Creativity, Spaces, Moving On..!

The house is very quiet -- no photographs to post, though that won't be true for much longer. We are going to move the fiber studio out of its 'birthplace,' so to speak, into new quarters about five miles away in another community to the northeast of Grosse Pointe, Michigan (St. Clair Shores). And I'm feeling oddly meditative, as if the occasion is somehow about more than just packing and unpacking a bunch of yarn, needles, hooks, buttons.

What is it about particular spaces that makes us want to create new things? Why are some spaces more conducive to creativity than others? And why do some of us (not everyone, I dare say -- which is no insult) care about such things to such an extreme degree? Why have I, for example, always fashioned new spaces as if my life literally depended on it, choosing paint colors, fabrics, furniture locations -- even when money was in short supply -- over many weeks' time, feeling my way along as the space came together, tinkering with it long after I'd settled in?

Private spaces, in my estimation, should be havens away from the rest of the world, retreats, quiet and harmonious.....which is why I moved from the beautiful townhouse I once owned not a mile from this house. There was a horrible woman next door who shrieked profanities at her son all day long, all night long, and it disrupted the sense of calm that I'd spent so much time cultivating in the house. I see, in retrospect, that I always create a soft, comparatively neutral background and pop colors off of it -- as with the present place, with its gray-green walls and earth tones, including spots of madder red. Men sometimes do this, too -- so its not only that I'm female -- I don't want to hear nonsense about how women are "natural" nesters, "natural" mothers....unless my first husband also was a "natural" mother. The second spouse loves small, cozy spaces that make him feel protected. At last check, he wasn't a "natural" mother either. In such spaces, people like us can write, knit, design, raise animals who genuinely display affection, reach out to whatever life-forces actually exist in the universe.....

But what about public spaces? As I think about the old and new studio spaces, it's clear that I wanted women's labor to really show. So I painted the walls a thick-cream color and let the colors SING for people when they walked in the door. There is a good, big seating area with cushy chairs and a loveseat and a coffee table and a big, black Ikea dining table with red chairs.......and there, as if by magic, people teach each other about what loops of wool will do when they're pulled through yet more wooly loops, when they are wrapped around crochet hooks, when they're made into a fabric and run through a washing machine or steamed or simply molded into beautiful shapes.

Best, I think, to let a warming, harmonizing container RECEDE so that the contents, the subject of the space -- whether it's hand-crafted wool or books or artworks -- can rise to meet whoever comes in. At Artisan Knitworks, the makers themselves rule the day -- the amazing women who put wool into dyepots, who pressed clay into buttons, who carved wood into shawl sticks -- and so the idea is to let them sing without any kind of background noise....as at home, where books and wool and the grand piano hold center stage, invisibly supported by watery gray-green.

I will take photographs of the new space and follow it along. Right now, it's a cacophony of primary colors -- a really unhealthy-feeling mixture of harsh purples, reds, blues, greens, yellows, with a dreadful burgundy tweed carpet. I'd like to rip the carpet out, but replacing it (I'd stain the cement and put gloss on it) has to wait until more money appears. So the idea will be to cream up the 16-foot, loft-like ceilings and walls so that they can welcome and celebrate the makers and encourage new artisans as they walk in the door, sit, talk.

More later. I need to do some academic work right now, go to the studio for a class, and sink back into the problem of making a new space later tonight. I'd love your thoughts as to why some spaces generate creativity and others do not. In the place as it is, I'd be astonished if anyone could think even one original thought.

svb

Dye Pots!

......and so, in spare moments, I decided finally to make good on the threat to dye some yarn. Sound of drums rolling.

My wonderful friend Ellen Minand (Ellen's Half Pint Farm in Norwich, Vermont) has been my coach -- so has Sybil Williams (an incredible knitter/weaver/natural dyer/chiropractor/cardiac nurse), also the source of my wonderful ginger cat, Sheba. It's a new variety of Rainbow Coalition.

A couple of days ago, I ventured into my third-floor stash (what a misleading word! It's a thousand square feet of YARN, for god's sake) and hauled out about a ton of fairly old but still sound Green Mountain Spinnery (Vermont) undyed, single-ply worsted weight wool in cream.......I won't tell you how many skeins I had, but the number rhymes with 'plenty.' That's not counting the natural gray wool (from the Orkney Islands) that I brought home from the studio with another dozen skeins of Michigan natural white yarn. From the basement came a number of huge enameled pots and my insanely huge plastic salad bowl (!). Into the latter went the first half-dozen skeins of natural wool with a dab of Soak (my favorite rinseless soap) to help the yarn give up its natural oils, dust, and general resistance to change (like some people I know?). An hour or two later, I was ready to go.

The big enameled pot eventually had about 3 gallons of boiling water in it and maybe 8 teaspoons of dissolved acid reactive dye -- a gorgeous raspberry. Into the pot went the skeins. I want them to be slightly variegated, so I didn't stir -- just pushed them down. They simmered for about 30 minutes, then another 10 for good measure. Then into a vinegar bath. Then into cooler and cooler (never cold) rinse waters. Gentle squeezing... Then back into the salad bowl for hanging on the second-story wooden deck railings. What a sight from the street this must have been, particularly as the colors multipled (raspberry, almost raspberry over the natural gray, tealy bluey, golden pear, etc.). Now there is a basket of wool at the studio with new labels that say "Sandra's Kettle-Dyed Yarn." The colors are soft -- I have deliberately cut back a tad on the dye -- not unlike the ones that a Maine woman makes with her son from local wool, dye, and vats of sea water.

What a wonderful thing to do. I made sage green with 7 parts golden pear, 1 scant part teal. When I have time to do it again, I'll add a bit of lilac to burgundy and see what kind of dark mauve results. Or maybe I'll add a tad of ochre to burgundy. Or maybe a dab of purple with teal....what would happen?

......all of which took me back (don't laugh) to finger painting. In grade school, I remember being completely mesmerized by the way the shiny primary colors from the finger paint pots merged on wet paper -- orange, green, purple, where once there were only red, blue, yellow. I tried to make a sunset once -- I remember all too well -- and the teacher actually slapped my fingers with a wad of paper because I was MIXING IT ALL UP. "If you want orange, use orange..." Really annoyed.

...but of course I'm a rule breaker, and nature mixes it all up every minute of the day....White light becomes a cascade of colors only partly captured in dyepots, the pigments of life imperfectly replicated by creatures who can't even see the entire spectrum of natural light. But we try, much as Chopin kept trying to write the perfect nocturne. He was right to think that, had he succeeded, music might have stopped, at least for awhile. So I will work toward Beet and Sky and Fern. To that damaged second-grade teacher, I say this: I am mixing it all up again, you poor fool, still being naughty, still making a mess. Taking liberties all the time with damn near everything. You should, too.

svb

An Amazing Poem by Ann Creer

Tapestry
by Ann Creer

In the needled clicking over mind
she knits with wool soft thoughts of yesterday
and weaves his wrinkled laughter
through her broken brow
slippered feet, rocker worn, retrace
remembered Sunday seams into the
sunstretched smooth of summers carpeted vows
she nods, replacing fraying fears
of loneliness with satin sounds of a
wedding gown and dream of his
Hand in quilted warmth upon her Heart
she purls the borders of their ribbed
separation, and gently kissing
casted lots upon the finished corners
Folds it over the Earth.

Women and Renewal

You know, women were the original recyclers -- for centuries past. I think of this today because, in between writing stints (book I'm trying like h___ to finish), I am taking the final steps toward remaking a half-dozen wonderful, old wool jackets. I bought them at a thrift shop for prices like 1.50, 2.00, 2.50. Wonderful wool. One of them is Ralph Lauren and I STILL bought it (I hate this preoccupation we have with Fancy Brands). I had a tailor take the sleeves out and serge the edges to prevent raveling, and to keep lining and fabric together. This kind of broke my heart, because I'm a pretty good wool tailor myself, lacking only the time, I'm afraid. But then, tailors have to earn a living too. So I gave her the work (I won't do it again -- she charged me a very steep price...I need to be less trusting about things like price and get it all battened down first). So now I will refashion the sleeves, using the old sleeve cap as a template. I think I'll make the sleeves for the first one in modified trellis (crochet) and make 'em long and wide enough so that I can draw the bottoms together into a big ruffle with a crocheted drawstring (edged of course with something nice). But I think now that I'll also add some free-form crochet motifs here and there on the trellis fabric, and perhaps over the old pockets. The buttons will be changed to mismatched vintage. The question is: What to call this line of jacket? Not Second Hand Rose -- too hackneyed. Take Two? All ideas are welcome. The next one will be knitted. It's a boxier jacket -- nubbier fabric. Looks like some kind of wonderful drop-stitch sleeve to me.

But as I think about all of this, I'm remembering my mother, and her mother. Mum was a great church bazaar (and Eastern Star bazaar) person -- made things out of nothing, which is what women have always done. Amazing enough that she could make dinner happen with nothing in the cupboard. She also could transform refuse into cute, sometimes beautiful objects. Sometimes we laugh at all of this. She made crocheted and skirted dolls for teapots and toilet paper rolls. She covered Quaker Oats boxes with all kinds of decorative things and used them for storage and sometimes for gift-giving. She made old curtains into clothing. She created such astonishingly beautiful Christmas stockings from scrap felt that people told her to start a small company -- which she did. She called it VanBee Originals. She actually SOLD quite a few stockings, and then kits made up of all of the materials needed to make stockings and picnic tray covers.............on and on. It was brilliant. It was what poor people have done for as long as there has been poverty. Women have yard sales. It's all recycling, creating wealth where other people see only trash.

If I live 100 years, I'll never be as resourceful as that woman was. Her name was Gladyce Bessie Beedle. She lived in St. Paul, Minnesota, ended up an executive secretary for the president of 3M and then Continental Telephone, and STILL had time for all of those charitable works and creative refashionings -- and she had only an 11th grade education. We should remember women like that as the embodiment of everything that's good in human society.
svb

MIDWEST FIBER AND FOLK ART VOYAGE, Part III

The final part -- and what fun this has been:

HERE ARE SOME PEOPLE -- by no means all, just a handful:

First: The smilingly gifted maker of some of the most beautiful Blueface Leicester yarn I've ever seen, from Bellingham, Washington-- Scarlet Tang. Brand is Huckleberry!

Second: The two owners of the Frontier Fiber Mill in Indiana -- makers of utterly ravishing alpaca yarn, and a new alpaca-merino blend that I trust will walk off of the shelves. I don't know of a finer small American mill than this one. Their yarn is drop-dead gorgeous., and they remember who people are from year to year! Even after three years.

Third: A lovely woman who beads shawl sticks. I bought every one of them. GREEDY.

Fourth: One of my all-time favorite people, Kim Leach, who is another frighteningly gifted hand-dyer. The brand is Happy Hands. She makes a sock yarn called Toe Jams (!) that actually DOES walk off of the shelves. But that's not all. Kim is just a wonderful human being -- about three feet tall in her stocking feet (!!!!) and sweet as sugar cane. Look her up.

Fifth: The owner of Ursula's Alcove, who makes really FINE vegetable-dyed knitting yarns. I bought more than I can sell (people don't really know what they have when they see yarns like this, and typically they're not brightly colored, so they sell very slowly -- but they are SO kind to the skin, and SO good for the planet). Her name isn't really Ursula. She does Renaissance fairs, and so...........Ursula.

That's it, folks, as Daffy Duck used to say. Or was it Bugs Bunny? Hugs all around. svb

MIDWEST FIBER AND FOLK ART VOYAGE, Part II

.......moving right along (this is thrilling! I feel as if I'm truly OUTWITTING all the smart people at Google, who think they've effectively limited the photos I can post.......!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You can tell I have a Ph.D., so damned clever am I.....):

First: Polly Ester, a PERSON created by the Windy City Knitting Guild some years ago. For the same number of years, I have been threatening to bring to life a sister, to be called Molly Ester, or some such rhyming thing, in Detroit. I learned, talking to some people from the Guild, that she is getting too big (i.e., her skirt is too long and heavy), so I have offered to move her to Detroit. Need to talk to more people about this. The question will be where to put her, and how to make sure people still add to her raiment. The idea, in a nutshell, has been to remind people that clothing used to be hand-made, and to create community. People add bits of knitting, crochet, weaving, etc., on the spot (years ago, I added a crocheted flower to her skirt on the spot and met two lovely women in the process).

Second: Members of the guild, who kindly asked me to share a bench at lunch IN ONE HUNDRED DEGREE HEAT.

Third: Two wonderful button necklaces made by the nifty woman on the right in the guild photograph -- photographed because I think that other people might like to try it.

Fourth: The owner of Ewetopia , a wondrous shop in a small Wisconsin town between LaCrosse and Madison -- and one of the most gifted young dyers I've encountered. I walked off with some of her lace-weight alpaca and LOTS of her amazing mohair. See below.

Fifth: The mohair! At least two of the colorways. And in the sun, to show the colors.

Move on to the next installment. svb

MIDWEST FIBER AND FOLK ART VOYAGE, Part I

Well, here goes, as promised. I have to do this in stages; Google's blogspot software doesn't like dozens and dozens of photographs. So let me first share these things. First: One alpaca giving another alpaca a nice peck on the cheek. I'm sure of it. Second: One of the many workshops with dozens of students. Knitters knitters knitters. Third: The interior of the rigorously rectangular building (see previous post). Fourth: A tractor in one of the parking lots. Now, I promise you that, in any of Detroit's well-heeled northern suburbs, you would NOT find a tractor. But there it was, in one of Chicago's northern suburbs. Finally: The aforementioned rigorously rectangular building in which the wonderful festival was held. Shoppers shoppers shoppers.

Now, go on to Part Two, where I have some things to say about people and their art.

svb