Sheepies and Wooliness Festival '09!

This past weekend was the 36th Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival! So I trundled down to Baltimore to see my excellent friend Elisabeth and check out the sheepies and the wooliness!

The festival is held annually in West Friendship, MD, at the Howard County Fairgrounds and is, unless I'm very much mistaken, the largest Sheep and Wool Festival in the country!

We got to see lots of animals of varying fuzziness:

Baby Alpacas! With really funny haircuts.

Baby goats on lawn chairs!

Unfortunately groomed Llamas...

And, of course, SHEEPIES!! Here's Madame Elisabeth nuzzling a lovely ewe.

Baaaaaaahh....

This is a Jacob Sheep! It has two sets of horns! It's like an extra set of handles!

I spent quite a long time petting this sheep on the muzzle... it was so awesome. And I got to feel it's horns: they were totally warm! Of course I knew that their horns were a part of their body but I really never expected them to be... warm... it was totally weird and awesome.

Oh.. and we also spotted... A nun.

A nun in combat boots.

!!

She was so cool. She was clearly there by herself and even though I suggested a couple of times that we introduce ourselves and make friends... it almost didn't seem appropriate.

Y'know... inappropriate like getting stealthy cell phone shots of her all over the festival.

Holy woman in boots. Lovin' the sheep. And I'm lovin' her.

But besides stalking women of the cloth who love cloth, there were also hundreds and hundreds of amazing fiber booths! Yarns, spinning fibers, spinning wheels. I was in HEAVEN. (Much like the nun. What, too much?)

I even ran into the woman who sold me my spinning wheel! She was there representing the Green Mountain Spinnery of Vermont. It was great to see her and she told me that I could take a class or two from her when I'm in New England this summer! YES!! It's exactly what I've been looking for!

Oooh.. and there were these CRAZY, portable spinning contraptions...

It totally made me think of tinkers and traveling Gypsies. Awesome...

So... I bet you're wondering how much moolah I dropped, right? Not as much as you'd think! I exerted much self controll, thank you very much. I bought a pin that says "Knit Addict," a couple of note cards, a small bag of spinable sparkle, and ONLY ONE SKEIN of yarn! But, oh, was it worth it:

Oh man, it's a hand-spun yarn made of 50% recycled bamboo and 50% organic cotton... so great. Can't wait to knit it up!

Yay Sheep and Wooliness! Thanks, Elisabeth, for a great weekend!

1st Annual Airing of the Hotties Stash

Fiber enthusiasts have a tendency to collect- patterns, ideas, materials- and these collections have a tendency to accumulate into what is known as a Stash. For knitters, it's exorbitant numbers of skeins of yarn. You buy one extra skein of something soft, or the last skein of a really great color, or three too many skeins of sweater yarn because you're too lazy to do the right math to find out how much you actually need... anyway... after a few months you realize that you have SO many of these extra skeins that you've stuffed them into a bag or box and forgotten about them. Therefore, knitters invented the traditional "Airing of the Stash." Once a year (or whenever you get to it) you pull down the box of unused yarn, pull out each and every sumptuous color and fiber, look at each one lovingly in turn, and then put them back in their box and forget about them again immediately. Ha! No. Sometimes you find the perfect yarn for the project on your brain, or remember about some really great fiber that inspires some great new design. Airing the stash is wonderful for reinvigorating inspiration (you know you already love the yarn 'cause you've already paid for it) and it's a great way to remind yourself that you really don't need to buy anything new because you already have a shit-ton of material!

I have quite a large yarn stash myself, but today I'm going to air another kind of stash. A stash of Hotties.

After my computer told me that my "startup disk was almost full" I thought I might as well delete some of the (ridiculously huge number of) images that I keep on my computer for reference. As I was perusing my collection to see what to get rid of, I stumbled upon a folder marked "hotties." Hence?

The First Annual Airing of the Hotties Stash!

Here are this years' Hotties... vaguely assembled in order of least nerdy to most nerdy. (What? That was what made the most sense.) I've also added links so you can check out my Hottie collection for yourself! Enjoy!

Alan Rickman, circa. 1976. Yum...

Gary Oldman, in real life. Adorable much?

Collette, the amazingly beautiful French author, performer and bisexual lover.

Rachel Maddow, journalist, nerd, hottie.

Amelia Earhart. Female pioneer in plane-flying and pants-wearing.

Rachel Maddow as Amelia Earheart. Uhm... need I say more?

Han Solo. Mrrreow.


Legs (aka Angelina Jolie) in Foxfire. Just stopping in to cause some trouble and break some hearts. She then went on to date Jenny Shimizu... hawt.

Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. His love defies the fact that he doesn't even have a soul. C'mon... that's so tragically romantic...


And, of course, Agents Mulder and Scully from the X-Files. And although they never actually hook up in the show... in my head they usually look like this:

Stay tuned for next year's Airing of the Hotties Stash!

Spring Sweater!

Now that it's warm out... I've finished my sweater!  

All right, to be fair, I finished it almost a month ago but there are a few things about it I've been hemming and hawing about so I waited to post about it.  

I started with a pattern from the Fall 2008 Interweave Knits called the "Little Blue Sweater" which called for a ridiculously expensive yarn.  So, after perusing the vast selection of yarns at Webs I settled on a similar yarn:  Valley Yarns Berkshire, in a similar color to the original pattern because, hey, I love that color.  Unfortunately, the Valley Yarn had a lightly smaller gauge than the one called for, so I decided to make the sweater an increment larger than my measurements (it would only change to size of the sweater by an inch or two).  I also decided that although the original pattern made the sweater with short sleeves, the odds my ever wearing a short-sleeved sweater were pretty nil.  So I improvised some long ribbed sleeves.

The sweater has these great cable and lace rows running vertically up the front and back.  I got to do a double yarn over for the first time, which was exciting, (y'know, to me anyway,)  and I finished it pretty quickly.  I wet blocked it, sewed it together and knit the collar. 

Trying on a completed sweater for the first time is always a little frightening.  You've been knitting and knitting for so long and you never know how it's actually going to fit.  No matter how much you measure or how many times you hold it up to yourself, the finished product is always different and always unpredictable.  There's this moment as you're pulling it over your head where you're holding your breath and thinking, "this is when I find out whether I'll ever actually wear this sweater."  This is only the second sweater I've ever completed.  I knit the first one in college out of a yarn that turned out to be excruciatingly itchy.  Although the pattern was simple and the sweater looked ok, the turtle-neck was impossible to stand with the itchiness of the yarn.  So I put the sweater in my closet and promptly lost it.  I have no idea where it is today.  Needless to say, I was a little nervous when I tried on this, my second sweater attempt.

It's not perfect.  The ribbed sleeves are a little bulky and, for some reason (I'm ready to blame the wet-blocking) it's way too big in the under-arm region.  The yarn is really thick and, because it's just slightly too big for me (thanks, of course, to my making it a size bigger.  dumb dumb dumb...) it's not the most flattering of sweaters.  There's no way it's going to fit under a jacket and the large double-yarn-over lace holes make it a little breezy...  I haven't worn it yet.  Le sigh.  But I'm hoping that it'll be a good summer night-time pull over type sweater.

  

Over all, it was fun to knit and, hopefully, I'll get some good wear out of it over the next few years.  And even though it wasn't a perfect outcome... I'm already thinking about my next sweater.  I'm thinking....  gray lace cardigan?  Yum...

Wool Equal Bronze/ Time Does Not Equal Money

The past few month, during which I have been admittedly blog-negligent, I have actually been quite busy! It was just the kind of busy that takes a few months to get results... y'know... applications kind of busy. Show submission, summer scholarships... I feel like all I did in February was apply for shit. (After which was followed by a period of unprecedented productivity.) But it's all starting to pay off! I'll be posting exciting news as it is confirmed.

First! I've been offered a Teaching Assistantship at Haystack School of Craft in Deer Isle, Maine! If you haven't heard of Haystack, it is a fairly prestigious program for students of all ages. Last summer I didn't even get in, so I'm pretty stoked about this year.

("Studios remain open 24 hours a day, seven days a week while workshops are in session." Basically, all I want in life.)

The class I'm going to TA is called Knitting: Wool Equals Bronze/ Time Does Not Equal Money, with artist Janet Morton:

"This workshop will explore hand knitting as a valid and vital sculptural/installation medium and as an alternate means of measuring time. Through a series of slide talks, discussions, and exercises, participants will be encouraged to playfully and critically examine their relationships to the natural world, everyday objects, and equations that link time to “value”. Experimentation with materials, scale, technique, and ideas will be encouraged. Participants will develop personal projects, and will be invited to work collectively on an onsite project."

O. M. G. !!!!!!

Sorry for my temporary lapse into 14-year-old-ism but, c'mon! Could this class possibly sound like something I'd be MORE into?!? The TA application asked for a MFA level education in the subject you were hoping to work with and since there really are no MFA degrees in knitting I managed to convince the scolarship committee that my two-straight years of doing basically nothing BUT knitting (and watching copius amounts of tv-on-dvd) was just as good as a degree. It's SOO vidicating: I'd been spending quite a bit of time lately bemoaning my "waste" of knitting time spent over the last few years... mainly because I wasn't making Art (capital letter.) Now I feel like it was worth it... and here's my chance to transition all of my new knitting skills back into a conceptual avenue. YES!

I refrained from looking up Janet Morton's work until I got into the program (mostly in an attempt to not get my hopes up, I think.) It's AMAZING. Here are some of my favorites:

Sweaterbike, 1994. hand knit bicycle covering
When you're cold... put a sweater on your bike? Now I really want to make one for my bike... but I'd have to make it removable for easy laundering.. this city is so dirty...

Canadian Monument #, 1994. hand screened red flannel, dinner plates. 20 x 12 ft.
Lucy Larcom reincarnated! Maybe a lumber-jack love interest? Anyway, totally awesome.

Newsflash Blanket, 1995. hand knit blanket. 23 x 9 ft.


Newsflash; Madame Defarge Eat your Heart Out, detail. 1995. stacks of the three Toronto daily newspapers, 12 framed images of knitter, 1000-plus balls of wool, a false floor, chair, vinyl text, and a television playing.
I think the title for this is HILARIOUS because my mother mentions this Dickens character in response to all of my text-based fibers work. Seriously, she's mentioned it at least 3 times. Here, at least some of the irony is the fact that knitting anything that complicated can HARDLY be called a "flash." To me, it also references traditional women's work and the overwhelming contemporary news consumption.

Capitol, 2004. hand knit model of the Capitol Building. 30 x 20 in.
Swoooooon. This way beats the knit turtles.


Felled, 1997. 300 leaves sewn from used work socks form poetry translation.

Felled, detail. 1997.
"I interpret this making of beautiful delicate items, from work-worn, day-to-day socks as a mark of respect for the labour they participated in." (From the Lovely Textiles blog, linked to below.) I also wonder if the title isn't a reference to the sacrifices one makes for "work;" injuries and sheer time spent toiling.

Changing Channels, 2000. 36 gutted televison sets, plants.

What a fantastic container garden! There are a number of my favorite artists who blend fiber art with gardening. I know that Ghada Amer has spoken briefly about the connection between gardening, domesticity and women's work, but I feel like there might be something more there. It's a topic I might explore more in the near future.

And those were just the highlights! For a much better interpretation/discussion of Janet Morton's work, check out this blog I found while google-ing "Janet Morton". Also check out the rest of Janet's online portfolio. Amazing!

I can't wait to have the opportunity to work with such an amazing artist and to experience the creative atmosphere I've heard such wonderful things about at Haystack. The end of August it gonna rule!

Mel! the Amazing Stuffed Dog and Drummer

I got an email a while back from my brother and sister-in-law with an entreaty to make my nephew, Angelo (1.75 yrs), a stuffed dog of his favorite tv character. This dog, Mel, is a drummer on the Noggin tv show Jack's Big Music Show. (Nope- I hadn't heard of it either.)



Cute, huh? Apparently, not only has the show been off the air for a few years, but Noggin (not the highest budget station) never even made any show-themed products for resale. My sis sent me some pics and a video or two and wondered if it was even possible...

Uhm... sure? I mean... it can't be that hard, right? (Bear in mind, I've never made a stuffed animal.) So I get on the internet, make some sketches and order some fabric samples, and start patterning...

Moog! Cute nose!

A paw in action...

A pile of appendages... (hehe... say that 10 times fast...)

O.M.G. This could be fun...

Ahahahhahhahaahaaa! Ok, that was probably the funniest part! Also because sewing his butt closed on the machine didn't even work and I had to sew it by hand. There's something about creating a stuffed animal that feel sort of... wrong? That's not the right word... but... uncanny. It has so much character so early on in the process. Anyway, here's the finished product!

How'd I do? Not bad, right?

I brought Mel down to Baltimore this past weekend to present to Angelo. It was such a hit! That kid is CRAZY for Mel! He's just starting to be able to understand abstract concepts and it's so funny to watch him: any time he started drumming on something, or there was music with a beat, he was like "drum! Mel! Mel Mel Mel Mel!" and then ran around the room looking for the stuffed animal. Mind, the dog is only a few inches shorter than he is. ADORABLE. I make gifts for each of the nephews (total count: 4) at each holiday, but because I don't get to hang out with them that much, I'm usually shooting in the dark as to what they will and won't like. So this was an especially great opportunity to try to cement myself in Angelo's memory. One can only hope? Maybe someone got some photos of him with the dog...

Ok, that's done. Next?

More Nephews- More Quilts!

As long as my siblings keep having kids, I suppose I'll keep making them quilts...

As if I didn't love having the excuse?!

Ergo- let's all welcome the newest Renick:

Louis Douglas Renick
born to Colin and Kim Renick
March 2, 2009
!!!

And ergo... quilt!

Heather Ross' Mendicino line! Amazing squids, mermaids, sea-horses and turtles in a lovely gender-neutral colorway! (Who says boys can't love mermaids? Poo to gender conformity!) I got the fabric at Spool, my wonderful, local fabric store. I had bought a bunch of these fabrics to make into bags and stuff... but when I started to think about a baby quilt they seemed to perfect to pass up!

I actually even got a chance to meet Heather Ross in person at Spool, which was pretty cool. Although it seemed a bit much to ask for an autograph... quilters are nerds, too?

Quilting is magic!

It's also a good excuse to do a lot of (dangerous) ironing.


Ahh.. the Kurz family traditional technique for backing quilts as passed down to me by Nellie Kurz. Thanks, Nell!

All done!

The back is all gold fishes... so that Louie can sleep wit' da fishes. (Not to play on an Italian stereotype or anything... )

The quilt will be presented to young Louie next weekend when my parents and I will visit him for the first time. Welcome to the family!

Tapestry Extravaganza!

Anyone who has been in close vicinity to me over the last few months had heard me stressing out about giving a tapestry demo at the Museum of Fine Art in Philly. I got the gig as kind of a fluke: An email that (I think) was meant for MICA staff/faculty said the Museum was looking for Artist Demonstrators for a one-day event sponsored by the Philly Jewish Cultural Alliance. I answered the email and ended up with a job demonstrating tapestry weaving.

So I got out all my old tapestry notes, built myself a frame, got it all warped up and then I remembered....

I freaking hate tapestry.

GAH! All of these memories of struggling through tapestry weaving at MICA flooded back to me: it takes forever, the frame looms are bulky and tough to weave on... Only by abandoning my first frame loom (because it was HUGE) and building smaller frames (weaving about 3" across instead of 8") was I able to work up enough enthusiasm to even work on my demonstration.

Then the nerves hit... I was sure that I wasn't what they had in mind. I was demonstrating TAPESTRY in front of the GIANT TAPESTRIES of Constantine the Great!! (No pressure...) And I was weaving a PACMAN sampler on a frame made of stretcher bars! Not exactly the definition of professionalism. I wanted to know EVERYTHING about tapestry... all the history, all the how-tos... just in case, even if my weaving was a little paltry, no one would be in doubt of my knowledge. (In case you're curious... everyone everywhere in every society did tapestry weaving. All of them. The history alone was a little daunting.)

And then there was my inner-political-guilt-o-meter that started obsessing with the political ramifications of working for a Jewish Cultural Alliance that looked (from the website) that it might be leaning toward the Zionism side of the spectrum. After just reading about anti-zionism organizing in my feminist discussion group I was plagued by a need to openly declare my anti-zionist sentiments, but couldn't figure out a way to do so without being blatantly rude to people who were paying me to demonstrate something totally unrelated to international politics.

Le Sigh. So I locked myself in my bedroom for the week preceeding the event, reading, writing, gathering history, weaving... mentally preparing mysef for the worst of the worst.

And then the day came.

Look! I got a sign! It has my name on it!!

(Computer with historical/technical slide show, sample weavings, extra shuttles/bobbins for weaving, handouts of techniques, Try-it-yourself tapestry loom, zines of history/how-to for sale, and an in-progress sample. With Pacman.)

So.. I may not have had to most professional set up out of all the demonstrators (the other artists all had displays and machines and stuff)... but I definitely had the most interactive table. Instead of spending my time building and warping a loom like I had planned, I ended up just setting out the biggest loom and letting the visitors try weaving a row (with help.) Because really? After all my worry and all of my preparation.... none of the people I talked to were over the age of 7. Seriously.

They were adorable. I had these teeny tiny little kids, with noses no higher than the table, their arms above their heads trying to get the shuttle through the shed! Soooo cute! And they were soo excited to weave! The weaving was uneven and ugly but those kids seemed so empowered by the act of weaving. It was a stark reminder of my first experiences with weaving: remember all those frustrations I spoke of earlier? With the slow speed of weaving and the annoying loom? Well, when I first started weaving, even on a floor loom, I hated it! But when I took my first weaving off the loom I was struck dumb by the fact that I had created fabric. Fabric was something that existed in the world before me in a way that I had always assumed was untouchable. I was astonished by my own ability to create something so real. I was humbled. I think it's one of the major reasons I fell so deeply in love with textiles. And these kids got that sense of power and joy just from weaving one row, incorrectly, on a shitty frame loom I made in my kitchen. It was awesome.


Here's the weaving that all of those kids worked on. (Allright, not technically tapestry, what with all those warp threads showing.) It was great to be able to take something with me from the event: tangible evidence of those kids work, through my preparation. Like the way rings in a tree trunk record seasons in a tree's life, each row of this tiny, sloppy fabric was woven by a different participant. It's almost a petition of the event... and through all of our combined efforts we made fabric. Sooooo cooooool. (I hung it on my wall!)


And! My amazing new friends Sasha (thanks for the photos!), Amber, Stephanie and Rebecca came to visit me. I was great to have support and friendly faces!

I also got this sweet pacman sampler out of the deal. Which, clearly, also went on my wall.

If you're curious about tapestry and are interested in purchasing the 24 page full-color zine that I produced for the event, lemme know and I'll throw them up on the Etsy Page! They're pretty awesome: they've got a history/context section, a few interesting internet links, and an entire how-to section that covers building a loom, warping and weaving techniques. Only $8! You know you want one!


Thanks to everyone who bolstered my self-esteem by telling me (often repeatedly) that everything would be ok! You were right... like usual... but thanks for listening to my irrationally panicked whining anyway... :0)