It has been a busy week here. My next reversible lace pattern, Viridi pinnam, is almost ready to post on Ravelry. Spring Fling is this weekend, where I'll be teaching reversible lace on Sunday.
Completely off topic from knitting — on Wednesday I attended a Congressional Visits Day. It was very interesting spending a day running around the offices for the House of Representatives and meeting with legislative staff. My group was especially fortunate to get an in-person meeting with Congressman Hank Johnson of Georgia's 4th district, on the east side of Atlanta. If you have a chance to visit, I highly recommend it. Those of you who are keyed in to visual cues will learn a lot about their priorities very quickly just by looking at how our representatives decorate their offices. If I were still in art history academia, I could easily get a master's thesis out of office décor on the Hill.
Friends have also sent some interesting fiber-related web links to my inbox. I must share.
First up, a long post about Vikings and wool. You'll recall I visited Denmark in 2012. One of the places I saw was the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde. I was excited to see the museum mentioned in the blog post. The museum does not just have static displays of ships. The museum is right there on the harbor. They have a ship-building workshop. Over the years, they have built replicas of every ship in the museum. One of them they even built twice, as there was more than one possibly reconstruction! The museum also has other workshop areas where traditional Viking activities are demonstrated and even taught. The day I was there the spinning and weaving person was not on site. However, she had spun and woven a sail by hand in the Viking way, a process that took thousands of hours. The importance of textiles is often overlooked when we are taught the history of sea travel. Fabric was valuable, and a sail took up a lot of it! Ship building — including commercial activities and naval warfare — required the participation of men and women and many, many sheep.
My experiments with reversible lace have involved working lace over a foundation of 1×1 ribbing. Lily Chin has created reversible cables over a foundation of 1×1 ribbing. Lynne Barr has create reversible three-dimensional shapes by manipulating 1×1 ribbing. It turns out Janeen Puckett, has worked reversible intarsia over 1×1 ribbing. Her video:
Lastly and close to home, Southeast Fiber Arts Alliance is hosting a showing of Coton jaune, Acadian Brown Cotton, A Cajun Love Story. If I weren't already teaching on Sunday afternoon, this is where I would be instead, especially since the most recent issue of PLY magazine is all about cotton. And to circle back to my comments about Congressional office décor, several offices for Georgia representatives did have a bale of cotton on display. Cotton may not be king here anymore, but its effect on history here is undeniable.
Friends have also sent some interesting fiber-related web links to my inbox. I must share.
First up, a long post about Vikings and wool. You'll recall I visited Denmark in 2012. One of the places I saw was the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde. I was excited to see the museum mentioned in the blog post. The museum does not just have static displays of ships. The museum is right there on the harbor. They have a ship-building workshop. Over the years, they have built replicas of every ship in the museum. One of them they even built twice, as there was more than one possibly reconstruction! The museum also has other workshop areas where traditional Viking activities are demonstrated and even taught. The day I was there the spinning and weaving person was not on site. However, she had spun and woven a sail by hand in the Viking way, a process that took thousands of hours. The importance of textiles is often overlooked when we are taught the history of sea travel. Fabric was valuable, and a sail took up a lot of it! Ship building — including commercial activities and naval warfare — required the participation of men and women and many, many sheep.
My experiments with reversible lace have involved working lace over a foundation of 1×1 ribbing. Lily Chin has created reversible cables over a foundation of 1×1 ribbing. Lynne Barr has create reversible three-dimensional shapes by manipulating 1×1 ribbing. It turns out Janeen Puckett, has worked reversible intarsia over 1×1 ribbing. Her video:
Lastly and close to home, Southeast Fiber Arts Alliance is hosting a showing of Coton jaune, Acadian Brown Cotton, A Cajun Love Story. If I weren't already teaching on Sunday afternoon, this is where I would be instead, especially since the most recent issue of PLY magazine is all about cotton. And to circle back to my comments about Congressional office décor, several offices for Georgia representatives did have a bale of cotton on display. Cotton may not be king here anymore, but its effect on history here is undeniable.
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