A Case for Unschooling?

Natural and Otherwise

On Monday a small group of us gathered in Glenburnie, which is a town in the heart of Gros Morne Park about a 1.5 hour drive from Gillams. We got together with Brenda Stratton, who is a fibre artist and dyeing expert so she could share some her extensive knowledge about all things dyed. She focused mainly on acid dyes with some information about plant dyeing.

Brenda was the technician for the Fibre Arts Department at the Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary for several years, so she knows her stuff. It was all the more of a relief to see her techniques, which include things like "add a glug of vinegar" and "just put it in the pot and don't worry about it!" She dispelled a lot of misinformation I had been carrying around with me and took some of the fear out of dyeing. Perhaps fear is too strong of a word for something as fun and magical as dyeing.  It may be more accurate to say that she calmed us down, particularly in our anxiety about felting the wool. She had the pots up to a rolling boil with merino fleece in them. Merino! The secret is apparently to let the wool cool down in the pot. Such a simple thing.

I have been experimenting with my new found knowledge.

Here are two types of different wool dyed with Peruvian madder (masham on the left and merino on the right)

Here is some natural grey Shetland wool dyed with organic acid dye (in blue, obviously!).  I am really loving dyeing fleece that is naturally coloured grey or brown.  You can see I have not achieved a perfectly even dye effect here, but the beauty part is: I don't want one!

And this, my friends, is a pot that is cooling down as I write this.  That bright yellow comes from alder leaves harvested from our backyard.  I boiled them up for almost an hour (again, nearly to the death of us with the smell!), then strained out the leaves, put in the fleece, a dash of alum and voila!  (Another thing Brenda shared with us is that you don't have to pre-mordant the wool.  Liberation is at hand, I tell you!).  I have the alder twigs soaking.  I have heard they give a very nice green/brown but need to be soaked for several days.  

And here is a gratuitous cat shot.  Minkie enjoying the morning sunshine (and a camera in her face).

Crooked Cucumber

Lately I have been thinking about something Shugen Sensei said about how birds don't ever sit around in their nests saying "oh, I worked so hard yesterday, I will just take a day off today."  I think his point was that they just get their work done, no muss, no fuss and in a way that is 100% bird-like.  

I do sometimes say that I am taking a day of rest.  Of course it still includes the important stuff but rest, for me, often means reading.  I thought I would share some of the books I have been digging into in hopes of hearing about the books you have been digging into - please leave a comment and let me know!

I started this post thinking I would list off some of the books I have been reading, but I quickly got caught up in the very first one, so maybe I will add some books later as an ongoing series, especially if people share their opinions.

At our first meeting, I was happy to discover that one of the people in our very small meditation group has a nice collection of popular books on Buddhist topics, so I borrowed three:  Crooked Cucumber, The Life and Teachings of Shunryu Suzuki by David Chadwick, Instructions to the Cook, A Zen Master's Lessons on Living A Life that Matters by Bernie Glassman and The Master, The Monks and I by Gerta Ital.  

Since I credit reading Zen Mind Beginner's Mind by Suzuki Roshi with giving me the courage and inspiration to actually take myself to a real Zen center, I am a great fan of his.  It was good read the biography and learn more about his life and especially to see that he was by no means perfect.  I did want him to be perfect - a perfect teacher, a perfect father, a perfect husband - but he was, instead, human.  It was fascinating to read about the history of the founding of the San Francisco Zen Center.  Everything I know about it comes from the stories of a friend who spent her teen years there while her mother was a student - a circumstance that was not always so great for her and, indeed, left her with a rather sour taste towards Buddhism.  Reading another perspective was welcome.

Also, it was good to read about Suzuki's training - certain aspects were explained that threw some light on things I have encountered that have always seemed inexplicable, like why no one ever just tells you how to do something correctly.  

My experience with certain aspects of the rituals and ceremonies is that it often feels like I am wandering around in the dark, bumping into things and knocking things over while everyone else has the layout so well mapped in their heads that they zip through as if the room was fully lit.  There seemed to be a very deliberate purpose to not telling me (or anyone) "watch out!  you're going to trip over that chair!" but I couldn't understand what that purpose might be.  I couldn't understand it because it is so different from nearly any other type of training one goes through.  Usually, if you are learning something new with a teacher, the teacher is guiding you very exactly, with lots of information and with the goal of helping the person to get it just right.  In Zen, not so much.

It was something of a relief to learn that Suzuki Roshi had the same kind of experience and same kind of frustration when his teacher would allow him to make mistakes and then correct him, often in a rather public, seemingly harsh way.  He couldn't understand it either until well into his training he began to see that he needed to make all his mistakes for all sorts of reasons - to come to understand and really embody the practice as well as to loosen and ultimately lose the sense of self, or ego, that needs to be perceived as perfect and smart (or any specific way for that matter).

To encounter a teaching that isn't a teaching or a teacher that isn't a teacher, except that they are a teacher and it is a teaching....well, it is something that turns you on your head for a while.  That seems to be the way of Zen - turn you upside down so that you can turn right side up again so you can realize that you were never upside to begin with.  

Or so I am told...I'll let you know!

Meet Patrick Glover

Patrick Glover is an artist living in Charlotte, North Carolina. We met at the beginning of our first year of art school at Cooper Union and quickly became fast friends. Perhaps inevitably for a friendship of such intensity, we had a falling out before our years at Cooper came to an end and we didn't see much of each other until recently when, via the magic of Facebook, we reconnected in a very good way.

One especially nice discovery since reconnecting with Patrick has been coming to know of a series of paintings that he has been working for the past several years.  They are based on photographs he takes while driving. For me, they bring up lots of childhood memories of being driven around while my mother went shopping and riding the school bus. They also tap into something that feels very North American and not completely unrelated to my own Knitting Sprawl project.

I asked Patrick some questions about himself and his work and I am very pleased to share his answers here, along with some images from this series of paintings (inserted somewhat at random). For more information about Patrick and his work, I also invite you to take look at his website.  (Note:  all of Patrick's work is oil on canvas)

(Robyn) Please give me a little of your biography.

(Patrick) I was born on Long Island. When I was 5, my father moved us to a very rural, poor and isolated part of upstate New York. I had just enough memory of Long Island to be aware that there was a bigger world out there, and to be frustrated not having access to it. I was fortunate to be accepted at The Cooper Union and ran as fast as I could to NYC, graduated in 1987, and stayed for nearly 20 years.

I spent a number of years after school basically drifting, from job to job and from non-traditional living situations, from squats to friends' spare rooms. One of those jobs had been for a large restoration company where I picked up decorative painting skills. It took me about ten years to finally have connections and to decide to make a career out of decorative work, at least until I could "really" paint. I had some success, saved up some money, made some bad decisions about how to spend it, wound up hospitalized with pneumonia and without health insurance. As a result of that and the economic crash, now find myself in debt and stuck where I am. However, I am continuing to paint, and living month to month, which is nothing new.

My work has been shown in NYC, as well as in a number of galleries in North Carolina, Seattle, Savannah GA, and Columbia SC and soon in St. Petersburg FL. I am currently working on making my studio into a multi disciplinary performance and collaborative space, which is pretty rewarding and keeps me focused on possibilities instead of problems.

(R) Why did you move south? What are some of the aspects of living there that are positive? negative?

(P) I moved south with the idea of being a real estate speculator:  flip a house in about three years and hightail it to Europe. It didn't work out as planned.

This area has some amazing flora and fauna, incredible spiders, lots of interesting insects. Of course, that includes more biting varieties. The winters are mild and have some of the most subtly colorful grays I have ever seen. Spring is a riot of color, but is very short. Summers are brutally hot and humid, fall is also too short. The mountains to the west are incredible, about a two hour drive. Chapel Hill and Carrboro are very hip, progressive and also about a two hour drive in the other direction. Charlotte has a fairly vital music scene, lots of experimentation, always a number of venues to hear music just about nightly. I am happy with the little mill house I now live in and like this neighborhood which is ethnic and working class. I also like having a yard which makes it possible to have dogs. I love my dogs.

Unfortunately, there really is no arts scene here. Galleries almost exclusively show either decorative, pastoral landscapes or decorative, formulaic abstractions. There are a number of real estate developments and real estate schemes that are attempting to market themselves as an arts district, but none actually are...It is very isolating and that isolation is aided by geographical realities. This place is a poster child for unregulated suburban sprawl. There are plenty of other cultural aspects of this town that are far from enjoyable. I personally have created a bubble of friends and tend to spend much of my time in the studio.

(R) Can you talk a little about the evolution of your paintings? Did (does) your decorative work influence your current work?

(P) I basically stopped painting after Cooper, other than doing the decorative work and murals. I was still trying to work through much of my own art school related confusion and what seemed like contradictory impulses. I maybe produced three or four paintings on canvas a year for about 8 or 9 years.

When I did start painting more seriously for myself again, I made a conscious decision to be a little schizophrenic about it, to keep my work and the decorative work as far away from each other as possible. One reason for that was that faux finishing and murals both require that you know and utilize formula methods, standard techniques and are consistent with process, all of which I hoped to avoid in my own work. Another reason was, as I would tell the people I would hire for my crew, with decorative painting you check your own aesthetics at the door. The designer and the client make aesthetic choices, all we were there for was to be the hands. I was also conscious of not letting the market driven motivations that influenced the way I worked as a decorative painter effect my own work. Efficiency is crucial on a jobsite, but can lead to formulaic painting in the studio.

Having said that, there has been some definite crossover, especially in regards to prep work, ways of scaling up and familiarity with a fairly wide range of materials. One chicken and egg question would be my use of glazes, which although it is a basic part of most faux finishing, predated the decorative work in my own work. I suppose an argument could be made that I have developed some skills working with layers of glaze from years of decorative work, though I am pushing that in non-decorative ways, I hope. Other than that, it has been adaptation plus recognizing and working with both my weaknesses and strengths, gaining confidence in the chance accidents inherent in oil paint and letting go of ownership once I put the brush down, which is an ongoing process, I think. I'd imagine that to be true of most painters.

(R) Who are some artists, living or dead, who you think about every time you enter your studio?

(P) There are some that are probably fairly obvious when looking at my work - Turner, Pinkham Ryder, Corot, Monet, Soutine, Zao Wou-ki, Pollock; some who's influence may seem a bit more obscure; Rembrandt, El Greco, Stuart Davis, David Park, Vuillard, Morandi; and a few that would probably take too long to explain - The sculptors Andy Goldsworthy, Anish Kapoor and Maya Lin, and the composers Steve Reich, Philip Glass and Mozart, who make up more than half of my studio musical accompaniment. Different lessons from different teachers.

Most recently, I have been sort of obsessed with one particular painting. About three years ago, after having started the windshield series, I was back in New York visiting friends and spent a few days at the Met. I had seen Richard Pousette - Dart's "Symphony #1 the Transcendental" countless times since the opening of the Met's modern wing. On this occasion, it seemed as if I was seeing it for the first time. I was stuck in front of it for about 45 minutes. It has since become a model for me of tensions and contradictions in equilibrium and a visual musicality. Those basic ideas has become more and more important as I continue working on this series. "Symphony #1" has been consistently buzzing around in my head since then.

Symphony No. 1, The Transcendental, 1941–42

Richard Pousette-Dart (American, 1916–1992)

Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

(R)  Any other influences, not artists necessarily?

(P)  Well, I have a strangely amalgamated jumble of philosophical influences. Marx's theory of alienation as reinterpreted by Guy Debord, mixed with and contradicted by the likes of Dewey and Stendhal... I'm very intrigued by what is going on in higher mathematics like Fractal Geometry and Quantum Physics, but I lack the math skills, education or language to fully appreciate the beauty of the truths they are discovering. Recognizing that, I am influenced by the little I am able to comprehend ( or maybe just my misunderstandings ). Music of all types, and the culture in general, especially the ways in which perception is influenced by mass production and reproduction, standardization and consumption.

(R)  Can you talk about your current series (rainy highway series)?

(P)  The highway series grew out of a small series I worked on when I was still living in New York around 1995-6.

I was looking for an approach and subject matter that could relate to everyday experience and somehow reflect this culture at this time. I began 3 series dealing with both the media and it's affects on narrative, sense of self, desires and perception and the automobile and it's effects on landscape. I did a series of still lives that included a television set as a central object, which was interesting, but ultimately seemed like a dead end. 

I also was working on paintings in which I was attempting to work out some of the issues that the glut of images and information we are bombarded with through the media suggest. That series is still ongoing, but typically stalls for various stretches of time as I lose faith in it as an approach or find myself either feeling boxed in or sense that the work is overly dogmatic...

I also did a series of 12 paintings of highways. I wanted to avoid any personally idiosyncratic, overly individualized or stylized approach to the work, because I felt that the anonymity of the images would be best served by a purely observational approach. I was pleased with the paintings, but couldn't imagine where else to take them.

When I moved to Charlotte in 2002, (a nearly entirely car dependent culture), it seemed to make sense to continue to consider the idea. I had many more opportunities to actually take images, since I was now driving every day and since I was also now using a digital camera. Images captured in the rain where purely coincidental at first and in fact, I dismissed them as unusable, since they did not conform to the original concept. It took a while before I realized what I was seeing, and took a while longer to convince myself to try to make paintings of it.

The images I capture in the rain are endlessly varied and I am very pleased with the fact that they are entirely a matter of chance. I'm also happy with the things they can suggest about standardization, recognition, predictability, even perception itself. They also have given me the freedom to really play around with materials, since each image tends to require it's own approach, which also helps to keep me from being tempted to become formulaic. It's nice to find that a subject matter can be so varied yet consistent, keep my interest and continue to suggest possibilities, even after a number of years.

(R) What are you in love with right now?

(P) Music, randomness, chance, ephemeral perceptual inconsistencies, nature, the patterns in nature, my dogs, food.

(R) What/where do you see yourself in ten years from now?

(P) One lesson I've learned in the past 7 or 8 years is that plans seldom turn out the way you might hope, so I'm not making any predictions. I'd like to be in a more culturally vibrant place with access to mass transit, art, music and cultural dialogue. Wherever I wind up, I would hope that I am able to honestly say that I am making the best work I am capable of making at that time.

Thanks Patrick!

Striking It Rich

Among my wanderings along the lower shelves in the handicraft section at the Corner Brook Public Library, I found a book about lace and lace making. When it comes to knitting lace my instinct is to back away slowly and then run as fast as I can in the opposite direction. No, lace and I have never been friends. I ventured to take out the lace book in the same spirit that I took out that c. 1970 coffee table book about weaving - if only to prove to myself that I would not catch the all-future-work-will-now-be-strongly-vaginal disease from just looking at early feminist craft-related art work. I dared to look at the lace book because what doesn't kill us will make us stronger.

What I didn't expect (just as I didn't expect to be so inspired by the c.1970s work - you can decide if I begin to lean towards vaginality in my future work) was that I would immediately see parallels between lace and my suburban project.

To wit:





The book I had checked out had some limited instructions for making this kind of lace (it is needle lace, not knitted lace) so I took a look over at Dover Books and they did not fail me.



A treasure trove of good, old time instruction there. I also picked up a book on fair isle knitting because the original impulse is still there.






I feel I have tapped into a rich vein.

Nothing Special

Yesterday I had many lovely birthday wishes and I extended my birthday wishes to our adopted country. Canada turned 147 years old.  Me?  44.

Since it was a national holiday, my day was mostly quiet. Gillams is not normally a center of frantic activity but it gets even slower when many of its residents head off to their cabins. We happily stayed close to home. A little spinning, a little fleece scouring, a little gardening.  And in the evening, a town-sponsored bonfire on the beach.  

Nothing special, but enjoying every moment.

Lucy modeling the wild hat and tres sophisticated.

The Artist's Guide

Please check out this videofrom the Art21 blog.  It is an interview with Jackie Battenfield. She and Trong Gia Nguyen discuss Jackie's new book, The Artist's Guide: How to Make a Living Doing What You Love.

Jackie Battenfield Interviewed By Trong Gia Nguyen from Trong Gia Nguyen on Vimeo.

Jackie is the longtime coordinator of The Bronx Museum of Art's Artist in the Marketplace program and respected artist in her own right. Her book is based on her work at the AIM program and working with Creative Capital. I am very happy to have been included in the book as an example of someone making art happen outside of traditional venues, particularly in the realm of community-based art works.

After you watch the video, you can go buy the book on Jackie's website. And then go make a living doing what you love!

Hey Lady, Is that a beaver on your head?

Or are you just happy to see me?

Handknit hat made from uncarded 

BFL/Icelandic fleece spun straight from the bag.

Knitting Sprawl - The Schedule

It has been very gratifying over the past couple of days to encounter such a warm reception to this project. Many times when I have solicited participants for my projects I run up against a brick wall again and again, so to be embraced so warmly is really quite surprising and wonderful. Thank you.

Here is a very loose schedule, which I hope to tighten up as things progress:

Mid-August - St. John's (and when I mention a major city, I really mean just outside of that city)
early Sept - possibly Halifax
Sept 14 -19 - Montreal (NOTE: Still looking for connections in Montreal! S'il vous plait?)
Sept 20 - 28 - Toronto (Have connections in Peterborough, and Waterloo/Wellington. Maybe Sioux Lookout, but I have to look at the map)
late winter/early spring 2010 - Vancouver area

So there are some gaps - I am hoping to get to Calgary and Winnipeg and maybe Saskatoon.

Knitting Sprawl

After several weeks of leisurely gardening, dyeing, spinning and knitting, it is time to get down to brass tacks. I have a big project to get underway and the time to do it is now.

Knitting Sprawl is an idea that has been cooking in my head for a couple of years. It comes from some ideas that came up during the time The House Museum was active and I was thinking about what makes a community and how new development affects ideas surrounding the notion of community. This was coupled with observations made about my sister's experience moving into a new development in Massachusetts. She began with an idea that this would be her family's dream home, something completely their own from Day 1. Unfortunately, they had all sorts of troubles from Day 1 and the dream was, at times, a nightmare. I wondered how many others have had that experience.

Using my sister as a guinea pig, we went up to her house and stayed for several days while I photographed and made some videotapes. Click here for my youtube debut.

Also, I started collecting aerial photographs taken of various suburbs with a notion to translate them into knitting patterns. My first attempts were technical failures, but I didn't give up on the idea. In fact, as time went on, the whole project seemed to be becoming more of a collection of ideas and projects that sprawled across the horizon like so many McMansions.

I knew that to carry out all these ideas I need to be able to travel around and speak with people and knit and take pictures.

Enter the Canada Council. They placed their faith in me with a generous project grant so that I can travel across Canada, meet with people, knit and take pictures.

It makes the most sense to start in the east and work westward, so in August, we will travel to just outside of St. John's with the goal of connecting with people. And when I say "people" what I mean is "knitters". Knitters already tend to get together and talk about things, so it seems natural to tap into this readymade network. My purpose is to stimulate conversation about the communities where people live: what do they love? what do they hate? and especially to ask the question "where/what do you think the center is in your community?"

I have already learned that the topic is filled with regional differences and subtleties. I have already learned that I should never, ever call Mount Pearl a suburb of St. John's. And I never, ever will, I swear! It has set me thinking that perhaps each region needs it's own knit or needlework project in response.

But perhaps I have said enough already.

Do you live near to St. John's? Would you be willing to host a knit together in August? Do you live in another region of Canada and want to participate? Please let me know - thehousemuseum(at)gmail.com.

Solstice

Done with Devotion

Just about every week, we head to the Corner Brook Public Library.  This is a real treat for us since our local library in Queens is, sad to say, the pits and we have given up using it.  Some people in town here mock the CB library but we soak it up.  Finn and Lucy gather piles of books and cram in lots and lots of reading.  We read in NYC too, but this is that great, sometimes completely random, experience of taking chances on books that you have never heard of that only a library can offer.

I love wandering around the non-fiction shelves and especially the Newfoundland and Labrador section.  There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of self-published memoirs and biographies.  Some of them are absolutely unreadable but occasionally you hit a real gem.  I always check out their knitting section despite that I have only seen one new book in about five years of looking.  This last time, however, I wandered a little further and squatted down near the floor and found a huge, coffee table book (maybe could be used AS the coffee table) called "Beyond Craft: The Art Fiber" by Mildred Constantine and Jack Lenore Larson (1972).  

What a find!

It has a somewhat breathless introductory essay that is charming for its enthusiasm, which runs along the lines of: people working with fibers have changed the world!  Art will never be the same!  Then it features a bio and photographs of work by artists from around the world.  The biographies are occasionally hilarious in a real 1970s way:  "The Jacobis are a swinging couple..."  and use language that I am glad to see has gone the way of the dodo:  "...Wilhelmina Fruytier is a tall, handsome woman..."

Much of the work featured has a very dated look to it but some of the work has transcended its time period and still resonates.  I have been googling some of the names to see if they are still working but many seem to be lost to history.  I guess art wasn't changed forever.

One person whose work stood out was Lenore Tawney.  She only just recently died at age 100.  Here is a link to her obituary in the New York Times.  I highly recommend reading to the end. 

Lenore Tawney 1907-2007

at work in her New York City studio in 1958

photograph by David Attie.

Essential

Anni Albers (Berlijn 1899, woont in Amerika) Pictorial weaving 1959 New York, originally uploaded by shaunaisms.

"Breathing does not express anything; one's work should be like breathing, essential to just being"

Anni Albers

Covering Up Down Under

There is an interesting project afoot. It is far, far away from Newfoundland, however.



No, it is not a stunning scarf for Ms. Sodia Pop.

It's Art, baby!

Grrl+Dog, otherwise known as Denise, is creating an installation for the entryway of the National Gallery of Australia and has asked for contributions of knitting. As a true believer in what-goes-around-comes-around, I eagerly volunteered to make a piece. The instructions on her blog (which is really wonderful - go and read it and soak up the great colour!) said to make the piece 8" x 55". A later communication, which I seem to have totally ignored, said 25cm x 25 cm.



I hope this ok, Denise! Fold it, cut it, toss it aside. The good intention was there....



And now we all have to keep our fingers cross that it will reach its far away destination by the deadline.

Go fair scarf/Art! Take thee to Oz!

Cat-friendly Environment

For about a year, I have had a number of little skeins of black handspun hanging around.  Too small to list on etsy and too difficult to photograph even if I wanted to list them there.  Black always looks like a washed out brown or a shapeless lump on etsy, as I have learned through bitter experience.  So what to do with my growing pile of little black skeins?

Make a Kitty Cat Hat!

modeled by the gorgeous Marta. 

It is available in my etsy shop.  Meow.

And the amazing weather continues.

Yesterday....red.

A Good Day to Dye

Two glorious days of sunshine in a row.  A thing rarely encountered.

I took advantage of the sunshine (still quite cool, however) to test some new dyes.  I first saw Greener Shades, an organic acid dye that uses no heavy metals, at Rhinebeck.  All the people, sheep, fleece and yarn were so overwhelming in that fantastic, Rhinebeck-y way that I could hardly even begin to think about dyeing so I just made note and walked past their booth.  

Later I did think about it.  Plant dyes are still my favourites (is anything more witchy than boiling up a cauldron of twigs and leaves?  I think not.).  But there are some colours that are very difficult to achieve and plus, I like to experiment.  

I purchased the starter kit, which has 1/2 oz. of each colour they sell.  It arrived and that 1/2 oz looked so miniscule that I wondered about their claim that I could dye 13 lbs of wool with this kit.

Oh ye of little faith!

This stuff is powerful.

I dyed much more than the 3/4 lb that I imagined I would get - some fleece took up the dye more intensely than others.  I over-dyed some of my vast stock of yellow fleece to get some really nice greens.  I still have a pot of fleece sitting out to see how it does over time in the sun.

Definitely a different experience from the plant dyes, but I am impressed.

Impermanence: Proof Positive

One of my yoga teachers asked us what happened to the images our eyes take in - where do they go?  How real can what we see be if we can't really say what happens to those images.  One of my fellow teacher trainees had his existential crisis right on the spot.

But it is a question I think about, especially when I think about how we hold our past in us.   Where exactly is it?  And if we can't say where or even what it is, why is it so powerful?  What are we holding on to, exactly?

I thought about this when one of my best friends from high school whom I have just recently re-connected with via facebook (see, it does have some redeeming qualities) sent me this photo c. 1986.

So young, so chubby-cheeked!  But long gone.

Come Knit with Us!

On Saturday we will be participating in World Wide Knit in Public Day here in Corner Brook.  Along with 200 other groups around the world, knitters, spinners, and crocheters of all ages and abilities will step out of their usual knitting environment and knit together.  

We will gather at the gazebo on the Majestic Lawn at 1 p.m.  If the rain makes it too unbearable, we will find another place to hang out.  But don't sweat it - just come join us!

Lasagna and other Gardening Adventures

Fortunately for us, the gardening season in Newfoundland is slow to start.  I always fear that I have missed all the deadlines but really, no worries there.  It is still snowing in Labrador and we have had frost warnings for most of the week.  I asked a woman working in a greenhouse if I was too late to plant peas from seed and she laughed at me, "Winter just ended my dear!"  

I have some seeds and some onions to get in the ground.  No potatoes this year - couldn't find any seed potatoes.  Oh well, our neighbor will just have to buy his own this fall instead of stealing ours.

My lasagna beds from last year were full of dandelions and thistles but I weeded them and made one more bed and began to get some seedlings planted.  I am ever hopeful we will be able to actually reap the harvest this year.  It feels like nothing short of victory to get delicious vegetables out of the rocks that go around pretending to be soil here.

It can be overwhelming, however.  My non-lasagna bed that I spent three years just digging rocks out of and adding compost to is looking pretty nice - loaded with fat earthworms.  But the rocks keep coming and the alder trees encroach a little further every year.  I was nearly in tears after one particularly back-breaking weeding session.  It just felt so impossible to carve out a little space of controlled growth amid all this wild landscape.  I used to wonder at why people here would go to such trouble to cut down so many trees and put in a lawn around their house.  A lawn, for chrissakes!  Lawns are like deserts when it comes to local ecology.  I despair over lawns.

Yet, yesterday I finally understood.  This place is so intensely wild that to let everything just be as it is, right up to your front door would be an act of great courage or maybe insanity.  It's simply too much.

Perhaps all this is just me trying to justify that I finally broke down and purchased, used, and fell in love with, a lawn mower.

Special Hats

I love hats.  I love making hats.  I love that one skein of funky handspun yarn can make a funky, handspun hat.  

I make a lot of these hats but they have not been good sellers in my etsy shop.  I haven't figured out the right way to get them out into the world.  But perhaps I have finally tapped into a way.  One of our stops on our trip to pick up wool on Tuesday was at Neddie's Harbour Inn, an upscale inn on Bonne Bay in Gros Morne.  The owners asked me and Shawn to bring some of our wares for them to sell to their guests.  We each carried up some skeins of yarn and a few knitted items.  Since my inventory is next to nil at the moment, I quickly knit and crocheted up two hats using some yarn I purchased from a woman named Monte in New Mexico.  I love her yarns and I loved making these hats.  

Happily, the people at Neddie's Harbour Inn liked them too.

Heritage Wool

Yesterday, Shawn and I headed down the Northern Peninsula to Daniel's Harbour - about a 2.5 hour drive from Corner Brook.  To get there, we have to drive through Gros Morne, a World Heritage Site and National Park.  It is jaw-dropping beautiful, even with the grey, foggy weather.  Besides the amazing scenery, Gros Morne is famous for being home to many, many moose and it did not disappoint.

This was but one of the four moose we spotted on our drive (we also saw a fox with a rabbit in its jaws dash in to the bush).  This guy looks like a teenager who has just been kicked out of the house by his mom in his second summer - she has a new baby to care for so now this one is on is his own.  Later we saw a mother and very young baby - the smallest moose I have ever seen yet still the size of a pony.  It never fails to amaze to see these huge, awkward yet beautiful animals.

We were heading to Daniel's Harbour to collect 20 lbs of washed, uncarded wool from Newfoundland sheep raised there.  Well, we weren't collecting the wool directly from the sheep.  We were collecting it from a woman named Kay who runs a store in Daniel's Harbour and is a fellow fibre enthusiast.  

Shawn and I have been on the hunt for local wool for over a year now and this is our first success.  And what a success - the wool is gorgeous.  I might compare it to Shetland in qualities - not as fine as merino, not like Icelandic, nor as rough as Coopworth.  I spun a little on a spindle Kay had and it was definitely a keeper.  We are all looking forward to making yarn that we can say is 100% Newfoundand - Newfoundland wool, Newfoundland dyes, Newfoundland spun.  I think we are almost there.

Kay seemed to be happy to encounter two people who understood her excitement about all things wooly.  She said that her neighbors had started looking at her as if she had two heads with all her wool-related activities.  But we had a moment of true understanding - just smiling at each other.  We understand Kay, it's going to be alright.  And then Shawn and I gave her lots of tips for her new etsy shop (please check it out - she has wonderful, traditional Newfoundland knitted products).  

We gave her our dandelion dye recipe and we admired her many items for sale.

The yarn you see here is made from the same wool as we purchased yesterday.  Kay has it processed and dyed in PEI.  

Kay has gorgeous sweaters as well as quilts made by women in the community.  If you are passing through Daniel's Harbour, stop in and check it all out.  Her place is called "The Store" same as her etsy shop.

It is hard not to mention that yesterday, the temperatures were in the mid-40sF (around 5C).  It was quite windy as well.  In other words, it was COLD!  Hard to believe it is mid-June but then again, every year is like this - winter coats until the very end of June when you are just about to give up all hope of summer arriving.  It will, but it sure is short.

Here are some pictures of Daniel's Harbour.  A compelling place in its landscape, natural and otherwise.

I Love Uncle Scrooge

Over at Monkey Mind, James reminds us that today is Donald Duck's birthday.  I can never think about Donald and his family without thinking about this scene from Wilt Stillman's Last Days of Disco.

I'm no kindergarten teacher.

Sourdough Zazen

One lovely, if sometimes tricky, aspect of life in Gillams is the lack of schedule.  No racing out the door (mostly), few deadlines, and plenty of time to take on the things that are easy to push to the side when the day is filled with activities requiring hour-long subway rides and packed lunches.

One of the things that I lost along the way in the fall was my bread baking.  I could squeeze in the occasional focaccia but my sourdough starter was a non-starter.   It was rare that we enjoyed the delicious, unbeatable taste of homemade sourdough bread.

No so in Gilliams.  One of my first tasks was getting a new starter going.  Making a sourdough starter from scratch is quite simple but the number of ways it can go astray appear to be limitless, as I have learned through experience again and again.  So it is always with a little bit of wonder that I mix that first 1/2 cup of flour and 1/2 cup of water together.  

What will happen?  

One thing I have learned is that, even if it gets side tracked for a time, it will work out eventually.  Bread will happen, even if it is a good deal later than I had hoped or imagined.

Are you reading the metaphors for sitting zazen yet?

It is hard not to get metaphorical when dealing with sourdough.  Or zazen for that matter.

I am thinking metaphorically along these lines is because two of my friends and I are starting a sitting meditation group this summer and we have been discussing how to do it.  It turns out that my practice is the most "traditional" in that I am specifically attached to a Zen Center and following a specific tradition while my friends follow the teachings of a well-known Zen master but in a much more informal way.  

It also turns out that some might regard my practice as somewhat strict, although since I consider myself to be such a beginner it is hard not to laugh at applying this description to what I am up to.  I can appreciate, however, that what I am up to isn't for everyone and could even scare some people off.  So we are working out a sitting program that will be welcoming to all who might be curious without making them feel like they have entered something so foreign to their experience as to be completely off-putting.  

I think it is going to work out just fine, even if it doesn't evolve exactly as I might imagine.  

And it is so exciting to have a group to sit with, in whatever manner.  There is something so wonderful and powerful and mysterious in it.

We will just sit and let things ferment for a while.  Yum.

And here is a simple sourdough recipe, for those of a less metaphorical bent:

Begin by mixing 1/2 cup flour and 1/2 cup water together in a non-metal bowl large enough to hold at least four cups.  Let sit for 24 hours coved in plastic wrap (a damp cloth will work too but it has to be kept damp).  The next day, give the mixture a stir and add another 1/2 cup flour, 1/2 cup water and mix well.  Cover and let sit for 24 hours.  Repeat for another two days - you should notice bubbling and a fermenting smell that is not unpleasant.  If you start to get an unpleasant smell, dump out most of the starter and begin again using only about 2 TB of your original starter.

Once your starter is nice and bubbly and appears to be rising and falling with your additions of flour/water, you are ready to use it.  The night before you plan to bake, add 1 cup of flour to your starter.  It will lose its watery quality and become thicker - like a thick pancake batter.  Cover and let sit overnight (at least 8 hours).  In the morning, you should notice that it has risen and fallen and be very bubbly.  Stir it down and put all but about 2-3TB in a large mixing bowl.

To the remaining starter, add 1 cup flour and 1 cup water, mix well and cover.  If you don't plan on using it again within 48 hours, put it in the fridge where it will keep for a good long time.  You can re-activate it as above by adding flour/water the night before you plan to bake.

To the starter in the bowl, add 2 cups warm water.  Stir well.  Slowly begin to add flour, stirring it in completely as you add about 1/2 cup at a time.  After 1 1/2 cups have been added, add a TB of salt and stir well.  Continue to add flour until the dough begins to come away from the sides of the bowl.  Now, spread some flour on your counter top or kneading board and dump the dough out.  Knead while adding flour, but not too much - it should still be a little sticky.  When the dough is soft and resisiliant (like a baby's bottom!), then clean your mixing bowl, butter it up and put the dough in it.  Cover with a damp cloth and let sit for 2 hours.  It should double in size, approximately.  

After two hours are up, dump it out onto your counter again, knead and divide in two.  Let sit for 1/2 hour.  Then put into your bread pans (or floured bread baskets) and let rise for another two hours.  Pre-heat oven to 425F in the last 20 minutes or so of rising time.  After two hours, put the bread in the oven and let back for approx. 30 minutes.  May take longer or less time, depending on whether the bread is baking in a pan or freeform, etc..  Some people like to spritz the oven with water 3X during the first 9 minutes of baking, others like to put a pan of water on the bottom of the oven.  Both are intended to give a crispier crust.  

Try it out and see what you like.  Bread will happen, even if it isn't what you expected.

This Little Piggy...

Corner Brook inaugurated their Farmer's Market yesterday in grand style. The weather was perfect, the crowds plenty, the music excellent, and everyone was happy.

Our West Coast Craft Collective started out with two tables, but quickly grew to three to accommodate all our wares. Response was enthusiastic. It is clear that many people have been longing for something like this for many years. Congratulations to all who made it happen - and a huge thank you.

In foreground, hats and eco-bracelets by Knix Hand Knits.

Here we have felted soaps and boxes by ShannonAnn and fused glass garden birds by 

Urve Manuel at Stone's Throw Glassworks.

I didn't have much to sell myself, but happily most everyone else was selling at a nice pace. Plus it was simply nice to spend some time with the other people who make things here on the West Coast. Such a lovely group of people.

My small basket of yarn along with some Islandsweet knitting needles and yarn.

The market will pick up again on July 11 and continue weekly through October as produce comes in. This was just a kick-off event to generate some interest. I think it worked!

A Natural, Zesty Enterprise

Many dandelions were gathered yesterday - about 1/2 lb of flowers. I boiled them for about 1/2 hour then simmered for another 1/2 hour. The smell was not for those with allergies - just a word of warning. I strained out the flowers and added about 20 pennies to the pot. I had heard that the copper in pennies could serve as a mordant if you just drop them in the dye pot, so I took my chances. Then, a quick scan of our cupboards revealed some alum, so I put in about 2 TB, maybe a little more than that. It was all a bit hit or miss. While I admire those who can take on their dyeing with a scientific attention to detail, for me it is like drawing a straight line. I just can't do it, even when it is what I set out to do.

Anyhoo, I simmered 1/2 lb of BFL fleece and some mohair locks for about 1/2 hour, then let the pot cool off the stove. Voila! (The colour is actually much more intensely yellow than this photograph indicates - for some reason yellow is so difficult to photograph accurately).



The colour is especially welcome because all my dyed fleece is still in transit and I have had only white, morrit and black to work with as I prepare some yarns for the first ever Farmer's Market in Corner Brook this Saturday. The West Coast Craft Collective, as we are unofficially called, will have a table of wares. Islandsweet will be there, as will Knix Hand Knits, along with some others as well. Stop by any time from 10 am to 2 p.m. and say hello!

But back to the limited palette....it did inspire a very late entry to the etsyFAST team's May Challenge (is this a weekday?). The challenge was to make something based on a movie. One of my all-time, #1 favourite movies is The Big Lebowski. Pure genius, every minute of it. I made a yarn based on the Dude's sweater. If you are not familiar with the movie, I urge you to see it, but do not let a first viewing put you off. It often takes about three times to really understand the many layers of subtle nuance. My brother-in-law, who is completing his Ph.D. dissertation in education as we speak, has compared it to Shakespeare with a straight face.

What in God's holy name am I blathering about? Well, I'll tell you what I am blathering about...man...sir...





I also made a super twisty yarn using a Border Leicester/Alpaca blend. Both are in my etsy shop, or stop by the Farmer's Market on Saturday.



This is a yarn that is made from two bobbins of singles that Lucy spun and never did anything with. After making a couple skeins of my limited palette, I was jonesing for some colour (where my kool aid at?) and I found these two bobbins. Desperate, I asked Lucy if I could ply them together, come what may. She agreed, although I am not sure if she is selling this skein or not. It was actually very inspiring to take more chances with colour - the random plying experience worked out so beautifully.


I happily await my packages of dyed wool. Please come soon!

Throughout Space and Time

Somehow defying space and time, I am sitting on the couch in Gillams. Never left, it seems. Or so it especially seemed as we arrived to find our dear, dear friend Olive in the house, making a fire in the woodstove and setting up a delicious, homemade lunch so that we felt not only welcomed but as if we never left.

Each year our trip back takes on a new flavour. Last year I remember it was one of hardship - the house had encountered difficulties over the winter and it was hard to turn the wheels that had to be turned to make improvements.  Everything generally felt like it was slightly off. This year, however, has been much more dreamlike. It truly feels like we just popped away for a weekend and now we are back with only that slight jog in between. Of course, that jog was much more than a weekend and it boggles my mind to think of all the activities we managed to cram into those nine months in New York.

Then, there are things like seasons that help confuse us and suggest that we have breached the time/space continuum. Here is Sunnyside on May 27th:



Here is Gillams on May 30th:



Things are rapidly getting greener, but it is clear that, if anything, we have been moving backwards in time.

As if to add to that sense, here are Finn and Lucy exploring an ancient relic from days long past...

They were quite amused by this quaint antiquity.

Here they are slightly less amused, as it is about 10 p.m. on Friday while we wait to board the overnight ferry in North Sydney, NS, after 12 hours in the car.  I won't even post the picture of Dan.  It would be near impossible to even whisper the word "amused" at his shadow at that point.  He was not a happy traveler.

The cafeteria in the ferry terminal.  There was something so....I dunno....post modern about it all.  

For myself, I was cheered up greatly upon arriving at the ferry terminal, despite North Sydney being one of the most depressing cities on earth.  It was the first time we saw license plates from Newfoundland and Labrador and the first time there were clusters of people standing around talking and laughing, speaking Newfoundese, as Finn calls it.  Ahhhhh....home at last!

The requisite pictures of the Tim Hortons in Port aux Basques.  We gladly stopped there in the morning after the ferry across and slurped up our steeped tea and coffee.  Never has fast food caffeine tasted so good.  (And thank you, Helen, for your explanation of caffeine from my previous post.  I knew I could count on you!)

A typical day in Port aux Basques.  We saw an RV in line for the ferry in North Sydney that was called "The Sun Seeker," giving us many laughs.  If it's sun yer after b'y, I'd turn around right quick!  Of course, that isn't really true, as the sun is shining brightly today.  But it was cold and rainy the whole trip north, so we had a more jaded attitude at that point.

Speaking of jaded attitudes....

One lovely new development in our absence has been a weekly get-together of knitters at a new cafe in Corner Brook.  Lucy and I eagerly attended this week's gathering, where an amazing lace shawl - with bead work! - was displayed.  Fourteen knitters showed up.  We had local tea and homemade sweets to supplement our conversation and knitting. Very nice.  Very, very nice.

And today, I am experimenting with dyeing with dandelions, among other activities.  From a resource perspective, it seems like a sustainable idea.

On Packing and the Colour of Caffeine

This is our one day set aside to pack up before heading out in the morning tomorrow. My list is growing longer with each thing I check off of it. How is that possible?

In the meantime, Finnian has decided that this is the best moment to start asking important questions like, "what is the colour of caffeine?" and "why does bees wax burn longer than other types of wax?". Yes, these are very important questions to be answered (if only I knew the answers!) but we will have 24 hours in a car to thoroughly explore the physical properties of caffeine. Today, however, we have: laundry, yarn labeling and shipping, fleece, clothes and spinning supplies packing, cleaning up the basement, post office run, and.....

If questions are your thing right now, I urge you to check out this blog that I have been enjoying immensely since I discovered it a couple of months ago. He always gives me something to think about while I check things off my list.

A Moment of Madness

Last summer we had our front foyer re-done. When we moved in, it had been painted to look like a half ruined, Etruscan fresco, which tried to take advantage of the actual half ruined state of the plaster walls. Dan was never a great fan of it but I liked it for its strangeness and because I love any attempt people make to bring a sense of the hand into unusual places. After almost ten years with our Etruscan ladies disintegrating in our foyer, the piles of shoes and scooters, baseball bats and what-have-you started to overwhelm the space. There were times when the front door could hardly open, blocked by the piles of stuff. It seemed like bad feng shui if nothing else.

So we had the walls re-plastered and put in a shallow cabinet with shelves for shoes and a bin for hats and mitts.





Clean and functional. No Etruscans but no clutter either. I eagerly volunteered to paint the foyer last September. And then, whoosh, life happened. So it was that a couple of months ago Dan made a bet with me that I would go back to Newfoundland and the foyer still would not be painted. Perhaps he knows me too well. Reverse psychology works like a charm - all he has to do is suggest that I can't do something and, let me tell you, that thing is done. Actually now that I think of it, this may have been his master plan all along. Played like a grand piano! Ah well...

What he didn't expect was that I would have moment of madness in that little foyer.




And, I won the bet!

Sharecropper

When we first moved into our house in Sunnyside, one of the greatest benefits was the little back garden space. It had become overgrown by the previous tenants and owners, but slowly over time I managed to beat back the weeds and forge a tiny sliver of paradise. I took a mostly laissez faire approach, allowing plants to grow where they wanted to, but with some re-arranging if necessary.

For the last several years, however, we have been in Newfoundland for nearly half the year and the Sunnyside backyard has been woefully neglected. I try to make up for the months of absence in mid-September, but really, it is an impossible task. Here are some unwelcome guests to our garden this spring:



The demon pokeweed. A plant who manages to grow a root as thick as my wrist while the shoot above ground is barely 8" tall. This one is already demanding a shovel to get rid of it. And those damn berries that stain everything in sight but are completely useless as an actual plant dye..there are.simply no redeeming qualities to this plant unless you consider the test of character they elicit a good thing. Which I don't.



Ah yes, bamboo. Many years ago our neighbor, being an experimental type, planted bamboo. When it overran their garden, he got rid of it, but not before it crossed into our yard. When we moved in, it had taken over literally half our yard (granted the "yard" is only about 17'x20' but all the more reason to never plant bamboo in it). With the assistance of a neighbor who took on the task of digging it up as some kind of personal mission, we managed to rid ourselves of the bamboo. Now, ten years later...it's BAAACK. I could cry.



And finally, in the pantheon of "what were you thinking" plants to bring into a tiny garden, Japanese Honeysuckle. Sure it smells lovely and the kids like to drink the nectar from it, but it, too, is a demon plant from hell. I managed to dig out all the roots in our garden, but my neighbors were not up for such a task so each year I had to be vigilant about keeping it out. As you can see, it has wasted no time in making itself comfortable once again.

It is because I know I can do little to really stop this invasion that makes it so frustrating. In six days we are out of here and the mice will play, or in this case, the bamboo, honeysuckle and pokeweed.

Enter Leah Gauthier and Sharecropper.

Somewhere I happened across Leah's webpage and read about her project, Sharecropper. She is adopting various plots of ground all around the five boroughs of NYC and turning them into mini farms that she and a crew of volunteers will maintain and tend. Here is how she describes her project:

"Leah will be using organic growing methods to plant rare and endangered heirloom vegetables and herbs, and to cultivate wild edibles on parcels of donated land or growing spaces located in each of the five boroughs. A portion of the harvest will be shared with local soup kitchens, and series of interactive cooking performances around the city are being planned."

When I read about Leah's project, my first thought was "sign me up!" And so I wrote her a note and we emailed back and forth and in a couple of weeks, Leah will be digging and planting in our backyard. I am very excited to be part of her project and to have our little garden once again functioning as something more than a weed growing facility.

And just so you know, I did warn her that things had become, ahem, a little overgrown.

Saying Thank You

Back in March, I organized a small group of homeschoolers to come by the ZCNYC to learn about Zen.  Shugen Sensei met us at the door and gave a wonderful introduction to the history and philosophy behind Zen.  Then we went into the zendo and he led everyone through a short introduction to zazen.  Fortunately we had two lively children - a brother and sister - who asked and answered lots of questions.  Most everyone else seemed a little intimidated by the newness of it all.  Their quiet demeanor did not reflect a lack of interest - I had lots of very good feedback that almost leads me to believe we could do another visit to keep the conversation going (but I will tread lightly here - I don't want to be seen as a Zen pusher, which are two words that do not go together well at all!).  

About three days before the visit, it occurred to me that we should offer some kind of donation in thanks for taking up Shugen's time.  I am usually a little slow off the mark like that.  In any case, I was not really prepared when the day came and went.  But it also occurred to me that among this group were many excellent knitters.  In fact, everyone was a knitter.  And I had some left over yarn from my Lion Brand window project. So, voila!  A thank you gift was born.

I divvied out some yarn to each family to knit into a piece that could be a size and design of their own choosing.





After I collected all the pieces, I put them together and crocheted a border. Some of the blocks were quite fancy!





I hope it will keep residents and visitors warm for years to come.

Turn On A Dime

This morning we were supposed to go on a Big Onion Walking Tour over the Brooklyn Bridge with a group of homeschoolers. We signed up well over a month ago and I have been looking forward to it ever since. I haven't walked over the bridge in years and years and F&L never have. The weather seems to have received the memo, because it is shining and glorious. But Finn woke up with a host of cold-like symptoms and a flushed face, so that plan had to be scrapped (it is NOT swine flu!). Beyond the disappointment was the money I had spent on the tickets. But what is to be done? People get sick and need to rest, not hike over a bridge. So it goes.

Fortunately there were a couple of other things that could be done today: laundry, post office, garden, finishing up an afghan for ZCNYC (pictures tomorrow!) and more. And I am still planning on heading to Wave Hill later today to meet up with Jennifer McGregor, the curator of their visual art programs. There may be a project afoot....

One of the beauties of homeschooling is that we can turn on a dime and adjust our schedule without too much muss and fuss. And a day at home, especially a gorgeous, sunny one, is always welcome.

(Some sweet-smelling Lily of the Valley found in a cool, shady spot in the backyard.)