the textile files

The detective & the jumper - an update

2011-11-19T17:04:00.003Z

Previously on this blog: The knitted detective

The Killing II has now arrived on our screens, and the jumper is yet again taking centre stage, as Ginny Dougray reveals on the Radio Times blog:

'I've only seen the first two episodes - and am gripped, once again - but cannot help remarking on The Sweater, which is not the beloved Faroese, black-on-white knit of old but a cheery, cherry-red. "There's this rule, you know, in the bones of every person doing what I do, that you should never give the audience what they want," says Grabol. "It's like an artistic law - you shouldn't repeat yourself, because then you're dead creatively. So there's a sense of 'They want the jumper? Well, they're not going to get the jumper!' "

Find about more about Lund's jumpers

Products with love

2011-09-28T16:11:00.002Z

Today I am launching an internet shop, Solveighs Textilkabinett at DaWanda,the website for 'products with love'.

You find my Textilkabinett @
http://en.dawanda.com/shop/mirabilia-domestica

If you have seen any other work of mine that you like on my blogs or website, I am happy to list it and sell it via the Textilkabinett.

Enjoy your visit, and if you like it tell others about it.

Psyche

2011-09-13T15:14:00.004Z

Butterfly and moth are of the same family. Airy and light, colourful or camouflaged, fragile or furry, fluttering in the sunshine in search of nectar, seeking the light in the darkness of the night, they are symbols of the spirit, of metamorphosis and the cycle of life. In myth, Psyche wears butterfly wings and moths are said to be the souls of the dead.

More moths & butterflies

Pink fluff, fur & feathers

2011-09-13T14:53:00.003Z

While in Eastbourne the deafening noise of planes fills the summer air and the Royal Air Force hands out stickers to promote their trade to a new generation of heroes in the making, only a few miles down the coast their colleagues march amidst rainbow colours, pink furs and feathers to the sound of music in a different kind of celebration.

Images of Brighton Pride 2011

Der unendliche Faden - The never-ending thread

2011-07-29T12:53:00.003Z

Der unendliche Faden - The never-ending thread - is the title of an installation by Thomas Hauck & Sabina Kaeser at Kunsthaus Kannen/Germany.Visitors are invited to add to the web of threads that stretches through the grounds around the Kunsthaus. While each thread in itself is finite, joined together they create a continuously growing web of infinite potential, only ending when people cease to work on it.

"31. Mai 2011 – 05. Juni 2011

Zum Auftakt der Ausstellung „Art Brut und Textil“ entsteht vor dem Park im Kunsthaus ein riesiges Netzwerk. Jeder der Teilnehmer kann seine Wolle selbst mitbringen und Freunde zum gemeinsamen Vernetzen einladen. Ins Leben gerufen wird die Aktion vom dem Installations- und Performanceduo „DAS ARCHIV“, das aus Thomas J. Hauck aus Berlin und Sabina Kaeser aus Zürich, besteht."

images of the installation

More information on the installation and the Art Brut and Textile exhibition
Gestrickt, geklebt, geknotet ...
(Knitted, glued, knotted)
Kunsthaus Kannen/Germany
5 June – 25 September 2011

The handkerchief of time

2011-05-02T10:08:00.003Z

“If you take a handkerchief and spread it out in order to iron it, you can see in it certain fixed distances and proximities. If you sketch a circle in one area, you can mark out nearby points and measure far-off distances. Then take the same handkerchief and crumple it, by putting it in your pocket. Two distant points suddenly are close, even superimposed. If, further, you tear it in certain places, two points that were close can become very distant. This science of nearness and rifts is called topology, while the science of stable and well-defined distances is called metrical geometry. Classical time is related to geometry, having nothing to do with space, as Bergson pointed out all too briefly, but with metrics. On the contrary, take your inspiration from topology, and perhaps
you will discover the rigidity of those proximities and distances you consider arbitrary. And their simplicity, in the literal sense of the word pli [fold]: it's simply the difference between topology (the handkerchief is folded, crumpled, shredded) and geometry (the same fabric is ironed out flat). […]
Sketch on the handkerchief some perpendicular networks, like Cartesian coordinates, and you will define the distances. But, if you fold it, the distance from Madrid to Paris could suddenly be wiped out, while, on the other hand, the distance from Vincennes to Colombes could become infinite.”

Serres, Michel (1995). Conversations on science, culture, and time / Michel Serres with Bruno Latour; translated from French by Roxanne Lapidus. The University of Michigan Press, p.60, 61

more handkerchiefs

Strick-Liesel

2011-04-06T11:17:00.004Z

"Strick-Guerilla - Die subversive Kraft des Strickens
Sie kommen in der Nacht, wollen verstören, wachrütteln. Sie nennen sich 'Strick' und 'Liesel' - und das ist Programm. Die beiden Künstlerinnen stricken ihre Werke: Plakate, die an strategisch wichtigen Orten in diversen Städten angebracht werden und gegen Atomkraft protestieren. Das Künstlerduo gehört zu einer weltweit agierenden Strick-Guerilla. ttt forscht der subversiven Kraft dieser alten Handarbeit nach."

[Knit-guerilla: the subversive power of knitting
They come in the night, want to disturb, wake us up. They call themselves 'Strick' and 'Liesel' - and that's the program. The two artists knit their works: posters that are put up in strategically important places in various cities in protest against nuclear energy. The artist duo are part of a world-wide movement of knitting guerilla. ttt investigates the subversive potential of this old handicraft.]

Titel, Thesen, Temperamente, ARD/NDR, 3 April 2011
http://www.ardmediathek.de/ard/servlet/content/3517136?documentId=6868262

Flat pack

2011-03-31T16:09:00.004Z

A flat-packed chair for the installation 300 Spectators by Goett & Hoad. To follow the chair into the gallery and find out more about the work, go to

http://solveighgoett.blogspot.com/search?q=300+spectators

London 26 March 2011 - March for the Alternative

2011-03-29T11:47:00.003Z

Under a sea of flags and banners half a million people took to the streets of London to protest against the ruthless spending cuts imposed by the UK government.

For images from the march, go to http://solveighgoett.blogspot.com/search?q=26+March+2011

ein wunderschöner Textilkreislauf - a wonderful textile cycle

2011-03-21T11:56:00.005Z

" ... heute war Stoffparty mit den Gütersloher Nähweibern. Stoffe, die man irgendwann gekauft oder geschenkt bekommen hat, aber nie verarbeiten konnte oder dann doch nicht mehr wollte, wurden wie bei einer Tupperparty präsentiert und verkauft. Die Tageseinnahmen gehen an den Kinderschutzbund. So weit die ganz einfache Beschreibung ...
Ich habe das Paradekissen gekauft.
Nicht etwa, weil ich es dringend benötige. Es ist genau das alte kaputte Paradekissen meiner Oma, dass ich vor Lichtjahren (lange bevor ich zum Nähweib geworden bin) mal auf einem Flohmarkt an eine nette Frau verkauft habe. Und genau diese nette Frau wollte sich heute auf unserer Stoffparty davon trennen, weil sie nie ein passendes zweites Kissen gefunden hat.
Ist das nicht ein wunderschöner Textilkreislauf?”

[... today we had a fabric party with the Gütersloher Nähweibern (sewing women). Fabrics once bought or given but never used in any project for various reasons were displayed and sold like at a Tupperware party. The takings of the day were donated to the association for the protection of children. So far, so good … I bought a Paradekissen (decorative pillow case).
Not because I needed it. It was the very same old and torn pillow case of my grandmother that light years ago – long before I became a Nähweib - I had sold on a flea market to a very nice woman. Now this very same nice woman wanted to let go of it today at our fabric party because in all those years she didn’t manage to find a second pillowcase to match.
Isn’t that a wonderful textile cycle?]

K.G., 19.3.2011

The knitted detective

2011-03-18T10:56:00.007Z

“For fans of The Killing, BBC4's tense Danish thriller currently airing on Saturday night, there's only question bigger than whodunnit: "Why does Sarah Lund always wear that thick patterned jumper? And also, of course, where can I get one from?"
Now, happily, the first mystery can be, erm, unravelled. Sofie Gråbøl, the actor who plays Lund in the show, laughs delightedly at the idea of British fans becoming obsessed with the detective's jumper.
Danish viewers also went crazy for it. " Everybody wanted that sweater," she says. "The company in the Faroe Islands couldn't keep up."
It was Gråbøl who decided upon Lund's attire: "We had a costume meeting and I saw that sweater and thought: 'That's it!'," she says, despite the jumper being decidedly unpolice-like. "The reason it's so perfect is because it tells so many stories. It tells of a person who doesn't use her sexuality – that's a big point. Lund's so sure of herself she doesn't have to wear a suit. She's at peace with herself."
The knitwear also has personal memories for the actor, who was brought up in the 70s in a very hippy-like environment in Copenhagen. "I wore this sweater and so did my parents. That sweater was a sign of believing in togetherness. There's a nice tension between those soft, human values and Lund being a very tough closed person – because to me it says that she's wanting to sit around a fire with a guitar; it gives a great opposite to her line of work and behaviour."

The Killing: Sarah Lund's jumper explained

http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2011/mar/10/the-killing-sophie-grabol-sarah-lund

more knitwear

2011-03-10T13:25:00.005Z

While I have gained my title, another Dr. G. has lost his.

Dieter Moor refers in Titel, Thesen, Temperamente (ARD, 20.2.2011) to the Guttenberg affair:

"... ganz Deutschland diskutiert [...] darüber, ob ein Doktortitel einfach abgelegt, gewaschen und wieder eingesackt werden kann so wie ein Taschentuch…”

[‘all of Germany is discussing whether a doctor title can simply be taken off, washed and put back into the pocket like a handkerchief...’]

http://mediathek.daserste.de/sendungen_a-z/431902_ttt---titel-thesen-temperamente/6530884_-schluss-mit-moor---ber-vorhandene-und-nicht-vorhan

more on handkerchiefs

The practical component of my arts-based PhD thesis is documented at http://www.mirabilia-domestica.co.uk/

Hung out to dry?

2011-03-10T13:21:00.002Z

The words suggest the solidity of a building, but does the washing line image tell a different story?

Feeding my textile self

2011-03-06T10:55:00.003Z

Birthday presents from my adorable daughters

Jumpers wanted

2011-02-19T15:50:00.002Z

“Piping hot chicken
Staff at Lee Valley Farm in Waltham Abbey are looking for people to knit jumpers – for their chickens. Twenty fowl were retired to Lee Valley after life in a battery farm, but they still suffer from bald patches caused by living in small cages. This makes them a bit chilly in the winter months, apparently, and they could do with some warmer clothes. If you’d like to contribute to the chickens’ winter wardrobe, send your woollies to Lee Valley Park Farm, Hayes Hill, Waltham Abbey, EN9 2EF.”

Newspaper cutting sent by N.L.

Knickers wanted

2011-02-19T15:48:00.002Z

`Show Us Your Knickers!' Carnival Knicker Bunting ˆ a request
Want to take part in a unique feminist social art project? Then send me your knickers!
I am Julia Triston ˆ a textile artist and designer ˆ and the creator of the Bra-ra Dress. My artwork is about the investigation of identity, and the issues surrounding this; my work involves recycling underwear to make a statement, and raise questions, about our bodies, fashion and feminism.
At the Carnival of Feminist Cultural Activism I will be running a practical textile workshop on Thursday 3rd March 2011. I am asking women to send me a pair of their own knickers in order to create a string of carnival bunting which will become a unique piece of feminist, social artwork, permanently recording, in a very unusual way, the event.
The aim of the carnival bunting is to show that our underwear can tell a story of its own, whoever we are and whatever we portray externally. In this piece of artwork, we will be putting on show, proudly and honestly, what is usually unseen and taboo.
There are no rules about what to send, but please do not go out and buy new knickers as your contribution! I want the bunting to tell the story of REAL women, and the choices we make, and wear, every day ˆ let us celebrate our diversity! Whatever you wear (big pants, tiny thongs, comfortable drawers, cami-knickers, boy pants), and whatever their size and condition (large, small, enormous, stained, tiny, worn out and baggy, or nearly new) please send them to me with your reason for doing so.
You might have a tale to tell about your knickers - for example, did you wear them for a special occasion? You may have been given them as a present, or hardly worn them because they are too tight. Are they falling apart, but still really comfortable? Are you proud of them, or embarrassed by the thought of putting them on public display?
The more knickers we receive, the longer the carnival bunting - so please take part in this unusual way of celebrating the diversity of women's shapes and sizes and our choices and attitude towards underwear.
Although your names, and stories will be recorded as part of the project, you will not be identified alongside your knickers, or with your stories. Names, stories and knickers will all be separated upon receipt, and you may remain anonymous if you wish.
Knickers will not be returnable, and they will be slightly altered before they are stitched into the bunting. The final artwork will be displayed at the conference and then donated to the Centre for Women's Studies at the University of York.
Please be brave and send me your knickers to: Studio 2, Fowlers Yard, Back Silver Street, Durham DH1, 3RA, UK. Please label your package: Carnival of Feminist Cultural Activism. Donations must be received by Friday 25th February 2011
Many thanks,
Julia Triston, Textile Artist

from my e-mail

Happy Christmas!

2010-12-22T13:24:00.000Z

Ave Maria

2010-12-11T14:23:00.004Z

Pulsera bendita - blessed wristband from Spain

Common threads

2010-12-04T16:46:00.005Z

‘Art and science have a common thread — both are fueled by creativity. Whether writing a paper based on my data or filling a canvas with paint, both processes tell a story’.

–Richard Taylor (2001), Associate Professor of Physics at the University of Oregon

http://kipworldblog.blogspot.com/2010/12/alternative-thoughts-for-researchers-at.html

Little sleeves waving

2010-11-13T14:09:00.003Z

“Bei den Treppen zur Straße hingen Kinderkleider zum Trocknen. Die kleinen Ärmel winkten ihm zu.”

(Along the steps to the street children’s dresses were hanging to dry. Their little sleeves were waving at him.)

Åke Edwardson, Segel aus Stein, aus dem Schwedischen von Angelika Kutsch, Claasen, München 2003, p.8

Stories of mother and babies parting

2010-10-10T14:16:00.003Z

“Threads of Feeling will showcase fabrics never shown before to illustrate the moment of parting as mothers left their babies at the original Foundling Hospital, which continues today as the children’s charity Coram.
In the cases of more than 4,000 babies left between 1741 and 1760, a small object or token, usually a piece of fabric, was kept as an identifying record. The fabric was either provided by the mother or cut from the child’s clothing by the hospital's nurses. Attached to registration forms and bound up into ledgers, these pieces of fabric form the largest collection of everyday textiles surviving in Britain from the 18th Century.
A selection of the textiles forms the focus of the Threads of Feeling exhibition, exploring the stories they tell us about individual babies, their mothers and their lives.”
Curator John Styles: http://www.johnstyles.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/
http://www.foundlingmuseum.org.uk/future_exhibitions.php
Threads of Feeling at The Foundling Museum, London, 14 October 2010 - 6 March 2011

The box in the wardrobe

2010-09-23T07:52:00.001Z

“Je weiter die Maschen in Berthas Gedächtnis wurden, desto größer die Erinnerungsbrocken, die hindurchfielen. Je verwirrter sie wurde, desto wahnwitziger die Wollstücke, die sie strickte und die durch ständiges Fallenlassen von Maschen, durch Zusammnenstricken oder durch das Wiederaufnehmen neuer Maschen am Rand in alle Richtungen wuchsen und schrumpften, klafften und verfilzten und sich von überall her aufribbeln ließen. Meine Mutter hatte die Strickstücke in Bootshaven zusammengesammelt und mit nach Hause genommen. In einem Karton im Kleiderschrank ihres Schlafzimmers bewahrte sie sie auf. Durch Zufall war ich einmal auf ihn gestoßen und hatte mit einer Mischung aus Entsetzen und Bekustigung eine Strickskulptur nach der anderen auf dem Bett meiner Eltern ausgebreitet. Meine Mutter kam dazu, ich wohnte nicht mehr zu Hause, und Bertha war schon im Heim. Eine Weile betrachteten wir die wollnen Ungeheuer.
- Irgendwo muss schließlich jeder seine Tränen konservieren, sagte meine Mutter wie zur Verteidigung, dann packet sie alles wieder zurück in den Schrank. Wir sprachen nie mehr über Berthas Gestricktes.”

[The more the loops were widening in Bertha’s memory, the bigger the chunks of memory that fell through them. The more confused she became, the weirder the woolen pieces that she knitted, which grew in all directions with stitches dropped, joined and added to the sides, split and tangled, and could be unraveled from all sides. My mother had gathered the knitted pieces in the house in Bootshaven and taken them home. She kept them in a box in the wardrobe of her bedroom. I came across them by chance, and both horrified and amused I spread them out on my parents’ bed. My mother came in, I was no longer living at home at the time and Bertha was in a nursing home. We looked at the woolen monsters for a while.
- We all need to preserve our tears somewhere, my mother said as if defending herself, then she put everything back in the wardrobe. Bertha’s knitting was never mentioned again.]

Katharina Hagena, Der Geschmack von Apfelkernen, Kiepenheuer & Witsch 2010, p. 20, 21

Clues

2010-09-19T12:24:00.002Z

“There was a gas boiler, comparatively modern, mounted above a deep square porcelain sink much stained and with a clean but crumpled tea towel hanging on a hook beside it. Dalgliesh peeled off his gloves and felt the towel. It was slightly damp not in patches but all over as if it had been soaked in water then wrung out and left to dry through the night. He handed it to Massingham who took off his own gloves and ran it through his hand. He said:
‘Even if the murderer was naked, or half-naked he would have needed to wash his hands and arms. He could have used this. Berowne’s towel is presumably the one hanging on the chair and that looked dry enough.’
[…]
Massingham was back beside him. He said:
‘The towel next door is perfectly dry and only slightly dirtied. It looks as if Berowne could have washed his hands when he arrived and that’s all. It’s odd that he didn’t leave it in here, except that there’s nowhere convenient to hang it. Odder, though, that the killer, assuming there is a killer, didn’t use it to dry himself rather than the smaller tea towel.'
Dalgliesh said:
'If he remembered to take it out with him to the kitchen. If he didn’t, he’d hardly want to go back for it. Too much blood, too much risk of leaving a clue. Better to use what he found at hand.'”

P.D. James, A taste for death, Faber and Faber 1986, p. 41, 42

Alternatives

2010-09-17T11:08:00.004Z

“I usually spend about two to three hours an evening stitching. It helps you realize there are alternatives to committing crimes.”

Prisoner, HMP Wandsworth

Fine Cell Work – needlework in prisons
http://www.finecellwork.co.uk/

"How the baby sling made us"

2010-09-14T13:28:00.003Z

“ There has been a rash of books on human evolution in recent years […]. Now Timothy Taylor, reader in archaeology at the University of Bradford, makes a claim for technology in general and, in particular, the invention of the baby sling – not, as you may have thought, in the 1960s but more than 2m years ago. […]
Not only is our brain very large, it is proportionately enormous at birth, creating problems at delivery for narrow-hipped, upright-standing women and even more during the first years, when babies are extremely vulnerable. Factor in the African savannah 2m years ago, teeming with enormous predators, and you wonder how we are still here. For Taylor, the crucial innovation was the baby sling, which enabled proto-human mothers to carry their vulnerable babies (infant apes, of course, cling to their mothers’ hairy backs).”

Peter Forbes, How the baby sling made us. Review, Saturday Guardian, 4.9.2010, p. 9

Timothy Taylor, The artificial ape: how technology changed the course of human evolution. Palgrave Macmillan 2010.

See also
http://newhumanist.org.uk/2330/slings-arrows

images: Mamas & Papas catalogue, autumn/winter 2010

Silk worms

2010-09-05T20:28:00.004Z

“… the magnaneries, the attics where, season by season, the silkworms were hatched and where they ate their vast quantities of mulberry leaves and spun their cocoons and were sent down to the last filature at Ruasse to be boiled alive as the precious silk was unwound onto bobbins.
Audrun could just remember the old magnaneries at the mas, the smell of them, and the chill in the air as you climbed the steps towards the well-ventilated rooms, and the sound of the thirty thousand worms chomping on leaves, like the sound of hail on the roof.
‘It was terrible work,’ Bernadette had told her. “Terrible, terrible work. You had to collect bunches and bunches of mulberry leaves every single day. And if it had been raining and the leaves were wet, you knew a lot of the worms were going to die, because the damp gave them some intestinal infection. But there was nothing you could do. Every morning, you just had to pick out the dead ones and carry on. And the stink up there, of the dead worms and all the horrible excretions, was vile. I used to gag, sometimes. I hated every minute of that work.’
Yet she had done it without complaining.”

Rose Tremain (2010), Trespass. Chatto & Windus, London, p.34

Summer festivals: Notting Hill Carnival

2010-09-04T17:04:00.003Z

Julia and I went to the Notting Hill Carnival. I found some feathers and sequins, souvenirs of the exuberant colours of the dancers' costumes.

Summer festivals: Edinburgh

2010-09-04T16:59:00.004Z

Julia went to the Edinburgh festival. She brought me back three mini-sheep and a venue card with a ‘necklace’ made of twisted pink plastic.

Covered legs: prudery or prudence?

2010-08-25T14:03:00.002Z

It is often said that the Victorians covered the legs of pianos, tables and other furniture out of prudery: showing legs, be they female or wooden, was considered to be indecent. “This is a myth,” writes Ralph Gee in a letter to the Observer. “The truth is simple. Enormously expensive dining tables were vulnerable to irreparable damage from the fashionable spurs of cavalry officers. So the most grandiose furniture was sheathed and the practice spread to the bourgeois drawing rooms. Had the problem been naked legs, all chairs would have been covered to prevent impropriety – and that would have been really stupid.”

Legs – the great cover-up, The Observer Review, 22.8.2010, p. 2

Sweaters for the homeless

2010-08-24T20:21:00.007Z

“Since May 5, artist Maggie Leininger has been placing one handknit miniature sweater in a public location every day hoping that it will be found and collected. She will do so until May 4, 2011. Each collector will then be asked to place a monetary value upon the object and to donate that amount to the National Coalition for the Homeless, Washington, D.C. Detailed descriptions and pictures of where the sweaters are placed can be found on the artist’s ARTivention blog at www.artivention.wordpress.com. For information on how to participate (knitting or placing a sweater), e-mail the artist at info@maggie-leininger.com.”

FiberArts Sep/Oct 2010, p.16

Lingerie for ladettes?

2010-08-24T20:05:00.002Z

Bags and belts made from ring pulls from drink cans have become almost a familiar sight at craft fairs, but Ingrid Goldbloom Bloch went a step further and made ring pull knickers. Her Trashy Lingerie collection has been purchased by Ripley’s Believe It Or Not - the museum chain specializing in curiosities (FiberArts Sep/Oct 2010, p. 15).
Founded by the American cartoonist, amateur anthropologist and eccentric collector of oddities Robert LeRoy Ripley (1890 – 1949) this world of the strange and bizarre has become a successful global entertainment brand. I visited one of the empire’s establishments last year – out of sheer curiosity – and remember particularly a portrait of the Mona Lisa made from slices of toast, and a dress made from human hair.

Spinning silk

2010-08-13T13:21:00.003Z

Sara Noble is one of my assistants at Mirabilia Domestica: the textile self re/collected. She told me of her experience removing silk worms from cocoons and spinning silk in Japan.

An invitation

2010-08-04T11:08:00.000Z

To find out more visit the project website http://www.mirabilia-domestica.co.uk/

"Love is not enough"

2010-08-03T14:54:00.002Z

“I scrounged some iron-on-letters from the dollar bin at Sew-Low Fabric Discount Store in Cambridge, Massachusetts, one day while I was waiting for my mom at the beauty salon next door. Her hair was thinning from chemotherapy, and she was trying to make the best of it. My mom had lung cancer. She died eight months to the day after I made the shirt.
The shirt hangs in the doorway to a closet in my bedroom. Everyone asks where I got it, but nobody asks what it means. One visitor told me it feels like a warning. I suppose it is.”

Jen Collins, in: Glenn, Joshua & Hayes, Carol eds., 2007. Taking things seriously: 75 objects with unexpected significance. New York: Princeton Architectural Press.

Celeste

2010-07-28T07:15:00.003Z

Celeste, thickly covered in a fur of dust, was found behind the radiator when the new heating was installed. She looked like a rodent, and must have been trapped there for close to 10 years. Now freshly washed she reminds me how fond I, and later my children, were of the Babar family with their admirable and quite extra-ordinary dress sense.

Oppression?

2010-07-27T11:30:00.006Z

“A chandelier made from 25,000 tampons might not be everyone’s idea of a centerpiece, but for Joana Vasconcelos it proved a great way of catching the artworld attention at the 2005 Venice Biennale. The Portuguese artist’s London debut features similarly spectacular collisions between showy décor and domesticity as she transforms crochet’s oppressive connotations as something that kept women busy indoors into a medium that threatens to take over the world. She’s covered everything from a baby grand piano to a ceramic lobster with the delicate, handcrafted stuff, and combines it with buttons, pom-poms and more to create the showstopping monster-sculpture, Victoria.” ss

Haunch of Venison, London W1, until 25 September 2010

The Guardian, The Guide, exhibitions, 23 July 2010, p.38

Damp sheets

2010-07-26T21:49:00.001Z

“Few things are attended with more serious consequences than sleeping in damp linen. Persons are frequently assured that the sheets have been at a fire for many hours, but the question is what sort of fire and whether they have been turned so that every part has been exposed to the fire. The fear of creasing the linen, we know, prevents many from unfolding it, so as to be what we consider sufficiently aired; but health is more important than appearances. With gentleness, there need to be no fear of want of neatness.”

Enquire Within upon Everything (1926), Herbert Jenkins, London, p.346

Zebra stripes

2010-07-23T11:40:00.002Z

“Perhaps of all four-legged animals, the zebra is the most well made and the most elegantly dressed; it has the figure and grace of the horse, the lightness of the deer, and its coat, striped with black and white bands, arranged with so much regularity and symmetry, makes it seem as though nature used a ruler and compass to paint it. The alternating bands of black and white are all the more remarkable because they are narrow, parallel, and precisely divided, as in striped cloth; […] they are always a lively and brilliant shade on the short, fine, thick coat, its luster augmenting the beauty of the colours.”

G.L. de Buffon, Histoire naturelle, 3rd ed., vol.12 (Paris, 1769), pp. 323 – 24
Cited in Pastoureau, Michel, 2001. The devil’s cloth: a history of stripes. Translated from French by Jody Gladding. New York, London, Toronto, Sydney, Singapore: Washington Square Press, pp. 45, 46

Joseph Beuys: Filzpostkarte

2010-07-23T08:09:00.003Z

A multiple that is also a play with words: Filzpostkarte - felt postcard - Feldpostkarte, the latter the word for postcards sent from and to soldiers in the battle fields through the German military postal service. Now family keepsakes or collectors items, they are reminders of affective bonds across distances in dark, difficult and distressing times, entangled - "verfilzt" with Beuys' own felt legends and affinities.

Pink net

2010-07-22T12:27:00.001Z

“Do you have a friend getting married? Have you been selected as the maid of honour? It’s your responsibility as the maid of honor to throw her a party. Why not a pink hen night.”
Pink things at Ms Pink http://www.mspink.net/

Folds

2010-07-19T08:48:00.006Z

“European folding culture may never be as resplendent as it was in the seventeenth century, when Nuremberg was the home of an entire school devoted to the art of folding napkins, but there are still masters of the art. Joan Sallas who has lived for years in Freiburg, Germany, is one of the few people in the world who knows how to fold a napkin into the lily that once decorated the tables of the Habsburgian Kaisers […]. The tradition that […] Sallas’s folded allegories keep alive today, echoes Leibniz’s conviction that every part of matter contains a garden full of plants and trees, a lake full of fish, and every part of an animal, and every drop of water, is again such a garden and such a lake.”

Daniel Birnbaum, Ingestion/Folded allegories, in: Cabinet: a quarterly of art and culture, Spring 2010, Issue 37, p.16

German article

video

Swim wear

2010-07-09T13:27:00.000Z

“There is no special etiquette in bathing except that a woman’s bathing-dress should not offend against modesty. It is absurd for her to wear a dress that will hamper her movements in the water, but it is far worse to wear a garment so attenuated that general attention is attracted to her when she goes down to the water and comes out of it. There is no set rule as to what kind of dress should be worn. It depends entirely on the individual. A well-bred woman is her own best guide in the matter.”

Lady Troubridge (1926), The Book of Etiquette, Vol.II. The Associated Bookbuyers’ Company, Great Britain, pp. 104, 105

Stripes and bars

2010-06-26T21:45:00.003Z

“Geometrically and metaphorically, there is a very strong link between the horizontal stripes of penitentiary wear and the vertical stripes that make up the prison bars. Intersecting at right angles, stripes and bars seem to form a web, a grill, even a cage, that isolates the prisoner even more from the exterior world. More than just a mark, here the stripe is an obstacle. Moreover, it is the same obstacle stripe – very often red and black – that we encounter today at grade crossings, border posts, at all places where it is necessary to stop.”

Pastoureau, Michel, 2001. The devil’s cloth: a history of stripes. Translated from French by Jody Gladding. New York, London, Toronto, Sydney, Singapore: Washington Square Press, p. 58

Nude fashion and the colour of human flesh

2010-06-22T12:32:00.001Z

“Sometimes fashion sets out to provoke. Sometimes it provokes by accident. ‘Whatever you do, don’t call the vogue for nude colours and flesh tones the vogue for nude colours and fleh tones,’ the stylist warned. ‘Last time someone used the word nude to describe a colour, the letters pages went nuts.’ They were apparently upset on the grounds that only a nude Caucasian actually matches the shade referred to as ‘nude’. ‘Flesh’ tones have been big in womenswear for a while, as part of the underwear-as-outerwear thing (no signs of that crossing over to men) and have nothing in common with flesh of African or Indian descent.
You may warily adduce from this that people must live in a state of vigilance for things to be offended by, but I know what they mean. ‘Flesh’ colours bear no resemblance to my flesh, either. […]
The overall effect of this vogue for whatever-you’re-supposed-to-call-them colours is to wash me out, making me look even more like something you’d set about with a crucifix and garlic than I do already. […] You need to exercise extreme caution, and not just when talking about them.”
Alexis Petridis, How to dress, The Guardian Weekend magazine, 19 June 2010, p.49

If you can’t swim, blame the swimming trunks...

2010-06-20T10:36:00.002Z

“It is impossible to escape the feeling that at some point not far away – perhaps even tomorrow – Capello will pick up the phone to Umbro and say: ‘I’ve just lost a reasonably important game of football, and basically I’ve checked all other possibilities and it’s come down to the shirt.’
He would have a point. One can only observe, yet again, how perfectly good, even excellent players seem automatically to malfunction the minute they don the accursed garment. The England shirt is the precise opposite of a superhero costume, turning men with extraordinary abilities into mild-mannered guys next door. Were Stephen Fry to pull it on, he would be struggling to string a sentence together. Were Lucian Freud to slip it over his head he would turn his easel round to reveal a childlike scribble of a cat. Psychological meltdown is now part of the warp and weft of its wretched fibres […].”

Marina Hyde, In the absence of a better excuse we could blame Umbro, The Guardian 19 June 2010, Sports, p.5

Knitting something different for baby

2010-05-29T18:23:00.004Z

“When a baby is on its way, mothers-to-be can often expect a plethora of knitted presents such as clothes and blankets.
Now one group of women is shaking up the tradition – commissioned by the NHS to knit 150 woollen breasts. The models, made by the Somerset Mothers’ Union, are being used to teach techniques for breast feeding – and how to deal with problems such as blocked ducts and mastitis. […]
Knitted breasts have been popular in the US for some time, where groups such as Knitting for Knockers make prosthetics for women hit by breast cancer.
Patterns are available online.”

Metro, 27 May 2010, p.35

Underpants on show

2010-05-28T17:06:00.003Z

“Italy: a middle-aged teacher who dropped his trousers to show students that low-slung jeans aren’t cool has been disciplined. The unnamed master stunned pupils at Fogazzaro middle school in Como with his impromptu show-and-tell. ‘A teacher mustn’t lower himself to the pupils’ level,’ said headmaster Luigi Zecca.”

Metro, 26 May 2010, p.26

Cables and wires

2010-05-28T17:04:00.002Z

As the house is being rewired, under floorboards and behind wall panels a network of cables and wires, usually hidden from view, is brought to light. Entangled cables from different eras: pre-1970s rubber coated wires, now crumbling and disintegrating, partly replaced later by white PVC around red and black. Now all ripped out and replaced with grey PVC around blue and brown to conform to European regulations introduced in the early 2000s to make the house a safer place.

Bubble wrap

2010-05-20T16:03:00.002Z

“Bride is (literally) bursting with joy
Popping bubble wrap is said to be great for coping with stress – so what better to wear on your wedding day than a dress made out of everyone’s favourite packing material? Teacher Rachel Robinson, 30, had the gown made for her by parents of pupils at St Mary and St John’s School in North Luffenham, Lincolnshire. The dress is made from 13ft (4m) of stitched bubble wrap attached to a cloth lining and finished with white foam packing and Haribo sweets. ‘I was very nervous but having the bubbles to pop really helped,’ said Mrs Robinson, who married Duncan Turner in Stamford.”

Metro, Tuesday, May 18, 2010, p.12

Wolves in sheep's clothes or Ba Ba Black Sheep?

2010-05-08T15:48:00.002Z

“Two Argentinean convicts who escaped from jail evaded capture after disguising themselves as sheep, it was claimed. Maximiliano Pereyra and Ariel Diaz, who were jailed for robbery offences, dressed up as the animals after escaping from a maximum security jail in Argentina more than a week ago. Pereyra, 25, and Diaz, 28, dressed in full sheepskin fleeces with realistic looking heads as they tried to evade capture, The Sun reported. They had stolen the sheep hides from a local ranch, it was claimed. They used their disguises to fool officials for more than a week despite more than 300 members of the local constabulary searching for them. The local police have been left embarrassed by the episode after locals reported seeing the pair running through local fields at night. ‘They were wearing grey clothes but had full sheepskins, including the sheeps' heads, over their heads and backs,’ said a farmworker at La Almeda. […] Police sources said it appeared that identifying the pair among thousands of other sheep was "almost impossible".
‘They can't pull the wool over our eyes forever,’ one officer deadpanned.
A spokesman for the jail was unavailable for comment. A spokesman for the local police force was also not available for comment.”

The Telegraph [ONLINE], 13 April 2010

more about sheep

“School knitting tuition ended by council cutbacks”

2010-05-07T09:59:00.003Z

“Knitting tuition is to end in schools in Shetland, despite fears it could threaten the future of its world-famous knitwear industry.
The Shetland Islands Council move will save the authority's education budget about £130,000 a year. Fourteen part-time staff will now be redeployed, or offered voluntary redundancy. Some in the local trade believe the knock-on effect could cut off the textile industry at the roots. Lerwick knitwear trader Evelyn Leask admitted almost no-one under the age of 50 now made a living by hand-knitting. But she warned: "It's really important that Shetland's heritage is taught to the young people of Shetland so that they can continue and learn to do it and also keep the knitwear industry fruitful." Some of the new local crop of textile designers have said they were inspired by knitting lessons in school.”

BBC News, Thursday, 6 May 2010

The Origin of Clothes

2010-05-06T15:39:00.004Z

“Geburtsstunde der Menschenkleidung
Unsere Vorfahren haben sich offenbar schon weit früher in Kleider gehüllt als bislang angenommen. Das hat ein Team um den US-Biologen Andrew Kitchen von der Pennsylvania State University herausgefunden – auf dem Umweg über die Tierwelt. Durch umfangreiche Erbgutanalysen ermittelten die Forscher, dass sich die Kleiderlaus vor rund 190 000 Jahren im Stammbaum der Menschenläuse abspaltete. Ihre Entstehung […] wäre nicht möglich gewesen, wenn ihr der Urmensch zu dieser Zeit keinen geeigneten Lebensraum geboten hätte.”

DER SPIEGEL No. 18, 3.5.2010, p.127

“For once lice are nice, at least for scientists investigating the origins of garments.Using DNA to trace the evolutionary split between head and body lice, researchers conclude that body lice first came on the scene approximately 190,000 years ago. And that shift, the scientists propose, followed soon after people first began wearing clothing.The new estimate, presented April 16 at the American Association of Physical Anthropologists annual meeting, sheds light on a poorly understood cultural development that allowed people to settle in northern, cold regions, said Andrew Kitchen of Pennsylvania State University in University Park. Armed with little direct evidence, scientists had previously estimated that clothing originated anywhere from around 1 million to 40,000 years ago.”

Bruce Bower, Lice hang ancient date on first clothes: Genetic analysis puts origin at 190,000 years ago. Science News 177 (10), 8 May 2010, p.15

Measurement

2010-04-20T14:51:00.002Z

“Weavers, spinners, Penelope or someone like her, once seemed to me to be the first geometers, because their art or craft explores or exploits space by means of knots, proximities and continuities, without intervention from measurement, because their tactile manipulations anticipate topology. The mason or surveyor anticipates the geometers in a strictly metric sense, but she or he who weaves or spins precedes them in art, thought and no doubt in history. We had to dress ourselves before building, clothe ourselves in loose garments before constructing solid buildings.” (Serres 2008:83)

Serres, Michel (2008), The Five Senses: A Philosophy of Mingled Bodies, Translated by Peter Cowley and Margaret Sankey, Continuum International Publishing Group, London

Nature and Culture: buttercup

2010-04-15T18:52:00.003Z

The first buttercups are appearing in the garden. In the buttercup drawing, printed on the lace-edged scent bag, nature and culture mingle, as perhaps they always do – a thought on the day when clouds of ash from a distant volcano, invisible to the naked eye, have brought stillness to the skies above Northern Europe.

Wearing Purple

2010-04-12T20:13:00.003Z

Warning
By Jenny Joseph

"When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple
with a red hat that doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
and satin candles, and say we've no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I am tired
and gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
and run my stick along the public railings
and make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
and pick the flowers in other people's gardens
and learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
and eat three pounds of sausages at a go
or only bread and pickles for a week
and hoard pens and pencils and beer nuts and things in boxes.

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
and pay our rent and not swear in the street
and set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.
But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple."

Read by James and Alice at Peggy's funeral

Occasions

2010-04-11T11:04:00.003Z

Yesterday my daughters attended the wedding celebrations of their father who married a woman from New Zealand. Tomorrow they will accompany me to the funeral of my friend's mother.

Each occasion, every rite of passage, within this life or into the next, has its own affective texture.

Cashmere???

2010-04-10T16:34:00.004Z

I love the feel of cashmere on my skin – the touch of luxurious knitwear that is, not toilet paper on my bum. Scanning the rows of toilet paper in the supermarket for special offers, my eye was caught by the introductory offer of “quilted bathroom tissue enriched with extracts of cashmere" – CASHMERE? to wipe the bum of the distinguished Waitrose customer? Whatever next? Is there no end to the aberrations of capitalism? I am not sure whether this product is supposed to bring a hint of decadence into the loo. Long accustomed to the dubious presence of silk in shampoos and soap as we are, this seems to me just one ridiculous and pointless product too far. My lovely cashmere cardigan will never feel the same again.

Happy Easter!

2010-04-04T16:04:00.002Z

Child's handkerchief

1969

2010-03-30T22:12:00.005Z

This printed velvet fabric is from a blouse that Anna B.’s mother made for her in 1969 when she was growing up in Sweden. She wore it, she says, when she was a hippie and has kept it since. The pile of the velvet has worn off under the arms and on the side where her shoulder bag used to rub against the fabric. Now Anna lives in England. Having a clear-out, she offered the blouse on a free-cycle website. That’s how I got it, together with some other lovely old bits of fabric and ribbons – a fabric sales representative once lived in the house she and her husband bought, and there are many textile treasures his widow had kept and left behind.

I used the velvet from the blouse to line a box that celebrates what was once The Shock of the New.

Stories and embroideries

2010-03-24T14:54:00.002Z

E-mail from my friend N., 23.3.2010
“This was the quote I took from the Arshile Gorky exhibition at the Tate Modern. From 1944

‘My mother told me many stories while I pressed my face into her long apron with my eyes closed. She had a long white apron like the one in the portrait and another embroidered one. Her stories and the embroidery on her apron got confused in my mind... All my life her stories and her embroidery keep unravelling pictures in my memory.’

They fled from Armenian Turkey to Russia during the pogroms of 1915 & his mother died there of starvation when he was still young.”

On the Tate Modern website, there is a short film of Gorky’s wife Agnes "Mougouch" Magruder talking about their life together. In his studio, she recalls, there was a daybed covered with a very prickly fabric, so prickly that she had to put something over it before she sat down because it pricked her legs that much. Among all my fabrics, I don’t have anything prickly enough to pair with this memory.

http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/arshilegorky/default.shtm

Manifold

2010-03-24T14:52:00.003Z

“…the Lorenz manifold is giving you information about what is happening anywhere in state space […]. What’s fascinating about this – because we are not supposed to be able to predict when we go left or right in the Lorenz system – is that there must be something very complicated about this surface that makes it impossible to say whether we are on the left or the right side of it. It turns out that’s because the Lorenz manifold rolls up in a very intricate way. You can imagine this a bit as if you were folding and rolling up a sheet of fabric over and over again, and then picking a point somewhere inside. Now you have to decide: is this point on the left or the right side of the sheet? It’s very hard to tell.”

Hinke Osinga

Margaret Wertheim, A difficult pancake: an interview with Hinke Osinga and Bernd Krauskopf, in Cabinet magazine, issue 36, Winter 2009 – 2010, p. 31, 32
For more about the Lorenz manifold and instructions how to crochet it, see
http://www.enm.bris.ac.uk/staff/hinke/crochet/

Ric Rac

2010-03-20T23:12:00.001Z

Zig zag braid for trimming, also known as rick rack, wave braid, corrugated or snake braid

Knitted love

2010-03-20T22:48:00.001Z

Advertisement from Vogue knitting magazine 1960

“Make something for someone you’re concerned about […] Hold that person close in your thoughts as you knit, concentrating on good things happening in and through that person’s life. Make a sacred garment in which to clothe your friend in love and positive uplifting thoughts. […] Trust that your intentions will manifest themselves through the act of your knitting.”

Murphy, Bernadette (2002), Zen And The Art Of Knitting: Exploring the Links Between Knitting, Spirituality, and Creativity, Adams Media Corporation, Avon, Massachusetts/USA, p.109

Taste

2010-03-14T16:28:00.001Z

“The best way to find out the taste of umami is to buy a tub of monosodium glutamate, stick a finger in it and put it in your mouth. It reminds me of chewing on a wet flannel in the bath as a kid. That sensation of wanting to chew it even more: that’s the umami mouth feel.”

Heston Blumenthal, in The Times, 4.3.2010, The Table, p.3

Dreaming under the sheets

2010-03-06T10:47:00.002Z

“All I remember is the sense I had every night. I’d bury my head under my sheets, close my eyes and pray that when I opened them again I’d be back home with Mum in England. The sheets would feel rough against my skin, but if I willed hard enough I could make them feel soft like the winceyette ones Mum had and then it was like sleep would transport me home.”

Abimbola Babatunde, in Alice Douglas, My big brother, Bim, The Guardian, 6.3.2010, Family, p.2

Cloth in-between

2010-03-02T09:53:00.002Z

“A Dyer’s Thoughts On Looking
At Plain Cottons, Linen And Hessians
Wedged In Between Imported Goods

Down by the docks, waiting in the goods yard
For dyestuff, I’m aware of the presence
Of tangerines, palm stenciled dates, crates of Indian tea,
African coffee, mass-market blue and white plates,
Stacked like Whitstable oysters, the air singed by spices.
I’m also aware, and these days increasingly so,
By what lies sandwiched between them.
Rough cuts of natural hemp and linen sacking
That knowingly – like antiquity Gods – know
Instinctively the ways of these goods.
Crumpled squares that soothe the rough,
Leave well alone, keep well apart for great distances.
Am I insane lingering on the humble cloth or does pure
Thought grasp at the chance of natural affinity?”

Jane Weir (2008), Walking the Block, Templar Poetry, Matlock/Derbyshire, p.30

Rubber glove and the universe

2010-03-02T09:46:00.003Z

“507.00 Parity
507.01 The rubber glove, with its red exterior and green interior, when stripped inside-outingly from the left hand as red, now fits the right hand as green. First the left hand was conceptual and the right hand was nonconceptual – then the process of stripping off inside-outingly created the right hand. And then vice versa as the next strip-off occurs. Strip it off the right hand and there it is left again.
507.02 That is the way our Universe is. There are the visibles and the invisibles of the inside-outing nonsimultaneity. What we call thinkable is always outside out. What we call space is just exactly as real, but it is inside out. There is no such thing as right and left.”

R. Buckminster Fuller (1982), Synergetics: explorations in the geometry of thinking, Macmillan, New York, p. 232, 233

Lost gloves

2010-02-27T12:10:00.006Z

“As sure as socks vanish in the machine, winter will split a plethora of gloves from their matching pairs. But all is not lost for the singleton – send it to Glove Love HQ, where a wealth of other rescued mitts are waiting to be mis-matched and re-homed. As part of Green Thing’s anti-waste initiative, the found gloves are washed, repaired and re-packaged by hand with recycled nametags detailing how they came to their second marriage. If you’d like to sport a unique pair yourself, they can be bought from Green Thing’s website for a fiver.

EggMagg, Winter/Spring 2010, Issue 3, p.6
www.eggmag.co.uk

Made in the USA

2010-01-12T21:48:00.001Z

“The harsh reality is that a lot of US textile mills are still in business only because they have government contracts making uniforms for soldiers – all uniforms are supposed to be American made, which is why they are so expensive. There is a glove factory in North Carolina that makes trigger-finger gloves with antimicrobial liners for the soldiers in Iraq, so that their hands don’t fall off from sweating so much. That’s the kind of thing keeping domestic factories alive.”

Liz Collins, in Bryan-Wison, Julia, Collins, Liz, Gschwandtner, Sabrina, Mazza, Cat and Smith, Allison (2008), The politics of craft: a roundtable, in Adamson, Glenn (ed) (2010), The Craft Reader, Berg, Oxford, New York, p. 624

"a rich, creative, and forceful art"

2010-01-12T21:46:00.001Z

“In the peace and quiet seclusion of the countryside the village community evolved a culture of its own out of the steady flow of its own life and of nature around it. […] Out of a million coloured strands of tradition filled with song and verse, legnds, myths, native romances and episodes, from the substance of the every day life of the community, and out of nature’s own rich storehouse, was woven a rich, creative and forceful art.”

Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay, Indian Handicrafts (1963), in Adamson, Glenn (ed) (2010), The Craft Reader, Berg, Oxford, New York, p.192

Persil washes whiter

2010-01-12T21:43:00.001Z

Advertisement from Housewife, 1947

Snap fastener

2010-01-03T16:35:00.001Z

“A snap fastener (also called snap, popper, and press stud) is a pair of interlocking discs commonly used in place of buttons to fasten clothing. A circular lip under one disc fits into a groove on the top of the other, holding them fast until a certain amount of force is applied. Snap fasteners are often used in children's clothing, as they are relatively easy for children to use.
Snaps can be attached to fabric by hammering (using a specific punch and die set), plying, or sewing. […]
Snap fasteners were first patented by German inventor Heribert Bauer in 1885 as the "Federknopf-Verschluss", a novelty fastener for men's trousers. Some attribute the invention to Bertel Sanders, of Denmark. These first versions featured an S-shaped spring in the top disc instead of a groove.”

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snap_fastener
Retrieved 3.1.2010

The Holy Tree

2010-01-03T16:22:00.001Z

“Above all this stood an enormous tree all bleached under the sun, the rain, the cold, and deprived of leaves. This was the Holy Tree. I myself don’t know why this tree was holy but I had witnessed many people, whoever did pass by, that would tear voluntarily a strip of their clothes and attach this to the tree. Thus through many years of the same act, like a veritable parade of banners under the pressure of wind all these personal inscriptions of signature, very softly to my innocent ear used to give echo to the sh-h-h-sh-h of silver leaves of the poplars.”

Arshile Gorki (1942)
In: Herschel B. Chipp (1984), Theories of Modern Art: A Source Book by Artists and Critics, University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles & London, p.536

A Christmas Tree of Life

2009-12-24T09:32:00.000Z

Most treasured possession

2009-12-24T09:28:00.002Z

"What is your most treasured possession?

Some little knitted booties given to me when I was pregnant with my daughter."

Dame Vera Lynn

Q & A with Rosanna Greenstreet, The Guardian Weekend, 19.12.2009, p.8

Nobel lecture on handkerchiefs

2009-12-14T20:36:00.003Z

“DO YOU HAVE A HANDKERCHIEF was the question my mother asked me every morning, standing by the gate to our house, before I went out onto the street. I didn't have a handkerchief. And because I didn't, I would go back inside and get one. I never had a handkerchief because I would always wait for her question. The handkerchief was proof that my mother was looking after me in the morning. For the rest of the day I was on my own. The question DO YOU HAVE A HANDKERCHIEF was an indirect display of affection. Anything more direct would have been embarrassing and not something the farmers practiced. Love disguised itself as a question. […] Every morning I went to the gate once without a handkerchief and a second time with a handkerchief. Only then would I go out onto the street, as if having the handkerchief meant having my mother there, too.”
Herta Müller
The Nobel Prize in Literature 2009
Nobel Lecture, December 7, 2009

Children's handkerchiefs

multum in parvo

2009-12-14T20:32:00.004Z

"Like visual multum in parvo, linguistic multum in parvo is best shown in a display mode; hence its place upon home samplers has now been taken over by posters, cards, bumper stickers and T-shirts."

Stewart, Susan (1993), On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection, Duke University Press, Durham and London, p.53

Woven ribbons

2009-12-03T19:40:00.002Z

The German town Wuppertal has a long history of ribbon weaving. In the Bandwebermuseum, the museum of ribbon weavers, housed in a school and only open two hours a week during term time, old machinery has been rescued and restored by enthusiasts and can now be seen in operation. My friend Gisela found out about the museum through a friend who is a friend of founder Irmlind Pesch, and from her visit sent me some samples of ribbons woven from old patterns on the looms in the museum.

For more information, visit the museum at

http://www.bergisches-staedtedreieck.de/bandwebermuseum/die_ausstellung.html

http://www.wuppertal.de/kultur-bildung/museen/102370100000154619.php?p=1,6,5

Wool Blanket Maps

2009-12-03T18:11:00.002Z

Picked up at an exhibition years ago, these were found in a box file where I was looking for something else which was not there.

The imperfection of words

2009-11-24T12:33:00.006Z

" - My young master in London is dead! said Obadiah. -
- A green satin night-gown of my mother's, which had been twice scoured, was the first idea which Obadiah's exclamation brought into Susannah's head. - Well might Locke write a chapter upon the imperfection of words. -
Then, quoth Susannah, we must all go into mourning.-
But note a second time: the word mourning, notwithstanding Susannah made use of it herself - failed also of doing its office; it excited not one single idea, tinged either with grey or with black, - all was green.- The green satin night-gown hung there still.
-O! 'twill be the death of my poor mistress, cried Susannah.- My mother's whole wardrobe followed.- What a procession! her red damask, -her orange tawney, - her white and yellow lute-strings, - her brown taffeta, - her bone-laced caps, her bed-gowns, and comfortable underpetticoats.- Not a rag was left behind.- 'No, - she will never look up again,' said Susannah."

Laurence Sterne (1759), the life and opinions of Tristram Shandy, Penguin Books, Hammondsworth, Middlesex, England 1967, p, 354, 355

Pins & sheep

2009-11-19T17:03:00.004Z

"Pin-making is similar to needle-making and almost as expensive; at the end of the fifteenth century, when in England a sheep sold for twenty pence, pins pointed individually on a pinner's bone, cost four pence per hundred."

Mary C. Beaudry, Findings: the material culture of needlework and sewing, Yale University Press, New Haven & London 2006, p.16

memory, loss, mortality, love

2009-11-19T16:54:00.002Z

"A hoard of children's milk teeth are wrapped in a white silk handkerchief and secreted away in a white envelope. The image is titled Anatomy of Time I. Vered Lahav conjures moments of visual poetry out of the most deceptively simple if elements. The overall colour scheme is white on white. The meticulously rehearsed and staged photographs tend towards the emotionally evocative; the assembled sculptures are objects of sentimental resonance. There are cherished embroideries, covert lovers' messages, traceries of the long departed. [...] The surface appearance might be slight, is certainly subtle and delicate, yet the themes go deep: the nature of memory, loss, mortality, love."

Vered Lahav
Wolverhampton Art Gallery, to 23 January 2010

The Guardian, 17.10.2009, The Guide, p.39, RC

Cutting holes

2009-11-15T23:12:00.002Z

"For many years, children occupy space in the household, whether they have a room to themselves or whether they share with siblings. When they’re little, their rooms provide a place for them to cut holes in their sheets in secret, as well as a place to be sent for time-outs when parents discover they’ve been secretly cutting holes in their sheets."

Robin DeRieux
Whose Room Is It, Anyway?
UC Davis Magazine on-line Volume 25 · Number 3 · Spring 2008
http://ucdavismagazine.ucdavis.edu/issues/sp08/parents.html

knitting patterns

2009-11-15T23:00:00.002Z

"Old knitting patterns are easy to see as ephemeral, disposable items, artefacts of everyday life that we can see in our memory on our mothers’ laps, but that we don’t readily picture in an archive. They are produced for a very specific purpose, and are not designed to become historians’ or biographical researchers’ sources. However, cultural historians and historians of everyday life can learn from them, and can use them as windows on to their time of production. Using sport-related knitting patterns from Winchester School of Art’s Knitting Reference Library as a case study, this paper will look at what historians and biographical researchers can get from this type of evidence: both empirical evidence about disposable income, materials, technology, and household economics, and more subjective, cultural evidence about class, identity, and gender."

Sweaters and Swimsuits:knitting patterns as historical sources
Dr Martin Polley, University of Southampton
Friday 11th December 2009: Building 32, room 2097, 2.o0 p.m.

see also:
http://www.fulltable.com/VTS/f/fashion/menuk.htm

Injuries

2009-11-08T13:43:00.003Z

"The First World War was a war dominated by high explosives and heavy artillery. Battlefield casualties included an unprecedented number with horrific facial injuries - injuries so severe the men were commonly unrecognizable to loved ones and friends. Often unable to see, hear, speak eat or drink, they struggled to re-assimilate back into civilian life. This secondary tragedy - the living unable to 'live' - catalyzed Surgeon Sir Harold Gillies to transform the fledgling discipline of plastic surgery based on his unrivalled observation of the profoundly wounded and his ability to push the parameters of the profession beyond all known techniques.

Since 2004, Artist and Project Façade Leader Paddy Hartley has researched, responded to and interpreted the personal and surgical stories of some of the servicemen who underwent this pioneering surgical reconstruction under Sir Harold Gillies."

Visit the project gallery at
http://www.projectfacade.com/index.php?/galleries/

Mourning

2009-11-08T12:58:00.004Z

"In the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth century, fabrics appropriate for mourning garments, were black or similarly dark in color as well as non-reflective. People in mourning were expected to wear dull and non-figured fabrics, avoiding shiny silks and reflective jewelry [...]

Before the nineteenth century most elements of mourning garb were made at home, but black pins for mourning had to be directly purchased from local merchants. [...] A widow who retired into mourning would be expected to send someone else, a servant or slave, perhaps, to make the necessary purchase rather than be seen in public herself."

Mary C. Beaudry, Findings: the material culture of needlework and sewing, Yale University Press, New Haven & London, p.26

Peace

2009-11-02T12:32:00.002Z

Red and White

2009-11-02T12:28:00.003Z

"According to legend, the Austrian flag was invented during the Third Crusade by the Babenberg duke Leopold V. After a particularly gory battle outside the city of Acre, the duke found his tunic completely drenched in blood. When he removed his belt, the cloth underneath was still white. So taken was he by this colour combination that he adopted it as his banner."

Hari Kunzru, Nowhere to hide, Saturday Guardian 31.10.09, Review, p.16

"I'm not going under"

2009-11-02T12:14:00.003Z

"My husband left me at the beginning of this year and a had a bit of time in sackcloth and ashes and weeping, you know, in his old T-shirts and my old pyjamas, and then, without even thinking about it, I put on this red cashmere cardigan, and it was really piratical red, and at that moment I thought, to use a cliché - but there is a truth in every cliché - I will survive, and the red was like a sort of red flag: I'm not going under."

Justine Picardie, in The Emotional Attachment: How do we feel about the clothes we wear? Woman's Hour, BBC Radio 4, 29.10.2009

Contagious Thinking

2009-10-23T09:01:00.006Z

In an experiment conducted by psychologists Nemeroff and Rozin, people were asked how they would feel about wearing a particular jumper that had never been worn and in addition been recently laundered.

"Not surprisingly, people said they had no problem wearing the sweater. The experimenters then asked them to imagine that the sweater had been worn by someone who had contracted AIDS through a blood transfusion [but] been laundered a few days ago, and that the person with AIDS had worn it for only thirty minutes, but suddenly people didn't really want to wear the sweater. Even though they knew there was no health or hygiene issue, the superstitious theory of contagion kicked in and they could not bring themselves to wear it. Rozin and his colleagues varied the imaginary sweater owners, and discovered that the idea of the sweater having once belonged to someone who personified evil, such as a mass murderer or a fanatical leader, elicited the strongest reaction from people. In fact, Rozin's results revealed that people would rather wear a sweater that had been dropped in dog faeces and not washed (raising genuine health concerns) than a laundered sweater that had once belonged to a mass murderer."

Richard Wiseman, Quirkology: The Curious Science of Everyday Lives, Pan Books, London 2008, p. 105, 106

for more detail on contagious thought, see
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Contagious+thoughts:
+under+a+'magical+law,'+good+and+evil+prove+as...-a011315474

MENS SUITS

2009-10-23T08:47:00.002Z

"Suits, shirts, ties, and gloves ... hundreds of them, painstakingly recreated on a diminutive scale in a dizzying array of colours and styles. [...]

Resembling places we may have been and things we may have seen or worn, their reductive size imbues the ensemble with a strange and arresting presence. [...]

Once new and desirable, now not so new and not so desirable, the clothes might be stand-ins for identity. They embody a desire to reveal and conceal, to conform or to be different, to be marked out as an individual or disappear into a crowd. [...]

MENS SUITS imparts no specific story, but allows for multiple possibilities. At one and the same time extravagant and introvert, the sculpture - like the material from which it is made - guards its secrets."

from exhibition leaflet:
Charles Ledray, MENS SUITS

for more detail see
http://www.artangel.org.uk/projects/2009/mens_suits

Knitted webs

2009-10-10T22:17:00.003Z

"This knitted web gives the viewer an opportunity to reflect on his/her position within the woodland area, the wood itself, and the surrounding landscape. It is a device for seeing.[...] Panoramas of distant views, perspectives of middle ground and foreground start to overlap highlighting an effect of 'parallax' created by the specific positioning of the piece.
[...] The knitted web thus becomes a map, a tool for orientation, containing specific information on its surrounding environment. The web is also a trap, its open lacy structure catching, filtering and refracting light, colours and sounds. Ultimately, the web will capture the essence of the place and become a spatial imprint of it."

Shane Waltener, Over here
Jupiter Artland
http://jupiterartland.org/the_works/the_artists/shane_waltener/

Mementoes

2009-10-10T22:13:00.002Z

Today my daughter left home to go to university. Her independent spirit will enjoy new freedoms.

Picking up bits left behind from the floor of her room and taking the overflowing bin down to empty, I choose some fragments to mark the day.

Nations

2009-10-10T21:43:00.002Z

"Nations is an installation of 192 treadle sewing machines, hand-painted flags of country members of the United Nations, and multiples of thread [...].

The treadle sewing machines are connected by a web of cottons threading throughout the installation from spool to bobbin winder, from wheel to the eye of a needle. [...] Each spool holds a reel of coloured cotton, and under the foot of each machine a national flag is held as if being worked on. The ordered lines of machinery draw a scene of a busy working sweatshop.

Threads and remnants of cloth strewn over the floor form barriers to entry to the machines. As a viewer we are called to attend to our own relationship to mechanised labour serving global markets and to our own participation in the fabrication of national identity."

http://www.iniva.org/exhibitions_projects/2009/nations/introduction

NS Harsha: Nations
18.9. - 21.11.2009
INIVA
Rivington Place, London EC2A 3BA

"Expanded the army, Recruited thousands, Knitted their socks"

2009-10-09T23:01:00.004Z

"At the onset of the First World War, the Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith appointed Lord Kitchener as Secretary of State for War. Kitchener, at the time Viceroy of Egypt and the Sudan, was the first military officer to hold this post. Predicting a long war that would require a huge army, Kitchener embarked on an unprecedented recruitment campaign, symbolised by the distinctive poster that made his face famous. [...]
Kitchener also associated himself with a Red Cross plan to exhort British, American and Canadian women to knit various 'comforts' for the men in the trenches, including mittens, scarves and socks. He is said to have contributed his own sock design, which included a square-ish 'grawfted' toe. The toe featured a seamless grafting stitch that made socks more comfortable for troops to wear, and which became known as the ‘Kitchener stitch'."

The National Portrait Gallery, London
http://www.npg.org.uk/visit/take-another-look/lord-kitchener.php

"Bras get you good press"

2009-10-08T11:27:00.003Z

"It is no surprise that the invention by a distinguished female scientist of a bra that converts into a gas mask has proved an enduringly popular story on the BBC's website.

When I worked for another newspaper, its online success turned out to be reliant on a report by a fashion writer about having a bra fitting.

So how wise of the designers at the Paris fashion show to have kicked off with some adaptable bras, thus getting the kind of coverage usually reserved for Chanel.

If I were trying to drum up interest, say, in the slightly-hard-going Tory fringe meeting yesterday on decentralisation and social action, (Caroline Spelman and Sayeeda Warsi) I know what I would do."

Sarah Sands, Bras get you good press, Evening Standard, London, 6.10.2009

A boom in the recession?

2009-10-08T11:10:00.003Z

"Knitting has cast off its traditional image thanks to a series of famous backers.
New figures show a boom in popularity for the pastime that was once associated with elderly ladies but is now the hobby of Sarah Jessica Parker, Julia Roberts, Cameron Diaz and Sandra Bullock.
Arts and crafts chain HobbyCraft said celebrity endorsement helped push wool sales up 28 per cent in the past year. Chief executive Chris Crombie said people of all ages were adopting a make-your-own attitude during the recession.
John Lewis is also selling six per cent more needles and designer wools than last year.
Gail Downey [...] said the boom meant people were joining knitting circles and swapping wool, patterns and ideas.
One of these grous is run by her design house Weardowney at a Starbucks in Oxford Street. It also hosts classes in her shop in [...] Marylebone, near Tony Blair's house. "Knitting has definitely become more glamorous," she said.
Kimberly Stewart, daughter of rock star Rod, [...] joins Miss Downey and her partner Amy Wear at their shop's classes. She said: "I like to knit so I have knitting parties."

Ellen Widdup & Sri Carmichael, Girls who purl: wool sales soar after celebrities make knitting fashionable, Evening Standard, London, 6.10.2009, p.23

Growing old

2009-10-08T11:03:00.002Z

The continuous flow of life "is, if you like, the unrolling of a spool, for there is no living being who does not feel himself coming little by little to the end of his spool; and living consists in growing old. But it is just as much a continual winding, like that of thread into a larger ball, for our past follows us, becoming larger and larger with the present it picks up on its way; and consciousness means memory."

Henri Bergson, The Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics, A Citadel Book, Carol Publishing Group, New York 1992, p.164

Euroqual Workshop: Archives and Life History Research, 21 - 23 September 2009, Madrid

2009-09-26T18:32:00.007Z

A meeting of researchers from many countries with shared interests in and different takes on archives and life stories. Not at first sight a conference that had much to do with textiles, but of course, like all such gatherings, a networking event and like all human enterprise embedded in textiles and stories.

We shared experiences, research narratives and stories around dining tables always laid with white linen, and in the lecture theatre facing a row of solemn flags behind the speakers' table - a reminder to me of the privilege of having been invited, a certain formality maybe lending gravitas to the event that dissolved as the days went on and disappeared altogether once we retired after yet another splendid meal to the Duque de Alba bench with its own aristocratic tale outside La Residencia for la penultima. So many honored guests had stayed and talked at this beautiful place before us: Federico García Lorca, Salvador Dalí, Luis Buñuel, Albert Einstein, Paul Valéry, Marie Curie, Igor Stravinsky, Walter Gropius, Henri Bergson, Le Corbusier and Alexander Calder. Calder's wife Louisa, by the way, like him worked with bright colours but in threads, and wrote a book on crochet.

In the mornings which came always too early, after an invigorating shower the faint scent of vinegar lingering in the white bathroom towels mingled with the fresh fragance of the Agua Colonia to clear my mind for another stimulating and challenging day ahead. We make our own sensory memories of time and place.

I took my hyperbolic crochet work into the lecture hall to think through my hands as I listened. There were other textile encounters in words and images - in Cristina Sanchez's paper on public mourning, for example. I was very moved by an image Francisco Fernandiz showed: of two brightly coloured picnic chairs next to the excavation site of one of many mass graves holding the remains of those killed by the fascists during the Spanish Civil War. The chairs with their cheerful patterns, so ordinary and bright, carrying the heavy weight of the past in the people sitting in them and telling their memories of terrible events that happened long ago, but are neither forgotten nor forgiven.

http://www.residencia.csic.es/pres/frame_hist.htm

Calder, Louisa & Konior, Mary (1979), Louisa Calder’s Creative Crochet, Penguin Books Hammondsworth/England, New York/USA

for photographs of Madrid, colours & textures, go to
http://solveighgoett.blogspot.com/

Mourning: black ribbons, white gloves

2009-09-26T18:21:00.003Z

"Black ribbons and white palms are two common elements in all the shrines and demonstrations. The white palms stand for fighting terrorism with peace. It has become a national symbol in Spain in the fight against terrorism. A group of law students at the Universidad Autonoma de Madrid first adopted the gesture of painting the palms of their hands white or wearing white gloves to signify the hands of people who want peace as opposed to the bloody hands of terrorists."

Sánchez-Carretero, Cristina (2006), Trains of Workers, Trains of Death: Some Reflections after the March 11th Attacks in Madrid, in Santino, Jack (ed), Spontaneous Shrines and the Public Memorialization of Death, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, p.341