Mother's Day

A Happy Mother's day to all mothers, a happy day to all nurturers, whether of children, animals, plants, the planets or themselves.  A day where I pay homage to the mothers who have gone before me, the mothers who are still to come and to the Great Mother.

The sun's shining brightly here, I hope there's light and warmth where you are.

Away to the south

Following the workshops in the Blue Mountains, Sydney, I headed off to the south, met up with a friend and we took the ferry to Kangaroo Island, a large island 155 km long, and 55 kms wide, off the southern coast of Australia.  The majority of roads are unsealed, and driving on the gravel surfaces is like driving on small slippery marbles, or juddering your way across corrugated surfaces.  As the Island has an abundance of wildlife, caution is recommended when driving in the early morning, at dusk and at night, as some of the inhabitants are large, travel at speeds and can do terrible damage to a car...and the occupants!  Despite this, the Island has a wild natural beauty, and is a mixture of woodlands, open forests, fresh and salt lakes, spectacular coastal cliffs and mild glassy bays. 

For Carolin - Admiral's Arch on the SE coast....battered by strong seas and winds coming off the Antarctic.  A beautiful and idyllic view, but the smell was overpowering, as this sheltered cave and rocks are home to many seals, and after being hunted almost to extinction for their fur and meat, they are now a protected species.

 

 Nepean Bay, our own "private" beach 5 minutes from the beach cottage we rented.

 Duck Lagoon.....sadly no ducks left.  After seal hunting was stopped, the land was clear felled for farming, and the resulting erosion has caused salinity and poisoning of the inland waterways, resulting in dead and dying trees.

A rusty disused old still used to extract eucalyptus oil.......would love to have wrapped it in some cloth! 

 A local inhabitant....an echidna, who I narrowly missed squashing as he ambled across the road.  I stopped and followed it into the bush and stayed quiet and still until it felt safe and popped it's snout out to continue foraging.  It was about 30cm.....12 inches...long.

 Pelican feeding

Remarkable Rocks.........definitely!!

Nothing between here and Antarctica!

A beautiful old brick one room schoolhouse, built in the  mid 1800s.

....and look, I found a good pupil inside, who knew all the right answers!

There was so much to see and do on the Island, and I don't think we covered even half of it, but I thoroughly enjoyed what we did see and do.  Next, a change of landscape, and onto Broken Hill, a mining town out in the desert country of western New South Wales.

Mountain basketeering

I started the second Contextart workshop here in the Blue Mountains on Monday, and it finished today.  The tutors were Wendy Golden  and Jim Walliss, both with many years of basketry and teaching experience, and they not only generously shared their knowledge and skills with us, but were endlessly patient as well.  For me, it was a week of steep learning curves, and widely contrasting emotions, including tossing the basket across the verandah in frustration, a little foot stamping, and some rude words directed at the offending basket....as well as excitement and a sense of accomplishment when I "got it".   Most of the participants felt the same I think. The learning experience wasn't helped by very cold wet weather mid week, but the sun came out for us yesterday and today, and it finally felt like it was coming together for us by yesterday afternoon.

We started the week with some muehlenbeckia, a native creeper that we had to free form into whatever shape we wanted, or could manage....this definitely wasn't my forte, and neither of these finished forms are mine, which ended up looking like an Amazon's breastplate, and went back into the bundle for common use!

Day 2 we learnt to make a nice flate base of cane, and learning the techniques to build our basket, and shape it, gradually building up the sides.

 This is small, about 4 inches tall and is made up of cumbungi, a flat rush, tall spike rush, and finished with coloured cane.  I enjoyed making this, and found it easy to get into a weaving/twining rhythm. 

But then came the challenge...The Melon Basket!! 

Framework of twisted vines and cane with twining begun.

This is where I'm up to......this is a mixture of watsonia, meuhlenbeckia, banana, spike rush and the dark section I'm still weaving is gymea lily.

Busy Basketeers!

I'll have a quiet weekend now with my son and his partner, before heading off to Adelaide to meet up with a friend and some more holiday fun.

Enjoy your weekend everyone.

Dyeing in the Blue Mountains

I've been absent for a while as I was busy getting ready and organised to leave home for 3 weeks.

Katoomba sunset, looking down Megalong Valley

I've been staying with my son and his fiancee.in Katoomba while I'm attending workshops at the Blue Mountains Contextart Art Forum, held at the Korowal School in Hazelbrook.  Being able to enjoy these beautiful surroundings and spend time in the extensive gardens was a bonus of the workshops

Over the weekend I did eco-dyeing using plant material from the nearby bush, with Kirsten Ingmar and Trace Willans.  They have very different methods, but both were great tutors and I had good fun, made some lovely new friends..........hello Pat and Christine.......and learnt a lot.  

  Pat and I collaborated on leaf dyeing this cotton tshirt by the bundling method.  Trace showed us how to use egg yolk to enhance the colour and print on cotton, by adding protein to the fabric. This would work on any cellulose fibre....linen, bamboo, rame etc.  We dyed the tshirt in a pot of mountain devil...a local native plant...mordanted with copper.  Note the green on the neckline where the dye has reacted with  perfume on the shirt.

 Back view, love that great string line pattern

 Leaf detail

Close up of string line

I didn't take photos of the bundling and wrapping process, but Trace has a great tutorial on her blog if you'd like to try it.

I did these samples using various shibori style techniques and chemical mordants in a variety of plant based dyes.

 Pole wrapped silk dyed in mountain devil, copper mordant.  It's more a green than the picture shows.

 Shibori folded raw silk, clamped and dyed between wooden blocks in bark with a copper mordant.

Silk georgette bundled with coreopsis flowers, dyed in onion skins with an alum mordant

Highlights of the two days

I'll be back again to post about the basketry workshop I'm doing all this week with Wendy Golden.  

Are you being served ?

I'm shop girl here today at the Tweed Valley Artist's Co-op Gallery, at Tyalgum.  We have a tiny room at the side of the Tyalgum Community Hall, which was built in 1908.

It's a spooky space, I have to cross this hall to the toilets at the back, that's our "backdoor" in the top picture.  The roof creaks and rattles, it smells old and musty and you can almost hear the footsteps, a background murmur of conversations and the friendly clink of tea cups of the many groups who've used this hall down the years, as it would once have been the hub of village life. It still is used regularly for meetings, wedding and funeral services, a theatre group, the local environment action group and our own art cafe.

It's quite a contrast to our cheery gallery, with it's colorful variety of arts and crafts from all over the Tweed.

I think today will be quiet, it's rather wet, but that doesn't always keep visitors away. They come over the Border Ranges from Queensland looking for lunch, or come from the south on the way to somewhere else.  But I have plenty to keep me busy and happy. When I need to stretch my legs, there's this wonderful view to enjoy.

I have my knitting...

 Or I can work on my tiny scrap houses when I've had enough of knitting.  It's a pleasant place to be, with some mellow music playing in the background and the rain falling gently outside.  I can concentrate just on my knitting or sewing, unlike at home, where I'd be aware there's dusting or ironing to be done (not that it necessarily would!).  So it's like a little holiday out of my usual routine.

Aah, there's a step on the stair, and the bell has been rung, it sounds like I have a customer. 

Shop!

Basketcases

Firstly I'd like to say thankyou to everyone who commented on my last post, and left lovely messages farewelling Freya. It feels very different now there are only 3, and the others have been unusually quiet....realising something is different perhaps.

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I went to a basketmaking workshop yesterday.  There were 10 of us, and we were all new to it.  I've wanted to learn basketmaking for ages, and since I'm also booked into a week long workshop next month, I thought it was a good opportunity to get a feel for it.

These were all made by the tutor, Jill Bose, who has been making baskets for many years.

This is one of my 'efforts'...now that it's dried, I can see where it needs more work.

My other creation.  I could damp this again and push it into a more upright shape, but I quite like it like this.  The orangey-brown leaves are philodendron, with the lighter coloured banana leaf woven through as an accent.

 

This is the very beginning, getting the base flat.  Dried banana leaf is woven around spokes of thin canes that fall from the palm tree after fruiting.


Ripe berries on the tree



Stems dry out after the berries are finished, and the whole thing drops from the tree...to be collected and made into baskets. An interestingly sculptural piece on it's own.

Getting the left to right and behind cross over action right

 

The flat base has to be held firmly in your lap to start the shaping of the sides.  I could've used a couple more pairs of hands at times.



Lajla's  finished basket.  Despite being given the same materials and instructions the finished baskets all looked very different, as we added out own touch.

Jill, the tutor, starting the framework for the large open weave basket

Hard at work



A banana leaf basket made by the tutor

We shared good food

Now that I have some idea of what to do, I'm really looking forward to my April workshop, to see how different the two tutors are and hopefully learn different styles and techniques. For this workshop, Jill used easily obtainable tropical plants, whereas the plants and fibres used in the next workshop will be cool temperate climate plants, and so will be very different. 

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