with all this yarn that I just don't feel comfortble knitting for my shop any more as it goes against the grain of my plant dye, foraging life style and mantra.
And yes, I was a bit selfish and was not willing to donate to just anybody, like dropping it off somewhere.
So now I can wear somthing, look down and have great memories of all this yarn.
See that blue light blue fluffy ball? I go that in Brunswick, Maine. Near where I grew up at the Yankee knitter before it closed.
Now here's the 2nd thing, the nuno felting material.
So nuno felting never took off with me or I with it.
In fact I'm HORRIBLE at it. After trying to teach it three time, I realized I needed to stop abusing others with my lack a dazicle techniques.
But look:
As awful at it as I am, I am good at making tight and tiny strips of nuno felted cloth.
A quilt will emerge from this pile if it's the last thing I do.
I'll share updates on that.
In other news;
My next workshop is at my dear friend's {Casey} shop,
If you live in the Portland, Maine area,
are curious about natural dyes and want to brush up on your indigo skills,
this will be just the class.
We'll have at least 2 different kinds of vats going.
Possibly more to accomadate ALL YOUR FIBER!!
Yes, that's right, I said,
ALL YOUR FIBER.
With in reason.
Which simply means, whatever we have room to soak and dye in the space of a few hours.
Some new shop updates have been happening every day.
Getting some fresh goodies and wears coming in
Thanks for sharing in this journey that we call making.
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