(Please forgive the delay in this post, I’m a week behind for the first time since I started this blog in 2002. I’m back-dating it though I’m writing it a week later than the date, to keep my posts in chronological order.

Saturday night. Showtime. The Susan Hensel Gallery opened the Threads in Space show. Susan and I had been anticipating this day for nearly a year. It was very exciting.

It was essentially a show to exhibit fiberart that was not practical, not wearable, was art for art’s sake. There was knitted work, crochet, handspinning, weaving, paper, bookmaking, an assemblage with found objects including a lot of yarn glued on for texture, a piece that reminded me of my days in mail art with what looked like letters and envelopes but with the “writing” sewn on in a cryptic non-language.

There was a video about knitting as art. There was a tent made of ripped fabric pieces out in the garden. There was also a performance art piece that involved sewing.

It was/is a strong show. It made me think. Some pieces beckoned from across the room, some invited intimate examination from inches away. All inspired.

Somehow my piece got finished and hung with time to spare. We changed into art-show-opening clothes (it was extremely hot and sunny so we wore African clothing) and we waited for the crowd. And they came.

At some point during preparations, I told Sue that Brian and I had our instruments in the car and we would be delighted to play background music if she would like. She was delighted. So we played three different sets with talking time allowed between them… first indoors, then in the garden and on the sidewalk outside the gallery (before the performance art piece began) then again inside just before closing time.

I especially enjoyed meeting the other artists. One woman, Karen Searle, knits on large needles with wire, and makes sculptural pieces you can see through. She did a wonderful dress and then shoes that dangled below.

Another woman, Carla Mantel, did a piece including unfinished socks she’d started and stalled for some reason. It also included a sort of spiral that looked like a striped scarf, using remaining yarns from projects she had finished over the years. It hung from the ceiling and the spiral spun around and around. I really enjoyed talking with Carla, we have much in common. It’s too bad she’s in Minnesota and I’m here in Michigan or we’d be friends for sure.

Gail Wagner crochets highly colorful sculptures that hang from the wall in a picture frame, but do not behave themselves in the rectangular space, growing and drooping at times into the room closer to the viewer. I loved these pieces! They sort of act like deep sea creatures. Wonderful.

Rosie Casey did a woven piece where she dyed yarn in an ikat technique, where she had several different shapes of buffalo, with stars on their sides. Some of the buffalo had printed stars on top of the dyed-in stars, and in front of the full floor-to-ceiling weaving on the floor was a pile of what looked like buffalo horns perhaps. She was not at the show so I could not ask her about the piece, but clearly she put in a huge amount of time, thought and work into that piece.

Sue Hensel’s piece was a huge, lumpy-bumpy ball of yarn she spun herself, about waist high. On top of the ball was a book she made with a poem she wrote (about hair and how it does not behave at times) inside.

The piece outside in the garden was intriguing. It was tall enough for adults but reminded me of the forts we would make as children with blankets over a folding table. Much prettier, of course, but that was the idea. It must have been about the size of one of those tents people would change clothes in at the beach during the late 1800s-early 1900s. However, at times I’d see three sets of feet showing from folks inside. For some reason I never went inside. Hmmm, surely that means something deep but I don’t know what!

The performance piece was Laura Lewis’ brainchild. She went out into the garden where we all could see her, having changed from her party dress into a pair of jeans and standard shirt. The jeans had a hole in the knee and she started sewing the knee together but soon started sewing her pant legs together, and then kneeled and sewed the thigh of the jeans to the calf of the jeans on both sides, then worked up to sew her arms as well until she could not move much.

It took a good long time even with loose stitches, and for one my feet hurt just looking at her perched on the balls of her feet for so long. (Later she said that she was not in any discomfort through the process.) In the end she freed herself from the bonds of the sewing thread. It caused a lot of talk afterward… one woman felt compelled to help her sew parts on her back where she could not have reached herself. I felt sad that she was restraining herself, it sort of pushed my buttons from a previous part of my life when I really did tie myself down in many ways. It was quite thought-provoking, as performance art almost always is.

We had such a wonderful time! I know I’m leaving people out… the cool guy who assembled a piece starting with a wood headboard and a ceramic head he found… the woman who did some felt pieces based on a trip she took to Iceland… so much to say but it was all good, really good.

Thanks to Susan Hensel for encouraging me to push myself into true artist territory. You know, for years I was sure I was not an artist because I don’t draw. I sewed as my artful outlet for many, many years. Then I did polymer clay for 10 years and nothing else. I called myself “a one-song canary.” I had images of several pieces I made into a book, while I was focused on polymer.

Then I got bored of that and did mailart and soft-block printmaking (sometimes called eraser carving). I got in another book with a self portrait I did in printmaking. I will have to post a photo of that print here sometime… someone remind me in a week, and I’ll do that. (Added much later… here is the same self-portrait block, printed on a sheet of polymer clay rather than on paper.)

Then I got bored again and started working with wool, first feltmaking and then knitting. And I can’t imagine ever getting bored again!!! But Sue has been with me since my polymer clay days. She encouraged me to go to my first feltmaking workshop where I remembered my love of wool, and that lead me quickly to socknitting.

During every step of the way Sue has encouraged me. When I have doubts, I can call her and she understands. When I’m bogged down, she pulls me out. And when I’m too busy she understands and does not feel ignored. She’s really a perfect friend. Thanks a million, Sue!!!

Photos: 1)Exterior of Susan Hensel Gallery with me in African dress talking to Mike Elko and his wife whose business card I’ve lost in the shuffle. 2) Visitors viewing the show just inside the front door to the right. 3) Show inside door on left side. 4) Straight ahead as you opened the front door, with view into second room. Notice my self-portrait is in back on the left. 5) Carla Mantel showing a child visitor how she spins yarn with a drop spindle. She also described to the child how she made the knitting needles used in the scupture.

6) Another view of child in front of Carla’s sculpture which included unfinished socks. 7) Performance Artist Laura Lewis between Karen Searle’s wire knit dress and Susan Hensel’s ball of handspun yarn with book/poem on top. 8 ) Garden beside gallery, where tent and performance art took place. 9) Folks near tent in back of garden. 10) Performance, early in procedure, starting to sew legs of jeans together.

This starts part 2 of a travelogue, where Brian and I traveled from Michigan to Minnesota and back over 4 days, for the Threads in Space art show at the Susan Hensel Gallery… followed by a family 50th anniversary gathering.

Brian and I got to Sue Hensel’s gallery early Saturday afternoon, desperately in need of some food. We also needed to find (if at all possible) some bamboo or wooden knitting needles, at least 11 inches long, in size 1 US (2.25mm). One more reason to love big cities, my friends. It was a cinch.

Sue directed us to a block not terribly far from her (same street, even), where there was a lovely yarn shop (Depth of Field) and a good number of possible lunch spots. We proceeded immediately.

Depth of field was not disappointing, I wish I’d had more time to really enjoy it. I got bamboo needles that were exactly what I wanted. Then I took a quick circle through the shop (not wanting to delay Brian much). I was looking for anything I’d not seen before. I guess I live in such a great place for yarn that I didn’t find much in that vein, but I did find 2 balls of Berrocco Foliage to finish a project I’d started with merely a single ball (which turned out to be significantly not enough). Very good.

I started to pay and realized that above me was a sort of mezzanine floor with sale items. Brian suggested I go peek. I ended up with two skeins of Rio de la Plata yarn in pale pink with an overdye of hot fuschia in a few spots. It will make a nice sample for my new shawl pattern.

Two transactions later, we were on the look out for good food. Someone in the shop said the Thai place directly across the street was really good. We went into an african place but it seemed to have fried food which was not promising with my food allergies so we left. We contemplated a few of the middle eastern places but decided in the end to try the Thai. We were not disappointed. Oh, my! Very tasty.

I had my usual Pad Siew (spelled differently sometimes). It’s thick rice noodles with broccoli and a thick brown/soy sauce that is a bit sweet, then usually eggs and some sort of meat or tofu. It was very nice. Brian got a spicy duck dish which was also very tasty. And it was all presented so beautifully! Asian food is often a work of art when it arrives at the table, and this was more so than most.

I loved this neighborhood. It wasn’t just a business district, clearly people lived there. There was a good mixture of cultures and many women passing by were dressed in African clothing. Sue said that there are a lot of Somali people in that area. I love seeing women float down the street wrapped in beautiful fabrics, whether they be African or Indian or some other culture. When I was in Africa I noticed that nobody seemed afraid of color. School uniforms for either girls or boys might be purple, turquoise, mauve-pink, you name it. And the fabrics!

If I had not been on a deadline, I would have gone looking for African clothing to buy and wear. As a matter of fact, I was wearing my Senegalese dress at the time… perfect summer clothing. It doesn’t cling, allows the breezes to cool the body while creating shade. Perfect.

To be continued…

Photos: 1) My little blue New Beetle in front of “Depth of Field” yarn shop on Cedar Ave. 2&3) Women in African dress on the same block. 4) Our lunch, a work of art.

(Note: To read all 5 entries about my Self Portrait and the Threads in Space show, click here.) 

I did it. Not only did I actually finish the knitting, I embroidered for several hours (duplicate stitch, it looks just like knit stitches but I did it in very fine laceweight yarn on top of the base sockweight yarns to slightly change color in a few areas).

I blocked it in the hotel room on Friday night. Then when I got to Sue’s, we steamed the heck out of it with her Scuncii steamer and I went looking for the closest yarn shop that had size 1 knitting needles. I decided I really wanted to hang the piece with a straight knitting needle at top and another at bottom, sort of as if it were unfinished. Because it is about me, and I am certainly unfinished myself.

We found our way to Depth of Field yarn shop (more on the Minneapolis adventure later) and they had size 1 (2.25mm?) bamboo needles (about 11″ long), perfect! We proceeded back to Sue’s shop, where the piece was mostly dry and after inserting the two needles at top and bottom of the piece, we hung the thing.

It worked, my friends. It really worked. I’m sort of in shock after all that rollercoaster emotional stuff I felt while I was “attempting” a self portrait. Well, I am here to tell you it’s not an attempt. It looks like me.

In 10,374 stitches. Officially using 11 or so yarn colors, but then I blended different yarns together in different ways and so who knows how many “virtual” colors actually ended up in the piece? I’m not sure I want to know how many color changes I made in one 91-stitch row, either. It was a lot of work. But as often is the case, now that it’s over I can tell you the effort was worth it.

Whew. I need a vacation! Oh, yeah. I’m sort of on one. Or that is to say I’m out of state seeing people I really like.

Photos: 1) My self portrait in yarn… wool and alpaca and wool blend yarns, with bamboo needles. Yes, the ends are dangling. The back looks like a rug. I’m smooth on the outside and frayed inside at times, and so this felt like Self Portrait: good day (front) and bad day (back). 2) Me at left, and my beloved artist friend Sue Hensel. Who pushes me harder than anyone else I know but without trying. Some of my biggest projects have been in concert with her creative and networking energies. Sue, you are the best!

I have been beating around the bush about my big project until now. Actually, I’m doing two projects, both in anticipation of a trip to Minnesota. We leave Friday. I guess I might as well talk about it now.

I don’t know how many other artists are like me, but I tend to try to do things that are either a little or a great deal out of reach. I sometimes know they are absurd goals and I figure I’ll try anyway, and sometimes I don’t realize the project really is… until I’m far enough into it that it would be a shame to quit.

A First Too-Big Project
The first project I’ve been working on is not absurdly out of the question, but since I’m sort of a sequential-deadline girl, I didn’t start on it until it was a sprint to the finish. (For some reason I can do this repeatedly without regretting it enough to stop such nonsense.) My beloved, on the other hand, both has the ability to see the full scope of a project and a way of starting things when other things are not yet wrapped up. So of course he gets dizzy watching me.

And this time he actually knew more about the first project than I did, and he ended up doing a good deal of the work because it was just faster for him to do it than to explain it to me.

He has done a lot of genealogy work in his own family, especially with going to folks’ homes and photographing the family picture albums. So our family had a special picture album everyone wanted to see, and we live from Minnesota to Michigan to Georgia, Florida, Alabama. So how could we share? Take digital photos of all the pages (the photos are glued in) and make a “web” page on a CD that people can run on their own computers. Even if they are not connected to the Internet. Cool, huh?

So Brian already knew he had a computer program that takes a folder full of images and makes a website from it. Not a perfect program, but one which did enough of the programming work that we could do something with over 900 images and not go nuts. (He has Linux, not Windows or Mac, so the program is not commonly used.)

Of course we had to take the photos and then either crop or rotate or enhance many of them before they were ready to go. Then we needed to make captions for at least some of the photos we knew information about.

Brian and I both worked on taking photos, he did most of the taking and the editing of the photos. I did captions, he ran the program to make the web page. I made covers and label/stickers for the CDs, printed them, cut them out and assembled the covers. We shared duties of burning the CDs. It was a team effort, which worked pretty darned well in the end.

We tried to put the photos on a photo website, too. With over 900 photos, we really were stretching the possibilities. We had to give up that idea for the moment.

But Brian figured out how to make a CD an auto-starting one (doesn’t require an icon on most Windows computers), and I figured out how to make a picture for an icon so that if someone looks at this CD in “My Computer” they will see a tiny sweet face of my Grandma Ruthie in the 1920s. Trust me, she was a dynamo but she looked sweet while she packed that power. An amazing woman. And lucky me, I take after her personality more than anyone. Her sons also took after her in great part. We’re enthusiastic and loud and socal, always on the go. And at least speaking for myself, I can’t be anything else if I try.

A Second Too-Big Project
But what is my other project? Um… Susan Hensel, my artist friend who moved to Minneapolis, is having an art exhibit entitled “Threads in Space.” It opens Saturday. It’s all about using knitting and other needlework to make things not expected of the realm of fiberarts/needlework. I called her enough times about cool non-wearable knitted things, that she said, “OK, let’s do a show!” In the end, she did the show almost totally without me, but I will have one piece in it. And I sort of started the idea in the first place, or at least shared the idea early on.

My piece? Oh… now this is where you find out how disconnected from reality I can be. I’m knitting a self-portrait from a photograph. Well, Brian took the photo and I scanned it in, spent hours and days and weeks manipulating it and saving it in a zillion ways, and then chose one graph of many to knit from. Then I had to go find as many variations of cream/tan/taupe/brown as I could, which could be knitted together (mostly sockyarns, and a few lace yarns used in three or four strands held together). Changing yarns sometimes every stitch for a dozen or so stitches in a row.

It’s 91 stitches wide, and 114 rows high. That’s 10,374 stitches. I worked on the computer part of it in 2005. I bought the yarns in June. And I started knitting after the CD release party, not two weeks ago.

The bad news is that I think for me every big project has a day at least, where I hate it. I want to give up, throw it away, say I never wanted to really do that. This is why I did not say much about it here. I needed to save my energy to get through the blue days. And they did come.

Last week when I got sick, I would work and space/doze and make mistakes, then the slow work had to be taken out. It took way too long to make progress, for someone like me who really does feel colorwork is not generally as difficult as lace or knit/purl patterns. But I sort of forgot that this project was essentially intarsia. Again, no big deal except that means that half the stitches are purls. And I just am not as fast at purling (especially with 20 color changes in one row) as I am at knitting. So that slowed me down.

Well, yesterday I took it to Altu’s restaurant. And of course I’m working up close on beige stuff. It looked to me a bit like the shroud of Turin but not holy at all. But Altu exclaimed “I see it, that’s my Lynnie!”

I hadn’t looked at it from enough of a distance. It does in fact look like me. It’s spooky, actually, how as you step back all of a sudden the eye can see what I have been doing on faith, one stitch at a time.

I do have two areas where the color I used is the wrong saturation. I will spend some time in the car (we leave Friday morning on our Minnesota trip) doing embroidery, duplicate stitch with lace yarn to sort of damp out the intensity of the somewhat bright pinkish-brown. I also intend to intensify/darken a shadow in my hair. But generally, this thing is working. And I have worked my way through the “I hate it, why did I start this?” phase of the project. Which, by the way, happens to me with dance concerts and new CD releases as well. In the end I’m glad. And thank goodness while I was working on this last week, I kept going because I knew that I could not have a chance to work through that phase if I didn’t keep proceeding to the goal.

I will do photos of the installation when I get to Sue’s gallery on Saturday. Well, I’ll take photos anyway. I don’t know when I’ll have internet access on the trip.

OK, time to sleep. It’s a long haul to Minnesota from here.

Photos: 1)My grandma Ruthie. Grandpa Oscar wrote below this one in the book: “My Ruthie” (makes me choke up just thinking of it). 2) Susan Hensel’s entry in Threads in Space. She learned to spin for this show… and it’s no surprise to me that it includes words as well as fiber. She’s done book arts and writing for years.

I’m working on a complex project. It is about 11,000 stitches on size 2 needles. However, those facts are not the big deal because a pair of socks can have more stitches than that (and on smaller needles to boot).

I’m using about a dozen shades of laceweight-to-sportweight yarn, in a sort of folk intarsia. For the record, that means that half of my stitches are purls rather than knits… and you know how rarely I do something with more than a handful of purls in it.

And it’s all about a zillion strands of non-color. Taupe, beige, cream, brown… well, one beautiful sort of an aqua-turquoise. And the rest, boring to me. It’s elegant, perhaps, but I’m not the sort to appreciate that.

I won’t know if it looks like my plan until I’m at least 2/3 through the knitting. I just have to try… you can’t know if you don’t give it a shot… you know?

I’ve been working every free moment since Tuesday on this project. Well, every free moment until I give up faith, freak out that it won’t work, take a walk around the block or get some food, then start in again.

My wrist is behaving nicely, anyway… it gets a bit tired, I stretch and rest a bit, put on my brace for a while, then I’m good to go again. I’m pleased about that since on Friday my only important task was to knit for hours and hours and hours and hours…

It can’t last forever. You will see pics when it’s done. For now, here’s the tangled mess I call a project.