Garden (and Garden show)

This is the first flower of my violet alstroemeria, I'm very excited, because I thought I lost it last summer during the heat wave, and it's now happily living in a pot, waiting to move to it's new home.

And these are the yellow flowers that have just bloomed for the first time as well. Luckily the way you pick the flowers encourages more growth of the lily, because I couldn't help myself with these ones! I'm hoping to have a bed of them in lots of different colours for cut flowers. I like having flowers in the house, but most of the ones I grow, especially the bulbs, I don't have enough of, or enjoy them too much out in the garden to dare pick them.

On another note, I am now officially part of an art exhibition about gardening (thanks DC!) that is happening next November. I'm really happy about that and really looking forward to working in a studio that has enough room to store all my materials and equipment. Since the whole moving decision I kind of have paused on my eternal quest to find a better way to store everything in a small space (can't give up anything, so please don't suggest it!), and have just been waiting to figure it all out again in a new space.

Does anyone have any suggestions or favourite websites for cool sewing storage stuff?

I'm thinking a giant pegboard for my tools, and possible thread display.........

House Hunted!!

We went to the bank on Friday to figure out a budget, we started looking at houses ..........

we put in an offer two weeks later on one.......

and got accepted!!!! Check out the beautiful* blue brick veneer!

This is the wallpaper in the kitchen of our new house. I don't have any other interior photos because I didn't want to jinx anything, but the wallpaper was special enough to warrant a picture. The rest of the house is wallpapered as well :)

THis is a partial view of the backyard - it has fruit trees and a yard for Xi to play in, and a vegie patch and a space for chooks and a brick garage that will be converted into a FABULOUS STUDIO TWICE THE SIZE OF WHAT I'VE BEEN WORKING IN!!!!!!!!! (and thus freeing up a room in the house - spare room/office hooray!!!)

This is the work of a day with the help of a friend (and Xi, to a lesser extent) towards getting our garden ready for the move. I've just decided to take cuttings of my bigger succulents because they'll take off fast, and potted up my favourite bits and pieces. There is already several established fruit trees, and grape vines (it's an old Italian suburb, bless their cultivation!) So we'll just see what the space and conditions are like before planning anything major..............or not if I can't wait.

IT'S SO EXCITING!!!!!

we're getting the keys sooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooon

*it's definitely going.

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!)

Museum Project

So.....I've been busy. It's all been too hard/busy/brain overloading. Lots of things have happened that I was worrying about (including teeth after nearly two months of paaaaaaaaain) and an exhibition on short notice. I need to catch up on everything it seems!

I wrote in the last post about a collaborative project with the South Australian Museum. It's called SAM's place, and is a cool project which allows the artist/artists to go behind the scenes, talk to the scientists and curators, research the greater collection and respond to it with an exhibition that's held on site for two months (the research period is four months).

I proposed as part of a group with a jeweler/metalsmith/artist cool chickie Lauren Simeoni and my husband, who's a glassartist/cool ideas guy. I bring to the table textiley/sewing/printing skills (and enthusiasm).

We've put together a proposal which allows us to basically do anything we want, in terms of making and aesthetics, but that's also the problem - we wanted our fingers in every pie! It's kind of like a pass the parcel game, in terms of, someone makes something and then passes it on to the next artist to either add to any which way they want, or under direction.

I've been freaking a bit, because I really haven't been able to use my studio for any length of time, and I just didn't have much to show apart from a bunch of ideas and a sketchbook, which isn't really enough when you're working with others, and the greater organisations that are involved that want to know about your progress.

It had become a bit daunting, so thank goodness for crochet.

Fast

Simple

Don't need a space, elaborate set up time or much of anything, just some yarn and a hook.

These are just the start of a series of free-form crochet forms, not sure where they are going to end up yet, or how they will look after they've been passed on, but it's a start. And it felt good to finally be able to start.

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....

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!