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spam scam spindly wham

21/1/2021

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I've received what i assume to be a spam/scam email insisting i follow a link to some place or other 
I'm writing this post today because it told me I would lose access to all my Weebly data if i didn't follow their link
​the email said 'you haven't used your Weebly account in 'quite a while'
hell i know I've been slack about writing but it hasn't been that long 

these things occurred to me
  1. i have no data that i give a damn about losing 
  2. this morning it's as cold as winter with squalls of evil, cold, needle sharp rain  
  3. i have to leave home 
  4. i am very grumpy 

so off you go ridiculous email 
​go live in the junk folder til i remember to clean you out
& if I'm wrong 
in 5 days this account will no longer exist
i'll have one less thing in my life that i attend to regularly
& i can start again if i wish . . . . or not

​maybe i'll see you again xx
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February 2020 : Personal Map Making : Mixed Media Daily Challenge (part I)

10/2/2020

 
Day 1 Rearrange a map
Day 1 Rearrange a map
Day 1 Rearrange a map
Day 2 Shift your perspective
Day 2 Shift your perspective
Day 3 Make backgrounds
Mapping has been such an important part of my life from when we travelled up & down the countryside as kids to my previous profession of medical imaging which involved interpreting the 3D human body & imaging it in 2D.
It’s no wonder that mapping occurs in my creative practice and having used monochromatic or greyscale for medical imaging for decades is undoubtedly the origin of my love of high contrast black & white images.

Over the past 2 years I’ve literally been mapping my thoughts & emotions in my creative practice. I’ve been exploring the connections & relationship between things which I often want to discuss but don’t want to articulate in words. 
Landlines is pretty obvious - it’s just a statement of fact.
The kawakawa monoprint series has helped me facilitate healing & wobble my way through grief.
The most recent Māhoe Leaf series is probably a lot less obvious to others, unless like me, they see the decaying leaf as a metaphor for the pathological process within the brain that is dementia & that same dementia as the metaphor for the breakdown of our society. 
I like to believe that my work is beautiful nonetheless & it’s not necessary for everyone to be able to see or even to know the unspoken dialogue . . .  it’s there to be felt for those who need it
Day 4 Textures from nature
Day 4 Textures from nature
Day 4 Textures from nature
Day 5 Map your desktop
Day 5 Map your desktop
Day 5 Map your desktop
All heavy seriousness aside, this month's personal map making class on Creativebug is colourful, light, thought provoking & fun - OMG, so.much.fun. 

e bonds’ daily mixed media Creativebug class celebrates maps in all forms, most importantly, the abstract concepts of map making. 

e’s teaching style is amazing. She ever so gently guides you through a method or technique that is then yours to play with. The most wonderful thing for me is that each day presents a completely new aspect of ‘mapping’ about which I have never thought. It’s brilliant. 

Here in NZ we’re a day ahead & kind of a day behind at the same time.
​Every night, at about 9pm, Hugh & I sit on the couch together & watch the next day’s class which means I go to sleep thinking about it & usually by the morning I’m pretty excited to get my morning routine shizzle out of the way so I can scoot over to the studio & play. ​
Day 6 Make a grid
Day 6 Make a grid
Day 6 Make a grid
Day 7 No straight lines
Day 7 No straight lines
Day 7 No straight lines
I cleared my table deliberately the week before the class started & ironically the work I’ve put to the side is a map of sorts. It’s an extension of our ‘Listening to the Land’ series, it speaks of connection to place, also my leaf litter project & laments the loss of wetlands from the NZ landscape. 
There’s an aspect of this new work, well several aspects actually, which i believe are incredibly significant for us as kaitiaki of this whenua . . . & that’s a story for another day. 

A real positive of this class for me is that it's given me with an idea that is likely to be the basis of my next muka artwork and that for me is the most exciting thing of all !

I’ll keep you posted 
 
Sal xx


Dyeing Fabric & Fibre with Harakeke Pods : February 2018

10/3/2018

 
January weather was amazing & we spent time most of our days just hanging out & going to the beach to swim which was superb & is really all I ever want to do in summer anyway.

By the time February arrived I was well rested & ready to do some explorations into using NZ native plants for dyeing fabric & fibre.

The harakeke seed pods were at their best for harvesting for making a dye bath too & I was lucky enough to have my friend, Isla, walk me thru the process, which is very easy but it is a process which takes a few days.
Here's a link to a post on Isla's website which outlines the process we used; natural-dyeing-with-harakeke-seed-pods
In the dye bath I made from the pods I had harvested I dyed a few lengths of muka, 3xDMC cotton embroidery threads of various thickness, a 60cm square of calico, a 30cm square of cotton drill & various sized rectangles of cotton drill fabric I had cut out with a view to sewing a purl soho boxy tee.
It seems the harakeke pods are high in tannins so no surprise with the colours the cottons & cotton fabrics came out but it was lovely to see the variation in the colours of the muka fibres.
Rather than dyeing a single large piece of fabric which would have been awkward to fit in my dye pot, I pre-cut the pieces of fabric for my sewing.

What I hadn't considered was the extra shrinkage of the fabric courtesy of simmering for an hour in hot water.
I had already washed & dried the fabric BUT I do cold washes & line dry ! What a bastard trap for rookies !

I sewed up my top anyway & fortunately the pattern makes a generous size garment so the only problem area is the armhole depth which is a little too tight to be comfortable.
But I have a plan !
I think I'll open that seam, on each side, & insert a gusset just to give me a bit more space.

And now, finally, we get to the point of why I wanted to sew this particular top.
It's all about the bottom panel. Which is a separate piece.
A beautifully proportioned rectangle of fabric which lends itself to embellishment.
I was watching Sashiko Stitching taught by Lisa Solomon on Creativebug & in one part of the class she is wearing a top she has made with a sashiko embroidered bottom.
I had the fabric : I had the threads : I had the pattern I wanted to embroider & now I have a top which is the memory piece of my very 1st foray into dyeing with harakeke seed pods.
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    About
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    Hi, I'm Sally
    I'm a fibre artist who loves botanicals - especially NZ native plants
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