An Snag Breac Beo

Productive Features

2012-01-25T05:11:00.000-08:00

I've been researching some products in our kitchen shelves for tips on craft-kit-instruction-writing. This one is particularly inspiring. Who knows what it really means...dry mix can be? Amazing.

Mustache tester needed!

2012-01-18T03:48:00.000-08:00

Everyone needs a good selection of fake mustaches. In fact my sister even has a dedicated storage box for her hair-pieces (labeled: Mustaches, Wigs, Beards, etc.) With this in mind, and knowing that there is no nicer material for wearing against one's skin than some lovely soft merino felt, I bring you, the Mustache Needle Felting Kit.

You can now craft your very own selection of mustaches....from the classics, like the handlebar (at top) or the walrus (at bottom), or mustaches made famous by characters from fiction...Poirot (second from top), Captain Hook (second from bottom) and Fu Manchu (on mask below.)

(Someone is not very happy with his mustache selection.)

So, I need one of you lovely people to test my kit for me.

I will send one lucky reader a free mustache kit.

You can only enter if:

a) you have never needle-felted before,

and b) you can commit to doing the test and sending me detailed feedback within a week of receiving the test in the post.

To enter, just write a comment below before next Wednesday the 25th Jan, and on that day I will pick a name out of a hat.

We can all become distinguished gentlemen.

Sketchbook Project

2012-01-07T03:42:00.000-08:00

Here is a video from Art House Co-op in the Brooklyn Art Library about the Sketchbook Project, featuring my sketchbook as one of their favourites!

For some reason, blogger is cutting off the right hand side but you can click here or on the name of the video above to view it on You Tube.

Winter Solstice already?

2011-12-21T02:28:00.000-08:00

Oh dear, suddenly its been three weeks since I last posted. Life has gotten busy, as it does this time of year. As usual, the busier my life, the more neglected the blog!

And it has been very busy, with builders digging up the entire garden...

...trying to get out for wintry walks and enjoy what little sunny patches there are...

...keeping watchful of snow and ice... (after last year's confinement the freezer and fridge are permanently well-stocked)

...posting out Etsy orders and doing a craft fair too...

...sampling cupcakes at aforementioned craft fair...mmmmm...

...and finally, getting a bit festive and decorating the house. And cat.

Well, I can imagine I won't get back here for a while, so happy solstice/christmas/hannukah/new year/whatever to you all!

Wovember Giveaway Results

2011-11-30T11:05:00.000-08:00

And the winner is...

Ivy Black! Do send me an email at ansnagbreac at gmail dot com and we can arrange delivery of the Sheep Kit.

Thank you all for your comments. It was really interesting to hear the different wools you all use and imagine beach-going sheep!

Photos from onlocation

2011-11-29T02:34:00.000-08:00

As mentioned before, the brief behind this exhibition was to create a wearable object to do with place, be that an actual place or imaginary ones.

Erika Marks, a jeweller and silversmith, who curated the show, made this beautifully embroidered belt, pictured below.

I'm afraid the colours didn't come out too well - it is a rich blue and mossy green map of the world, with an orange embroidered line showing Erika's path around the world, places she's lived and travelled too. It made me want to map my own path.

Wendy Louise Knight, a milliner, made this sewn, knitted and crocheted baby-carrier, filled with memories of places she'd been with her family, holidays and trips to the beach in a camper van.

Jelena Fischer produced this delicate and beautiful necklace, which looked like a collection of driftwood and beach-combings. It was made of hemp twine and porcelain pieces, in response to "my personal geography, the tracks I make."

Daniele Vesque made these giant wings, which cast shadows like line-drawings on the wall behind, inspired by dreams of flying.

Naomi Draper, a glass artist, made this mesh of knitted wire and glass beads with lichen threaded through. It can be worn as a collar and took inspiration from the forest park at Lough Key.

This dress was made by fashion designer Eileen Abbott, inspired by ancient symbols of life.

Soraya Ricalde, another jeweller, made this copper and red silk neck-piece inspired by the colours and shapes of the river walk in Dromahair, Co. Leitrim.

And finally, my own piece was made as a bag with attached torch that viewers could look inside. There were two small leather eye-holes on the front - one for looking, the other to shine the torch through.

Inside was a miniature felted scene, made from Shetland wool (with a tiny bit of merino for the green.)

Here is what I had written about it:

When I was a young adult, myself and my father took up walking the way-marked trails of Ireland, carrying on our backs the provisions we needed for several days at a time and camping en route. We often got soaked and developed blisters from our sub-standard walking gear, but the places we visited were beautiful: high, open, wild places with incredible views, and quiet, secluded woods, mossy and dark with tricking streams. This piece is a tribute to that time.

onlocation

2011-11-23T08:47:00.000-08:00

onlocation is the name of the exhibition opening tomorrow in the Leitrim Design House, in which I have a piece. (Click here for more info)

Here is some info about the show:

Each maker was asked to consider their response to ideas of place, and the connections formed in their mind by these ideas. Each of them has produced a unique work, inspired by a location of importance to them. The resulting project has given rise to some very personal work, at times using materials and themes not usually considered when working within their traditional field of expertise. These themes range from childhood experiences, through the natural world in different forms, to concepts of freedom and belonging – and all arising from thoughts of place.

If you are about Carrick-on-Shannon tomorrow, the opening is from 7-8.30pm and all are welcome.
The piece I made uses felted sculpture made with wool from my neighbour's Shetland sheep. More info and pictures coming soon!

From sheep to yarn

2011-11-23T04:10:00.000-08:00

I have been meaning to write this post for the last year or so and though this project is not quite finished (the yarn has not yet been knit with) with all this sheepy action in Wovember, it seemed an apt time to finally write it.

As a learning spinner I have mostly used commercially carded or combed top - I know some spinners feel this is not really spinning - but alas I am made of lazier stuff than they - the spinning itself is what I enjoy, the carding or combing much less so.

This project was my first adventure dealing with whole raw fleeces, straight from the sheep's back and into my hands.

The fleeces I got from my neighbour, finely grown by her lovely shetland sheep, (pictured above and below at lambing this year.) It was my first real chance to deal with a whole fleece and gave me a lot of respect for the process. The work involved was enormous. Below is the very sheep whose grey/white fleece I was given, pictured here with this year's lamb - I'm afraid I can't spell her Hungarian name...

Below is her fleece from last year. As you can see, its pretty dirty and required a lot of picking through. Much of it was matted also. (I wonder how you stop this happening - coats perhaps?) Some of the black fleeces were so matted they were almost felted into little rugs, and unusable for spinning.

Much picking through ensued, sorting out the usable fibre, then washing it with many many rinses and leaving it to dry. After that I had a selection of lovely locks. The fleece pictured above gave a small amount of white fleece, and a larger amount of grey - you can see the range below in the washed locks.

After that there were hours of combing the fleece - this may have been easier with a better fleece, but it was slow work, teasing out the locks. I combed it with two small hand-combs, making about 3 passes between each comb, then pulling off a roll of top from them.

Then it was spun into yarn - some of it fairly lumpy - the black in particular as it was a more matted fleece to begin with and I only have a certain amount of patience with combing...

I have yet to decide what to knit from it. I felt some stranded colourwork a la Shetland would be most fitting, but as I am not massively fond of colourwork I am waiting for the right pattern.

I used some of it for a felted artwork, of which more anon...

The whole process was definitely a labour of love. The huge majority of the time in processing the fleece was spent preparing it for spinning, and the littlest time to actually spin it. It gave me a whole new level of respect for the process, and made me realise that the preparation is where it's at.

I remember reading in Lilias Mitchell's Irish Spinning, Weaving and Dyeing about families in Ireland producing their own wool - the older people spun and the younger ones all carded. The spinners would be annoyed if the wool wasn't carded well by the younger and less experienced members of the family - I can really see why now. You cannot make up for insufficient carding or combing while spinning.

I cannot imagine preparing enough wool to spin your own yarn to make clothes for a whole family, and thankfully I don't have to, but it was really worth doing, if only to see the sheer (no pun intended!) work involved in something I thought of as relatively straightforward.

I continue to use a mixture of prepared tops and raw fleeces to spin with, but have to admit I love the spinning and not the preparation so will be known as one of those lazy spinners who gets a helping hand from mechanical carding and combing machines. Hooray for machines!

Wovember guest post

2011-11-23T04:01:00.000-08:00

You can check out my guest post about why I love working with wool over on Wovember.

Wovember Giveaway!

2011-11-15T08:06:00.000-08:00

baaa!

In celebration of Wovember and all things woolly and sheepish, I am having a Wovember Giveaway here.

To be in with a chance to win your very own Needle Felt Sheep Kit, just leave a comment on this post saying which sheep's wool you most like to work with. (If you haven't worked with sheep's wool before then maybe there is a wool you would like to try... there are so many out there - Shetland, Wicklow Cheviot, Galway...)

Poor sheepy fell over....

At the end of the month, I shall pull a name out of a hat and send the winner a Needle Felt Sheep Kit from my Etsy store. Yay sheep!!!

Molotov Cocktail Knitting Pattern

2011-11-15T07:31:00.000-08:00

The Molotov Cocktail pattern I made last June is finally up for sale on Ravelry, hooray!

It part of the weapons series, with others such as the Dynamite Bomb, Bomb and CCTV camera.

It is knit in separate pieces and then sewn together. The bottle is knit in the round as one piece and stuffed as you go. The rag is a small flat square, and the flames are knit individually in garter stitch, using wrap & turn short rows asymmetrically on either end to give them a fiery look.

The pattern calls for Lamb's Pride Worsted (the best bottle green I could find on a trip to Dublin) but any yarn could be used as gauge is not important.

It is suitable for an intermediate knitter.

You can buy it here - this link will take you to Paypal and then Ravelry will send you on the pattern:

...for the sum of three euro fifty.

Or just visit the Ravelry pattern page here.

This is not about christmas....

2011-11-13T06:05:00.000-08:00

...although this post appears quite christmasish....

...it is actually a post about wool.

Wovember - Kate and Felix's great project launched this month has inspired me to go one step further with my craft kits. I have just added these two sewing kits to my etsy shop - a robin and a set of trees. They were previously made with polyfil stuffing, which I was never happy with. One of the things I love most about my kits is that a large percentage of them is actually bio-degradable. So the stuffing was bothering me. After some head-scratching and number crunching I have decided to go for 100% wool stuffing in the kits. Yay!

There it is, in all its woolly grey glory!

I have just written a guest post for Wovember all about why I love wool (out sometime this week) and in reminding myself of why I choose wool and natural materials I found I had to make this change in the kits too.

Its been great to visit Wovember and see how many people there are out there who love wool too, and want to see more of it, want to see items labeled wool to be made of actual wool.

Its definitely been a difficult call for the craft kits. I spend more money on materials to buy what I feel are better materials - 100% wool felt, recycled bubble-wrap and compostable packaging. So its always nice to be inspired by something like Wovember to include even more wool and get rid of the synthetic rubbish just waiting to fill a landfill for the rest of its life.

The robin loves wool too!

oneoneoneoneoneone

2011-11-11T08:56:00.000-08:00

In celebration of today's date, I felt I should again share this photo. Happy day of one-ness!

(Sorry about the dusty dashboard!)

Art Trail at Hunter's Moon

2011-11-03T03:30:00.000-07:00

Here are the artists whose work was on display at the festival. Click on any photo to embiggen.

Above, Eva Walsh's installation of cast deer jaw-bones. Eva cast some in beeswax, which she painted gold and some in uranium glass. Under UV light, these glowed a bright green, casting an eerie fairy-tale light in the space.

Helen McBride's photographs. Helen took dark double exposure photographs of animals, the moon and other subjects.

An installation from my own selection of puppets and taxidermy. A graveside picnic of tortured souls.

Glyn Smyth of Scrawled Design's gig and band posters.

A spontaneous and mysterious exhibition which appeared in a shop window in the town... We were glad to see the mood of the festival inspired artists to get out there and show their wares!

Tim Kerr's vibrant and amazing paintings were on display in the Dock Coffee Shop. The top photo is rather dark, so I included this shot of one of the prints for sale in the box office too.

I also failed to get a good photo of Karen Constance's strange and surreal, cartoon-like paintings, but here is an example above.

Some pieces by Jane Lives, in pen and ink, print and lace.

Paintings by Elizabeth Archbold. A series of empty landscapes - dark and evocative.

Ciaran Coghlan's very popular bird paintings. A whole flock graced our walls.

The Deer Ladies, by Helen McDonnell, a Belfast-based tattooist, with sound installation by Hornby. Delicate sculptures made of sellotape and tissue paper, and embroidered with bold tattoo-like designs, each with autobiographical significance to Helen.

And finally Kit Fryatt, our wandering plague doctor poet, captivating some meat-related-articles.

We ended the shows on Sunday night with a Day of the Dead Procession, (fancy dress of course!) which visited all the artworks. Artists gave short talks on their work and answered questions, which gave people a lot of insight into the works.

All in all, it was hugely successful, with a lot of visitors over the weekend - both festival-goers and people living in the town. I was also happy to see work sold too. Lets hope we can do it again next year!

Hunter's Moon

2011-10-18T06:17:00.000-07:00

Oh dear...quite a lack of activity here, which usually means plenty of activity in the real world and a lack of sitting down to write about it...

I have been working on Hunter's Moon Festival which is rapidly approaching - next Friday 28th to Sunday 30th October - and looks to be a pretty amazing festival, the likes of which Carrick-on-Shannon won't have seen before.

I've been curating the Art Trail, which has been great - lots of interesting artists from near and far, putting up their mysterious and macabre work in unconventional gallery spaces - the dark and empty buildings in the town.

Check out the website for more details about the festival. There will be more info coming on all the artists soon!

Hunter's Moon website.

This week I have been...

2011-10-02T02:32:00.000-07:00

...in West Cork. A place no one should ever go when the weather is bad in September. There were a couple of reasonable days, but then the weather got grimmer and grimmer until the fog completely obscured Cork and we were forced to attempt to visit the less weather-dependent sights, most of which we found closed when we got there.

I did manage to keep a daily diary, which was good - some excerpts of which are below.

High and low-lights included...

...the lovely tiny stone cottage we stayed in, where you could hear the sea from...

...plentiful rain...

...the Tragumna Threshing Festival, including an auction for half a pig. The pig was still alive at the Festival...

...the hilarious buttons in what I called the blame room in the Mizen Head Fog Signal Station...

...a Clonakilty Black Pudding burger for the amazing K...

...days of foggy grimness...

...nice eating from the Woodcock Smokery and local cheeses...

But most of all, my advice to anyone planning to go to Cork in September would be to avoid any bad weather, as the rest of Cork is basically Dunta (that's closed in Irish for you non-Irish speaking folk) from September on.

Better luck next time...

Solar System in Felt

2011-09-01T02:56:00.000-07:00

Hooray, the kit I have been working on for what seems like years but is only months is finally up! Its the most difficult kit I have put together so far, and the most work intensive.

The main difficulty was trying to find a way to make all the planets to scale. Most models I've seen are only roughly to scale. The scale varies so hugely between them all, from just a couple of millimetres to 12 centimetres diameter. (That's a fraction of an inch to 5 inches for you imperial types.)

I had to resort to polystyrene balls for Jupiter and Saturn in the end. Much as I dislike polystyrene, I couldn't find a viable alternative. (Although the kit is available without the polystyrene - you can use tightly wound balls of wool instead...) I tried to remind myself that its about as bad as drinking three cups of tea in the canteen of Tallaght Hospital (only because that's the last place I got given polystyrene cups) but the joy of the kit lasts an awful lot longer.

Anyway, I enjoyed making this kit most of any of them so far, perhaps because I learned so much from it. I've included notes on each planet - its composition, what makes it the colour it is, the shape of its orbit and so on. And I chose to represent the planets in true colour - at least in the sense of being in the colours we would see it in, so the colours look duller than you might remember from enhanced photographs.

Anyway, you can read more about it here and buy it too if you like!

I found it a very difficult kit to price, as there is a huge amount of labour in putting it together. I have included all the different coloured fleece in paper bags labeled for each planet to avoid confusion - this took a lot of time, weighing out and packing up to four colours for each planet. And I used the best quality materials I could find...which also pushed the price up.

So, it is 30 euro...which feels like a lot to me, but to be honest is probably too low a price...how I hate pricing!

Anyway, its up on Etsy for anyone interested, hooray!

This week in pictures...

2011-09-01T02:48:00.000-07:00

Memento Mori

2011-08-20T02:45:00.001-07:00

...is the name of the show myself and my sister Jennifer Walshe have up at the moment in the Roscommon Arts Centre. (Click on any image to see a bigger version.)

We decided to present it as a show curated by us, with work made by our alter egos, three each.

Mine are:

Nollaig Dottirson, a transgender Icelandic-Roscommon artist, who knits and felts violent artifacts - bombs, Molotov cocktails, security cameras and barbed wire.

"Nollaig's work is contextualised in her own transgendered and transnational experience (born in Reykjavik to Icelandic and Irish parents), wherein the sometimes violent renegotiation of her gender is metaphorised in her intimate, familiar and knitted appropriations of the iconography of war and aggression.

The project of feminising these icons challenges notions of masculinity and femininity, and explores violence both personal and political, from a sexually transgressive perspective."

...then comes An Snag Breac, an outsider artist living in Roscommon...

"An Snag Breac is Irish for the magpie, and represents the raiding and hoarding of unwanted objects, natural and artificial. It is the pseudonym of a Roscommon-based artist creating assemblages of phantasmagorical creatures from the discarded detritus of the natural and manufactured world.
Mixed media include textiles, wood, taxidermy using road kill animals and discarded objects. Plastic golems of flesh and bone, queer syntheses of steel, wood, skin and fleece, reflect on and recycle the workings of the inner world, both natural and psychological.

An Snag Breac’s ongoing experience of chronic pain (back and neck) underpins aspects of the biological and anatomical focus of her work, influencing her use of material – including a spine and acupuncture needles."

...and the embroidered advice handkerchiefs of textile artist Enda O'Rourke...

"Enda O’Rourke is a textile artist resident in the Boyle area. Enda’s work is a recreation and reflection of his personal history. Born in London to unmarried Irish parents, Enda was raised by his grandmother and aunts, learning to sew from an early age - the stitches and tradition dropped from grandmother to grandson. Enda’s work seeks to recreate the unspoken and lost libraries of his grandmother’s experience, in a tradition neither aural, nor written, but textile based, and in the voice his grandmother and the women who raised him bequeathed him."

Then we had Jenny's collection:

The Community Choir drawings from Turf Boon...

"Boon considers his Community Choir Drawings series an open-source composition, one in which the viewer is expected to be an active participant in decoding and assigning meaning.
The deployment of communal authorship in this project recalls for Boon the gift drawings and songs of the Shakers, drawings which were executed as depictions of heavenly inspirations or gifts. Gift drawings were not considered to be the work of an individual artist (the drawings were never signed), but a contribution to the whole community that could be employed as any member saw fit.

Boon’s Community Choir Drawings series is imbued with a similar sense of openness and generosity, which reflects his career-long engagement with the ethics of community and the importance of group spirit."

A film from Freya Birren...

Olia Lialina’s M.B.C.B.F.T.W. (Redux, At Rest)

"Russian artist Olia Lialina created her browser-based artwork My Boyfriend Came Back From The War in 1996. It is considered one of the first works of internet art, and tells the fragmented story of a woman and her boyfriend’s attempts to communicate and connect after he returns from fighting in a war.

Lialina’s work has been subject to many re-workings by different artists. Birren’s version takes Lialina’s as a starting point in both visual and textual terms. Here, however, a different story of a different soldier in a different war unfolds from Lialina’s opening line. Unlike Lialina’s pioneering use of the internet as an artisitic medium, Birren’s use of technology is deliberately low-fi - Postit notes simulate the frames of a browser, with the film processed to look like it was made in the 1970s."

...and finally, the work of outsider artist Caoimhin Breathnach, shown for the first time since his death. He lived in Knockvicar and collected sound recordings, keeping a diary of his works in Ogham.

"The main focus of Breathnach’s artistic practice was the creation of his unique brand of “subliminal tapes.” This was a two-fold procedure - Breathnach began by recording sounds onto cassette tapes, before subjecting the tapes to a wide range of physical processes, such as burying, burning or encasing them in various materials such as velvet, paper or moss. In most cases, these physical processes rendered the tapes unplayable, so that the sounds recorded on them can now only be imagined.

For tape 79, Breathnach notes how he rose at dawn on the summer solstice (“grian-stad”) in 1982 to record himself playing a series of chords on the harp against the backdrop of his radio broadcasting at 1485 Khz. After sleeping with the tape under his pillow for a night, he then wore the tape strapped to his abdomen for a week, noticing significant improvement to his “strampail” and “glórghail” (both obscure words are defined in Dineen as referring to stomach noises)."

The show is on until Thursday the 25th for those of you in the area. More details here.

The Bomb

2011-08-20T02:20:00.000-07:00

Yay, I put a new pattern up, and its free! More explosive knitting!

It is a simple pattern, starting with the bomb itself. This is knitted in the round from the top down, with paired increases, a straight section and then paired decreases. The bomb-top is knitted in a similar way but as a flat disk, then sewn in place. The fuse and sparks are worked in I-cord and then sewn together.

Finished size: 5”/13cm diameter

Yarn: The pattern is written for a worsted/aran weight yarn, but gauge is not important – you could use any size yarn. The important thing is to use needles a size smaller than normal. This means the stuffing won’t show through.

Worsted weight yarn in black (60yds/50m), white (6yds/6m), yellow (4yds/4m), orange (4yds/4m) and red (4yds/4m).

I used Lamb’s Pride Worsted in M-05 Onyx, M-10 Cream, M-155 Lemon Drop, M-110 Orange You Glad and M-107 Red Hot Passion.

Other materials: 4.5mm/UK/US Size 7 dpns, Stitch marker, Yarn needle, Stuffing

Gauge: 20 sts and 26 rows to 4”/10cm in stocking st on 4.5mm/Size 7 needles

Its free to download. You can download it here:

download now

or go here for the Ravelry page for the pattern (sign-in needed) and download it from there.

Enjoy!

2011-08-15T01:02:00.000-07:00

We are looking for help with the funding for Hunter's Moon Festival.

Please check out our fundit campaign here - there are some great rewards for donations to the festival!

You can view our ridiculous plea for help through puppetry above!

Hunter's Moon Festival Call for Submissions

2011-08-11T07:08:00.000-07:00

The talented and lovely Willy and Natalia are organising a music and art festival in Carrick-on-Shannon this October, lots of details here. I am co-curating the art side of things. We will be organising an art trail around town, with a larger space as a festival box-office and gallery. Here is the call-out below for all you arty creative types!

Hunter’s Moon Festival, Carrick on Shannon, Co. Leitrim October 28-30th 2011 promises to be a weekend of music, art and film. Performers include Tony Conrad, Blood Stereo, Circulus and Sharron Kraus.

The Festival invites artists from ALL disciplines (large/small outdoor work, sound installations and performance work very welcome) to submit proposals of existing or new work. Selected work will be included in an Art Trail throughout Carrick on Shannon. This art trail will take place in vacant shops and shop fronts in the town, a pop up gallery and The Dock Arts Centre.

Hunter’s Moon is the name for the full moon which falls in October, the light of which helped hunters to track and kill their prey. We are looking for work which reflects this theme – darkness, moonlight, hunting, flesh…The Sinister.

Applicants must be available to deliver and install their work during the week prior to the festival and to collect work on Monday/Tuesday afterwards. Any work sold will be charged a commission of 10%. Artists will be in charge of the transport, installation and deinstallation of their work. There will be a ten Euro fee for artists who are accepted – this will go towards the cost of invigilation but will be waived for any artists willing and able to volunteer time to invigilate.

Applicants must submit proposals by email to: huntersmoonart at gmail.com
Applications must be accompanied by a short artist’s statement, proposal of intended work/s with photographs where applicable, and examples of recent work – this can be image attachments up to 1KB or links to a website or blog and must be clearly labeled.

Throughout the duration of the festival a craft market will be in operation. There are a limited amount of stalls available to artists/craftspersons to sell their wares from. Interested parties can send their details to the same email.

We look forward to hearing from you. Please let us know if you need anything clarified: huntersmoonart at gmail.com

Submission deadline: 1st September 2011

In search of the perfect flame

2011-08-10T09:34:00.000-07:00

For two days I have been knitting flames. That's quite a lot of flames. (And one whole day of backwards flames.) A new knitting pattern is coming shortly, involving flames. (How did you guess?) Particularly apt considering the rioting in the UK. So I spent a long time trying to work out a pattern for a short-row garter stitch flame using wrap and turns on both ends at different and non-symmetrical intervals. (Sorry non-knitters, that's the end of the technical part.) And work one out I did.

And then we had a bonfire last night. And I looked at the flames and thought, alas, these flames do not resemble my knitted versions, what has gone askew...? Which was when I realised that flames are brighter and yellower on the inside, and darker and redder on the outside, not the other way around - that is, if you were to try and represent them as two dimensional objects anyway, which I have to say, is bleeding difficult to start off with.

So that led me to a whole other day knitting flames in reverse, until I was happy with a final design (see far right below.)

Sadly, I have only perfected one size, so will spend yet another day tomorrow knitting smaller flames. Considering the almost arsonist-like qualities of certain members of my family you'd think I'd be better at this.

Memento Mori

2011-08-08T07:02:00.000-07:00

We have an exhibition coming up in the Roscommon Arts Centre next week, and I have been busy making work for it, including this giant felted barbed wire.

I have been wanting to make this piece for ages now so its been good to finally get around to it. You may have noticed my penchant for making weapons and artifacts of war and violence out of textiles before. (...and if you haven't then you really haven't been paying attention.)

It even works on horses.

Details of the exhibition are here, and all are welcome to the opening next Wednesday between 5-6.30pm.

Baking day

2011-08-06T11:57:00.000-07:00

I decided to make some dough this morning to bring to Knockvicar Organic Garden for baking in the clay oven. The fire had been lit early this morning by the lovely Laszlo and allowed to die down to embers.

I've never baked bread in a clay oven before. It is very different to using an oven obviously, a fierce heat - dry and quick to burn bread.

I tried a focaccia. We only placed it just inside the door - not even into the main chamber, and within minutes it was going brown on one side.

With plentiful turning and watching and even flipping, it came out lovely in the end and was devoured in minutes. (Complete with butter. How Irish are we!?)

There were a couple of delicious pizza-type concoctions cooked and then I put in two loaves of bread at the end, when things had cooled down a bit. I put them in the main oven for about 10 minutes and then brought them out to the door, shifting them back and forth every few minutes until I found the spot where they would cook and not burn. I found leaving the door ajar helped too.

Eventually it was just me and the dog in the pouring rain, keeping a watchful eye on the bread, and shifting tins back and forth continually. Well, that was me, the dog just lay on the ground trying not to get rained on, more successfully than me!

It seems to be that there is a lot of experimenting with clay ovens, learning how the oven fires - it reminds me of firing pottery in a wood-fired kiln some years back - learning how the kiln reacted to being fed with wood, what happened to the temperature each time more wood was added. Learning and responding to the fire.

Overall a great success, and lots of lovely eating happened today. There is a slight smokiness off the bread, and the crust was gorgeous too - crispier and crunchier than an electric oven.

The oven was hot for hours too, I can see why they are used communally - you can get so much baking out of one firing. I'll certainly be back with my dough again. Thanks Knockvicar!

Art on your bum

2011-07-19T08:24:00.000-07:00

For my birthday this year I was given some money from my father, which I decided I would spend on something very nice instead of sensibly putting it into bills. Thus arrived in the post a skirt kit from Clothkits.

To top it off, this one has a print from Rob Ryan - master of the paper cut! (And not the painful kind.) The price (42 pounds sterling) made me wince a little, but having made it now I would highly recommend them.

The kits come premarked with sizes, from 8 to 16. It was a little lacking in info on what measurements each size was, but after measuring my hips and waist, I decided to try something between a 10 and 12. Being too scared to ruin the kit, I made a paper pattern from it - thus rendering the whole kit idea fairly useless - then tried the paper pattern on some other fabric, made some small adjustments - and then confidently made the real skirt.

I learned a lot from doing it - namely making linings, and what facings are.

Contrary to popular belief I am not much of a seamstress - perhaps because I refuse to accept my limited sewing skills, and think life is too short for basting, tacking, sometimes even pinning.

I have never really learned to sew, merely picking up bits along the way, zips never being my strong point until recently when I learned how to sew a zip in (just google it to find out) and how bloody easy it was - to think I could've been doing this all along instead of making some horrendous pieces of clothing.

Actually, I take that back - I still would have made horrendous pieces of clothing, they just would have had better zips.

Another day I must catalogue the horrendous wonders I have created - there are very few pictures and most of the originals have long since been thrown in the bin. Here is a recent addition:

A pair of hippy pants, converted into a bag. But somehow it is awful - it will always remain a pair of baggy hippy pants...drab, with awful drape and bad zips...

I should definitely follow patterns, the results are far better. And Clothkits definitely have my vote of confidence.

And best of all, its a Rob Ryan print! Amazing! Love it!

...oranges...

2011-07-15T03:17:00.000-07:00

reds...

2011-07-12T03:39:00.000-07:00

Colours in the garden...pinks

2011-07-10T02:17:00.000-07:00

2011-07-08T09:00:00.000-07:00

Look how tiny Earth is next to Jupiter - we could fit loads of our planet into the storm of the Great Red Spot!

And the winner is....Wendy!

Send me an email Wendy with your address and the whole solar system will be in the post to you!

Planets of the solar system....in felt! And its a giveaway!!

2011-07-04T04:24:00.001-07:00

(Click on the photo to embiggenate.)

Hooray! The new kit is almost complete!

And yes, it is a solar system. (Well guessed Hope! Send me on your email and I will send you a voucher for my Etsy shop.)

It is a wet-felting kit that provides all the materials and pages and pages of instructions on how to make a felt model of the planets of our solar system. It is a scale model, so the planets' sizes are all relative to each other (which presented a whole set of obstacles designing it - I had no idea just how big Jupiter was before doing this...)

It does not include the sun, as the sun would need to be 49" or 1.25m in diameter to fit in and that would have been way too much felting.

It also includes lots of interesting information about what makes the planets the colour they appear to us, along with some ideas for what to do when you have finished with it, and relative distances between the planets, etc.

I have *really* enjoyed making this kit! Its been mind blowing, learning about the planets, what they are made of, the fact that they have water on them, that it snows on Mars! I can't wait to get it out to people!

So....I am looking for one fabulous person to test it for me.

If you would like to receive a free Planets of the Solar System kit in the post, just leave a comment below or mail me, but only if:

*you have never done wet-felting before* and...

*you can complete the kit, fill in a detailed feedback form and return the form to me within 10 days of getting the kit in the post.*

I will pick one person's name out of the hat on Friday 8th July and post it here. Then I will send the winner out a kit to test.

CCTV, knit style

2011-06-23T09:48:00.000-07:00

Sick of public surveillance? Try out the new knitcam.

Completely obsolete and will not capture any images.

Knit yourself one to go in the corner of your room, or by your front door.

This pattern is for a knitted Security Camera, and includes detailed instructions and templates for making a rigid cardboard frame so the camera can be mounted on a wall.

Tools Needed: 4 dpns size 3.75mm/#5, stiff cardboard and glue or tape, 4 stitch markers, ruler

Material needed: Around 50g each grey, white and black DK weight yarn

Pattern Difficulty: Intermediate.

Includes long-tail and cable cast on, i-cord, knitting in the round and flat, intarsia while making knit and purl stitches. The pattern also has instructions for making a cardboard frame to sit the camera on so that it can be mounted on a wall. This involves cutting out a cardboard template and gluing or taping it together and fitting the knitting over it.

Pattern Style: Written instructions in knitting abbreviations, all abbreviations given

Available in a PDF from Ravelry for Euro 3.50.

The link below will take you directly to Paypal to pay and Ravelry will send you the PDF to download.

Or, if you are a Ravelry member, click here for the Ravelry page on the pattern!

I have been knitting...

2011-06-22T02:14:00.000-07:00

...this lovely pattern by a Finnish designer, which I have really enjoyed. It is quite complicated, with an 8 row pattern repeat and a 14 row pattern repeat happening at the same time, and at times had my brain doing a version of cerebral twister while trying to get the moss stitch to line up around the neck - something I later realised was impossible.

A couple of things I've read recently have also put other thoughts into my mind...

One was this article on the Fifty Mile Fibre Diet, the idea being to shop local for your yarn. This is something which is remarkably hard to do in a country with lots of sheep. There are three main woollen mills in Ireland, only two of them actually use wool from Irish sheep, and for one of those it is only in some of their wool. Crazy really.

I've also read The Culture of Knitting, kindly given to me by a fellow knitter. Its an interesting read, certainly thought-provoking, if a bit impenetrable at times and also full of lots of stuff I disagreed with. The conclusion, titled "Is the world full of ugly jumpers?" (Yes it is, in case anyone was wondering...), broaches the subject of yet more acrylic yarn made from petroleum being made into horrible jumpers.

All of which reminded me even more how much what I'm knitting with is important to me.

Anyway, not to get into a massive rant on buying local wool...I actually did find some local wool for this project. From Frenchpark in fact, about 20 minutes away from here. And lovely jacob it is too. (I just wish there were more options!) For once, it was also very affordable - 7.70 euro for a massive skein, of which I used maybe 2-3.

Being Jacob, it is a bit scratchy, so I washed it at 30 degrees to felt it somewhat and soften it up. It actually barely shrank at all and made a lovely fabric when washed. Above you can see it pre-washing on the top and post-washing on the bottom.

There it is, all pinned out.

I still can't believe I knitted a whole jumper in moss stitch without going bonkers though.

I highly recommend it as a pattern, although I would ignore the suggestion to knit with 2" of ease, as mine came out quite baggy..

In other news, I painted the door Insanity Blue. Despite the door being completely disgusting with layers of filth and mould and snail trails on it, and the blue being a massive improvement from that, I still can't live with it. It will have to go.

What were we thinking in the paint shop? Its like having a big brush poke you in the eyes every time you walk near it - its that blinding.

In other news, I am very excited to be working on a new craft kit...I love this one!!!...

and there's a 10% off voucher for my shop for the first person who can guess what it is...

Lunar eclipse at Carrowkeel

2011-06-16T02:04:00.000-07:00

Barely visible at first...

...but the moon got brighter and brighter as the shadow moved off.

What a lovely place to watch it from.

Peg Loom Workshop

2011-06-07T07:12:00.000-07:00

I have a workshop coming up on the 18th and 19th of June in Cleen Community Hall, Knockvicar, organised by Knockvicar Organic Garden. It runs on both mornings, from 10am-12.30pm and is €45. Participants will make their own tuffet to take home. You also get plans for making a peg loom to take home with you. The details are here.

We will be using peg looms to weave tuffets with raw sheep's wool. A tuffet is a thick cushion/rug type thing - made famous by Bo Peep.

First you sort the fleece.

Then put the warp on your loom as below.
Then you weave away on your pegs.Twisting the fleece to give it strength.

Lifting the pegs out.

Et voila! The finished tuffets. They make lovely rugs or cushions for seats. They are especially good for sitting outdoors on - as sheep's wool is such a good insulator and practically waterproof with the lanolin still in it.

I hope to source some lovely fleece from some local rare-breed sheep. Pictured here is some gorgeous Jacob lambswool.

If you are interested in coming, call Knockvicar Organic Garden to book your place.

Advice Hankies opening

2011-06-07T04:00:00.000-07:00

Well, the opening was lovely with a nice crowd.
The Ink Spot is the best place to have an exhibition as everyone got lost in the Aladdin's cave that it is and emerged smiling some time later.

The pieces look great scattered about......and there are even postcards available...

...and now, thanks to the inimitable Felix, new badges too.

Here is the piece I had written about the show...

I asked friends and family to give me some advice. It had to be advice they would follow themselves, or wished they did, something they had learned and thought worth remembering, no matter how important or trivial the subject matter. I was thinking about advice, and how easy it is to give it, but likewise how easy to forget it yourself. As one of the responses I got said - "Write down your advice to yourself somewhere as you discover it" - a reminder of how much we forget our own advice. Sometimes I wish I could carry my own advice around in my pocket - take it out to remind myself. So I took what they gave me and embroidered it onto handkerchiefs. I like the idea of a hanky as a multiple-use portable reminder. Now you can always remember your own advice.

Lie down, it may get better...

2011-05-26T09:35:00.000-07:00

...is the name of my exhibition, opening next Thursday, 2nd of June in my favourite book shop, the Ink Spot, Bush Craft Lane, Carrick-on-Shannon, Co. Leitrim, Ireland, and running until the 1st of July.

All are welcome for tea and cakes at 1.30pm on Thursday the 2nd.

The exhibition will feature an installation of the advice hankies I've been making. Click here and here to view them all.

Ovine, equine, cervine

2011-05-23T06:28:00.000-07:00

I've been doing some spinning recently, with Wicklow Cheviot I got at a visit to The Sheep and Wool Centre in Leenane last year. (Definitely well worth a visit for any sheep enthusiast.)

I washed the fleece, combed it, pulled it off a home-made hackle through a diz and spun it up into a rather lumpy but pleasant aran-weight yarn. They are a hardy mountain breed and I didn't expect their wool to be so nice. It's not next-to-the-skin-type wool, but definitely good for other purposes.
I've given up on counting twists per inch and suchlike. I realised I just like spinning. Not having to measure amounts of wool and doing it scientifically - just doing it for the relaxing and meditative passtime it is.In other news, our neighbour's horses came to stay for a while and have been settling in well.They got the snip this week, which was more eventful than it could have been due to one of them needing about four times the normal amount of anaesthetic.

There is something so weird about seeing such a strong and magnificent creature lying unable to move on the ground. Although, much more terrifying was when he came-to and lurched drunkenly around the field at speed, crashing down on the grass randomly.

It's been great to live with the horses for a while, have them graze the field, hear them whinnying about the place. But witnessing them being castrated was a lesson in itself. It is a brutal process by definition, and dealing with such a huge animal is a tricky business. Having two stallions is not an option - they are too unpredictable. It makes you realise what keeping large animals entails. It's not idyllic!

On a more idyllic note though...the upside of having any trees we plant destroyed by deer is that occasionally you walk into the kitchen and find one grazing outside the window.

Advice Hankies

2011-05-14T03:53:00.000-07:00

I've been working on these hankies over the last while. I gathered advice from friends and family - advice they would follow or like to follow themselves - and embroidered it onto handkerchiefs.

They are very difficult to photograph well, but here is the last of them, for the benefit of all advisers! Thanks again!
You can click on the pictures for larger versions.

Bluebells and hay ropes

2011-05-06T08:38:00.000-07:00

Spring is really here. The bluebells are out and next-to-impossible to truly catch on film. (Or should I say memory card...)

The Roscommon Lamb Festival was a success again this year, with 1,147 knitters converging on the town to break the world record of people knitting in the same place at the same time. There's just a small fraction of them pictured below. There was a great atmosphere, and even mexican waves of knitting.

I also met some lovely gentlemen who taught me how to make hay ropes for sheep.

The rope is pulled from a bundle of hay, by twisting it into a coil. Very like spinning yarn.When long enough, it is folded back on itself and twisted the opposite direction to make a rope.
It is then tied off at the end and the knot is pushed through the opposite end to go around a sheep's neck.There's my one below, not as strong as the ones they made, but passable!They were impressed with my efforts. Its so lovely to learn a dying craft off people who used to use it all the time. One rope was used for tying around a sheep's neck to bring it to the market, and the other longer one for tying the legs together.

The length was tested around your leg - if it fit around your thigh it was long enough for the neck. They also took care to trim off the bits of hay poking out all over before finishing it.

Of course rope is now cheap and plentiful so nobody does this anymore.

The shop is up!

2011-05-04T05:03:00.000-07:00

Hooray! All the felting kits have now been listed in my Etsy shop. Feel free to hop on over for a peek and tell your friends all about it.

Its been a busy time getting everything ready and tested. A big thanks goes out to all the fabulous people who have tested my kits. I have learned so much from you all about how to write instructions more clearly, and how to translate whats in my brain onto a piece of paper in a meaningful, accessible way. Its also been amazing to realise that its 16 years ago I learned to make felt, in Glencolumbkille in Donegal. Its obviously a love affair with wool... of which, more anon...

Etsy Shop

2011-05-01T03:09:00.000-07:00

Theres been a bit of a lack of blogging round these parts lately...but the good news is I've set up my etsy shop and begun adding listings. More will follow in the days to come but for now a few will have to do!

Lots of craft kits will be going up shortly! Click here to visit!

If you go down to the woods today...

2011-03-16T09:51:00.000-07:00

...you might find some felted mushrooms. Yes, another kit is looking for a kind volunteer to try it out and give me feedback. If you have never done needle felting before and would like to give it a go, just leave a comment below or email me at ansnagbreac at gmail dot com. I will put all the names in a hat, pick one out in 5 days and send the winner a Needle Felt Toadstools Kit.

All I ask is that you make at least one mushroom within a week or so of getting the kit and send me feedback on what you thought of it.

The kit makes several mushrooms...

Couldn't help throwing in another shot there of the little fungi basking in the lovely March sun!

Advice in progress...

2011-03-09T09:06:00.000-08:00

I have been working on these hankies recently. I asked friends and family for advice, something they would follow themselves, or wish they followed. It could be anything, from very general advice to detailed tips.

I got a lots of different responses! I have been embroidering them, including bits from myself, on old handkerchiefs over the last while. I like the idea of having a reminder of something important that can be carried in your pocket.
Here are some of them...

(That one is a detail from a larger piece.) Now I just need to get my hands on some more handkerchiefs!

Fox craft kit give-away!

2011-02-25T04:38:00.000-08:00

I've been quietly working away in the studio, making craft kits to sell. This is the fox I've made for the needle-felt fox kit.
I will have an etsy shop up and running in the next while with kits for sale.

Meanwhile, I'm in the process of developing several kits and am looking for feedback about them. I thought I would look for some help from my lovely readers and ask if there is someone out there who has never done needle-felting before but would like to try their hand at making a fox? All I ask is that you send me feedback about the kit.

If so, please leave a message at the end of this post or email me (ansnagbreac at gmail dot com)
and if there are a few of you, I'll pull a name out of a hat in ten days time.

The kit includes 2 felting needles, a sponge, pipe-cleaners, instructions, and enough merino fleece to make a fox and it all comes in a box.

The Sketchbook Project

2011-01-12T10:47:00.000-08:00

I have finished my book for The Sketchbook Project, a travelling exhibition/library of sketchbooks that will make its way across the states for the next six months.

Participants each got a blank sketchbook to fill in and a theme to use as a starting point. The theme I chose was "In five minutes..." which made me think of all the things that happen in a short period of time that you might not notice happening, and all the things that happen in a much longer period of time.

I completely dismantled the book I was sent, and made a new book, with an illustrated story at the front, and then a fold out section at the back...
...keep on unfolding......and again...

...into a big tree.

Its mostly done with pen and ink and watercolours on watercolour paper.
Some details of the tree and the story are below.

Its been fun making it, and a challenge to get such a large poster into a small book, while keeping the dimensions the same. Another challenge was making it very hard-wearing. I am not used to having to think about lots of people handling my work!

The snow is back...

2010-12-21T06:52:00.000-08:00

Frozen lakes...

...foot-long icicles...

...christmas trees...

...massive snowflakes, tinkling like tiny pieces of broken glass under my feet...

...and brave cats, bounding through snow deeper than their legs are long, climbing the hill to look at a snowy Sliabh an Iarainn.

Escape Update

2010-12-15T13:14:00.000-08:00

It took until day seven but I finally got out.

High points of being snowed in for a week:

Receiving various packages on the days the postman could get in - the package of chocolate was by far the best.
Getting loads of stuff done around the house....unsurprisingly!
The day I found two duck eggs lurking in the straw. Two!
Surprisingly, it was interesting to have only a set amount of ingredients to work with - and to have to be resourceful with these, cooking things I wouldn't have otherwise tried, and living on less - making do with what was there.

Low points:

The pine marten coming back into the attic one night.
Trying to block up the holes to stop said pine marten getting into the house or into the duck house.
The cats puking up worms all over the floor and sofa....mm mm.

Bizarre points:

The box of veg my mother posted me, bless her. As she put it, a tuck box. No tuck box should ever contain kale. Ever.

Day Four

2010-12-06T06:01:00.000-08:00

The frost was the craziest I've ever seen this morning after the freezing fog, with massive spikes covering everything.

That's not a close-up picture above - those little spikes are about 10-15mm long each.

The world was pure white.

I was ridiculously overjoyed to find the ducks had laid two eggs after going on strike the last while - a source of food! Hurray! I won't starve.

Other things I've learned - don't make porridge in the microwave. (Even if you couldn't be bothered defrosting the gas...)

...beetroot cake is still delicious the second day...

...beetroot soup is also still delicious on the second day (but I'm wondering if day 3 and 4 might find it less appetising)...

...I'm thankful that I kept these measly pots of coriander - they are my only fresh veg now...(except for the stick of celery, but I'm saving that for tomorrow's dinner - curried celery...delightful...and seems an apt meal for budget day tomorrow)...

I'm also wondering did the government manage to arrange this - the biggest distraction from bailouts and the budget they could possibly have imagined...Suspicious.

Snowed in...

2010-12-05T12:35:00.000-08:00

Day three...not quite at stir-crazy stage yet...the last of the fresh veg is gone...the fruit ration has three satsumas left...beetroot soup made...beetroot cake made (actually a great recipe and particularly good with orange blossom icing)...many bean based meals already eaten....many bean based meals to come...much defrosting of gas done...much defrosting of ducks done...

That's the road below...

'nuff said.

'Tis beautiful of course too. But also bonkers - after last year's month-long cold snap it seems strangely normal to be snowed in. There's enough food to last me several months, as long as I'm happy to live on bread, prunes and legumes, the water is finally drinkable and I've got the cats to talk to ("Oh no" says you, "the solitude is getting to her, she's talking to the cats!" "No, no" says I, "sure I was always talking to the cats.")

Anyway, I thought I'd put some pictures up, seeing as I've no excuse now for not updating the blog! I hope you are all warm and cosy somewhere.

SENDHELP

SOON!!!

Ceramics and light

2010-11-17T12:38:00.000-08:00

There's been some beautiful skies recently, between the rain and wind (of which there has been plenty.)The forest park, just a few minutes down the road, was looking particularly gorgeously autumnal last week when I took this. Since then the trees have turned another corner and begun looking more wintery. The light here has been amazing.
I have been making ceramics, and am in love with the colours of some of the glazes.
Tiles for the bathroom, candlesticks for the craft shows.
I love the depth of colour in the spots below - its hard to tell in the photo, but when you look closely, its almost impossible to say what colour the glaze is - there are yellows and blues and reds. It reminds me of colour in nature - it is so rarely one single colour, but many varied hues that make a colour up.

Put a lid on it

2010-11-17T12:29:00.000-08:00

I will have a couple of pieces in an exhibition made entirely within jars in the Galway Arts Centre next week called Put a lid on it.

Here they are - a giant felt tooth and a tiny house complete with lighting.

I was quite pleased with the felt tooth - it had a few adventures before heading off to Galway. Here's a shot for size.

Samhain drawing

2010-11-01T03:10:00.000-07:00

For the first time in my life I thought I might make it through an oiche shamhna, (that's Halloween in English) without hearing a single firework, despite being outside by a lovely bonfire for much of the evening...but I did hear two distant bangs in the end. The house is obviously not far enough away from civilisation!

A friend introduced me to Urban Sketchers recently, and its had me inspired to get pen and paper out and do some drawing the last few days, so yesterday I dragged a chair and various mark-making tools up the hill to paint the barn, as it looks so very beautiful at the moment, with the trees turning.

Concepta kept me company. She actually walked through the watercolours at one point, and then all over some paper too...little black paw prints.

Its been so long since I went out drawing or painting. I feel so very out of practice, but it was good to get out and do it.

Frosty mornings

2010-10-27T08:35:00.000-07:00

There's something that I love about the first proper frosty morning. Waking up to sunlight streaming through mist, illuminating spider's webs and the edges of leaves...

...drops of ice melting in the sun...

...the last few flowers trying to open.

We've had some lovely days and its been a pleasure to witness a different season on this piece of land.
The red oak, losing its leaves...
...before...

...and after.

I was excited to find these matchstick lichen in the top field the other day - a sign of clean air. (Probably not good to admit I am excited by lichens...)

A crowd (is there a collective noun for moths?) of Herald moths were found hibernating in the shed on a black plastic bag. You can just about see their stripy legs in the photo.

The orchard has been duly harvested...

...and some of it made into gleaming apple and rosehip jelly. (Slightly overset - a friend who had a jar dropped the jar which shattered and apparently the jelly bounced down the road intact...anyone have any good tips of how to get a nice runny-without-being-liquid set on a jelly?)

In other news, a Turk's turban pumpkin made a complete mess of the kitchen - bloody impossible things to break into...

And does anyone know what this is? I found it stuck to the cat, its like a weird little slug - it went from a tiny round lump...

...into a stretched out worm-like thing. Very strange. Answers on a postcard please, or a comment will do...Knitting has continued - a crochet version of this amazing pattern.

And I got a copy of Knitted Fast Food...

All very silly, but they make me laugh.
(I have been knitting some useful objects too recently - honest!)

Revenue

2010-10-19T07:48:00.000-07:00

This particularly amused me this morning as I filed my tax return online - a window that popped up to announce I needed to install software from The Legion of the Bouncy Castle, which I at first presumed was some sort of virusy-spam-type-thing and then realised it was actually serious.

Always glad for the little things that make doing tax a slightly more amusing, if somewhat bizarre and ridiculous activity.

Stone Wall Socks

2010-09-25T04:05:00.000-07:00

The days are getting colder here, and the nights even more so. Autumn has arrived and my feet are cold! So I thought I’d make some toasty warm socks, using a stranded colour pattern for extra thickness.

I used some yarn I had lying about, or wool as we call it over here - and wool it is - some lovely grey Jacob from a local farm, a cone of dark brown Jacob I picked up in a charity shop, and some ancient Tivoli Bainin – yes, as I look into it, its about 23 years old. Talk about hanging on to things in case they become useful some day. (Mind you, it only spent the last 3 years of its life with me – the rest was in the company of another industrious knitter.) Anyway, enough about hoarding, on with the pattern.

Obviously, these yarns could be replaced by something similar - wool would be my first choice - nice and hardwearing, and they can be scratchy, as the socks are big and baggy enough to be worn over other socks. They are made from the top down. Inspiriation for the colourwork came from the geometric designs on Andean Chullo hats.

Anyway, here is the pattern...

You could also download a PDF of it from here:

download now

I’ve given instructions for three colours. These ones blend particularly well into the patchy stone walls around these parts.

A = Grey, B = Brown, C = White

Gauge:

4”/10cm = 20sts or 22 rows using 5mm needles (U.S size 9, U.K size 5)

The socks fit very loosely on a size 5 or 6 foot (U.K sizing). They are roughly 10-10.5”/27cm around and 9”/23cm from heel to toe. They are easily adjusted to make longer socks. If you are working these socks in a different gauge, the amount of stitches on your needles must be divisible by eight to accommodate the pattern.

Abbreviations:

CO – Cast on

st/t – stitch/stitches

k – knit

kfb – knit into the front and back of the next st, creating two sts

rnd/s – round/rounds

PM – place marker

Beg – beginning/begin

*rep – repeat the instructions in the brackets

sl1 – slip one st

p – purl

p2tog – purl two sts together

RS – right side

WS – wrong side

dpn – double pointed needle

ndl – needle

k1A/k1B – knit 1 using A/knit 1 using B

k2togA – knit 2 together using A

ssk – slip 1, knit 1, pass the slipped stitch over

Pattern:

Rib:

Using A and 4 dpns of suitable size, CO 36 sts.

PM at beg of rnd.

Work in (k1,p1) rib for 1”/2.5cm.

Change to B.

K one rnd.

(kfb, k2)*rep for one rnd (48 sts)

Using B and C, begin colour chart. Do one repeat of colour chart, then change to B and k one rnd.

Heel flap:

Rearrange sts so that you have 24 sts on one needle for the heel flap, and 12 and 12 on two other needles (front of foot). The 24 sts for the heel flap should start from 12 sts before the marker to 12 sts after it. Remove marker.

Join A and work back and forth across these 24 sts as follows:

Row 1: (Sl1, k1)*rep to end

Row 2: sl1, p to end

Repeat these two rows until heel flap is 1.5”/4cm long.

Turn heel:

RS: sl1, k13, k2tog, k1, turn work.

WS: sl1, p5, p2tog, p1, turn work.

RS: sl1, k across to 1^st st before gap, k2tog, k1, turn.

WS: sl1, p across to 1^st st before gap, p2tog, p1, turn.

Repeat these 2 rows until all the heel sts are used up. You now have 16 sts on the ndl.

Picking up gusset sts:

Rejoin B and work across front of foot sts, then pick up 6 sts along the right side of the heel flap, k across heel flap, then pick up 6 sts on left side of heel flap. Rearrange sts so front sts are all on one ndl, and 6 gusset sts and half of heel flap sts are each on one ndl. Ndl 1 is front foot, ndl 2 is right side gusset and heel, ndl 3 is left side gusset and heel. (52 sts)

Using B and A, work front of foot in chart and gusset/sole in vertical stripes as follows:

Rnd 1: Ndl 1- chart; ndl 2 – k1B, k2togA, (k1B, k1A)*rep 5 times, k1B; ndl 3- k1B, (k1A, k1B)*rep 5 times, sl1, k1A, psso, k1B. (50 sts)

Rnd 2: Ndl 1 – chart; ndl 2 and 3 – continue with vertical stripes – (knit B with B and A with A etc.)

Rnd 3: Ndl 1 – chart; ndl 2 – k1B, k2togB, continue in pattern; ndl 3 – work in pattern to 3 sts before the end, sl1, k1B, psso, K1B. (48sts)

Continue working in chart on foot sts, and vertical stripes on sole sts until the end of the chart. If you like, rearrange sts evenly on ndls. PM at beg of rnd.

Change to B, k 2 rnds.

Using A and C, start on next chart, repeating around all of the sts – on all 48 sts.

Change to B and k 2 rnds.

Using A, k1 rnd, PM after 24 sts (halfway around.)

Begin toe decrease rounds as follows:

(k1, ssk, k to 3 sts before marker, k2tog, k1)*rep

Repeat this round until 20 sts are left and bind off using Kitchener stitch.

Now sew in all those loose ends and enjoy having toasty warm feet!

New additions

2010-08-09T02:41:00.000-07:00

I was seduced by the duck sellers at the car-boot sale in Carrick yesterday, and came home with two Khaki Campbells, quacking in the boot of the car in their box.
Okay well, it was no hard sell - as soon as I looked at those ducks I wanted to bring some home...

Given how much they obviously adore water, a temporary pond is being set up in an old bath tub that was lying around. Meantime, they have been splashing in a box.

Velma Volente is obviously the ring-leader, but Gilda is close behind...

I see why people go bonkers about ducks - they are such lovely creatures - the way they waddle about, shaking their tails. And the ridiculous quacking. I thought chickens were amusing but they are nothing in comparison with the duck antics...

Other beautiful sights recently include this crane fly (daddy long legs)...

...lots of amber snails, with their spiral shells...

...Hedge Parsley...

...a bumble bee, sleeping in the bindweed...

...and a wasps nest in the bushes. Its about 10" across.

Moths and Flutterbys

2010-07-26T05:37:00.000-07:00

How could I not put up photos of this beauty, the Garden Tiger moth? She was found on a walk myself and my mother took in the top field - a huge fluttering, bumbling, orange, white and black creature, which we ran after over and over, until she finally settled down to lay some eggs.She was massive - about a 2" wingspan.

Apparently containing a poisonous toxin too, I found out upon returning home and looking her up.

There she is, laying her eggs.

Its incredible just how many different species of butterfly and moths that live in Ireland - the moths much more so. They are creatures I haven't really spent any time looking at before - until I got a good identification guide for my birthday that is! Here are some of the ones I've managed to capture on camera...

The Ringlet...
Small Copper...

Meadow Brown...
I think this is the Orange Underwing moth...
and a Silver-washed Fritillary... (butterfly that is.)

Home and Away

2010-07-06T04:04:00.000-07:00

Thought I'd throw up some photos from the last two months, of things close by and things far away...and by far I mean the south-west of Ireland...so not that far. Above is the Hawthorn beginning to bloom in early June. Not exactly the May tree this year.

The beautiful limestone landscape of the burren. I still find it fascinating that we were once the bed of a tropical sea floating around near the equator.Cherries, growing in the garden! Amazing!

The cliffs in Ballybunion. Beautiful place to walk.

Part of a wasp's nest I found in the garden. We also have several of these in our attic. Apparently a great year for wasps and bees so far, what with all the sun...
Check out the honeycomb-ey bit inside, although I guess its not honeycomb...I realise I know nothing about what wasps do, except sting you.The Cliffs of Moher. The tiny little dots on top are people. More fauna in the top field. All this activity in one place. Hard to photograph with the wind - I'm surprised they didn't get travel sick what with all that blowing about.

And the herd of cows that got lost and ended up in the top field, happily munching on the grass and snoozing.

Midsummer

2010-06-23T02:09:00.000-07:00

I was fortunate enough to make it to Carrowkeel on the solstice, where the sun sets into the Cairns. (Cairn H pictured above)Above is a view of the sun shining through the roof-box into Cairn G. How incredible to stand in a monument 5000 years or so old, and have the sun come streaming in to illuminate it. (At least when the kids weren't running in and out and blocking the light!)

We were utterly awed.

You can read more about Carrowkeel at Martin Byrne's great website here. The knitted banana, in the back of Cairn G, illuminated by the sun's last rays on the longest day of the year. How much more sacred can it get?

Other midsummer activities included making rose petal jelly.Actually a jam, technically, seeing as I didn't strain it.I feel so lucky to be living in a place with enough rose bushes - and there seem to be more and more springing up everywhere I look at the moment - to make this. Its one of those things I've always dreamed of...having a garden filled with that many roses. And the amazing thing is, I haven't planted a single bush. (Yet!) What abundance in this incredible piece of land. You may also have noticed the cherries - the first delicious cherries I've had straight from a tree in Ireland. The apples and plums are also quietly nursing their little fruits. I used this recipe. Easy, delicious, highly recommended!
Pictured here on my porridge this morning.

Interview on Mr. X Stitch

2010-06-18T02:29:00.000-07:00

Check out an interview I did with Joetta Maue about my work over on Mr. X Stitch.

GOODBYE I LOVE YOU

2010-06-17T02:01:00.000-07:00

Beauty in the Gaps Between the Horror

Here are some pictures of the show for those of you who couldn't make it. Thanks to everyone who came, and thanks for all your comments. I will include a copy of the information I left up at the show here too.

Shredded

In 2006 a close friend of mine died by suicide. The artwork in this exhibition documents my own search for meaning in the years after his death, and my search for a way to express the legacy I was left with.

His flat and all his possessions

Wishing Tree

It took a long time to begin to articulate the horrific and violent imagery that remained with me after this profoundly complicated death, in a world that was deeply uncomfortable hearing about it. Embroidery gave the words and thoughts that were so difficult to say aloud a space in which to be expressed. Somehow the softness of thread and fabric, the meditative quality of stitching, the flexibility of the finished product and the comforting nature of textiles - we use them to clothe ourselves, to wipe our tears, to rest our faces on as we sleep - made textiles the best medium through which to start conveying the violence of the images, the nightmarish quality of suicide bereavement and the horror of the act itself.

How long did you hang there?

Exhibition view

At the inquest

From the initial use of textiles, I moved on to other text-based work, using photography and ceramics, to document memories, thoughts, emotions.

Wishing Tree, detail

It was hard to be in the room for long

Bits of his eyelashes

In my practice as an artist I use a lot of traditional and heritage crafts – embroidery, knitting, basketry - in non-traditional ways. The weight of history behind embroidery resonates deeply with me, as it is a skill handed down through the generations, over centuries of time. Yet, for a long time it was seen as unimportant, frivolous and decorative. I have chosen to use this medium to express something very real and strong that is also at times very fragile and tender, but no less important for that. I wanted to create a beautiful object, yet suffuse it with horrific images and text. My aim in juxtaposing these was to infuse embroidery with new life, whereby it is changed from something judged as “nice” and “pretty”, and really fairly inconsequential, into a medium with grit, capable of expressing grim and very real issues.

GOODBYE I LOVE YOU and Tea

GOODBYE I LOVE YOU photographs

Tea

Wishing Tree, detail

In Ireland, suicide is a taboo subject for many. This work was a process of finding a space for the thoughts very few wanted to hear or talk about, from the tiny, personal and deeply upsetting feelings sewn onto a handkerchief or pillow, to the larger, more public and celebratory messages - the GOODBYE I LOVE YOU banner.

Nightmares

Dreams

I wrote the following to a friend about grief, and the vacuum a death leaves us with:

We will learn to live with a big hole in our hearts, we will decorate it and smooth the edges off, grow plants in it. We will never fill it, but it won’t always be a dark, ragged, painful ravine.

This exhibition is my story of learning to live with that hole; about the journey of grieving – from the awfulness of the event, to the ability years later to say goodbye. It is the stuff of life and the stuff of death, and that, really, is where my interests lie – in exploring the world, looking at it, looking at the horror as well as the beauty. And there is so much beauty in the gaps between the horror.

Mourning Quilt

Photographs 3-8, and 11-15 from the amazing Unkie Dave, many thanks!

GOODBYE I LOVE YOU

2010-06-02T03:44:00.000-07:00

I have a solo exhibition opening in ArtMart Studios next week. It comprises work made in the aftermath of the death of a close friend by suicide. The work explores the difficulty I found expressing the feelings I was left with after this profoundly complicated death and includes embroidered images and text, photography and quilt-making.

I wrote this statement last year about the work:

Fabric and the stitched word seemed the best possible way to communicate the horrific imagery left with me after this violent event. Embroidery gave the words and thoughts that were so difficult to say aloud a space to be expressed. Somehow the softness of thread and fabric, the beauty of stitching, the flexibility of the finished product and the comforting nature of textiles - we use them to clothe ourselves, to wipe our tears, to rest our faces on as we sleep - made textiles the best medium to convey the violence of the images, the nightmarish quality of suicide bereavement and the horror of the act itself.

The exhibition runs in ArtMart Studios, 7, The Mall, Sligo from 14-19 June, opening hours 11am-5pm. There is an opening on Saturday 12th June at 7pm. Please come along if you are in the area.
The exhibition is not suitable for children.

You can read a short piece artist and curator Joetta Maue wrote about the work here.

New home, new flapjacks

2010-05-17T09:07:00.000-07:00

I hate moving house. Well, who doesn't really? But the move has been made, and I hope that this will be the last.

There is nothing like a bit of baking to make you feel at home, so to start as I mean to go on, I made some flap jacks. Here is the recipe. Its very simple and easy and could be adapted to suit whatever is in the cupboard. It would also be fine with a bit less sugar and butter.

Flap jacks

8 oz oats
1 oz pumpkin seeds
1 oz sunflower seeds
1 oz pecans

2 oz dried apricots

2 oz sultanas

5 oz butter
4 oz light brown sugar
2 oz maple syrup

Preheat the oven to Gas Mark 2/150 degrees Celsius.
Chop the nuts and apricots roughly and mix all the dry ingredients together in a bowl.
Melt the butter, add the sugar and maple syrup and stir to dissolve in a big gloopy gorgeous mass. Pour on top of the oats & co. Mix, then place in a greased, lined baking tray (roughly 20 x 30cm) and bake for 20-25 minutes, 'til lightly coloured. Cut into squares while still hot and leave to cool and harden in the tin.

Delicious. And all gone in less than 24 hours.
There's been some beautiful sunshine and grim rain the last couple of days. Above is a view of the top field in the glorious sunny part of yesterday. And below is the view from the top field.

I don't know what kind of flower this is, but its everywhere at the moment.

Found some fragrant orchids yesterday too.

There are swallows roosting in the barn, there's deer poo in the back garden, and rabbits are grazing on the dropped lunch crumbs each evening right outside the window. It is like a paradise!

In the midst of busyness

2010-05-04T11:47:00.000-07:00

Is busyness actually a word?

Anyway, there has been far too much of it over the last months working on the house - flooring, painting, varnishing, scrubbing doggy dampy smells off things and such like.

There have been quiet moments too, walking up through the woods in the morning to find the wood sorrel glowing in dappled light...

...and the view from the top field of the clouds nestling in the valley.

And the numerical wonderfulness that was my odometer last week. Ahh, the beauty of numbers. If only it had happened on the 11th of November next year....

And dandelions. How incredibly plentiful they are this year, little golden orbs by the side of the road, and all over the garden.

One of the shitter things about living with chronic pain is how it has stopped me being able to look after the garden. I hate watching it getting weedier and weedier as I don't do much. I'm trying to take a new approach to gardening, inspired by a friend whose garden grows a beautiful coloured mish-mash of plants - weeds and non-weeds alike. This time last year I stayed in her house for a while and enjoyed her garden so much. But I was not a tolerator of dandelions in my own flower beds at the time.

Now I am facing the fact that I'm just not able to weed very much. The pain, and the enormous amount of work on the house together make for a neglected garden. Is it time to love the dandelions and live with them? For now that is what I am trying to do.

Asking my gardening friends and some research on the internet leads me to realise what an important plant they are. They are dynamic accumulators - gathering minerals from the soil and making them more available to plants. My friend tells me they indicate the presence of silica and the availability of potassium to plants. And they appear to be incredibly good for you when you eat them.

I'm still not 100% sure I want them in the flower beds though!

But I do love dandelions in the fields.
And everyone has to love the sight of Piper running through fields of them down at my Dad's place.

The Bomb is up

2010-04-13T12:35:00.001-07:00

It took a while, but I finally got my bomb pattern up for sale on Ravelry or from here via Paypal. Here it is in all its glory. Just to be clear, that's KNITTED bomb I mean of course...

Its the classic cartoon bomb, two sticks of dynamite, timer......and detonators.Its up for sale for 3.50 Euro, and 10% of the sale price goes to MAG - Mines Advisory Group, whose work includes clearing landmines.

You can buy it here via PayPal.
And here is the link to the pattern on Ravelry. (Sign in needed)

Its a fairly easy knit, done mostly in the round, with simple increases and decreases and some I-cord for the detonators. The pattern could easily be converted for making up on two needles. I used some Tivoli double knit yarn, but as gauge isn't important it could be made with any yarn lurking in the large stash any self-respecting knitter has hidden away for emergencies, along with some stuffing.It took a big of figuring out to get a nice flat face on the timer and in the end I used mathematical formulae. But I was left with some practice timers, one of which converted nicely into an oversized comedy watch...yes, it is totally ridiculous, just like the bomb!

Peas on Earth...

2010-04-11T03:35:00.000-07:00

Yes, that is a ridiculous name, but how could I not? Anyway, here is the pattern! Also available as a free PDF download on Ravelry. Or download it directly here.

Finished Measurements:

5” x 1 ¼” x 1”

13cm x 3 cm x 2.5cm

Materials:

A small amount of any type of yarn will do, with the appropriate size crochet hook. I used Kingcole Pricewise Double Knitting 100% Acrylic yarn in shade 272 for the mid green of the pod, and shade 53 for the lighter green of the peas.
3.5mm (U.S. Size 3) hook (or the correct size for your yarn)
A yarn needle for sewing up

Gauge:

16 sts or 10 rows dc per 4”/10cm

Abbreviations:

I use American crochet names, but the British ones are given here in italics also.

ch – chain/s

sc – single crochet = British – double crochet

dc – double crochet = British – treble crochet

st/s – stitch/es

sl st – slip stitch = British – single crochet

hdc – half double crochet = British – half treble crochet

sc dec – single crochet decrease (pull a loop through each of the next 2 sts, yarn over hook and draw through both sts)

DIRECTIONS:

Pea Pod side (Make two)

Using mid-green, ch 24.

Row 1: Skip one ch, 1 sc in each of next 2 ch, 1 dc in each of next 17 ch, 1 sc in each of next 2 ch, ss in next ch. (This leaves one ch with no st in it and makes the pea pod nice and pointy)

Row 2: Turn work. Skip 1 ch, ss in next st, 1 sc in each of next 2 sts, 1 hdc in next st, 1 dc in each of next 12 sts, 1 hdc in next st, 1 sc in each of next 2 sts, ss in next st.** Fasten off.

For second side of pea pod, work from * to **, then ss to end of pod.

Hold both sides flat against each other and work a line of sc through both sides to join them together. This leaves a nice ridge along the back. You could also sew along the edge using blanket stitch instead.

Pea (Make 5)

Make a slip ring (magic ring), (instructions here) and ch 2. (Counts as first hdc)

Make 6 hdc in ring, pull the ring closed and join with a ss. (7 sts)

Next round: Ch 2, 1 hdc in 3^rd ch from hook, 1 hdc in each of next 5 sts, ss to join.

Next round: Ch 1, sc dec three times, ss to join and fasten off. Leave a long tail of yarn and use this to stuff the pea. Push it into the pea with the wrong end of the crochet hook.

Making up:

Stuff all your peas and sew in place. Attach yarn to one end of the pod and ch 20 to make a tendril. Sew in any loose ends. Et voila!