not a lazy suzen

So, I’ve been hooking a mat when I’ve been too annoyed with the giant sweater. Mostly, I’ve just been too excited about the new tilting lap frame I received–it’s pretty much impossible for me to resist playing with a new toy, no matter how much work I have to do. This mat is pretty intuitive since it is more or less a sample for bigger works. I’ve been having a bit of a hard time figuring out colours–I keep hooking and then ripping stuff out, only to re-hook everything again. Working with somewhat representational imagery is hard but I’m letting my naiveté take the reigns. You can’t really fudge lack of skill. Heh.

My sweater is almost complete. I only have one more sleeve to knit and then I get to weave in all those pesky ends. I’ll be photographing it for installation and taking some action shots of it being worn before I send it off to the gallery. While I won’t be attending the exhibition opening myself (thanks to being a super poor graduate student), I’ve been informed that there will be some documentation taking place. I’ll post it here as soon as I get more information.

In other news, tonight is Nuit Blanche here in Montreal and I’m trying to figure out what to attend. I’ll probably pop the Belgo to see what’s happening throughout the galleries there but mostly I’m interested in attending the performances in nearby churches (one choir performance and another pipe organ event) but we’ll see how far I get. Last week I got lazy and didn’t go to any events, blaming it on the subzero temperatures, but this year I have no excuse–It’s 5º above zero, it’s freakin’ balmy out there.

So, rather than stressing myself out any further with things that clearly do not need stressing about, I’ve moved on to something completely different. I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately. Historical and scientific stuff about icebergs and tidal waves. It’s super fascinating stuff. Here are some iceberg facts that I can whip out at the top of my head:

• By the time an iceberg reaches the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, it has been travelling for over three years.
• Icebergs can founder unexpectedly making them pretty dangerous things to be around.
• Icebergs are made up of fresh water that is up to 15,000 years old which means that its the purest water around (and great for making vodka!)
• A growler, the smallest of the iceberg categories, is often the same size as a grand piano.
• Icebergs can travel 48km per day while a glacier travels about 7km per year.
• When an iceberg breaks from a glacier they call it “calving”.

I guess my interest in icebergs right now is linked to my general infatuation with loose foundations and home. Icebergs break off from large glaciers, spend years drifting into coves and harbours, sometimes getting grounded into place but most times they drift along with the current toward warmer water where they melt and shift and break apart. They visit but they never stay because it is geologically impossible for them to. It would be a little cheesy to say “I am like an iceberg” so I’m not going to make that my official statement. I will say that I am fascinated with the image of a house bolted onto an iceberg and wonder often what living on a berg would be like. It’d be a constant state of tension, I think, between the serenity of floating in the sea on your own private island and the anxiety of flipping over at any moment. My stomach is in knots just thinking about it.

This imagery is fairly new to me–a house on a berg. I have to do a bit more drawing to figure all the details out but the bare bones you see above is essentially what I’m envisioning. I have this inclination to translate this imagery into hooked mats, irregularly shaped and maybe even with other non-hooked elements. I am working on a test piece right now just to see if the imagery will work in this format. I have a pretty good feeling it will but want to be sure before I bite off way more than I can chew.

For this test piece I am working over an old piece of burlap left over from last semester when I was teaching myself how to hook. As a result, pretend the heart shape isn’t there. And also pretend that it is flipped to the left 90º and has a house latched onto it. Since this photo was taken a lot of things have been drawn and added to it. It’s like a big jumbly mess of Sharpie lines that will all make some kind of sense in the end.

Last week I ordered a new rug hooking frame. I’ve been dreaming of this frame for months now and I cannot wait to add it to my collection of studio equipment. No longer will I have to struggle with large wooden embroidery hoops that have the potential to destroy the rug as I am working on it. No longer will I have to keep screwing up my posture to balance the frame between my stomach and the edge of the table in order to work. Soon I will be free to make as irregular shape a rug as I want! Boo-ya!

In the meantime, however, I’m stuck with the hoop until I get that lovely box in the mail.

I feel like I am getting eaten alive by this thing. This photo was taken a few days ago but the sentiment is still the same: This sweater is a monster! Knitting the sleeves off of this giant mass is a huge annoying undertaking. I have to stand in order to work the entire piece needs to be turned continuously as I knit in the round. It’s a little easier once the sleeve grows long enough that it can stand away from the body but even that is awkward. Everything about this project is awkward. Errrrrr.

One of the good things about knitting something of this magnitude is that I’m really exercising my problem solving skills. For instance, the working ball of yarn kept getting in the way of my knitting and as a result I kept accidentally tangling the rather delicate 5-ply wool. So! I quickly sewed up a little cube-like bag from some scrap flannelette, attached a short strap to it so I could then wear it across my back. This way the working yarn is always at my back, close to my right side and completely out of the way. Sounds simple, I know, but you wouldn’t believe how long it took me to realize this solution!

I am really eager to finish this thing and I can’t seem to knit fast enough. I want it to be done so I can move on to other things. I just learned how to do knotted netting and I’m already dreaming up ideas. And I really have to write, something I haven’t been making any time for this semester despite being a seminar that is all about writing. Oops. Once the sweater is done…..