Between Earth and Heaven

Finally got to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, to see the African Textiles exhibit. I really wanted to see the "metal tapestry" by El Anatsui. I was not disappointed. Wow! The man's art is stunning. This huge tapestry is made of thousands of tiny pieces of tin and wires. It is just gorgeous. The picture at top left is an overall view and all the others are detail shots. My photos don't really do it justice, but they do give a good general idea of what it is all about.

Here is a YouTube video of Anatsui during the installation of the piece:



You can also visit Rayela's Fiber Focus; she wrote a nice piece about Anatsui just the other day.

After seeing the African textiles, we visited the Calder jewelry exhibit. I wasn't allowed to photograph, but there are many fabulous photos at the museum website.

It was a very pleasant day, capped off with an excellent dinner that included steak tartar - one of my favorite dishes of all time, and so hard to find nowadays.

What I Make From Dryer Lint

You know I am all about recycling, and I wash old sweaters and other woolens until they shrink and become thick wool felt. One byproduct is what gets left in the lint trap: lots of wool fluff. I can't possibly throw this away! So, I make wooly balls, and sometimes I turn the wooly balls into wooly ornaments.

If you would like to try this, but you don't happen to be washing, and ruining, dozens of sweaters, you can use wool roving. Pick whatever color appeals to you. Grab a large handful and shape it more or less into a ball. Then wrap wool thread around it. Stuff this sloppy ball into the bottom of a stocking, and tie a knot - the process of pushing while you tie the knot will improve its shape.

If you want to make more than one, just keep repeating the process until you have used the entire length of the stocking. At this point you can call it a garland and quit. But if you hang that garland in your living room, your family may have you institutionalized.

Now throw your weird garland into the washing machine and let it start - hot water and just a bit of soap. After about five minutes, you need to check on how things are going. The wool will start to felt and if you let it go on for too long, the nylon stocking will become embedded in the balls. Yuk.

Once your balls (ha, ha I said "your balls") have felted as much as they can without grabbing onto the nylon, it is time to remove them from the washer and finish them off by hand. Remove the balls from the stocking and rub them against something rough, like an old-fashioned washboard. You do this while keeping them hot, wet and soapy. They will "harden off" and become nice, tight, hard balls. That's really the most difficult part of the process - takes lots of elbow grease. Once you have the finished balls, you can either enjoy them as is, or dress them up with ribbon, buttons, bells, and what have you.

Above all - have fun doing this! Although, during the hardening off process, you may decide you'd rather pay someone like me to do it for you!

The Aussie Fires - Comfort and Sorrow

 
From Sydney, Australia AP writer, Kristen Gelineau:

Kangaroo corpses lay scattered by the roadsides while wombats that survived the wildfire's onslaught emerged from their underground burrows to find blackened earth and nothing to eat. Wildlife rescue officials on Wednesday worked frantically to help the animals that made it through Australia's worst-ever wildfires but they said millions of animals likely perished in the inferno. Scores of kangaroos have been found around roads, where they were overwhelmed by flames and smoke while attempting to flee, said Jon Rowdon, president of the rescue group Wildlife Victoria.

Kangaroos that survived are suffering from burned feet, a result of their territorial behavior. After escaping the initial flames, the creatures - which prefer to stay in one area - likely circled back to their homes, singeing their feet on the smoldering ground. "It's just horrific," said Neil Morgan, president of the Statewide Wildlife Rescue Emergency Service in Victoria, the state where the raging fires were still burning. "It's disaster all around for humans and animals as well."

Some wombats that hid in their burrows managed to survive the blazes, but those that are not rescued face a slow and certain death as they emerge to find their food supply gone, said Pat O'Brien, president of the Wildlife Protection Association of Australia.The official human death toll stood at 181 from the weekend's deadly fires and authorities said it would exceed 200. While the scope of the wildlife devastation was still unclear, it was likely to be enormous, Rowdon said."There's no doubt across that scale of landscape and given the intensity of the fires, millions of animals would have been killed," he said.

Hundreds of burned, stressed and dehydrated animals - including kangaroos, koalas, lizards and birds - have already arrived at shelters across the scorched region. Rescuers have doled out antibiotics, pain relievers and fluids to the critters in a bid to keep them comfortable, but some of the severely injured were euthanized to spare any more suffering. "We've got a wallaby joey at the moment that has crispy fried ears because he stuck his head out of his mum's pouch and lost all his whiskers and cooked up his nose," Rowdon said. "They're the ones your hearts really go out to."

In some of the hardest-hit areas, rescuers used vaporizing tents to help creatures whose lungs were burned by the searing heat and smoke. One furry survivor has emerged a star: a koala, nicknamed "Sam" by her rescuers, was found moving gingerly on scorched paws by a fire patrol on Sunday. Firefighter David Tree offered the animal a bottle of water, which she eagerly accepted, holding Tree's hand as he poured water into her mouth - a moment captured in a photograph seen around the world.

"You all right, buddy?" Tree asks in a video of the encounter as he approaches the koala.

To read the whole story, go to this article and for more, see news.com.au.

When I read these stories, and see this beautiful photo, it does make me wonder: how is that we, as a society, condone torturing, killing and eating animals? Granted, not everyone is aware of the sad lives these animals lead, nor do they realize what terrible deaths many animals-for-food suffer; but we all know, when we lift that fork to the mouth, that we are eating animals. Mind you, I am among the guilty: I don't eat much meat anymore, but I am not a vegetarian, either. Baby steps, I guess. At least I'm working on it. How about you, my readers? Any opinions?

Many thanks to Kecia, at Lemoncholy, for publishing the photo of Sam The Koala on her blog.

If you would like to make a donation, to help the people and communities devastated by this horrid event, click on this: Australian Red Cross.

To help the efforts of the animal workers, you can direct your donation to the Victoria, Australia RSPCA.

Go Fish!

Just listed at my etsy shop! I made it by recycling sweaters into wool felt, then lots of cutting and hand stitching. Fun!

Update: Go Fish was featured at Softies Central Thank you, Therese!

Have you seen this ad? It is wonderful!

Flying Geese - Flying Away

It feels so good to say that Flying Geese is complete. Here is a detail photo.

UPDATE: Please go HERE to see how the piece actually ended up!