Christmas Fair

Yay! The student Union in college organised a Christmas Fair.  I signed up for a table and spread out some of my knitting. 

 

I also sold some little stars and hearts (Christmas decorations). I kept them in a willow basket, handmade by my Mam, Margie. 

Margie took photos of me posing in the hat and gloves so that people could see what they looked like on.

It was a great success, everyone especially loved the little baby slippers! I must dig out the pattern again out of one of the knitting books and knit some more. Thanks to Margie for sewing on the buttons and for all her help last night.

Home for a few days

I've been busy in the last two weeks.  Before my presentation last Monday, Me and dad went over to Henley to join Margie and Mel.  We had an early Christmas celebration because Mel and Chris are going to be in America for Christmas.  It was a great weekend.  Because I don't have money this year for presents, I worked in the print room in college to create a woodblock print for Mel and Chris.  This is the finished result (1/3 "Bailey & Bindi" 2008). I'll add a pic of Mel's edition soon.  The cats are Bailey and Bindi.  The print contains 10 different colours and is printed from one block of MDF 6mm that I had to cut into with woodcut scribes.  10 colours means 10 steps so it was a lot of work, but enjoyable and well worth it.  

For Margie's christmas present, I'm still working.  It's going to be three hearts with a gingham pattern.  The squares are a nightmare to cut out but once I start printing, I'll have some fun!  

Because it's very time consuming I don't expect to finish this piece until after Christmas.  So, I've already shown it to Margie.  A good thing about making prints as Christmas presents is that it means I can document the steps and results in my notebooks.  I'm delighted to say that I got my result for my research and presentation and the combined result is a B+.  I'm waiting for my essay grade on Friday to see what I'll get for Christmas!

Margie went to Vienna and brought me back lovely wool, Lana Grossa Primo and beautiful needles.  The pattern is created by the wool as you knit.  I'm knitting a pair of socks, following a Jo-jo heel sock pattern I found on the Lana Grossa website. 

Mind Games

For my research project in college, I've been working with various mediums, including printmaking and knitting.  Here's the three images I'll be using for my presentation next Monday. This first image is of "Ode a La Biévre" by Louise Bourgeois. While some of her work disturbs me, I really love the cloth books she has produced. This one is especially interesting, with the combination of text and imagery, as well as each image being so very different from the others. 

The next image is one of my desk. I was finding it hard to pinpoint 3 images that sum up my research project. So, I talked to my tutor and she suggested taking a photograph of my desk. So this is my studio space in college, which I use a lot! My work for this project can be seen on the wall - there's a knitted 'S', which exemplifies my explorations in knitting patterns and there's a woodblock print of a sewing thread spool and a needle, entitled "Before the Stitch". 

 

The last image is the one I'm least happy with, because it demonstrates a work in progress.  One of the interests I identified in my project was the mind.  Duane's brother, Leigh, had his brain scanned recently and got to keep the x-rays, so I converted them into a screenprint, with varied success. I hope to have more prints completed soon.  This print was featured in the exhibition "Support" for the IADT open day.  

Knitting Update

Here's some of the items I've knit over the years.

This is the first ever Teddy I knit, he's a rucksack teddy and I brought him everywhere with me. I was about 8 years old. 

A Debbie Bliss teddy. The first one I knit from this pattern, I've since knit many of these teddies. The most recent being a Rambo one and one for Duane, now named Alfie. 

In fourth year of Secondary School, I knitted this teddy as part of a school project.  The pattern was on a torn out page from a magazine. I think he looks adorable in his stripped pyjamas.

My first attempt with double pointed needles resulted in a pair of leg warmers. My second attempt was a pair of cozy socks, modelled here by Margie! 

I enjoy knitting baby clothes and accessories because they are quick to knit.

In the Knitted Accessories book, I came across a cute Berry Beret and tried my hand at it. I was very happy and knitted another in blue for Margie. 

While knitting, I watched The Sound of Music on tv. You can see the ballroom scene behind me in one of the photos. 

Baking Update

I've been taking photos for the last few months for this blog, but never got round to putting them up.  So, here they all are. 

Last year, Duane gave me a Student Vegetarian Cookbook.  I found fun and delicious recipes inside.  One of our favourites is for Oatmeal Cookies.  These cookies are white chocolate chip and always go down a treat! 

During the summer, Margie and I found ourselves in This is Knit in Blackrock.  We picked up some wool and a lovely book called Weekend Knitting.  Among the pages of patterns added treasures - for example, there's a recipe for chocolate chip cookies.  These cookies were delicious!

On the same day as baking the cookies, I also made a rhubarb crumble, one of my favourite desserts to bake.  The top browned up nicely and the bowl was empty by nightfall.

In August, when the weather was good, Margie and I started baking scones.  We followed a recipe from the September issue of Country Homes & Interiors.  I saw the picture of the scones and, with my mouth watering, couldn't resist the lure of a warm scone with melting butter and raspberry jam. Of course, the jam had to be Bonne Maman. This jam always reminds me of my childhood holidays spent in Belgium, where we'd go to the supermarket and slice the bread with those bread-slicing machines and then go back to the apartment and spread the slices with butter and Bonne Maman jam. 

In early september, I moved into an apartment in Dublin with my friends.  I needed to be close to college and also needed more independence than we had in Digs. The first weekend I spent there, I watched Saturday morning tv and was inspired by Delia Smith to start baking bread from scratch. 

 

Here, I'm punching the air out of the dough after it rose for an hour. 

I soon expanded to other recipes that called for yeast.  Here is my first attempt at Cinnamon Buns.

Unfortunately, I left them in the oven too long so they were a bit too chewy! They still tasted great though. 

I really enjoy baking my own bread now but I'm still hunting for a 1 pound loaf tin. 

I made a delicious pizza, also from a Delia Smith recipe. 

Margie and I enjoyed the pizza with Margie's home-made Chutney while watching a girlie film. 

Society's Abyss.

The statement I put up beside my piece:

From the selection of concepts I randomly choose Composition, Society, and Dante's Inferno.  From my research I developed a poem which follows the same rhyming pattern (Terza Rima) as Dante's Inferno and is written in Gothic Rotunda style.  Like the hell of Dante's inferno, Witch Hunts have been omnipresent in Western culture for centuries.  While Dante's Inferno deals with Divine Judgement of the sinful after death, the Witch Hunts are an example of misplaced societal judgement before death, thus highlighting society's own downfall or capabilities to endlessly repeat mistakes.  The mirror is a tool often used to discover the mark of the devil on accused people.  I use the mirror to discover the words of the poem.  The poem is faded and nearly illegible, just as the horror of the tortures used in Witch Hunts has faded due to desensitisation.  The editions are bound to become a Book of Spells, a play on the religious Book of Kells. 

Here are the photos of the completed art work:

The Poem reads:

Swinging from a man-made rope

Or roasting on a bed of wood;

Cruel judgement tore away the hope

Increasing the wrath of "common good" 

And still today we see the sky

Lighting up, 'cos those who could

Ignited another witch todie.

Nighttime hides the ones who come,

Justice cloaking sinners sly:

Uneasiness to the beat of Hitler's drum

Sounding out fears ill-founded;

'Though what good can come from 

Innocent and soul divided?

Condemned by their peers,

Every victim's life upended,

Silenced by the age-old fears

Of spells cast and poisons evil.

Fleeing the taunts and angry jeers -

Mass hysteria caused upheaval-

Often suspects flee from kin

Darkened by mentation medieval

Evading torture to begin

Rebuilding lives and dreams beside

Neighbours too accused of sin.

Day after day, far and wide,

Across the plains of ground and time,

Yesterday has been denied

When the sinless fall to impossible crime;

Ignorance is no longer bliss.

Tolling bells together chime

Cacophonies of laws remiss -

Heralding the killing spree.

Hunts of witches cause this 

Unfair disregard for history

Nullifying the need to pray.

These injustices of witch hunts can be

Seen in societies of modern day. 

copyright 2008 by M.M.W. (Marjolein Wouters)

Completed College Work since last post

Hm, I haven't been on this blog in so long. I've finally decided to return and now shall post a mountain of posts for updating my life on this!!

First off, here's the completed piece for my project from 2nd Year. I was very happy with it myself and had positive feedback from tutors, family and friends. 

Now I'm back in college after a fun-filled summer.  I don't have a picture of my final piece for my Chance Project. Here's all the workings.  It's very seasonally-appropriate. I had a lot of fun producing this work even though it was tough going with lots of late nights.  The final piece is a combination of literary and artistic ability- a print of a poem.  The concept is based around modern day witch hunts.  I'll give more information when I've posted the photos of the final piece. 

Here, I'm using scrim (muslin) to clean the ink off the copper plate and push it further into the etched lines.

The old printing press looks so lovely and I love being so hands on with my work. It's just a pity that it is so heavy to turn and that I had to roll it through four or five times for each print so I ended up with a very sore back for the whole of last weekend.

Embossing is a technique I hadn't used before in print so it was fun to play around with the image. The pentagram was printed from the internet and then I transferred the image to card to use as my embossing device! The press had to be adjusted so that a mark wouldn't be left on the blankets (the wads of material that cover the work while its being printed). 

The completed piece is very striking. This is the best photo I have at the moment but there'll be more to come!

 

College Work

This Week I have been very busy in college. I'm incorporating knitting into my project. It's a self-directed project and assessments are next week so I'm busy knitting away.

I've taken scraps of the material used in canvas making before its been made and cut into strips. I've sewn these strips together and rolled them into balls.  I'm using my purple US13 needles and knitting 18 rows on 15 stitches. I'm planning on making a large canvas once I have enough squares.  Here's a few of the balls. 

For notebook and experimentation I also knitted with plastic.

This Weekend I have been mostly Extreme Knitting....

Hello.  I gots a pre-Birthday Present from Mammy cos I won't be at home for my Birthday.  Duane and I are going to spend a few days with Mel and Chris. Yay!  

Anyway, the present I got is a book called: The Book of Crafts.  I found a lovely knitting pattern in it for a floor cushion.  So I decided to use the pattern to create my first piece on my new extreme knitting needles.  Margie (Mammy) and I got out our stash of oddments of wool and we merged a few different colours together. I started knitting. Now, the cushion is going to turn out looking like a small beanbag.  I have 1 and more than half squares made so far.