Pure Love

My son Noah worked yesteday 5 hours on this washing cloth.  He was very chalenged knowing what his mom can do with thread and decided to do also a fancy colour-changeing thing. Everything was neatly sewed up so no threads show.  We used it straight away to clean the mess he made while eating nachos with avocado. 

His little piece of work remeinds me of the love we put in all things handmade and it brings me to vodoo.  Yo know the dolls used for voodoo have hairs of the person in question and so on.  The principle of vodoo is putting your thoughts into this doll as so to believe you had the person itself in front of you.  Well, I supouse that handmade things have got the same magical powers voodoo dolls have (in positive).  They are filled with love and positive thoughts from the maker.  But should the maker get to be in a hard situation, for example beacause of bad working conditions, you would also get this bad feelings into the things that are being made by the hands that are suffering. So poor working conditions would be like poisson for the consumers?  I let you think about it...

Impulsiv

Sometimes, in the middle of the night the ideas assault me and next day I suddenly have a new project going on. This time I decided that my daughter had to have an kid mohair little bolero jacket for the fall. I'm experimenting with drop stitches. Will see how it all comes out. I have been knitting by 27°, my hands warm and moist, but what should I do, this is my obsession and little cute girls just must have a fluffy bolero!


And, Noah my eldest decided to take the production of football T-Shirts in his own hands for the school championship and is doing very well without any help. I teached the basics and he is doing pretty well alone. The numbers on the back are made of an old white linen sheet. He zigzags everything. The T's have a very cool grungy look.


This week, as impulsive as I'm I wrote to Elaine Lipson from the Red Thread Studio to just tell her how I very much love her blog, and I was lucky to gain a friend. Her blog is a treasure for all who share the slow cloth passion. She explores the web and other places to find her textile treasures. Elaine is absolutely worth visiting.

What's coming

This week I have been writting my plans, putting them to paper helps me think and get some stuff clear.

In november I'll be going to Chile for 6 weeks, Noah, Elias and Isabelle will be going to school there and I expecto to be able to get some research done about chilean slow clothes development.

I will be visiting Araucania Yarns (http://www.araucaniayarns.com). They are doing an amazing slow work. They produce yarns with row materials of mostly local provenience and dye it all by hand with local labor in socialy responsable maner.

Also will be visiting the women of Fundación Chol-Chol http://www.cholchol.org. Mapuche people from Chile working with self produced and self processed wool. The beauty of their work lies in simplicity and in the natural dyes they use.

Will be posting a very nice video about fundacion chol-chol (that is when I find out how to embed it, anybody there to help?)

Waiting for the Monsoon (clic to hear the podcast)

Maiwa Textiles is doing a lot for the preservation of textile crafts being forgotten through the fast industrialisation of the textile work. They have made a few videos and many podcasts that are worth seeing. I only hope the slowclothes community keeps on growing so that we one day have the possibility to influence decisions and to get our oppinion to be heard and shared by a large ammount of people. See also http://www.maiwa.com/

Taditional Art not to be lost

Today I want to show you something very special, the "Centro de Textiles Tradicionales del Cusco". Cusco, this region of Peru near Machu Pichu is keeper of the old textile traditions of the precolumbian people. The indians here (do not like calling them like that because they are not, nor aborigines because those are australin, but can not find a better word) learn in their early childhood the Art. Much is being forgotten, for example the process of natural dying because of the introduction of industrial chemical methods, also the techniques are getting lost because the big comerce does not have place for complicated stuff that takes time and therefore money. Anyhow, the "Centro de Textiles" works together with some villages that are working towards preservation and revival. The results are beautiful. Please look at the beautiful hats, mostly made without pattern just out of the memory (try to do that yourself!!). Just worth looking into it. Special: jung boys and Men knit and wave too.

Waiting for the Monsoon

For the ones interested in the slow clothes movement, this is a quite good podcast.

The crafters revival is coming and also increesing respect for all handmade. I have observed that slowly the people get to understand that crafters do not need to be compared with the industy and are no longer seen as a cheap and unefficient option to the industrial production. Crafts are slow because they are thoghtful. It sometimes needs slowliness to get the best out of something.