Today and Jane Thornley Vest Knit Along

I have so many things I'd love to write about, my trip to Boston, the intensive Saori workshop, but it always seems daunting to play catch-up.  So today I'm just going to write about....today.

Today Clover is still doing well, in month four since her diagnosis of bone cancer. The lump on her leg has grown, but her life quality is good. She's eating well and maintaining her normal weight, she loves her outdoor time defending her yard from squirrels and wandering felines, letting the birds know she's still in charge of this little bit of Mother Earth. At her last vet check-up, her heart and lungs were sounding good.  Still taking it a day at a time and today's a good day.

Today, when I finish this, I'll be headed over to my church (First Unitarian Universalist of Terre Haute) to hold open studio weaving for a dozen kids at a week-long art camp. We'll be working on Earthpeace Banner No. 4, my final commitment for the grant  project which bought me my adored Saori loom.

Today, I'm very excited to be working on a vest in free-range knitting, in a knit-along (KAL) guided by the brilliant Jane Thornley. I've had a difficult time finishing free-range knitting projects, but this one is going to be different, I just know it.  I am hoping that doing this project will break the resistance I've had for follow-through, and that I will be able to work on freestyle knitting without the handholding!  It's certainly fun, though, to be part of the group on Ravelry that is participating and see everyone else's color choices and stitch variations.

So here's a picture of my progress so far:

The yarns, clockwise, starting with the green: Araucania Itata, Interlacements Carolina (?), Robin Edmundson cotton/rayon boucle, Elsbeth Lavold Hempathy, Noro Blossom, Araucania Itata.

Great fun so far, and Jane promises that the fun is just beginning with the back panel done!
That's today!

Catching Up / The Gopalan Gallery Show

Back in October 2010, I had the thrill of being part of a gallery show (my first!)  It was held at the Gopalan Contemporary Gallery.  I had the fun of doing it with dear fiber friends, Cathie Laska and John Salamone. Our fiber exhibit was paired with the work of Stephanie Doty, whose mixed-media really complemented the fiber.
Of course, so giddy and self-absorbed, my pictures are all of my own work, so this is a very one-sided presentation of the show.  It was gratifying and amazing to see my shawls, hats and sculptural objects displayed.  It was also a real challenge to figure out just how to do that!

I am especially proud of the stands I made for the hats - I knitted covers for vinyl balls and attached empty yarn cones to them. The cones fit fairly snugly into heavy-duty, yarn-wrapped cardboard tubes (saved from rolls of bubble-wrap.) For stability we had cans of beans at the bottom of the cones, wrapped in socks so they, too, fit snugly.  I really do like the way the hats look displayed on the round balls, rather than mannequin head-type display.

 Forest Floor Shawl (2007)
Wool, mohair, silk, nylon commercial yarn, woven, crocheted, stitched

 Wrapping Hat - Small Homage to Chakaia Booker (2009)
Wool commercial yarns, plastic button, knitted, stitched

 Joy After Sorrow  (2008)
Wool commercial yarns, crocheted, stitched

 Mangos For Breakfast By the Startling Bougainvillea (2010)
Cotton, silk, wool commercial yarns, woven, crocheted, stitched

 Motley (2010)
Wool, nylon commercial yarns, woven, crocheted, stitched

 Ritual Objects Series (2008-2010)

The Mermaid Breaks the Net and Wears It In the Deeps (2010)
Cotton, silk, wool commercial yarns, woven, crocheted, stitched

 Sujata Gopalan, the gallery owner, was very supportive of my wish to include a few of my poems that went with some of the pieces.  And I had to write an artist statement, something I'd never done before. I had a very difficult time, until I decided to think of it as another poem....

Zann Carter

Artist Statement

 

at first it’s all about process:

the rhythms of

the spinning

the weaving

the knitting

the crocheting

the felting...

endorphin bliss of process

and then it’s about transformation

(the unspun wool becoming

the yarn becoming

the object)

all happening in my hands

                        in my hands!

Oh, the lovely tools,

the healing ritual of familiar movements,

the spell cast by repetition,

the falling completely under that spell.

enchantment moves me through loss and sorrow,

                  the wound of the world in me,

into the sacred joy-space of creation.

it happens often enough that

i do these things again and again:

spin weave knit crochet felt

then it becomes about story

story told by bits of texture and form and color        colliding,

a wild trajectory of stitches, the way fibers meet

each other just so,

intersect, join, move away again, leap and arc

and play around spaces...

sometimes the story is whole,

sometimes there are only fragments,

solitary images that find poems to hold them, too,

pieces of a scattered puzzle, hints, clues

to a mystery that will never be solved

but wants simply to be.

i make garments to wear in dreams and fairy tales,

artifacts from a world permeated with magic and myth, a bearable reality’s

Incantations.

My friend Brian Morton did a review of the show and I love the way he described my work as "...airy, chaotic and bizarre..."
Next post (I hope): details of the Ritual Objects Series.

Handwoven's Not Just For Socks Challenge--Winner!!

Oh my.
I don't know if I can express just how gloriously happy this has made me, but my capelet, which I called Motley, was chosen for first place in the "Most Innovative Use" category!

Since I was told that it was actually all right to publish photos of my entry before, I'm assuming that I still can, so here you go:

 Some details: Weaving done on 7" Hazel Rose tri & square looms, 2.5" tri & square looms, Noro Kureyon Sock yarn, Shibui & Claudia's Handpaint sock yarn.
I won a $200 spree at Halcyon Yarn and I'm thrilled about the prospect of my work being shown with the other winners in the May/June issue of Handwoven.  It will also be displayed in the Handwoven booth at Convergence 2010 in July.

Creating this was an amazing experience.  As I mentioned before, I learned a lot in the process - a lot about my process, about focusing and being able to realize a vision.  That's one of my main goals this year - to step out from being primarily a process artist and become a more productive artist.  To envision, create, complete...

Another goal is more integration of the fiber arts that I love - combinations & juxtapositions of weaving, knitting, crochet, felting, spinning...oh, and text! Storytelling & poetry....sometimes literally text in the work, sometimes a story or poem that emerges from it to stand alone.

April is National Poetry Month.  That means....NAPOWRIMO 2010!! Yup, I'm again going to take on the challenge of writing and posting a poem every single day in April.  It is still scary - even though I succeeded with it last year, I have no idea if I will be able to repeat that this year.  But I've got to give it a good try!

Other fun poetry things in the works for April, including a book coming out with two of my poems & a poem of Sophia's! Sweet. Very sweet to be published along with my granddaughter.

Have a lovely, poetic, art-filled day!
'Zann

Handwoven's Not Just For Socks Challenge

Since my word for the year is "Focus" I am very proud that I managed to do that and complete my entry for this contest.  I went right up to the midnight deadline wire on February 28, getting my pictures in about two hours before.

And right now, I'm not only proud of that, I'm excited to the max because my piece was chosen as a finalist!!

Although I didn't see any proviso in the contest rules about publishing photos or descriptions of the work prior to the final decisions, I'm not going to do so except in the most vague manner.

So here is a detail of the piece and I shall say little else but that it's wearable.


Being a finalist meant I had to send this recently birthed work off to the Interweave offices in Colorado.

That was hard to do.  I overnighted it because I didn't want it to spend a minute more in transit than it had to.
Whatever happens (and winners will be notified on March 22) working on and completing this piece, focusing, making it be THE thing I worked on for weeks was an amazing process for me. 
I'm so glad I did it.
Wish me luck!!

No.2 - Bitter and beautiful: all winter

Bitter and beautiful: all winter

those words haunted me.

Day after day
Crow perched on them

and turned her sad
wise eyes to mine.

One winter I plan to grow
small

so Crow will make me
her baby.

She will carry me from
bitter to beautiful

and back again
over and over

and I will sleep
and sleep

through it all.

----Zann Carter 04.02.09

------------------------------------
Notes
As usual, I am making my own set of rules. I will write a poem every day and I will post a poem that I have written every day. It just may not be the poem I wrote that day.

I actually started on March 31. Just wanted to see if I could indeed write a poem that was relatively acceptable, blog-worthy, in a brief period of time. My intention is to spend a half-hour or so on this each morning. I might let it steep a bit during the rest of the day, make some changes here and there. I might play around with ideas for the next day’s poem.

So yesterday, April 1, I posted the poem I wrote March 31. I also wrote another poem in the evening. I wrote another poem yesterday morning. And last night. I may be so inspired and filled with poetry focus that I write all 30 poems for the month very quickly...so I am not going to be so strict with myself as to just when I write the poem that I post each day on the blog.

The poems will, however, all be new (though I may use old notes as starters), written quickly, without a lot of agonizing editing.

I also want to use this challenge to write shorter poems than I usually write, to experiment, allow myself a to take a different poetic path than my usual path, to play with chance and found poems. Fun - this girl just wants to have wordy fun and is having it (despite the somewhat bleak nature of the first two poems I've posted.)


As For Fiber-related Work....
I'm deeply engaged with completing my pieces for the International Freeform Fiberarts Guild 2009 Challenge/Exhibit. We're not supposed to write about our submissions in detail, so I can say no more than that right now.

You can see the challenges for the past three years here. I was able to participate in 2007, but missed last year and getting in the book that was done. I believe there will be a book created again this year. All profits from the sale of the book benefit Women for Women International.

I'm tremendously excited about working on this as I almost thought I was going to have to pass on the challenge again this year. Creative energy seems to be pretty thick and intense for me right now. I'm also excited because the piece that was created from our 2007 scrumbles has been displayed numerous times since and this month is going to be displayed and (hopefully) sold at Lion Brand Yarn Studio in NYC, the money again going to Women for Women.

That's it - the eghan or elementsghan. Here you can see the individual freeform artists' scrumbles for earth, water, air and fire. Imagine the work to assemble them into this splendid piece! We have the awesome Myra Wood to thank for that. I remember Myra being so patient and responsive to my questions back then. I love Myra's book on crocheting freeform lace:


and am eagerly awaiting her upcoming book on freeform knitted lace.

Namaste,
'Zann

Clean Socks & Freeform Bracelet

A very quick post - Sophia will be arriving any minute and I think that will limit my computer time drastically.

This was a lovely sight to me: a whole bag full of freshly washed handknit socks:
I want to thank Martha of RiverWools for assuring me that my socks indeed can be washed in the washer. For the longest time I was hand washing them and besides the time spent, they just didn't get as clean as I'd like. So. I pop them in a laundry bag (I like this one by Woolite) and put them in a cold/cold wash et voila! The spinning helps enormously as well, as it gets lots of the water out and they air-dry pretty quickly.

Here is my worktable in its current state:
I am working on freeform crochet here. And here is a freeform bracelet:

This is in ArtYarns in a Handpaint Stripe colorway (#136.) I have to say I loathed this colorway in the skein, but liked the way it worked up in freeform. And the yarn itself is very nice to work with - it's soft and kind of springy, and makes a rather sturdy crochet.

The interesting thing about this bracelet is that I created it essentially all in one piece. It just sort of flowed forth, beginning with a 36" chain. I crocheted back a ways with slip stitch and then I began to create the circles that form the design, then made the band by again creating a few inches of slip stitch cord and crocheting back and forth on both sides of it, formed the loop for the clasp, and finished by wrapping the remainder of the chain around the band. I secured it on the back side.

Sophia has arrived, so I'm done here!
Namaste,
Zann

Short Row Experiments

I was looking through one of a myriad of 'bits 'n'pieces' boxes I have and found these. Sometimes I'm just amazed when I find something interesting I've written or created and never really done anything with - I often think, I did that? Why didn't I continue the exploration? Then again, engaging in the process without concern about outcome (product) is both a learning experience and a Zen experience of being-in-the-now.

I was using Silk Garden and creating a variety of short-row triangles. I varied the number of stitches in my short rows - where the tri is biggest and has that neat curving edge I believe I wrapped-and-turned after just one stitch.

In the detail above, I don't remember how many stitches in the short rows, but I was also doing a 3/3 rib.

Actually, I just realized that these experiments (as well as the Blossom Shawl in Knitty) inspired the Short Row Wedge Wraps I did in Kureyon. I very lightly felted these. Here's one:
ah...process AND product.
Balance is good.

Namaste,
Zann

Two Tri-Loom Shawls

(Note: I added my mom's obituary to the "My Mom" post below. It took me awhile to write it...)

I finally finished two shawls I've been working on for ages. Both were made on small continuous weave looms.

The first is in Noro Silk Garden . I used 3 different Hazel Rose looms: 12" square and tri, and 7" tri. (Remember HR tri-looms are sized according to the sides rather than hypotenuse, so they can be matched up with the other shapes.)

The final shawl is very different than the one I started out to make, which was going to be a large triangle composed of squares and triangles. Instead, because of issues with the neck and drape, I wound up working in an improvisational way and ended up with this shape:


which sits very nicely on the shoulders and has an almost jacket-like appearance.When I first began putting the pieces together, my intention was to set the squares on point, with three forming the base of the triangle and then filling in with a row of triangles across the top. Somehow I decided that I liked the look of the central part you see below (2 tri's at the bottom, two squares at the top),
but discovered that the squares did not sit right at the neck and puckered and looked awful. This resulted in my making 7" tri's and gathering the squares just a bit to fit along the edges of those tri's, and then doing an interesting join between 2 12" triangles and one of the 7" triangles:


I edged each piece with a round of single crochet and joined with mattress stitch through the back loop of each sc. The whole shawl was edged with a round of single crochet and a round of slip stitch. I did not attempt to match edging colors, just used the Silk Garden color flow as it came.

-----------------------
And here is the Forest Floor Shawl, which was started in the fall of 2006, finally finished. It languished in all-but-a-few-loose-ends state for months. I don't think I'll ever understand why so many of my UFOs wind up being virtually finished but for a wee bit of work left.
Quoting from my earlier entry while this was in progresss:

"It's made of small woven triangles in Noro Blossom, joined in a freeform fashion, with areas of
freeform crochet in the same Blossom. I'm also using some Noro Silk Mountain, for the edging and here and there in the body.

My guiding vision is of a shawl sort of magically whirled together out of all the leaves and twigs and seed pods and bits of bark on a forest floor."

I talked my yarn shop friend Jennifer into modeling for me. As you can see, the shawl either requires or inspires a bit of dramatic flair on the part of the wearer.

I swear....I shall wear this in public as soon as the weather becomes shawlish rather than longjohnish. (and a gentle pooh-pooh to the lady who said, 'but...but, there are HOLES in it!')

2007 International Freeform Exhibit

Fire

It's up!
The online show for the 2007 International Freeform Exhibit is here.

I am filled with joy at being part of this.
My contributions can be seen here and here. If you love freeform, you will be enchanted by all the interpretations of the challenge subjects, The Elements. And the Tree of Life ornaments...oh my.
It is interesting to me to see the differences, and to see the unity as well.

I want to give public praise to Myra Wood, who took on the task of co-ordinating this challenge. She patiently answered questions, extended deadlines, and put together the online show. She is now receiving the actual pieces and is creating the in-person exhibit!

All the pieces will be put together in four wall hangings and the ornaments hung on a tree. They will be exhibited at the July national conference of the Crochet Guild of America, and the regional conference in Oakland in the fall. These conferences include knitting as well....

Scrumble for Women's Artistic Soul exchange-March

Freeform Octopus Scarves

I was awfully ill over the holidays - a relatively minor cold, but even the minor ones necessitate full on asthma management strategies, so the minor doesn't become major. I did little but lie about, read, eat soup and drink water...and yet I seem to have been continually crocheting for I came up with these rather fun and interesting scarves.

I call them the Octopus Scarves because they end in 8 dangling tentacles....each can be worn three ways.



The yarns I used for this first one are Noro Kujaku #22, and a variegated Jojoland sock yarn in purples and blues, used double. I made crocheted cords from the Kujaku and then joined them with freeform crochet. I don't use a lot of different stitches in my freeform, primarily chain, sc, slip stitch and hdc. The freeforming comes into play mostly in shifts of direction and where I choose to place the hook.

In the next scarf, I used Noro Kureyon for my cords and filled in between them with another sock yarn Trekking XXL, again used double.

Finally, I had leftovers, so I made a Quartopus Scarf:
These scarves, along with the Forest Floor Shawl (which is coming close to completion) have moved me closer to realizing some of my aesthetic vision. This is a point where I have to push myself to keep going and exploring...in the past, at such points, I often backed off. Why? Who knows...fear of something, I suppose.
Well, la-di-da, la-di-da...enough of that arty-speak.
Namaste,
Zann