Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Happy New Year!

I have lots of ideas bouncing around my head for projects for 2010! I can't wait to get started!

But first, I'd like to share some of what I have been doing since I last posted:

I completed colorful sweaters for my adorable grand-daughters -- Abby and Chelsea who live in the frozen Northeast! My LYS had a display of yummy colors of wool yarns that caught my eye. I decided to knit striped cardigans - in warm colors for Chelsea
and cool colors for Abby. I used a Lion Brand free pattern I found on-line as a starter and changed the stripes using Fibonacci's number sequences (1,1,2,3,5,8...) to create interesting stripe sequences. The challenge was to make the stripes match at the sleeves. I also decided to make the closure a separating jacket zipper instead of buttons. It was great to see the girls in their sweaters when we visited early in January!

While taking the train from Savannah to New York State I realized that I didn't have a hat to wear when we walked around New York City to the Museum of Modern Art. I had brought along several things to keep me busy including some 2 oz. of handspun singles I had spun at our January Spin In earlier that week. The fiber was delicious -- a combination of alpaca, milk, bamboo, bunny, and sparkle from Roo at Moonwood Farms. So I started my hat... and was pleased to finish it before we arrived in NY. (Of course, I stayed awake most of the night to finish it!) I must admit it came in handy keeping my head warm against the breezy cold air.

MoMA was marvelous! I wanted to see the exhibit of the Bauhaus Workshops that was going to end January 25th. It was all I had hoped for and more. Seeing Gunta Stolzl's African Chair up close, was thrilling as I had seen it in so many books I had researched while writing my book Woven: a Bauhaus Memoir about the Bauhaus weavers. There was a fascinating movie taken in the masters homes in Dessau during the Bauhaus years and Moholy Nagy's Light Space Modulator gracefully moved and cast wonderful reflections on the walls and ceilings as it did when I saw it several years ago at its home at Harvard's Busch Reisinger Museum. (His original film can be seen here.) The exhibit took me back to my trip to the Bauhaus sites in Germany where I had seen some of the pieces. The exhibit had so much MORE... and was displayed so beautifully. I was happy that I had ordered the book on the exhibit so that I could refer back to the experience as photos were not allowed. I spent some time in the hands on workshop where they had lots of texture materials available for participants to create their own tactile artwork based on Johannes Itten's classes from Vorkurs, or Preliminary Studies classes.

While in Albany, I completed a woven bag for my camera on a cardboard loom and have started to felt some handspun French Press slippers I knit from a pattern I bought through Ravelry. I used some of the yarns I'd dyed with Koolaid on beige wool which created muted colors. The tapestry design incorporates geometric designs and 2 shuttle columns.

I realize that I never posted the images of the scarves I created on a charcoal tencel warp that I mentioned in my last blog entry... Here goes:
handspun milk fiber, cotton and handspun silk weft
silk/cotton blend weft
silk/cotton blend weft
handspun white bombyx silk & sparkle novelty black weft
Mobus scarf of milk/cotton blend, silk/cotton blend & handspun bombyx silk weft