Down Under

I am currently travelling in the south half of Australia with my threee children and my favourite botanist. You can have a glimpse at our adventures on my other blog (in french):

http://troisetes.blogspot.com

Enjoy!

A new pattern: The Urban Warmers

After almost three years of procrastination, my new pattern is published:

The Urban Warmers
Intended to warm your arms and legs, those structured pieces are quick and fun to knit. They make great use of those tricky variegated yarn that are sometimes hard to showcase. Combined with a contrasting solid or almost-solid yarn, the hand painted colors really pop and shine.

One size fit most, easily adjustable.

TECHNIQUES USE:
• Long-tail cast-on
• Knitting in the round
• Twisted 1/1 ribbing
• Stripes in spiral
• Corrugated ribbing
• Sewn bind-off
I do not explain those techniques, but provide some tips all along the pattern



To celebrate, I offer you TWO promotions:

A special introductory price for the Urban Warmers pattern: 50% off until September 15, 2011. Buy now

20% off on my old but still good Rainbow Moebius until September 15, 2011. Beware: you have to buy it separately for the promotion to work. Buy now

link to the Urban Warmers pattern in Ravelry

I hope you'll like it. :)

sleeping bags from sarees - sacs de couchage en saris

I am transforming some old sarees into sleeping bags. Getting to play with 5m long pieces of silk fabric is both amazing and tedious. But my wonderful Elna has THE tool to make this fun:

The Hemmer Foot

Je suis en train de transformer des vieux saris en draps-sacs (sacs à viande - sacs de couchage...) Faire joujou avec des pièces de soie de 5 mètres de long, c'est à la fois merveilleux et fastidieux. Par bonheur ma bonne vieille Elna a THE outil qui rend la tâche amusante et presque facile:

Le Pied Ourleur

I bought the sarees on ebay. Beware: only the one with PURE silk in the description are real silk. Guess how I know? I thought that I was careful in my order, but I still have two piece of beautiful but absolutely useless fabric sitting on my table.

J'ai acheté les saris sur ebay. Attention: seul les objets avec les termes "PURE silk" dans la description sont vraiment en soie. Je pensais avoir été prudente, mais je me trouve malgré tout avec deux magnifiques pièces de tissu inutilisable sur ma table.



For this kind of project, be also extra careful to choose pieces without beads or metallic embroideries on the main part of the saree. Those would be unconfortable to sleep in.

Pour ce genre de projet, choisissez des pièces sans perles ni broderies métalliques sur la partie principale du sari. Cela rendrait le sac inconfortable pour dormir.



If the ornamental panel is beaded or particularly beautiful, it can be used as a wall hanging, or maybe a big cushion.

Si l'extrémité ornamentale du sari est particulièrement belle, vous pouvez aussi l'utiliser pour faire tableau ou un gros coussin.

It is textile art AND (not but) - a sequel on the Rethinking Needlework symposium

I don't know if the fact that the exhibition "Neue Masche" at the Museum Bellerive, Zürich did not really surprise me is good or bad. Maybe I share the same curiosity than the curators, and we browse the same sources (the web, the book "knitting art"...) and it is good to share our discoveries with more people?

But what bothered me (and therefore made me think) the most about the exhibition and the symposium "Rethinking Needlework" is that they where both largely based on the proposition "This is needlework/knitting/crochet BUT..." (it is huge, it is ironic, it is shocking, it is made of something surprising, it is controversial, and most important it is not traditional, it is NOT your granma's neeldework).

I must confess I am getting tired of this obligatory controversial or at the least ironic position the textile artist seems to have to take if her/his work is to be taken seriously and considered art. Imagine if each and every time you heard or read about a painter it said "This is painting BUT..." (this is not your granma's painting, this is tiny or huge, this is done with surprising material ,this is ironic this is controversial... etc). Of course some time the discourse on painting is also about the controversy, the new, the surprising. But it does not seem as obligatory and recurrent than it is in textile art.

Some would argue that this is because textile art is "somewhat new" in the Fine Arts department. Well I don't think so. When I look on photos from the exhibitions held at the Biennale de Lausanne or other textile art from about 30 years ago, the artwork and the critique does not seems so obsessed by justification, controversy and irony. And yet it was at a time where gender and social discussions where as burning as now, if not more.

Maybe it is time we start to look at the positive side of textile art. Let's say that the attention to needlwork and textile art has been justified enough. What if we let go of the BUT and try on the AND? Yes, this is needlework/knitting/crochet/patchwork AND it is stunning, thoughful, beautiful, moving, interesting, surprising, funny...

Rethinking needlework, a symposium

Last week-end I went to the symposium "Rethinking Needlework", held in Zürich on the occasion of the exposition "Neue Masche" at Museum Bellerive, Zürich.

Rethinking Needlework.
Discursive threads in current art and design production

Friday, May 20, 7 pm
Museum Bellerive, welcome address followed by a tour of the exhibition with the curators

Saturday, May 21, 10 am–6:30 pm
Zürcher Hochschule der Künste, Vortragssaal
Admission: CHF 25/15
Lectures by Matilda Felix, Petter Hellsing, Jessica Hemmings, Verena Kuni, Patricia Waller; artist interventions by frfr-international (Marlen Groher; Corinna Mattner), Regula Michell/Meret Wandeler, Rüdiger Schlömer; sampling threads, performance by Ines Bauer, Steffen Schmidt and Désirée Zappa, MAS/CAS study course, Cultural Media Studies ZHdK

The exhibition was great, with lots of different propositions and nicely put together. It was nice to see some of the artwork I knew from photos on the web in real life. I was a little disapointed though, and I will explain why in my next post.

The symposium was very interesting to me, even if most of the contributions where in german which made it harder for me to understand. It gave me lots of food for thoughts and inspiration for further research.

The positive result of feeling a bit lonely in this german speaking context was that it gave me the courage to go and talk to some of the other isolated persons (or the one I guessed would be the most open to a discussion in english). Three where particularly awesome to me.

• I am very happy I met Jessica Hemmings, who patiently listened to my thoughts (see next post) and helped me with my chocolat cake. She showed us wonderful art that I did not know at all, was funny and clever and really interesting to listen and talk to. When I grow up, I want to be her and write amazing books and articles about textile art and artists.

• The-gnittinK-Room project artist, Rüdiger Schlömer, is not afraid to play with the knitting needles. He seems fun and curious about everything that may be a link, a thread or a motive. I want to play the "what if" game with him and see what happens. (And Rüdiger, if you read this, you really should try to see what happens if/when you finish even the smallest or simplest project, a hat for example.)

• Then artist Petter Hellsing moved me with his project "Little cabin in the wood". His tales - the ones he embroider (check his project "the living room") and the ones he tells - made me think a lot about the relationship between textile and intimacy. Textile is deeply rooted in the history of humanity. In fact, I believe that textile is one of the strongest root of humanity and culture. (I will save the these I have on this subject for another time.) Of that, I have been convinced since a long time now. But I don't think I thought that much about intimacy before. Really, of all the visual arts, textile arts only use the material that we allow to touch us intimately in a daily basis. That is a very inspiring idea for me.

I am very happy and thankful that such an event happened in my own country, not too far from where I live. I only wish I could be part of this textile world more often.

Itsy bitsy slow motion video, with textile

What's not to love?

Itsy bitsy - an etsy treasury

Apparemment je ne peux plus m'arrêter avec ces trésors d'etsy.
Celui-ci vous propose de l'art mini pour micro-appartements.

Well, apparently I cannot stop making treasuries.
This one is all about tiny art for small household. I want about everything in it.

I've lost my key (in red) - an etsy treasury

J'ai perdu mes clés (en rouge) un trésor d'etsy.

Je perds souvent mes clés. Le meilleur moyen de les retrouver est de me demander : "Où et quand les ai-je vues pour la dernière fois? Puis de cesser de chercher. Et bien entendu un bon porte-clé, bien coloré, ça aide. J'en ai besoin d'un nouveau, et la poupée rouge me tente beaucoup.

I often loose my keys. The best way to find them is to ask myself: "Where did I saw them last? When?" And of course to have a lovely bright key ring. I need a new one. The little doll would be lovely.