sense of place: randbøldal museum

a bright, crisp autumn day. highly volatile, changeable weather. sunshine one minute and rain the next. wind racing clouds across the sky. you have to capture those moments of light when they happen, because they'll be gone in the next second.

there's something about a little museum that's so personal and accessible. something in the very air at randbøldal that whispers of the weavers who came before, even if the looms aren't the same ones - the sounds of the tramping pedals are the same, the voices talking together echo of the voices that came before. the shelves filled with naturally-dyed yarns, mushrooms ready for dyeing the next batch. as true a copy of the clothing worn by the egtved pige as can be woven today. in a little museum you can come close to all of these things.

you can go on a guided walk in the woods, looking for mushrooms and then you can see for yourself the changes wrought to the yarn by their steamy mushroom bath, maybe even be allowed to stir it a bit yourself. at a small museum, the experience is something you can fully appreciate. it doesn't try to do too much, it is what it is and isn't pretending to be more.

in these times when everything has to be an event of sorts, an experience, sometimes the best experience is the one that happens inside of you when you encounter a place where it's still and calm and relaxed. where there's time for people to tell you stories. and there's time for you to try things for yourself. to become part of the tradition in a sense, take part in the history. to weave your own meaning.

it's definitely the volunteers that make such a place so special - with their stories and their philosophies and all of the knowledge they have to give. i am happy to be a volunteer in training (truth be told, i'm mostly the photographer), learning from these lovely women (and men). hearing their stories and soaking in the history in this beautiful little hidden spot.

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if you want to know a bit more, i have written previously about the magical little bitty museum tucked away in randbøldal. it's where i first encountered weaving, which still speaks to some deep part of my soul.

magical places

i most definitely filled up my energy batteries today - i dressed up in my hugo boss suit, i wore fabulous heels, i had a great conversation with potential for the future and excellent results on a couple of tests in the morning, followed by a visit to a little second hand store where i found several treasures and then spent a couple of hours in one of my favorite places, that magical little museum in randbøldal, surrounded by creative people who were actively creating things.

artist anne brodersen was there, stitching on various fragments and talking about her work. i'm even more in love with it now. as anne explained the work with the greek bull from cyprus on it, i got goosebumps when she suggested that all of those cultures which are but artifacts to us live on somewhere in another dimension.

she explained some of her techniques, especially the way she uses photos and her transfer technique using a special kind of glue (which i ordered as soon as i got home). she also added texture to some of the pieces inspired by iceland in the form of different colors of soil that she collected on her visit to iceland. hmm, perhaps something can be done with all that sand i've collected from the world's beaches.

many of her works are a collection of various small fragments put together in creative and interesting ways. it was so inspiring. i find that i often have so many ideas swirling in my head and on my pinterest stitching board, that it stops me from getting started. but i think i can manage to get started if i just begin stitching various small pieces with the idea that they can be put together later. at times i'm so paralyzed by my own brain and probably also by my abundance of supplies.

we discussed the tension (insecurity?) that is in evidence in many embroidery artists around the interwebs about whether their work is art or handcraft. anne is, as i said previously, seemingly very secure in her work being art (which it very much is!). we talked about the resurgence in the popularity of such handcrafts today and she said she felt it was a product of these times. if you embroider, you are showing that you really have time to devote to such things, so you are showing what a surplus person you are. it's a status symbol today, in the midst of our busy lives. (i think this is equally true of gourmet cooking, crochet, sewing, etc.)

i talked with her about her courses in various techniques and i will definitely be taking both of the ones she offers. they're held over a weekend at her studio near the west coast of denmark. the courses are small - only 5 people. and i just can't wait! but it probably won't be 'til spring.

the museum in randbøldal has some kind of special energy. it's palpable in the air there and it gives me a sense of inner calm and peace like nowhere else does at the moment. it's a combination of atmosphere, looms, creativity and wonderful people. i think everyone needs a place like that, a place that gives you a calm and centered feeling when you didn't even know you needed it. magical.

now run along and find one for yourself!

reflections on the february daily art journal

click on this mosaic to see the whole set on flickr.

here it is, my mosaic of all of the pages of my february art journal calendar. this is such an interesting process. here in february, i've been less religious about sitting down and doing a page every single day, so there are many which stretch across two pages, because i didn't do them until the second day, thereby giving myself more space. i'm finding that works a bit better for me.

here are the close-ups of the second half of february. the first half is here.

february 15 - doodlings on a heavily embroidered dress seen in jean-paul gaultier's haute couture show

february 16 - sketch of the inkle loom that we bought  for sabin to weave ribbon on at our beloved randbøldal museum.

 february 17 18 - experimenting with monoprinting

i scribbled a thick layer of pastels on an ordinary sheet of paper and then laid it against the page and drew on it. it was fun!

 february 19 - cutting up one of those free postcards

february 20 - more monoprinting, this time a spillover from the soujournal project

february 21 - 22 a doodle a bit inspired by these, seen on flickr,

but with my own motifs. 

this was the first time when i sat down with the calendar and didn't know what to do.

and i think that shows.

as you can see, the past few days, after elizabeth (aka my zen master) sent me a link to a wonderful artist named shannon rankin, i played with some maps and really found my groove. expect more map stuff in the near future. it was well-timed, because husband had just cut up a map to aid him in our property search and so i had some extra bits of map at my disposal. sometimes cutting into such things is hard for me, but since it had already been cut, i had no inhibitions.

february 23 - 24 thinking about redrawing maps

these are places that have been important to me.

but i shuffled them at will. that was liberating.

february 25 - 26  driving around, looking at 8 farm places had me spending a lot of time with maps over two days. i found myself wondering which road would lead to our new home.

february 27-28 - fragments of a topography

maps in general interest me - topographies and mapping and drawing and tracing the topography of a life. that's what we're going to do in moving, we're going to redraw our internal maps. i got a bit of a start on it here at the end of february.

i still don't have a clear idea where this project is taking me. but combined with the soujournal project, i'm doing a lot of art journaling this year and that seems like a good thing. in fact, it seems so good, i've been pondering ways of sharing it.

so i'm putting together an online art journaling course. at first it was only in my mind, but now it's spilled onto the page a bit and i've even begun to make up packets of pretty papers for it. i'm still at the planning stage, but i'd love to know if you'd be interested in taking an online art journaling course and coming to explore this medium with me? please email me with any ideas you have about this - what you'd like to do in such a course, how you'd like to interact with the other participants, thoughts on materials and the like.

and don't forget to check out my fabulous new orange coat below. it was totally worth breaking the year of not buying things. :-)

experiments in fresh indigo - part 2

i still had a lot of indigo growing in the garden, so i decided to conduct another experiment dyeing with fresh indigo. i'd read about another method, where you blitz the leaves up in a blender with ice water, so i wanted to try that.

i had a piece of fine, very light cotton and i painted it with soy milk doodles, hoping to get a different color in spots. then i poured the indigo ice water mixture over it and massaged it in and let it sit for maybe half an hour (i really should have noted my timings a bit better).

it didn't feel like enough to just dye one piece of cotton, so i got out the silk i had dyed down in randbøldal and over-dyed it with the indigo ice water bath. 

it had a very cool effect with the regular indigo and the fresh. tonally, they are totally complementary, but they give very different shades of blue green. lovely.

it was a bit hard to rinse off the bits of the leaves, so i just hung them up to dry so that i could shake it off. i even over-dyed the one i had dyed with the salt dye mixture because it had ended up quite a light color when it was dry. 

i had found a nice piece of woven silk that i dyed as well - it has come out much more green. i don't know what i'll do with it, maybe make a top? i haven't decided yet. the dyeing is the fun part. and i stuck all my indigo stems in water and they surprisingly quickly sprouted roots, so i'm going to have even more next year!

and i planted them in the bed next door to the first bed of indigo. we'll have a blue summer next year if they take off. we have some unseasonably warm temperatures, thanks to the tail-end of the hurricanes on the east coast of the US, so i hope they have a chance to take hold.

weaving - the beginning

i was so excited all day yesterday, as i looked forward to my first weaving class with the weaving club (vævelaug) in a nearby town. i thought about it all day, hoping they would be as nice as the ladies at the museum over in randbøldal, where i first was introduced to weaving, had been. so i kind of bounced off the walls and was rather unfocused on everything else i did all day long. maybe part of it was the prospect of actually leaving the house and being around other people too, but that's perhaps a whole 'nother story.

a couple of things tried to stand in my way in getting there. i had the address plotted into my clever phone and knew it would take me 28 minutes to get there, so i left in plenty of time. i got out to the car and as i drove up the hill, the empty light flashed on the gas tank. nice job, husband, leaving me with no gas. grudge book. husband has an annoying habit of seeing how far he can push a tank of gas before filling it. clearly he did not grow up in blizzard country. friggin' copenhagen city boy. so i was fuming and wondering if i had time to fill before i got there. i called him and yelled some incoherent (i was slightly manic about the weaving class, remember) things about chivalry being dead and "in my culture, men are responsible for filling gas tanks," and such, and then i headed north.

i got up there faster than the clever phone said i would, so i pulled into a gas station to fill. which is when i discovered that i didn't have my purse. apparently That Girl had packed up a bag full of weaving books and notebooks and pens and a camera and a sweater in case it was cold there, but she neglected to grab my purse. so now i had an empty gas tank - the light was staying on, rather than blinking on and off - and no means of filling it. and i wasn't going to be able to pay for my weaving course when i got there. nice start. but happily, in my head, i was able to add it to husband's grudge book entry, because as i was leaving he was going on and on about how i had to look for sabin and her friend and send them home from the sledding hill so they could eat dinner, so it was technically his fault that i didn't pick up my purse.

my clever phone guided me to the address and i saw a little building, all lit up, so i followed some other people in. i was a little surprised how smoky it was inside and by the wave of alcohol fumes coming off the woman by the door who greeted me. then she slurred, are you going to walk with us? walk with you? i was confused. and i had gone into the little clubhouse of a gangforening - a walking club, apparently for old smoking alcoholics. they probably even use those sticks, tho' i got out of there before i found out.

there was a time when that would have totally defeated me and i would have hurried home as fast as possible, embarrassed and confused and a little bit hurt. but i got back in the car and consulted the clever phone again for the address. i took a trip around the block and discovered that the area was dotted with all kinds of little association clubhouses. and finally, there was another one with lights on (across the street from the walkers - why couldn't they just TELL me that, by the way?) and i found it.

this time, it was much more obvious that i was in the right place. there were things like yarn and looms and combs and shuttles and nice people welcoming me rather than stumbling over to me and looking at me like i may have come from another planet. it felt a bit like coming home.

there are two rooms packed full of looms. i only had the macro lens on me, so i'll have to share a shot of them next time. there's a little kitchen and a little library and storage for many, many combs and shelves of yarn and spinning supplies and those thingies that help you turn a skein of yarn into a ball of yarn (must learn the term for those). it's a whole, sweet little old house devoted entirely to weaving - can you imagine anything more fantastic?

and everyone was so nice. the teacher is an artist who makes his living as a weaver. he has a studio in frederiksværk and i'm looking forward to going there at some point to see his work. the first thing i will weave is a sampler where i will learn different patterns - 8 different little 20cm x 20cm squares, which will then go into a book that i will make, to use as reference for my future weaving. the teacher had a big bag of yarn that he had been given, so i could choose three colors from it for my sampler. hmm, guess what colors i chose?

no surprises there. my first task was to take the yarn from skein to balls, using a winder of some sort (i will learn the technical terms, i promise). one issue is that i'm learning all of this in danish and i didn't really have the vocabulary for it in english to begin with! so much to learn!

the light blue was hopelessly tangled, so i ended up having to do it by hand, which took the better part of an hour. the other two went as they were supposed to and in no time, i had them wound into balls. what was most fascinating about the process was the way my teacher handled the skeins of yarn. it was so clear that he had a level of comfort with them borne of years of working with fibers. i felt a little bit in awe.

by the time i had it finished and we had talked through my pattern and how many warp strands i will need to set up on the loom, it was time to go. i'm so excited to learn this from the very beginning - including how to set it up! even just talking through the pattern with my teacher made me understand better some of what i'd been reading. i'm definitely a person who needs to be shown things rather than only told them!

what's really wonderful about the group is how nice everyone was. they all talked to me even tho' i hadn't met them when we were all back in kindergarten. they were interested in how i had found them and where my interest in weaving came from. i could feel some of the spirit of camaraderie that i had been hoping for (and didn't find) with the local art association i joined last year. it felt a bit like coming home.

and i so want a loom for my birthday. it already feels like an eternity til next tuesday.

experiments in fresh indigo - part 1

i bought some indigo seeds in the spring and planted them in pots in the greenhouse. once they were big enough and the frost gone, i planted them out in a raised bed. they looked a bit weak and scrappy and i wasn't sure whether they would turn out. but they took hold and became big, lovely, lush plants, taking over the bed, even though i had only planted them in one half. 

i read about people dyeing with fresh indigo (regular indigo dyeing is a fermentation process and seemed daunting) and decided to take some with me down to the little museum in randbøldal, where i weave. we had a regular indigo dye pot simmering that day, but i took the fresh leaves and some salt and decided to try the salt method on some silk i had found.

i massaged the salt into the leaves and then put in the piece of silk, which i'd prepared shibori-style with some small knots made with rubber bands. i massaged the leaf and salt mixture into the silk and let it sit.

i think i gave it about half an hour. it turned a lovely light aqua blue color. it took the leaves with quite some variation, with some spots darker than others. unexpected and lovely.

it's the perfect length for a scarf and i gave it a dip in vinegar water to set the dye and then took out the rubber bands. they had produced a lovely pattern, together with the salted indigo leaves.

it created a lovely play of colors on the silk and i found myself wishing i had more. it had been the last of the bolt at the fabric store, so i only had a small piece. i had divided it into three scarf-lengths and i put the other two in the regular indigo dye pot. that yielded a darker blue, as you can see here below.

i've sewn the ends together and made it into an infinity scarf that wraps twice around and has a lovely drape. i'll have to share a picture of it another day, as it's grey and rainy today and not light enough to take photos. it definitely won't be my last experiment in dyeing with fresh indigo. i think next year, i'll actually try to make some regular indigo dye to use, going through the whole fermentation and drying process. it's really a magical plant and it seems to do well in our climate. 

looking for the elusive red thread

we got together in our local creative group on sunday and made small "flexigon" books together, inspired by places that mean something to us. because i love the little museum down in randbøldal, where i go to weaving every other wednesday, i wanted to make that the focus of my little foldable book. i selected some photos that i'd taken there, as well as a photo of the runner for my kitchen that i wove there at the museum. many of the photos i chose were of that work in progress and the one in the middle is of the new runner that i just started last saturday. what i wanted to ponder in my little book was the magic of the place. because it really is a magical place. 

and what came out was something else entirely. i began to think about the way that we trace red threads of meaning through our lives. or the way that we probably should do that and don't always do so. and my little book became a kind of meditation on that. perhaps because i have used red strips cloth in my rug, or because i often struggle to figure out whether there is a cohesive meaning to my life. it can feel like i'm really just bumbling along. 

but it's strange that wasn't what i sat down to create. i wanted to create a little book that expressed the magic i feel in the air when i'm at the museum. it's a really special place. it makes me feel calm and centered and present. i feel it immediately when i step out of my car, my shoulders relax and i breathe deeply. it's in a little valley, on the curve of a creek, nestled down in the trees. part of the magic is the group of women which gathers there, especially the leader of that group, who is a lovely, spry, can-do woman who makes things happen. she's a big part of the magic. but the place itself has something special as well. maybe it's on just the right vortex, or just the way it's placed, there on the creek, nestled at the base of a tree-covered hill, is perfect. and i wanted to try to capture that in my little book, but instead, it ended as a search for a red thread. 

i guess i unconsciously chose that myself when i chose the pictures that i did. i have many other pictures that capture the magic, but the ones i chose were nearly all of my own weaving and in that way, i guess i did control the direction it took, even if it maybe felt like i didn't. i guess i'm just looking for that elusive red thread.

i'm going back to weaving!

when i went back to the magical randbøldal on wednesday evening, it was like coming home. and i wondered how it was i stayed away so long...sometimes we have to lose ourselves for awhile to find ourselves. i'm going to make a long runner for the kitchen. and it doesn't matter how long it takes.