The Importance of "Playing"....not "Making"

So a few friends & I got together here last night and played with colors on the drum carders. We decided to do this, instead of our usual monthly felting challenge, because not one of us has felt (no pun intended) particularly inspired or motivated lately to "create" anything. Willa's been trying to use up odds and ends of yarn so her stash doesn't take over the house; I've been too overwhelmed by computer & online stuff that I haven't felt my head was "clear" enough to take on anything new; Lynn's been busy writing and not motivated but hoping that the pressure of some upcoming classes would get her going again. And Linda's been busy teaching and hasn't had the time to do anything for herself. All situations I'm sure you've all experienced at some point or another!
So our hope was that just "playing" with color and fiber without the pressure of "making something" and in the guise of a social gathering, might spark the creative juices again and help jump start us.
And it worked! We all were mumbling about things we might like to try next on our way out the door.
I'm not sure any of us learned anything new about color, but playing reminded us of a couple of basics. First, as Lynn commented, it was a good reminder that everything is darker than you expect after felting so you really need to have some little burst of color or light to make things "pop". Also, as Linda's sample reminded us, for felting (as opposed to spinning) you really need to have thin layers if you want the colors beneath to show thru. We all liked the ability on the drum carder to add color "edgings" or highlights.
And we all were surprised we hadn't thought of this before: since we all make yardage and work with commercial merino or merino/silk top....rather than laying out yardage by laboriously shingling wisps it would be a TON faster to take the top and card it quickly into thin layers and then shingle the batts!
So my takehome from this little gathering....play more & work less! Something I'd lost track of lately. Don't always get caught up in feeling like every free minute for fiber must be used to "make something"! Simply "playing" without an end in sight is very freeing...there's no long term commitment to a project to weight you down and if you don't like what you "played" with, the garbage can is handy and easier to use if you've only invested a couple ounces of fiber and 15 minutes of your time! And it just might inspire something grander.
The samples of some of our playing can be seen on the gallery (I don't want to bother posting it all over again, so check out this link for the photos here.

Light at the end of the Tunnel!

I can't believe it was October 16th when I last posted anything! Kind of pathetic if you think that my intention with this blog was to share some new information or technique that I'd learned each week about fiber.

It's not that I haven't been learning....it's just been that my learning was, most unfortunately, diverted these past 5 months to the realm of computers, websites furnaces & pellet stoves! I think that the aggravation and frustration of equipment & software not working well just didn't leave room in my psyche to create, play or experiment with anything fiber. It made me lose my muse and I really hated it...I have been so uninspired and unproductive.

But now that all is working again (fixed the pellet stove this morning with a metal tablespoon and a Lancome eyeshadow case - I bet that's a first!) I'm finally feeling open to diving back in the sandbox to play!

To jump start my muse this weekend (assuming Shutter Island doesn't traumatize me Saturday night!) I intend to play with fiber on the drum carder all day Sunday...I've got pounds and pounds of fleece I dyed this past summer I need to card and blend. I've already done a few experimental runs and spun it up and am looking forward to breaking out of my usual color prejudices and come up with some novel combinations (I was thinking this little trial was novel, but now that I look at it closely I see both my favorite orange and my tried and true lime green!). I'm expecting that perhaps some of my felting group friends will be joining me Monday night too, so, that will be fun and I should have some show & tell and some interesting things to share next week based on our gathering Monday night!
Until then, may your muse stay with you!

Art and Fear-The perils of art making

Enjoyed an interesting and quick read a while ago that I never got around to sharing with you. You might be interested in it if you ever get hung up starting a new project. Whether it's because you have too many ideas and have troule deciding which one or two to attack or because your desire for "perfectionism" inhibits your freedom to "just explore", this book by Ted Orland and David Bayles is worth some time and contemplation. Art and Fear; Observations and Perils of Art Making.

Fibonacci & the Fiber Challenge ...ideas and incentives!!

As you may know, we're running a Fiber Challenge here this fall (for more info, check out http://www.northeastfiberarts.com/) and this has generated some discussion among customers....both about the "challenge" of it and the fabulous prizes. So here are some thoughts on design ideas and inspiration....

For those that have expressed some anxiety about how to use the materials required, I've suggested something as simple as using the Fibonacci numbers to knit or crochet stripes for a pillow, afghan, or scarf! Or the Fibonacci could be used to weave the yarns into a shawl or to felt the yarns into a felt rug. The Fibonacci numbers are 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, etc (you see the progression?). Anyway, it has been determined that working designs based on these numbers creates a pleasing visual....so you could use the numbers to symbolize shots of weft or pics of warp, rows of knitting, or units of crocheted motifs, for example. The numbers don't have to be used in order....I've often used them to wet up warps (see the woven kimono jacket above) where I might thread 3 ends of blue, 5 of green, 1 of orange, 3 of black, 8 of green, 3 of orange, etc. It's a way of seeming to create a random design but assuring that it looks good and it can't be simpler.

Here's another option for design ideas....look to nature! The designer of the silver shawl pin prize, Kerin Rose, looked to nature for her design idea when I asked her about designing a shawl pin for the contest. You can see her design inspiration and learn how she made the pin for the contest on her blog below. And you'll want to check her blog out regularly as she's always got something interesting to write about and fabulous jewelry to put on your wish-list!

kerin rose: my creative space......

What does color do for you?

The last couple of weeks I've been thinking about color a little differently. Usually I think about how colors "look" together or how they "look" on an individual.
But this week, partly prompted by some research for a little blurb I was writing for an email newsletter and further fueled by a funny discussion on Saturday at a social knitting gathering here, I have become fascinated with how we "feel" color! It really is a "physical" reaction we have. I'm relieved to know that studies have shown this and that I'm not (at least entirely) crazy to think my pulse raced when Martha pulled out her lap blanket on Saturday! The riot of colors was so exciting it was food for the soul. Even for those (like myself) who usually gravitate toward darker, murkier earthtones, seeing it really resonated in a way that made us all feel happy! I laugh now recalling the cackle our group of ladies made "oohing and ahhing" over which were our favorite squares.
I remembered reading years ago how a study had shown that painting prison cells pink had been demonstrated to calm violence among the inmates. And this notion of color affecting us physically & emotionally was reaffirmed this week as I read about a study of blindfolded individuals that consistently identified which hand was held over a red piece of paper and which hand was held over a blue piece of paper! The researchers attribute the results and our physical response to color to the fact that we truly "feel" the difference in the wavelengths of each color!
So now I realize that it's not just that we "see" colors differently, but we "feel" them differently too. And it must be this physical reaction that makes them so personally compelling. So next time my sister Joany rolls her eyes at me coveting another burnt orange, chartreuse or chocolate brown yarn (I'm definitely drawn to the warm colors), I can tell her it's a physical thing I can't control!
And, next time we're picking out colors to use in a fiber project, maybe we should ask ourselves how the color makes us "feel" rather than how it "looks" on us!
Happy day!
P.S.
As an interesting aside....some languages only have words for 2 colors (basically black and light) into which all colors are grouped. As languages evolve and get more sophisticated, they add additional words to further break the colors out. Linguistics scholars have found that in over 80% of languages, the order in which colors are consistently added as the language evolves is as follows:

1) all seem to start with black (covers blues, purples) and light (covers whites, yellows, reds).

• This is interesting and makes sense since the eye sees "value" (light and darkness) before it sees "hue" (colors like red, blue, etc)

2) then they add red (so languages with 3 words for color have black, light and red)
3)then they add green next and then yellow after green
4)then blue (which had been either grouped with green or black to this point) is added!
Apparently "orange" wasn't used to describe a color until the mid 20th century...until then it had been always referred to as yellow-red until it took the name of the fruit it resembled!

How do you price your handmade items?

I'm often asked by knitters, spinners and felters how to price the items they want to sell and since this question was also raised at Felter's Fling earlier this week I thought I'd share my thoughts and those that were discussed at Fling.
Most customers who have approached me about this seem to have heard that the rule of thumb is to ask 3 times your materials cost. I've never understood where that came from! In my experience, there is just no basis for that at all. Some crafts require relatively little material cost and are labor intensive whereas others are quick, buy costly in materials!
I've always looked at the time it takes me to make the item...that includes the time to dye the fiber and the fabric, do my test swatches for color/shrinkage, design the piece, layout and felt the piece and sew or trim it....and mulitply these hours by my rate per hour (how you come up with that is another issue entirely!). Then I add in my materials cost and something for my overhead cost which in my mind includes the cost of the dyes used, the propane gas for the tank, electricity. And then I'd add in any extra marketing costs....did I print up post cards for the gallery show to send out or hand out at the event or did I take out an ad?
When asked this same question at Fling, our instructor seemed to have the same approach to figuring her starting cost although she also added in the time and financial investment in workshops taken honing the skills over the years as well as the investment in R&D - you know, all those items you "experimented" on to get to the pieces you're selling. So all that comes to your "wholesale" price - what you'd sell it for directly to the buyer. Then she suggested doubling that total figure for a retail situation (i.e. if instead of selling it directly you are selling it thru a craft shop or gallery). She also had a friends discount for a while...the "mate rate"...until that got a little awkward.
I also think there is a much more ambiguous factor that I believe some artisans manage to work in to their price. So this "X" factor is how much BEYOND the starting figure you come up with based on the considerations mentioned above that you can ask (and get) because of the uniqueness and originality and scarcity of your product. My friend Linda commented that this X factor is what one can get for your stuff AFTER you die....and its higher if you die tragically and at a young age!
Of course the bottom line is that your success is a function of the marketplace...you know it's all about supply and demand . And demand is a function of WHO is shopping and that's why its important to know YOUR market. You can underprice yourself out of a market you know. As the instructor said....when one of her items isn't selling, she marks it up!
What are your thoughts!

Much needed R&R!

My workspace this past week!

So I missed updating the blog last week because of a little R&R at our family place on Lake Sebago, Maine. If you've never been there, you must go. It is the most beautiful crystal clear water and sandy bottom of any lake I've ever visited-except perhaps for Lake Louise which was far too cold to swim in! But of course I'm biased having spent every summer of my life there and by all the years of fond memories...summer long card tournaments (a canasta-like game called Sanba), learning the butterfly stroke from a distant cousin, jarts contests over happy hour, the treasure hunts my aunt always ran using tricky limericks she'd write that sent us running for clues from the beach to the house, all the way to the point, and even out to the mailbox, plus waking to the revelry call of the bugle at Camp O-At-Ka (which is a boys camp just next door that my great grandfather -who was Episcopal bishop of Maine -helped get started). Ahh, summer fun!

Anyway, its not summer without a visit to Sebago and it's always a great time for me to get some relaxed knitting done for the store and it's a great place to contemplate life and refresh the spirit for another year.

And, its a time for me to collect lichen for natural dyeing. Lichen needs really clean air and prefers a north (or is it east?) facing exposure near water. Anyway, the woods and rocks around our house and along the point offer a perfect place for it. Since it can take 40 years for lichen (a symbiotic relationship between a fungus and an algae) to grow, you don't pick the lichen, but there are always pieces around the base of the rocks that have fallen off during wind and rain storms (and haven't we had those this summer!). So I always take a bag and walk the trail to the point, side stepping into the woods to search at the bottom of the huge boulders on which the lichen grow. If you search right after a rainstorm, the lichen are green (not tan and black as you see above).

This year I also found another spot for lichen on the way home from Maine in the White Mountains. I always stop at the Wiley House center on Rt 302 in the White Mountains to stretch my legs and let Chloe take a swim in the pond. This year, we also walked a small trail leading from the Wiley house along the river bed, and there were many huge boulders covered with the mamulata (I may have spelled this wrong) lichen that's good for dyeing (the type I collect give the beautiful purple colors and I believe when I took a workshop on lichen dyeing with Karen Casselman all those years ago she referred to this type as mammulata lichen). Anyway, they are the ones pictured above that have the acid orcin in them which when exposed to ammonia (urine if you're a traditionalist) produces the purple dye orchil. I love to see lichen growing, not just for collection purposes since I dye with it infrequently, but becuase they are a sign of REALLY CLEAN AIR.

Remember that if you're going to collect lichen for dyeing, DON'T pick them, but collect the pieces that have fallen off the rock on their own or with the help of mother nature's wind and rain. The fact that they fell off their perch means they weren't healthy anyway and yet they still produce a good purple dye. It may take you a couple of years to collect enough for a dyebath, but as long as the lichen is dry when you put it away, it doesn't go bad or mold.

Ifyou haven't dyed with the lichen yet, here's what I do...

1. tear up the lichen pieces and put them into a really large jar (a Costco size pickle jar)


2. cover them with ammonia and cap the jar


3. let them sit for a couple of days, shaking the jar up twice a day (you need to oxygenate them for the process to occur)


4. add water to the mix (so the solution is 2:1 ammonia & water) and continue to shake twice a day and let the lichen ferment for 3-4 weeks until you see a good deep purple color.


5. strain off the lichen, add water enough so that your yarn or fiber is submerged and heat (do not boil) until the dye is set (could be 30-40 mins).