As I mentioned yesterday, MJ and I met at her LYS, Wildfiber. (Be sure to check out her post about it – her pictures are better than mine. Well, all except the one Georgie took of the two of us with her camera. But, in his defence, he did a better job with ours.) The store was/is an explosion of color – warm and inviting, lots of wonderful light. Places to sit and my god, the yarns! Everything you could ever want in an LYS. I’m still jealous!
As we were walking around the store, I came across this AMAZING item – I’m not sure what you would call the shape – but it’s FREEFORM at it’s best!
I’m not sure pictures can do the work justice. It’s crochet and knitting combined – and each piece is built upon the next creating a canvas of texture and color. As we walked further around the store, we came to the back classroom area and discovered more of this amazing artist’s work:
Some of the pieces are garments – well – they might all be garments. I tried on the long purple/yellow coat and to be honest, it’s about as far from practical as you can get – extremely heavy and itchy, but my god – WHAT GLORIOUS COLOR! This artist’s work is a Gustav Klimt painting come to life!
I don’t even remember the question I asked, but I asked a woman standing behind the table about the artist, and the woman ended up to be the artist herself! Prudence Mapstone. This Australian artist told us she got started with freeform when her carpal tunnel got so bad she couldn’t knit big pieces anymore – too heavy. So she started playing around with little pieces that she sewed together to make bigger pieces. And so on and so on. Prudence uses any kind of yarn she can find – natural fibers, synthetic fibers, novelty yarns – generally sticking to a specific color palette for her projects. I was so inspired I bought both her books and some notecards with close-ups of her work!
What’s really wonderful about the work is that it will go wherever your imagination can take you! Every stitch pattern – knit or crochet – is open as a possibility. I love the idea of this – truly I do and am going to try my hardest to figure out the lovely bullion stitch. What a great way to play with all the odd balls of yarn we have around!
Anyway, I encourage you all to visit the galleries on Prudence’s website. Her work MUST NOT be missed.
Okay. I’m not blaming any one person in particular – I’m blaming you all equally – but I had some crazy ass head-spinning dreams last night about this and this and maybe some of this.
STOP IT! LEAVE ME ALONE!
I told G I might have a problem and showed him some of this stuff and told him if I got one of these and some of this I could make my own yarn like this. (Is that not EXQUISITE!!!) He looked at me with his drop-dead gorgeous puppy dog eyes and said, “Is that something you’d be interested in?” like totally all supporting me and stuff and I yelled, at the top of my lungs (in my head of course) HOW, I repeat HOW ON THIS EARTH DID I GET SO LUCKY? [ETA: Yes, well, Ann might be correct, but I’d prefer to think my sparkling personality has at least a LITTLE to do with it….]
But, really, leave me alone! All of you!
[ETA: Just say, and I’m just saying here, I saw something on ebay I might want to buy – what’s the etiquette for auctions? There’s a seller and one person has the only bid on a bunch of stuff. I feel kind of bad bidding over her – am I allowed to do that? What’s the knitting/web protocol here? You know what? Don’t even tell me. I need this like I need ANOTHER hole in my head. Oy gavolt!]
For Claudia:
The Bee and The Dahlia
Last but not least, Annie is putting together an Afghan project in memory of Kerstin‘s brother-in-law. I’m sure you’ve heard by now, but he died, along with two of his friends, in one of the most horrific traffic accidents I’ve ever heard about. It’s stunningly sad. A square is the absolute least we can do. Thank you.
