the prodigal molly returns

i hadn't seen molly dolly since before we went to arizona back in may. she wasn't here when we came home and she seriously didn't show up again until two days ago - july 10 to be exact. my last photo of her before that was april 6, though i am certain that i saw her on may 3, the day we left for arizona. at first, i wasn't worried - she can easily disappear for a few days and maybe a week, but i'll admit that eventually i thought something had happened to her. 

i was just sick about it, but couldn't even bring myself to speak it out loud. i would go out in the garden and talk to her, both out loud and just in my head. i was so sad to think that i might not know what ever happened to her. but now she's back, like nothing happened. i wonder where she was? billy, her grandson, does this all the time - he clearly has another home and lives there most of the year, only coming home for a few weeks every summer. but molly's never disappeared for more than a few days before this. she must have been angry that we left for 10 days. 

she's 12 years old now - yes, it was 12 years ago that we brought that tiny grey kitten back from our trip to minnesota and south dakota. 

at long last

after going all this time without ever having covid, it has finally caught up with me. so much for my theory that i hadn't gotten it because of my b-negative blood type.  i think it was last week's travels and i think husband also had it last week. thanks to 4 vaccinations, it's like a bad cold/flu. i have a fever, a headache, a very sore throat, aches all over my body and a weird revulsion to fish. husband was eating torskerøgn for lunch and i couldn't even look at it. i had some avocado toast. it must be the new flirt variant - they try to make it sound fun, naming it that, but it's not fun at all. 

an abandoned house in belgium

do you ever just want to give it all up, buy a falling down house to fix up and move to belgium? me neither. though this house near gosselies was rather tempting. tucked in the undergrowth along a cobblestone street, windows open, quietly falling into disrepair, yet strangely appealing. i peeked in a window. it was like the people left it from one day to the next, taking nothing with them. i so found myself wanting to know the story. what happened? was it elderly family members who died and the family didn't want the house? was there a murder? have i been listening to too many true crime podcasts? could i learn to speak french?

i don't really know what to make of belgium. i've been in brussels a few times and also to ghent. this was my first trip to the french-speaking part. it felt like entering a pocket in time. quiet, slow, and maybe a bit abandoned and forgotten, like this house.

scenes from a quick trip to stavanger

had a quick work trip to stavanger this week. it's such a lovely, charming, creative, artsy town. and the light was amazing. i had a chance to stroll around a bit, spotting street art at every turn. and there was even time for a get-together with miss buckle from the old bloggy days! we ate a great burger and had a few laughs!

progress

i've made progress on the first tea towel. the "pattern" i gave myself may result in one that's a bit short after i wash it, but that's how you live and learn. i'm too far now to turn back, so i'll just go a little bit longer on the next one. it goes faster than you think. even husband was suprised. and check out the difference the color you weave in with makes to the overall color. this is exactly what i wanted to learn. 

every single thread

we had an unexpected (for me, i've been busy lately, what can i say) day off midweek this week. i needed it more than i even knew. so i asked emmy if she had time to come and help me dress the loom (yes, i looked that up - i've learned weaving in danish, so i know none of the terminology in english). 

i'm really happy with the colors and the way this turned out. i can't wait to see what weaving in with different colors does to the whole. i'm hoping to learn a lot about how the colors affect one another.

some of the palette i've chosen for the weft. these colors are all in the warp itself. i have so much to learn.

i don't think i meant for this to be quite such a rainbow - i was playing with the color and the transitions between them and the process of moving from one side of the spectrum to the other. 

the threads are in such order, behaving themselves. there's so much potential for chaos within them (just two minutes with mazikeen the demon cat), but here, they are behaving and in order. and i can really see the color transition go from blue to yellow to red. there's some purple in both ends for balance. 

and now, i'm pulling the threads through (no idea what that's called), but this is essential to connecting them to the pedals and making a pattern. i have so much to learn. but what i love right now about this process is that i have to work with and develop a relationship with every single thread. i have to ensure that they are in the correct spot, checking and rechecking. i have to get to know them, to tame them. yes, they're going to be tea towels - an everyday object that gets used and isn't really noticed. but i will have noticed every single thread in them. that feels profound somehow. and it's so nice to be making something tangible, that i can touch and sense and feel and notice and ultimately use. and that isn't made up underneath it all of 0s and 1s. 

colors of kindness warp

here's how my colors of kindness warp turned out. i'm so grateful to my friend emmy for helping me make it yesterday! i spent all my time choosing colors and deciding when to add the next one and change it out and didn't learn as much as i should have about actually making the warp, but that was also something. and there will be more warps to make. this one will be tea towels where i play with color, learning what it does to this rainbow of colors when you weave in with only one color or another. it'll be a few weeks before i have time to dress the loom, as i'm really busy with work, but i can't wait. 

color inspiration

i'm setting up a warp with colors inspired by these colors of kindness crayons as the first thing i will weave on the new loom. i want to not only get to know it, but also experiment with color and how it works together. plus, everyone is clearly getting tea towels for christmas!

if you need me, i'll be playing with these and planning the color scheme this weekend. 
 

what is time?

i participated in another project at trapholt museum. they are amazing at doing these projects where they involve ordinary people like me. they always involve some kind of craft - embroidery, weaving, patchwork, knitting. they often ask a young designer/artist to put the whole thing together. and the projects are always awesome to be part of. this time, the theme is time. the mission was to find a single word that means time to you. then, you should embroider that word on a piece of old bed linens. the bed linens were allowed to have holes in them, which you repaired using sashiko stitching and you had to embroider the word in blue embroidery thread. you also had to track your time and embroider how much you spent in white thread. i found a lovely old dyne cover in a nearby secondhand shop, but it didn't have any stains or holes to repair. my piece is 57cm long, because i'm 57 years old. all of them had to be 50cm wide. oh, and you had to embroider a line down the middle in a simple running stitch.

it took me a long time to figure out my word. i mean, really, what one word expresses time if you can't use the word time? i kept coming back to stories. it struck me that we can't even talk about time without telling a story. it never settled in for me a the word that i KNEW i had to have, but i also couldn't get it out of my head, so i ended up choosing it.

another of the rules was that you could use whatever embroidery stitches you wanted, but you couldn't stitch anything figurative. you really had to just stitch your word. and it had to be at least 6cm tall. i had trouble making my word behave as i wanted - i wanted it in my handwriting and in the end, i formed the word from a thin wire and stitched over it to achieve what i was looking for. 

and because the wire would have been against the rules, i picked it all out again after i had stitched over it. the whole stitching process took me 16 hours and 22 minutes. the thinking about it took much longer than that. i don't think what i made is high art by itself. i'm so curious how the final work, put together by artist kristine mandsbjerg will turn out. i'll keep you posted. the exhibition goes up in november.

what word would you have chosen?

the brewery is now a weaving studio

my friend's husband died in february and she has sold her house in the countryside and bought a new apartment. that means that it was time for her loom to come home to me. we decided that the beautiful new floor in the brewery made it a perfect room for it, so now it's not a brewery, but a weaving studio! on saturday, we dismantled it and brought it over to our place.

husband is going to build some shelves and storage areas for all those sticks. weaving requires a lot of sticks. 

i also got that beautiful piece of olmer cloth that's hanging over the chair from emmy. i'm going to use it to make a new cover for the pillow that's underneath all those sticks in the previous picture. the one i'm using there belongs in our outdoor lounge area. 

i wanted to assemble it immediately, but we had to go back over to have dinner and sit around the fire and make pancakes for dessert. it was absolutely glorious weather all of the long weekend. i do love the many spring holidays in denmark.

husband and i waited until monday to assemble it, since we had guests over for a barbeque on sunday. we had it assembled in no time. it's actually not that difficult, even though it looks quite complicated. of course, it helped that we had just disassembled it the day before.

we glued some felt on the bottom of the legs to protect the floor, hence the newspaper. i'm going to make a colorful warp and do some tea towels to get acquainted with it. then, i will embark on rugs for our bedroom. i've waited for this moment for more than a decade - my own loom, set up so that i can weave at home!

marching in under the wire

i almost let march go without writing here. not sure how that happened. time flies when you're having fun! over my birthday weekend, we had so much fun, creating an amazing floor in our brewery. here are the photos of it. it's a decorative polyurethane floor. which is related to, but not epoxy. it wears better and looks amazing! what do you think?