Museum show pre and post!

So.....

Here's some behind the scenes of the works we made, and the finished installations (a small selection of them, we ended up making quite a lot, and I haven't gotten the professional photos back yet, so they are just snappy snaps)

I didn't go with simple, easy to make free-form crochet like I spoke of in March... I went for casting, sculpting, learning and inventing totally new things and combinations of materials that I'd never worked with before.

I have vowed for the next body of work to utilise my skills, not spend all my time figuring out how to make things work......

This is one of the two Hypohued Oculate Anemones I produced with the help of Tom. This one is as yet nude!

Tom is being a great collaborator and casting the base!

This is the finished piece. It's not that great a shot, I feel I'll have to explain it:

The glass polyps have been sheathed in machine knitted tubes which have been knitted from embroidery threads, so each tube is a combination of three to five different coloured fine threads, so it produces subtle (in hot pink) variations of tone, and you are able to glimpse the glass underneath.

In short, the eleven glass pieces that needed dressing, plus the base, plus the gluing and stitching took a long time. It was hard to juggle making all the other work, the writing, travelling for another show and parenting, and to top it all off, I made this piece to go specifically in a vertical drawer, like a hidden treasure surprise, I thought it was a great idea at the time, but with half the people I sent to see the show not finding it, I wish I'd made something out of cardboard that took me no time to put in that drawer!

Each piece has it's own fake museum labels and story attached to it, here's the anemone's:

This anemone colony is remarkable in that the polyps have developed

completely discrete functions that act independently of one another. There are often several eye stalks, feeding mouths and defensive wings that make up the whole anemone.

The Hypohued Oculate Anemone uses colour as a way to

attract small prey and bigger interest. It uses electrical pulses

throughout the polyps to change it’s appearance, being able to

react to various different stimuli and environments.

They are also able to communicate with other colonies

through colour patterns and flashing displays.

Excerpt from Laurosto journal:

….I was diving, and was entranced by this underwater delight,

until I reached out and it bit me.

Now I have two lovely specimens for my collection….

it did take a few attempts to capture a complete colony,

but the polyps look good with my jellyfish…

Location and dates unknown

Donated Laurosto Collection 2010 LSRHTM274

These are the Egyptian/Australian animal mummies. Here's the spiel for them:

An Interesting Connection

There have been a lot of theories about Ancient Egyptian sailors
reaching other continents, yet there has been little evidence to date.

Now, for the first time there is a definitive link between Ancient Egyptians and Australia in the form of a tomb discovered by Sam Laurosto, the intrepid amateur naturalist and collector.

The date of discovery as well as the exact location is shrouded in mystery, though we know it was somewhere in South Australia and some time in the late 1800’s.

Laurosto discovered in the tomb mummified native Australian animals, objects and frescoes that led him to believe that a small population of Ancient Egyptians resided in Australia for some time and integrated the local fauna into their existing pantheon.

He observed the similarities between the animals worshipped as anthropomorphic gods:
The Jackal headed God Anubis and the Kangaroo God (name unknown),
The Falcon headed God Horus and the Parakeet God,
and the Ibis headed God Thoth and the Brolga God.
He also noted that the Ancient Egyptians had a crocodile headed god, Sobek, and Australia is known for its crocodiles.

They gave us a poster on North Terrace (which is the main drag for the Art Gallery, Museum, State Library etc), notice Xi doesn't look that impressed.

Here's Lauren working on some finishing touches to the foyer display. We've a teaser selection of curios: a Spanish Man of Peace, an eye catching mineral Disconite, a blue hypohued anemone, an Egyptian Kangaroo head with sketches and various glassy sea creatures.
Here's a view of the mineral display with Laurosto's minerals added in. Tom made one called Turdite, found in Deep Craek. He was pretty pleased with that one,
and Lauren made Pompomnite which really doesn't look that different from the authentic green gypsum, but a whole bunch of school kids came through as we were checking out the display and had a great time debunking some of our minerals (but not all surprisingly enough!)
Amongst the sharks and deep sea fishes lurks the elusive many eyed Roller Fish.

And here we are finished installing on a project that we first started talking about when I was four months pregnant and lasted until.........well, actually, it's just been installed at the Adelaide Town Hall, so really, it's lasted until after our son's first birthday.

So thanks Lauren and Tom it was a great and interesting experience doing the show with you, (and Xi especially for getting dragged to the Museum so many times when you would have rather been laying on the grass!)

Stuck in the Heat (or New Studio)

Well, it's supposedly 37 C outside and we're now hiding in our one a/c room, baby's sleeping, and I do not dare make much noise, so that rules out tidying the room!

I spent some time last week setting up my new studio space at the Blue Pony, studiomates with DCBS and my husband, as well as other fabulous artists. I actually spent most of the time trying to figure out the orientation of things so that I could see the baby from wherever I would possibly be (on account of the multiple roll stage and lots of lovely things to put in mouth).

So here is the space before unpacking:

and after:

I've decided not to unpack all my boxes, or even bring them to the Pony, on account that I'm sick of setting up spaces and unpacking stuff only to never be able to use it. So I'm hoping this time I'll actually have a chance to dig around for something because I'm producing work.

I went in this morning with Xi just to drop some things off, and ended up staying and working for a bit which was lovely and unexpected. My space is upstairs, which is very hot when it's hot, so I moved my knitting table downstairs and just hung out in the relative cool for a while with another artist. Nice to have some company, and I actually started the collaborative project I'm involved with at the South Australian Museum (which I was getting more and more worried about). ....more about that later though....

Sample experiments evolve...

After nearly a year of trying, I've finally got a knitting machine that does what I want it to do - fair isle!

Oh how I love it so much.

It didn't really take me that long to figure it out, but it did take that long to get a teacher, realise that the machine I was given wasn't capable of it, find another one, service it, work, go away for work and have a baby....

This is where I thought I'd be in March, starting experiments, making fabrics. I did feel a bit thwarted at every turn for a while, but now all is good.

These were fair isle samples that I turned into stuffed fishie creatures for the babies in my bump club. They've got a magnet in them so they can stick to things (my sewing table for example) or later on, they can go fishing for them with a magnet on a string (I loved those magnetic fish games..)

They are suggestive of fish, I think the last one looks like a speedy dog fish, and the second one looks like a fat slow whale fish. It's the only one with a stuffed tail, and I'm not sure about it. They're prototypes and are whatever shape I made the rectangular piece, but they're for babies, so I'm sure they won't mind that they are a bit wonky.

I used cotton from cones that I'd had stored somewhere, and I thought I'd give them a quick wash before wrapping, and since today was a stinking 39 C, I thought they'd dry quick as a flash, but unbeknownst to me, outside it was becoming muggy, and now it's kinda raining. Hence the fish on the fan.

The textured tails felt quite nice wet, and I was thinking they could be a bath sponge toy maybe. (if I did the whole thing in a tuck stitch). not sure...

Some set backs and knitting disasters......

Well, not much to show for the past two weeks. I've had things happen, and not happen, and then not finish, and then not work, so I feel like I haven't been that productive. But I have finished something that I'm pretty happy with, I just have to wait until my mother opens her birthday present before she sees it up here :)

I was so close to learning what I wanted to learn on the knitting machines, I'd pulled apart two machines they'd given me, and built one from the best parts. My teacher remembered to bring all the things she'd forgotten last time, and I was so excited, I thought that it was a case of third time lucky...............but I'm going to have to hope for fourth time lucky.

The machine jammed internally, so she spent the next two hours fiddling, and I spent it laughing helplessly and muttering about being cursed. She took the machines away to fiddle with again, and got back to me that she's not happy with them, and is finding me a new machine. This is when I mentioned that I'm more than happy to have someone service it, as I feel like most of what I've done so far is learn to oil parts. I still don't want to give it up, I like the zingy sound of the machine and I'm excited about the possibilities, I'm just not interested in servicing them myself - I want one that works! I just want to do more sample pieces before starting something big, and I want to learn multicolour patterning damnit!

So that fell through, I'll find out on Tuesday what the next step in the saga/drama is at the next guild meeting. One the plus side, I found a whole box full of cotton cones that I'd stashed in the cellar because they'd be handy one day, so I have a supply of yarn for a big project (when it eventually happens!)

I seem to like taking pictures of material on the line at the moment. These are bassinet and cot sheets. The baby so far has inherited a pile of mainly white clothes, and well, that's a bit....plain. And spotlight was having a sale, and the 100% quilting fabric (the nice thick stuff) that was normally $25/m was down to $2/m. So now the baby's going to be lying back on flowers, trains, spots and dots for a bit of variety!
This is another pic in the evolution of the room. Tom's been scraping back layers of paint for about 2 weeks now, I'm finding paint chips everywhere, as you can see the room has also been an orange and a pale green, not to mention about 5 other colours. As I'm typing this, he's doing the last coat of the walls *fingers crossed*

And this is the Almond tree flowering in the front yard, because I had to put up something that was pretty and happy with itself!

Studio Workplay

This is a picture of my studio space that I share with a metalsmith/jeweller and a glass artist. I have my printing press, my silk screens and my knitting machines all vying for space and time. (I also have a sign up from my birthday party, but the happy birthday bit has fallen down along with the balloons and streamers).

I am making progress in my knitting, I took my first finished piece in last tuesday for the guild meeting, it's a scarf made from a thick ply variegated cotton that a friend gave me after realising she'd never finish her project. So this is getting sent to her this week. I started off doing every needle, and tried to do lace work, but the ply was too thick, so it didn't really like doing it, and then I went to every second needle for the majority of the scarf, coming back to make it even at the other end. So it's kind of got a ribbed body almost, and then more structured ends. I've told her she can pass it on if she wants!

This is what I've been doing with my sample pieces - making little pouches with them.

From top left: plain mohair -- terrible to work with, I'm handing over all my mohair/angora/fuzzy stuff to my hand knitting neighbour, it's really frustrating to put through the machine, you have to freeze it before hand, and then dislodge the tangled fibres every two passes, it takes a looooooong time to do anything with it. (The piece of kaki knitting on the machine in the photo above took a crazy amount of time, I was lace making with mohair, will have the finished piece of that up sooner or later)

:sock yarn (3 or 4 ply) 80% wool, 20% nylon, really fast to work with, playing with my cam lever. I also dyed this at an open day at the spinners and weavers guild in Hobart in january.

:working with a tuck stitch pattern (I can read the diagrams - yay!) and using a really nice 80%bamboo 20% wool 4/5ply (can't quite remember) it has a lovely sheen and a nice weight to it.

:stripes! the red is the bamboo mix, the black is a nubbly cotton. When I get two carriages, I'll be able to do stripes without knots, which will be fabulous.

: another tuck stitch pattern in the bamboo mix. The lilac one is the only one that I didn't sew wrong sides together and turn out, and I think it sits the best, so will probably redo the lime one to make it the same way.

I'm happy to have made something useful out of my samples, I've used one for carrying jewelry when travelling, they are good because they can be folded in half, I'm thinking of using one as a wallet..... got to figure it out.

I'm working on other things with the pieces, I just need to resolve them before putting up photos.

I'm also doing some lino cutting at the moment, just very slowly...

What I did during the renovating part 1

So we've had another go at the baby's room, this time was sealing the ceiling, as it's got a plank ceiling, with gapes between every piece of board that let in a lot of dust. The caulking made a huge difference, and I think it looks great already, but am looking forward to painting it (or watching it being done, since I get yelled at everytime I go into the room, because of the fumes, and to tell the truth, 10 tubes of caulk does get pretty stinky, we initially bought 3 tubes, thinking that was plenty, but oh no.....)

This is what I did in my sewing studio while that was happening - a new workboard! I must admit, I could have worked, but it was Friday night, and I wanted to do something fun (and productive, and procrastinating and kinda organise-ish). I just covered a poster board I'd been using for pattern display with some white flannelette (cause it was handy).

and then filled it with my knitted samples, so I can look at them and figure out some plans!
The ribbon project will be posted soon as well!

fun with machines

I was very luckily given a knitting machine by my Aunty Sue, an Empisal KH 68O push button to be precise a while back and I saved it to learn this year, because I knew that I wouldn't have the time to devote to it last year.  I think it'd been stored for quite a while without use, I'm guessing maybe 20 years, but could be off.

I started teaching myself step by step care of the 'friendly instruction manual' (I think you've got to worry when it calls itself friendly) and here are my first samples below:

plain knitting with increasing, decreasing and a purpose put hole; various types of pattern textures (which were really cool!); playing with the lace carriage (quite a dropped stitch problem and tension issues with the cotton) and my first proper cast on and cast off!!

The first three I did by myself, and then realised I could be trying to teach myself out of a book for a long time, when instead I was itching to get into cool projects, so resolved to get a teacher.

I actually found a machine knitters guild and have since attended two meetings (separate chapter groups) and have picked up lots of tips as well as arranging some lessons.  The ladies all are very friendly and most are at least 25 years older than me, some up to 40 years older.  I think I'm a bit of a novelty to them.

My plans for the knitting machine is to make fabric pattern pieces to incorporate into garments, free form sculptural objects and plain mucking around.  However, after my first lesson, my homework is to do:

2 backs, 2 sets of sleeves and two fronts up until the neck section.

This is the machine, and getting ready to make the rib hem.  

And these are my two backs.  the multicolour one is a bit skew-if, I was doing a fabulous job of decreasing, but kept forgetting to put back the empty needle on the left side, so it kept adding more stitches.  The striped one on the right is (hopefully) correct.

I did a small jumper because I just want to learn the techniques, not because I think I'm going to have a boy and am preparing for when they are two....

I'm hopefully going to add some textured bits to the sleeves or front, just to make it a bit more interesting to do.

I think my favourite thing so far is using the yarn winder, to make a ball where the yarn flows freely from the centre.  it's such a lovely action, I might take some photos of that!