Fiber Artist In Residence

Day 57: Just so nobody thinks I'm slackin' off during the pandemic, I thought I'd pull a few of my current projects together for a group photo, emphasis on the words "a few." There are others which, for want of space, simply couldn't be accommodated, like spinning, weaving on the floor loom, piecework for another quilt. I do not believe in letting my hands rest idle unless they are holding a book or puzzle, and as I have said repeatedly to friends of late, I have the attention span of a nervous gerbil. Some processes demand longer stints of activity than others, but many of these crafts are such that I can do a row here, a few throws there, fifty stitches in another place and then move on to something else. This keeps me from getting bored (a mood I fall into all too easily), and a bored Crow is a cranky Crow, and a cranky Crow should really come with a big red warning label.

A bit of backstory here: one of the first full-time jobs I ever held was that of art-needlework consultant for a chain of three stores on the east coast. I was already well-versed in many forms of needlework, although at the time, I leaned more heavily toward knitting than anything else. It was during my employment that I learned to tat with a shuttle, rounding out a knowledge base of the most common types of needlcraft. As I matured, I kept searching out other needlework methods: tvistsom, Russian knotwork, netting, cardweaving. Admittedly, I found that I didn't enjoy each as much as the others, and some were abandoned forevermore (I will never be a fan of macrame, although I love marlinespike work). For the most part, I prefer to work with finer threads than with yarn, although knitting still ranks among my favourite pastimes, and when I do crochet, I seldom use a thread larger than size 30. Weaving, whether on the floor loom or my small rigid heddle, is also high on the list. It is a rare day when I don't have a knitting project in progress or the big loom stands empty.

So...to the details, then. My living space has been occupied with one quilt or another for at least the last four years straight, so the Hexagons form an appropriate background for (top left, going counterclockwise): kumihimo (beaded), crochet (a pineapple tablecloth motif using ecru vintage thread), peg-loom knitting, rigid-heddle weaving, nalbinding (an Ugly Yarn project), knitting, and last, hanging on an inprompu loom in front of the fireplace bricks, sprang (again using the Ugly Yarn seen in the nalbinding legwarmers). Ya think I have enough to keep me busy for a while?