The Art of Gardening Sustainably

What have I been doing in all this heat? Nothing you might say, but you would be wrong....I have been weaving some pieces for the above exhibition. The exhibition is to support Sustainable Gardening Australia, and is being put on at my local gardening centre, which, instead of the usual coffee shop, has a gallery, run by Meredith Plain who is a ceramicist. One of her amazing birdbaths (with frogs) is in my garden and I would have one of her dragons, but that is a long story.

I've chosen the theme of recycling, so all the knitting needles are orphans from the opshop, which is where most of the buttons have come from, recycled plastics, and the neverending spool of nylon wire. Who knows what I'm going to do when that runs out.

I've given you a little sneak preview of the six works. I'll post the full lot when I have pictures of them hanging, but if you want to see them live....



The Art of Gardening Sustainably

An Exhibition to spread the word about sustainable gardening and raise funds for SGA (Sustainable Gardening Australia)

7th February to 8th March 2009

Exhibition opening: 6 to 8pm, Thursday 5th February
To be opened by Mary Trigger, Chief Executive Officer, SGA.

Bolin Bolin Gallery at Bulleen Art & Garden
6 Manningham Rd W., Bulleen. 98505155.
www.baag.com.au

SGA (Sustainable Gardening Australia) is a not-for-profit, non-government organisation whose mission is to promote the benefits of sustainable horticulture. (For more information about this ground breaking organisation and gardening sustainably go to http://www.sgaonline.org.au/).
Funds will be raised by donating Bulleen Art & Garden’s normal commission to SGA; small artist contribution donated to SGA (which would cover exhibition & opening costs which will be met by BAG); and sundry other donations.

The Gallery

The exhibition will be held in the Bolin Bolin Gallery at Bulleen Art & Garden, 6 Manningham Rd West, Bulleen. (For more information about Bulleen Art & Garden, go to http://www.baag.com.au/ or www.baag.com.au/gallery/)

Sponge cake hat

Some relief from the weather. It's a bit cooler and is only getting up to 37deg C today.........

I did realise, yesterday, that I hadn't shown you the sponge cake hat. Well....

Remember this.

I turned it into this.

Then I did this, as well.

I decided I wanted to knit a sponge cake hat.

I have a very old pattern, early 50's, late 40's, which I've used before which uses stocking st and reverse stocking stitch to create layers, and has a very flat top. So I thought I would use that to create this hat.

I love it. It's just what I wanted and is suitably fun and suitably practical. It's now for sale on Etsy, as is the very large skein of the slubby stuff.

Esme Johnson Prize

I've finally sent off my fingerless mittens to Yarn magazine. It's way to hot to be thinking about mittens. (For all you who don't know, we're on the.....I think it's the fourth day of 40deg C with minimal relief (down to 35deg C on Saturday) (38deg C is 100deg F)) I haven't posted on Etsy for a couple of days, so it's a great effort to get these off.

I was very happy with the final result. They are beautiful and just what I wanted for this project.

They definitely needed blocking. The pictures really show you what a difference blocking can make.

One of the things I also did, for my own curiousity, was to time how long it took me to knit the second mitten. Having the pattern established, I thought it might be interesting.

It took around 5hours and 40minutes. (I used my mobile phone stopwatch to time me, so it's a bit too accurate!). This means that to knit these would take around 10 to 11 hours. Not taking into account the time it takes to block, then sew on buttons, this is a long time. I have done a rough costing, but I'll leave it to your imagination. How much do you earn an hour, or would like to earn an hour?

I know I've said it before, but the moral: if someone gives you something handmade, treasure it, it's a priceless gift of love.

Australia Day Weekend

The Australia Day weekend is always a good excuse to catch up with friends and to think about this country of ours. It's always a bit difficult and again controversy has arisen at the suggestion that this is not the most appropriate date to celebrate Australia day.

January 26 commemorates the day the British flag was raised at Sydney Cove proclaiming a new settlement and the beginning of European civilization in Australia. It is easy to see that some of the original inhabitants may not see this as necessarily positive. I agree with Mick Dodson, Australian of the Year, that we need a conversation on this issue...we can do better.

I would like to propose another way of thinking about dates. Not new, but perhaps more in keeping with who we really are and would like to think of ourselves.

31st July - the date when Western Australian held a referendum and agreed to join the federation with the five other colonies, the last state to do so. Western Australians might not agree that this is a good date.

21st May - the date when the British House of Commons passed the Bill that sanctioned the union of Australia and its' independance. (I think this is the date, would need more checking) I like this date because of the supreme act of successful democracy that this displays. Six separate colonial governments and the British House of Commons both voted, on one hand to join together and become a nation and on the other, voted to allow this to occur.

Few other countries have achieved independance without bloodshed. It is something to be extremely proud of, that this could be done. With all the competing interests, democracy won.

1st January - the actual date of Federation. A good date, but already the New Year has taken that date, and pershaps could be viewed as a merely ceremonial date.

Anyway, discussion should be had and maybe we can do better......

Sunday was spent on an Australia Day weekend tradition - the Handweavers and Spinners Guild Spin-in at Yarra Bend in Melbourne, one of our lovely inner city parks. We are indeed a lucky city. This is only the second time I have attended, and, again, I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

How good is it to sit, with friends, under the trees, on a beautifully sunny day spinning.

If you look carefully, the empty chair is mine and my new wheel had its first outing. Perhaps not in the best condition yet, but supportive comments were passed and happily received. A gentle first outing.

Still did manage to get this spun.

Enough of politics, off to SnB.

Summer challenges

I've finally started both of the challenges for the summer.

The first and the hardest to start is the two balls of cotton for the Woolybutt challenge (http://www.woolybutt.com.au/) It took me ages to figure out what I wanted to do. As we're giving away the resulting articles, it did have to be something useful.

I've had i-cords running around my head....finally.....I'll knit a little top, starting from the top (underarm) with eyelets for an i-cord tie. I started from the top as it's a long time since I've knitted for small people and I don't know how far the yarn will go. I've also knit it flat, as this is a design in progress and I thought of buttons down the front. With a change of mind, I'm going to sew it up and embellish it with hearts!.....yes hearts....

I'll then finish off with i-cord straps that can be tied to fit the eventual owner and perhaps make room for growth.

The next competition is the Esme Johnson Prize, run by Yarn magazine. Lynne Johnson has donated the prize in honour of her mother who loved the knitting stitch, feather and fan. I've participated in a couple of Lynne's classes several years ago at the Wangaratta Stitched Up Festival and she is a wonderful teacher.

I've also had this beautiful very fine yarn sitting around since attending a Margaret Stove workshop. I thought I'd combine the two into my current obsession and make a pair of feather and fan fingerless mittens. I think I have enough small buttons and though it is extremely fine and I'm finding I can really only knit this during the day, I am enjoying this and am pleased with the result.

I just have to finish both in time!

1001 paintings

Some time ago I was given '1001 paintings you must see before you die'.

It has sat on my shelf and I view it with some puzzlement, as I always have difficulty with the concept of HAVE to, it always begs the question...well, what if I don't?

However, great paintings can make you see the world differently, how to express feelings, colour, form, all sorts of ideas, invoke memories and just please the eye. So I decided to systematically 'look' at the pictures, even though they're not the real thing. I have seen some in my travels and I'm sure I'll see some more of them in the future. Right now, the book will serve as the beginning of a different sort of journey.

The book is organised by the different centuries, which is good for comparison and seeing the change in art over time, but I think I might just open up randomly and look at just one. A sort of I Ching of painting. So here is the first:

'Entrance to the grand canal, Venice' by Bernardo Belloto. c1741

This shows in incredible detail the magnificance of Venice from the extraordinary grandeur and, if you look closely, also the intimate details of daily life. This is a important, busy, beautiful place.

This was an interesting first choice and it brings back memories of my first trip overseas (some 25 years ago) where I made my one and only visit to Venice.

I did love staying there and wandering the streets and canals, riding the water ferries and getting lost! The colours in the painting are muted and soft with touches of light. I have a different memory, however, looking back at my photos reveals that little has changed.


The colours are surprisingly similar, as is the city. Alot of what I loved about Venice was also the small and intimate, the houses, tiny waterways and walkways.

Lovely memories.

PS. I haven't put in a picture of my wheel yet, but 'Yes' I do have a little Poly wheel, made by Phillip Poore of New Zealand.

There is a wonderful website documenting New Zealand wheels, past and present. What a wonderful resource: www.nzspinningwheels.info

Back home again.

The boys are safely esconced with friends having a very Tom Sawyerish holiday, you know fishing, swimming, just at the bottom of the paddock. So it's very quiet at home, which is just as well as I'm recovering from having driven 11 hours in two days to both accomplish the quiet and get to deliver my Summer School class.

The class went very well and the adjustments I made worked out well and the aim of the class - using the multicoloured tops successfully - was achieved....hooray. As always lovely people and all of them willing to give everything a try.

These are the samples I showed them of the different results you get when you used different

preparation and spinning methods.

I started with this beautiful top.

The first three methods were then spinning without thinking.

1. Worsted spinning, short lengths.

2. Worsted spinning, full, long, length.

3. Just because, I carded the top to really mix it up.

Then I got sensible and actively tried to get a good result

1. I stripped the top of each colour. Well not quite, this is a difficult top and the stripes of colour are quite thin. I did my best.

2. I used the fold over finger method of spinning. This is a semi-woollen method of spinning which allows you to go through the top stripe by stripe.

3. I used the same technique as before, just had a longer bit of top. This made it more difficult to manage and, didn't seem to make much difference.

Finally, I spun a wonderful slubby yarn and a reasonably thick single.