nemo ignorat

A Pennant for The Gathering of Dreams

I am not a well organized person. Especially not when it comes to art or craft. I usually get the feeling, I want to make something and then let this feeling and the accompanying thoughts mature until all is penned up like in a pressure cooker. And shortly before the valve bursts open or the cooker explodes, I begin with a project and then just make it. It feels just right at this stage. 
Which is fine by me but when it comes to documenting my projects I really suck.
When Mo asked me if I wanted to participate in her "I Dream of a World Where Love is the Answer"-Gathering I spontaneously accepted. Got the silk and then froze. I was confronted with a specific topic. And as much as I think that only Love can be the answer, I usually am a way too realistic and pessimistic person to actually think, something some artists make can change anything. But I accepted the challenge and worked with it. 

I am a linguist. I do not work in the field anymore but that's what I learned and breathed and lived for quite some time. That is what I am. A scientist. Of Words. And a philosophy minor. So thinking about the word 'Love' and what it means was my natural way to work on this challenge. (You see, my work is either completely worked out by my subconscious processes or my well-organized brain works very methodically on a problem. Contrary to my assessment above.) 

So, what is Love? When you think about it, love is a concept. And a rather broad one at that. Love can be so many things. Love for the country, love for the world, love for a specific person or even an object. But this still does not narrow it down. So my thoughts went to what the concept Love my encompass. 

To me "Love" is a like an embrace. The concept "Love" embraces so many other concepts: generosity, humility, selflessness, caring, compassion, kindness, altruism, care and comfort and trust. Love is the opposite of Fear. If you love someone or something, you want to let it run loose, set it free (thanks Sting) and you will trust in it. 

Since I am German, I wanted to make it in German. German might be a rather unwieldy language but it is great when it comes to concepts. Especially philosophical concepts. Using a word does not simplify this word or reduce it to just one meaning. Meaning is something rather complex and even if we use words like 'table' we envision different things in our minds when we hear it. It might mean more than just the furniture. Along with a special image of a special furniture, a person might connect it to a certain feeling, connected to other people or situations. Now, if a word like table can contain so many different things for a person, imagine what a word like 'Love' may contain. And now imagine what all the other concepts, a word like 'Love' may contain. 

Somehow, I ended up with 'Selbstlosigkeit' (selflessness), 'Mitgefühl' (sompassion) und 'Geborgenheit' (care and comfort, safety and protection). When you love someone or something, you feel compassion, act selfless and this love may give you comfort and protection. 

I added some onion dyed cotton, used different silk thread dyed in indigo, madder and logwood. There is a lot of madder, because madder is of the Earth. And I just love the earthy part of its colour. 

Let's all protect this broken world. Feel compassionate for her well-being and for the beings living on her and be selfless about it. Step outside of the Dream and just Love. 

hand working

I know, for most of you this is old news. You all had your own thoughts about this topic many times over. But some things take a while to mature.

Yesterday, I was talking with a friend about crafts, DIY in general and sewing in special, and we were musing about working by hand in contrast to working with a machine. Although I actually own several sewing machines, I rarely ever use them.  (1 treadle, 1 hand cranked, 1 simple electric from India with only straight stiches and 1 40 year old Husqvarna, more like a tractor under the sewing machines, most of them with very personal stories behind them.) I learned sewing on machines when I was in school (around 10 or so) and later my mother insisted I take a sewing class when I was around 14. Mother and I had very different approaches to teaching, learning and crafting in general.

But I think, it is good that I learned sewing properly it helped me later when I started making my own clothes. My father taught me how to repair things. He was the one who taught me how to sew on a button. And I think it is good that I learned that too. 

Later on, mother's machine approach to crafting lost me. She had a knitting machine, the treadle machine was hers and she had an electric as soon as she could afford it. (My parents loved machines. They had an electric bread cutter, one of those fancy kneading/mixer/etc. kitchen appliances, automatic bread maker, they even had an egg cooker and electric knives and can openers and juicer and what not. The amount of kitchen machinery alone was mind boggling. Add to this the whole DIY shebang my father had and you can imagine, they needed a rather large house.) For a time, making her work easier with machines even made sense. After the war, she earned money by sewing shirts and dresses for other people. So she needed a productive method to work. (That was were the treadle machine came in. Electricity was rare in the late 40s, early 50s and she got it on food stamps she collected from the whole family.) She had two children (my brother, I came way later.) a husband and her parents to look after, cloth and feed. So everything that helped her getting things done faster was good. 

But later, when there were only my parents and me left (my grand parents were dead and my brothers moved out), she still favoured machines over everything else. She even had a rotary iron. (Our cat just loved to sleep on the still warm, freshly pressed bed sheets.) 

Me on the other hand always favoured doing things by hand. Yes, I learned how to use the machines and for a while I've sewn on the treadle, and I even used the Husqvarna for another while. (I got the Husqvarna in trade for a sofa from my flat mate's  mother who was a craft teacher in school.) I do have a washing machine and thank all Gods of Invention that someone came up with that thing. Hubby has a tendency to machines as well. So for a while we shared our kitchen space with one of those coffee makers (where you fill in whole beans and water and push a button to make real espresso). Over time I got rid of some of the machines again (except the washing machine). I have one of those espresso makers (the ones you put on the oven), a hand cranked bread cutter (hubby insisted on some kind of help, he is hopeless with a bread knife) and when push comes to shove, I choose to do tasks by hand. 

I always thought this was because I don't like the noise those machines make. They are all so incredibly loud. But - and here I resume my tale from the beginning of the entry - when I talked with my friend about sewing by hand and kntting by hand and favouring the spindle over the spinning wheel, I realised it was not the noise.

Yes, the noise is one factor but my main reason not to use machines is because I feel I am only handling a machine not sewing or knitting or spinning. When I sew by hand, my main goal is sewing. I sit whereever I like and I have a needle and thread and the stuff I want to sew. When I have a long straight seam, I like the help of a third hand but lacking a piece of furniture where I can attach it, I can use my feet to keep the seam straight and tight. I can even pin a piece of fabric to my trousers and tighten the seam this way. In short, I don't need anything else but the bare necessities. But when I sew on the machine, I am glued to one place which needs to be ideal. It needs an electric outlet, more space, should not be too high or too low and so on and basically I am just the machinist. Yes, this is oversimplifying the task of sewing on a machine but still, it is more about the machine than the sewing. 

But nevertheless, since I do have all those machines (the sewing machines, the spinning wheels, even my mother's knitting machine) I always think I should use them. Be more productive. I could do so much more than by hand. 

This talk yesterday made me realise that all this huffing and hemming about the machine assortement in my house is unnecessary. I now had over 40 years time to get not only aquainted with them but befriend them, make use of them, in short, be the machinist. And I didn't. When I think about sewing or knitting or spinning, I take my needles or my spindle and begin. Just like that. So maybe it is time to part from some of the machines. Find them a new home where they will be used.

I am a hand crafter. I will always prefer manual tools over machines. I am not running aroung naked, even hubby has enough clothes to wear and we are not freezing in bed because the next quilt takes a whole longer. I am a hand crafter, I can take my time and do things the way I feel best. 

Indigo vat refreshing

Since it is getting warm now, I began refreshing my outdoor indigo vat. It's a 230 L vat, so it would be quite a hassle to replace it completely. Which means, each spring I remove the mud and particles from the bottom. Usually I use a pond net but the netting didn't survive the winter and I wanted to fish out the sludge yesterday so I improvised with a kitchen sieve. 

I place the sludge on some paper and let it dry out. The sludge consists of oxidised indigo and decomposed hydrosulfite and calcium hydroxide. The latter both would not be good in my garden and it is better not to strain the sewage system with it. Another reason why removing the sludge and replenishing the vat is the more environmentally conscious choice than replacing it. 

Once dried, I can safely throw it in the trash. In Germany, we don't use landfills but energy from waste plants where the non-compostable and non-recyclable waste is incincerated to produce heat for district heating and electricity from steam. The slag is used to build streets. It's not a 100% but better than landfills at any rate. 

Today, I will try to fish out sediment that settled down since yesterday and then I will replenish the vat with some fresh water, indigo, calcium hydroxide and hydrosulfite. Since it takes about a day to reduce the oxygen in such a large vat, it will be ready to use by tomorrow. 

And here you can see our new dog Bolt inspecting the sludge. 

He moved in almost three weeks ago. He is from the shelter, about 4 - 5 years old, of unknown origin. We only know that he spent most of his life in two different shelters, has been adopted last year and brought back only a few weeks later. And he was exactly the person I was looking for. 

After mum and Ramses died in January, I fell into a very deep hole. For the past 14 years most of my life concentrated around taking care for my parents. After mum went to live in the nursing home, Ramses got sick and then all of a sudden both people were gone. And I was feeling very lost. Hubby and I spent a week in Paris, which was great. But I still missed a dog in my life, so as soon as we got back from France, I went to shelters to find one. And I came home with him. 

And I am beginning to feel complete again. Not entirely but we're working on it. 

My main goal this year will be the house. I didn't have the heart to sort through my mum's stuff while she was still living. Which is what I am doing right now. And which is very exhausting. Finding all the old letters and pictures, deciding what to keep and what to throw out. It takes a toll. And the whole bureaucratic stuff is still not finished. So I divide my days. I sort a bit through the flat, wash some wool on mum's stove and clean the garden a bit. This way, the whole way down memory lane is not getting too exhausting and overwhelming. And having a reason to get out in the woods again is helping as well. 

diversion

In the midst of inner turmoil and outer chaos, I needed to get creative. 

I made some lanterns from champagne coupes, I found in my mother's cupboard. I have no idea why my parents ever needed some of these but here they were and I love lanterns with tea light candles. So I painted them and although they don't look like much in daylight they are actually quite nice in darkness. 

The paper roses are for the funeral tomorrow. I could not bring myself to buy actual roses for the grave. I buy regional, local and seasonal and all flowers have to be imported from South America or some African country in this season. And I didn't want that. So I made some paper roses from crêpe paper, silk paper and wire. My mum was a kindergardener and she was always crafting something. So it should be ok for her as well. I asked the gardener/florist who will provide the wreath to use seasonal appropriate plants. We'll see how this will work out. 

it's been a while

And a lot happened. 

For the past year I was mostly a carer. For my mum and since October for my dog as well. And over the past months, both deteriorated more and more. Until last wednesday, I had to put my dog to sleep. Around 2, I cam home from the vet. Cried, mourned and felt only sad and empty. When a phone call from the nursing home came that my mum had a collaps and I should come. And so I accompanied her to her end a while later. 

Both were the centre of my activities and attention for the past months and now there is nothing. Which makes me feel a little lost. Lost in my way, lost in my focus. 

Right now, I'm organizing the funeral and all the other bureaucratic things one has to do when someone dies. And I began emptying my mother's flat. Yes, I could have done it already while she was in the nursing home. But somehow, it didn't seem right. I had asked my brothers to come and look if they wanted something. But the bulk of my mothers stuff is still here. And what amount of stuff. Not interesting and/or precious. Just stuff. Piles of magazines (yes, stacked neatly and collected in boxes but still piles). Already I moved boxes over boxes in nice clothes to a charity. Together with boxes full of cook books. Nothing against cook books, I like them as well, but my mother's taste was totally different from mine and in the end, she just bought them indiscriminately. Whatever book was new, she bought. Some were still wrapped in foil. She was not a messy. She always had someone to clear up and clean (mostly it was me) but she was a hoarder of stuff. And no, I was never allowed to throw anything out. And now, I am drowning in her stuff. 

And I miss my dog. I'm a dog person. I love to have a reason to walk. I miss our daily 10 - 15 km. I miss his (attentive) presence. And although I always said, I didn't like walking. I miss it. So much that I walk into town to get some execise. Though it is not about sports. It's about the movement per se. The walking or cycling, the not being still, the not being motion-less. I didn't live without a dog now for nearly 20 years. Or more precisely, I lived with dogs since I was 6 with only a few years break in between. And now there is none. 

On friday is my mother's funeral. I'm looking forward to getting a sense of closure. 

Katazome students

Yesterday two students visited me for a short dye day in inidgo. They wanted a peek into katazome dyeing and so I showed them how to prepare the paste, apply it through stencils and dye. It all takes some while and we had only a few hours so we concentrated on two projects. From my stash one of them got inspired to try some itajime shibori as well. Luckily it was warm and sunny and the paste dried in a jiffy. 

paisley stencil with some freehand tsutsugaki

snowflakes stencil with some ornament

some etudes in itajime shibori ... it reminded us all of an x ray

Mother went from bad to worse and back to bad again. But she is stable now and she still has her iron constitution. Nursing her at home was no longer an option and we got lucky and found a place in a very nearby nursing home some 3 weeks ago now. It's only at the end of the street about half a mile away so I can go and visit her at any time. Her memory of the last 30 years is almost completely gone and I'm sure if I wouldn't visit her so often, she would forget me as she forgets my brothers. (She remembers there were other kids but she doesn't remember anything about them.) But they were able to mobilize her a bit again, so she can have some meals in the common rooms, meet other people and take part in some activities like singing or even crafting. If she has to or wants to stay in bed the whole day, she is much better cared for than I could. They have the resources and the people to help with changing her position, getting her out of bed (without heaving her 80 kg all alone from bed to commode) and doing all the little things. The nursing bed alone is incredible technology. 

It was a hard decision and I'm still not absolutely content with it. But the care she gets in the nursing home is way better. 

It was shocking to see her going from ok and celebrating her 90th one day to being pain riddled and not being able to move or be moved to loosing her mind, her personality and everything that made her her in just two weeks. We got the pain under control. And since she doesn't even remember all her surgeries any more she doesn't have any pain either. The mind is a wonderful and a scary thing. And it's scary to see it going. Not scary for my mother. She knows somehow that she lost memories but it doesn't really bother her. I am scared. I'm scared of the prospect that this can happen to anyone anytime. 

And I'm thinking a lot.

And since you can work and think at the same time, I began working on some long neglected projects. Like our garden. Germany is a country with a high density population, so neighbours are those people who live only a few metres away from you. And some don't like it when leaves and twigs grow over the fence onto their property. Most ignore it or cut them just away but some are more rigid and meticulous and no excuses. 

But I had to accept that there were too many too rambling plants in my garden. And since every careful and controlled weeding would not lead to any success, I accepted the necessity of a more tabula rasa approach. 

And now my poor garden looks like this:

garden wasteland

I'm going to save our offended neighbour from being forced to look at our (insert expletives here) garden any longer by adding a little, very much law conforming, privacy fence on our common border. After errecting the provacy fence, the wasteland will be rebuild with some native shrubs and a new elder tree (the old one had to be killed thanks to the neighbour) and I found a little wild plum (Zibarte, a very old native subspecies of Prunus domestica) which will find a new place as far away from any border as possible. I will need to regrow some kind of larger tree as a substitute for the Sawara cypress which I might will have to cut down sometime in the future. Hopefully, it won't come to this since it is populated with many birds and insects but I want to make sure that there is a substitute ready should it come to it.

And I still have a small cornelian cherry (Cornus mas, another very old native shrub species) in a container which will be able to root her feet into real ground now. The wasteland will regrow. 

Online class 2016 canceled

I am sorry to inform you that I will have to cancel my online class on dyeing and printing cotton and linen with natural dyes. 

My mother just turned 90 this month and since her last stay in hopital, she is now strictly confined to her bed. Although I have help in form of nurses who come twice a day to get her to the toilet and wash her, life got much more interesting for me since then. I am running my German class right now, which is fun and interesting and all that but it showed me how exhausting it is too, with class work and care for my mother. I had to ackloedge to myself that I won't be able to do both for a while now. 

So with a heavy heart, I am cancelling the class. 

In case I forgot to refund someone, please contact me per mail. 

I will go on posting in this blog once in a while, so stay tuned. 

Studio finally in working order

Over the last two months I scrabbed plaster, painted (with the help of a wonderful friend who sacrificed her precious saturday afternoons for me) and schlepped more things into my new attic space than I ever imagined. Finally, the new studio is (more or less) finished. At least there are shelves, the books are all there (Did I mention the schlepping? And I'm still missing about a ton of magazines which are hopefully still buried somewhere in the basement storage), most of my fabrics, my tools (except for the BabyMac folding 4 shaft loom and my treadle sewing machine - they are both still in the basement ... more schlepping) and at least the weaving yarn are all in the studio now. I already baptized my new office space by printing and binding 11 books that were ordered before christmas. And the 160 L container for the new indigo vat is already in the bath and ready to go. 

I still don't have the dye space finished. But I needed a break from schlepping things from the basement and the second floor upstairs. Unfortunately, most of my dye stuff is in the garden shed (nee garage) and involves some more metres and stairs. 

All in all, it was a revelation. I had no suprises when it came to stash. No, OMG, I didn't know I had this-moment. Only one book double (which was a fitting gift for my friend.) My biggest surprise, though, was the quantity. When most of your things are being packed away in closets and boxes, stashed in the basement and all around your flat, you loose sight for the sheer amount of things. Seeing everything all together in one space was quite a shock. As I said, there were no surprises about the single items, just the sheer amount of undyed fabric I collected over the time. Some of them are vintage and quite beautiful, some are new from the remnants box of my favourite fabric shop and some are just that, vintage, undyed, white (mostly) bed sheets and pillows. Great for a lot of things. A lot of people just donated me their unused white bed linens. You know, the densely woven white cotton fabric. Beautiful quality most of it. Some with embroidery most without. 

And this is how it looks right now

general room arrangement on the left side there is the weaving space and on the right side, the larger part, is the work table

loom side

workspace

the best feature, a huuuuge work table with great natural lighting - 2 square metre sturdy work table. Just for me, no need to empty it before every meal. Isn't that great?

as you can see, it still isn't pretty. I don't know if it ever will be pretty. But it's rather large, there is still room left in the shelves and room to maneuvre. There is still a lot to do but I couldn't help myself and began arranging for warping the rigid heddle yesterday late afternoon. I'm planning some scarves for a while now and am looking forward to actually weaving them. 

Next thing I have to do is sewing some curtains. It took me a while to figure out a mode of mounting that won't look too aargh and doesn't involve those ugly blinds. And before it actually gets cold (if it gets cold this winter, who knows) I will need a curtain in front of the kitchen/dye area because I know from past experience this can be a rather cold spot in this flat. And I will need another insulating curtain in front of the door opening towards the stair case. Our house was build in the 60s and they used concrete blocks (good, great insulating factor) and glass bricks (bad, next to no insulation). But since it has three storeys and a huge stair case from ground to roof with glass bricks on two sides, the stair case insulation is next to not exsisting. On the other hand, exchanging it with insulation glass is not affordable. So, we just live with additional curtains in front of our appartement doors. The appartments themselves are rather well insulated. Weird combo but that's the 60s for you. 

I wish you all a wonderful and creative new year. I am just happy that I can begin working again. 

It took only 50 years

As a child, although I always loved fall, I hated having my birthday in late Novembre. It was too late and usually too cold to have one of those great outdoor parties and it was too early to have snow (another reason to go outside). I love snow and I always wanted snow on my birthday. Never got it. But as the saying goes: good things come to those who wait. And I waited only 50 years for it ;o)

Last night, it snowed. It was not a great snow, too wet and heavy, and it didn't stay but it snowed.

Tonight, the dogs above smiled on me.

 

Fall

This year, I can pinpoint the exact moment when we moved into fall. It was yesterday morning at 6:10 a.m. I was wandering through the woods, when all of a sudden a gush of wind came up and the leaves suddenly fell down. At first, I thought it began to rain but it was the rustling of the falling leaves. It took them most of the day but this morning, every inch of ground was covered in leaves. Still nice and orange and yellow with some reddish flecks, not wet and damp and brown yet. A day to savor. Tomorrow the day will be filled with the WHOOOOOs of leaf blowers and the scratching noise of rakes and brooms. But today we can still walk ankle deep in rustling leaves, shuffling them with every step.