Something I've been working on.
This is how it always is. It starts out as a sweater, maybe at a yard sale, or the Salvation Army. The sweater comes home with me and joins the piles of other sweaters, crowding me out of my studio. I sort them. I bag them. I sneak them into my husband's office. Anything to be rid of them. Anything, that is, except for what I am supposed to do with them - which is to wash them, over and over, until they become lovely, thick wool felt. And the colors ... the colors are so marvelous. A seemingly infinite variety of reds, or blues, or even whites. I'm amazed by how many different shades of white there are.
Eventually, hubby grows weary of his office being my attic, and he brings them all back to me. Except now, instead of being in big, lumpy plastic garbage bags, they are all in big Rubbermaid bins. Big, ugly grey bins with orange lids. Why can't hubby be addicted to buying old wooden trunks at the flea market, instead of these hideous things from the hardware store?
I move the ugly bins into the bedroom. Surely they will be such a daily eyesore that I'll get to work and soon I'll have a lovely pile of felted and pressed pieces of wool to play with. And the bins can go back to the basement.
Um, do you know how handy four big bins can be? It's like another table on which to pile STUFF. I don't even see the bins anymore. They're still there, but they're well covered, and I'm used to them.
But I digress. What I'm really thinking about is how the lovely felted wool becomes a little piece of art, or maybe a big piece of art, but definitely something worth looking at. And touching. And feeling. It always starts with those few scraps. And, when put together, they take on a new life. Then even more energy seems to just happen, when a little vintage button gets popped on top of the small collection of scraps. And, finally, the amazing transformation that happens when all those stitches get piled onto the mix. It's just wonderful.
And to think, a few miserable months ago, I wasn't sure I wanted to keep working with sweater wool at all. :)
Click on a title if you want to see the whole picture: 1. 1996, 2. 1997 cuff bag, 3. 1998, 4. 1998, 5. 1998 pink cuff bag, 6. 1998 purple with heart, 7. 1998, 8. 1998 teeny brown with penny, 9. 1998 tiny purple with heart, 10. 1999, 11. 1999, 12. 1999
This is pretty much the end of that old batch of bag photos which I came across recently. I hope you've enjoyed these strolls down Memory Lane. :)
