Grimshaw Street Studio

It's all too exciting.....not sure where to start, but here goes...

As part of the collaboration between Greensborough Chamber of Commerce and Renew Australia, the Greensborough shopping centre has become a project under the Renew Australia auspices.

Basically, what Renew Australia does is take "otherwise empty shops, offices, commercial and public buildings and make them available to incubate short term use by artists, creative projects and community initiatives." They are now working with the Greensborough Chamber of Commerce to use the vacant shops in the Greensborough town centre....and I've got one!

This is it, at 77 Grimshaw St.:

 Basically, on a month by month basis, for no rent, this is going to be my studio/gallery/workshop, where I will be for 5 days a week. (Currently, I don't have the hours, I do....but it seems a commitment if I tell people!?....) I aim to work on developing new products, new sculptures and engaging the community. I have to pay all the outgoings and figure out how to fit out the shop at low cost......but I am SOOOO excited!

Here is my first little installation with a little bit of information just to show that someone is coming. This is an unfinished sculpture called 'White house'. Once Christmas is over and family and friends have been welcomed and fed and the season celebrated, I will be cleaning, painting, getting electricity on and all the other things I keep thinking of....I have to rewrite my list because it's outgrown the small page!...for the opening on Tuesday the 7th January.


Whilst the shop is a little 'interesting' at the moment, it has great potential. In its previous life, it was a tattoo parlour, I'm not short of power points or lights! Under the blue, unlaid lino is a concrete floor, which should come up a treat. The walls will be filled and painted. Tables, chairs, artwork will adorn it and hopefully make it feel welcoming and interesting.


It has a lovely view, with some potential for a little yarn bombing and given that there is Greensborough Shopping Centre right behing the church over the road, quite a pleasant aspect.

So, I hope people come and visit me while I'm there.


Oh, and by the way, I know that there is at least one more space available, and they're hoping that the currently filled spaces will encourage other owners to join in, so if you're interested just go to the Renew Australia website and register your interest.

Celebrate with a mystery box!

Jan and Marie from the Handweavers and Spinners Guild of Victoria have come up with a lovely way to celebrate the coming 60th Anniversary of the guild. They distributed mystery boxes, filled with mysterious stuff which we will make into something mysterious for an exhibition in April and May next year.

Here are my boxes:

Yes, I know, there are two.... I didn't realise that I would get a choice, so while I was trying to make up my mind, the keepers of the boxes (Joy and Doris) decided I could have one of each! How could I refuse? I can't pick spinning over weaving, or weaving over spinning...just not right!

Here is what is inside:

 I think you can see the strange threads, bright blue beads, feathers, a playing card!, bits of wire, all sorts of yarns and fibre, oh, and shells....

These are actually the most interesting and the colours match yarns and fibres, and me, and will form the basis of whatever it is I'm going to make. It will be a sculpture, and, as far as I can, I will use all the materials and it will be done by the 29th March, 2014.....just not sure about those blue beads yet!

Stay tuned for progress reports!

Oh, and sorry for not blogging for awhile, bit crazy round here, going to get crazier....

Who is Cornelia Mee?

Dear Cornelia,

I know it is a bit weird writing to you, after all your book was published in MDCCCXLVI (1846 by my reckoning) but I just had to let you know how much I'm enjoying 'Exercises in Knitting'. I downloaded it onto my kindle from Project Gutenburg and when I'm feeling like a bit on inspiration, I just take a little look.

I am intrigued by who you are....you're not on Wikipedia!, but you are on Ravelry. Despite some intriguing references, I can't find out any more. There are other books, it says so on the front plate. Titles like 'A Manual of Knitting' and 'Crochet Explained' are just a couple of the intriguing titles. Have they been completely lost? Who knows?

Actually, found a wonderful resource from the University of Southhampton The Richard Rutt Collection at Winchester School of Art. Lots more to look at.

I digress. What caught my eye this time is your description of Twisted knitting:

Cast on 12 stitches, knit and seam (purl) alternate rows for 8 rows; the 3 first and last stitches of each row are always knit.
Ninth row - Knit 3 stitches, take a third pin (needle) and knit 3 more, knit the remainder of the stitches with the first pin.
Tenth row - Knit 3 stitches, seam the 3 stitches on the third pin, seam the other 23, knit the 3 edge stitches. This completes 1 twist, and is repeated after every 8 rows.

Now it seems to be cable but with a little twist. Will it make any difference? Just had to know, so I made a little sample.

A regular cable is on the left and your 'twisted' knit is on the right. It does lie flatter and does suggest further variations.

Thankyou so much for the inspiration.

Cheers, Teresa

An ode to Petlyn wool combs

Dear Julie and Joe,

Just thought I'd drop you a line to let you know how much fun I'm having with your English wool combs that I bought from you at the Australian Sheep and Wool Show in Bendigo this year. I also purchased some of Coral Stewarts' dyed fleece. More of a sentimental purchase, as I don't need any more fleece, but I do love her work and have a jacket and a jumper made from her dyed yarn, which I love.

Now I know that this was not the perfect start, whilst the fleece is dyed it was still very greasy, but I thought that knowing this was not the best start would allow me to experiment to find the best way to process it. Fleece is always tricky as you tend to get a muddying effect as there are no distinct blocks of colour. Well, this fleece, anyway.

I found the best way was to load a rough colour block at a time, then take it off with the free comb, load more, take off more, and keep going till I had this:

You can sort of see the layers that were created and when I 'dizzed' it off I got

It spun up beautifully, as you would expect using wool combs, I navaho plied the resulting single to try and keep some colours. It did turn out muddy in places and I did really lose the blue, but I love the yarn so much I didn't take a photo before I knit it up into a shrug to sell in my Etsy shop.

I really love the combs and have started work on my next project, and, as convener of Experimental Spinners at the guild, we're going to have a session playing with wool combs. A couple of us have wool combs and so does the guild. We're going to try colour blending and see what happens.

Thanks again for your marvellous products and your generosity in sharing your knowledge.

Cheers, Teresa

PS Hints on blending colours on wool combs would be appreciated!

Letter to the unknown customer

To whom it may concern,

Just thought I'd drop you a line to let you know that I've finally listed all my current fingerless mittens on Etsy. I know this is a little old fashioned writing a letter, but it feels better to be actually writing to someone, albeit unknown, than just speaking into the ether and wondering who is listening.

So let me tell you about my mittens. There are three different types that I've listed:

These are the last of the handspun yarn crocheted into a simple shape. I need to make more of these, but there's alot of spinning to do. I do have some gorgeous coloured tops in my stash waiting for me.

Then there's my new range:

I've made them with the boys in mind, but they do look good on women too! Currently, they come in black, grey or natural colours. I like addiing something different on the band and down the back of the hand.

Then there's my standby fingerless mittens, the ones with the buttons. They started this whole fingerless mitten making run.

There's the black and cream ones I always have, though I do need a couple of grey gloves, I am from Melbourne!

Then there are the couple of colours I currently have.












And, finally,

the chunky ones! Two are handspun and the other is from a stash dive with amazing buttons.

I have made an aweful lot of these fingerless mittens with buttons, over 150 if my records are to be believed, and the spreadsheet never lies, though I can hardly believe it! What makes it even more unbelievable is that each one is different. Sometimes it's just the yarn and I knit the square in stocking stitch with the thumb and the borders in moss stitch. That's my standard pattern, but alot are diving into the stitch books and playing with different stitches.

Anyway, I hope you like them and if you want to become a known customer head over to the fingerless mitten section of my Etsy shop.

Hope to hear from you,

Cheers, Teresa


I

Samoyed and new toys!

Eventually you have to get on with things. I've finally managed to catch up with the lovely Samoyed owner W and discussed progress on the spinning and weaving of a blanket from her lovely Samoyed fur. Many things had to align for us to finally have an excited and exciting discussion. We're both passionate about this project, I for the challenge it will be and for W, the promise of a wonderful reminder of a friend.

Here is the bags of fur that I now have to spin!

It also means that I do feel the pressure and was highly delighted when I showed her the small spun samples and the little bit of weaving that I had done. The weaving was done on a weave-it loom, which is only a square with nails and gives a fairly rough approximation of the final product. Fortunately, her immediate response was positive!

In testing out the spinning I used my small wool combs and loved the result so much that I determined to buy the much bigger English combs when I went to the Australian Sheep and Wool show in Bendigo in July. I've been playing with these monsters ever since, and just love the speed of preparation and the resulting ease of spinning. It is these that I will use to prepare the Samoyed for spinning.

Now I'm off to spin up some the wonderful wool top from Andyle to make into lovely natural coloured neckwarmers. I've just realised that without really thinking, I've been doing the right thing. In the middle of winter, when I can't really get any dyeing done as there's nowhere to dry and the boys don't really appreciate having their bathroom taken over by slow drying skeins, I spin natural wool tops that I get at the sheep show. It makes so much sense. Now, I have to make a special big effort over the summer to do alot of dyeing!

Last day of my Winter Residency

And the sun comes out! It's all finished, we've cleaned up and prettied ourselves up and ready to share our work during the Open Studio happening this weekend.

It's been an interesting month and I feel quite pleased that I nearly managed to do all the work I set out to do. I didn't quite do enough drawing, but I did complete two BIG works, now called Cavern and Tower. Crocheting video tape is not easy and I was worried about my hands getting tired or sore, but all is well.

The only two things I would make sure that I do if/when I do another residency is:

1. as much as possible, check out the surrounding area. I wanted to interact with my little bit of Abbotsford, but really needed to do a few good walks to see if I could find good places to sketch, any businesses where I might find materials and anything else of interest.

2. take the weather into account. I know it's Winter, but didn't really plan for the reality that I wasn't going to sit in the sunshine and sketch.

Minor issues really, so it's been FUN!

Hope to see you at the Open Studio.