not a lazy suzen

This is an accurate capture of what my studio at school presently looks like. Sometimes it totally feels like I live and work in a cave. Well, maybe not so much a cave but a little den dug into the side of a hill like a fox hole. I am suffering from a lack of organization and I’m really trying to resist the urge to attempt to sort things out because I know that once I start there is no way I’m going to be able to stop. Frankly, I don’t really have time for it right now. I will be setting aside a week in April for organization and painting. Soon there will be few white walls and in their place a beautiful warmish mid-tone grey.

Anyway, I realize I haven’t updated in roughly a week despite all my intentions to keep tabs on myself. So, let me get y’all up to speed.

I’ve been toying around with new designs for some hooked mats. I took out all the Newfoundland hooked mat books from the university library and started compiling imagery. One of my favourite books (that I’ll be adding to my Amazon wishlist) is Silk Stocking Mats from the Grenfell Mission. The mats in this book are spectacular. Unlike most primitive mats popular in other parts of Newfoundland and Labrador, the Grenfell Mission hooked mats are quite narrative in their designs. One of the mats that I fell in love with is of polar bear with a series of icebergs (unfortunately I don’t have the book with me to scan the image). The icebergs in the mat are hooked in such a way that they appear immense thanks to the vertical blue stripes that make up the bottom of the berg. I did some sketches of my own referencing this design element.

I’ve taken this idea and sketched it onto a new piece of burlap to make a mat that will measure about 150cm x 50cm. While I’m really happy with the design, I’m a little hesitant to start working on it. I’m a rather impulsive person when it comes to starting projects and sometimes this impulsiveness causes me to bite off more than I can chew. There is no way I can finish this rug in time for an end-of-term review in April. So I think this guy is going to hide in my stash of things to do and I’ll come back to it in the summer while I’m in residence in Newfoundland.

Now, I’m not stepping away from the hooked berg completely. I think I’ll take a cue from some of my colleagues and churn out some small projects. Just like the house-on-a-berg that I posted last week, I think I’ll scale down this design to something a bit more manageable for my time frame. I can create a larger narrative through the installation of smaller pieces. We’ll see!

Speaking of small and quick projects, I made little baby bergs with some Fimo. There’s about six in total right now and I’m thinking I’m going to make a bunch more because they’re fun to make and quick to finish. I’ve never really worked with Fimo before now and holy smokes– it’s great! One 56g pack of Fimo at about 2.95$ each can make three baby bergs. Score! I don’t know what I’ll do with these little guys though I have been tossing around a couple of ideas like building a sea filled with little bergs or creating communities of them. The next thing I’m going to try is making a berg with holes poked through the waterline edge so I can thread thin string through to make little fishing nets that just kind of dangle from them. I’ll probably end up forming a couple holes into the back so they can mounted to the wall on small nails.

And this brings me to net making! Ooo!

So a while ago I took part in a workshop with my fellow MFA Fibres gals where we all learned how to make knotted nets. This is a skill I’ve been want to learn for ages. I’ve always had these daydreams of making nets upon nets upon nets, piled up in a giant tangled mess. The process of making a net is pretty fluid and requires few tools. I built a netting shuttle and gauge out of a piece of poplar using a template I found online as a reference. The results have been pretty effective.

I’m not sure what I’ll be doing with this but I have been spinning up some silk that I think will look pretty freaking spectacular if made into a fishing net.

Though, there are other ways to make a net. Before making the netting shuttle and gauge, I did a fairly large (but not quite large enough) test piece with crochet and bulky weight wool. While the test piece isn’t quite big enough to hold my knitted buoys, it will be big enough to keep fabric and balls of wool in for storage. I love how chunky and strange the crochet netted mesh looks when working with this gauge of wool, I just wish the net was bigger! Oh well.

Right now, however, I have to get into writing/research mode thanks to a presentation that I have to give on Monday morning. I’ll end this with a glimpse at my notes. I promise I’ll not take so long to update again.