Delayed Inspiration

What does this scarf have to do with my baskets? It's an example of how everything I look at feeds into the collected information I use for inspiration. I'll begin with saying that I'm drawn to stripes, from wallpaper to textiles. As I was working on my new striped basket I realized that it reminded me of something. I went upstairs and found this scarf. I'd bought it in Norway two summers ago.

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For this basket, I wanted to weave bold stripes in a just-dyed, dark grey reed. I needed an accent color and remembered one I had dyed after studying the colors in a photo of peeling birch bark. Unfortunately woven together, the series of natural colors I created looked like mud. Not all ideas pan out.

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I put that basket idea aside, but found that my favorite color, a warm neutral was what I needed to play off the cool grey. (The basket is 20" x 15".)

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One thing I enjoy about using rattan reed is how I can alternate between weaving flat and "hairy" textured baskets. I wanted to work on a flat surface and make a larger basket after having finished a small, very bright "hairy" basket. All this is in preparation for an upcoming craft show in Boston from March 25th to March 27th. For more information and directions you can click here.

Why I blog

This winter has felt very long. For weeks, a part of every day was spent shoveling snow or chipping ice. February came and went but the doldrums and cabin fever set in. Even Emma and Kitt seemed stressed. March is showing improvement. The need for burdensome layers of clothing is lessening as the amount of daily mud appears to increase, on the kitchen/studio floor.

Seemingly out of nowhere, ideas for new work have been flooding me. It's almost as if spring has loosened creative seeds and I can't work fast enough. It's a good thing too, since I have a fair in Boston at the end of the month. I've been posting process photos of a new basket to my Facebook fan page. The photo above is how it started. I'll be back shortly to write about the process. (The idea I wrote about earlier - inspired by birch bark, didn't work out the way I had envisioned it, but now I have lots of dyed reed and a vague idea for another basket.)

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So ... why this blog? Although I don't post often, I'm constantly trying to find words so I can share what goes into how and why I weave. I often tell people that words aren't my "media," so this is a place where I practice getting my thoughts out of my head into words. This is also a collection point for my other blogs. There's a new one where I've been collecting design sources called Pinterest, and a photo blog where I've been adding photos of Emma and Kitt, taken with my iPod. If you've read this far, I hope that you'll come back. I'll do my best to post more often.

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