I received an email earlier this week letting me know that Under the Sea II was not accepted to their juried show. There were 809 artists who submitted 1,367 pieces of art. While I was trying not to believe my pieces would be accepted my heart really wanted to have my felting acknowledged as art.

I applied to the Okotoks Art Gallery to have the exhibit that is currently in the Prince of Wales Heritage Centre in Yellowknife, Under the Sea, exhibited there here next year. Unfortunately that bid was not successful.

Not the most successful week but I will check around for more juried shows to enter and more places to exhibit.

I have be making felt since my return to Yellowknife and I will share that soon.

I am in Edmonton and fly to Yellowknife in the morning. I had an uneventful flight from Reyjkavik to Edmonton, it is so wonderful that there is a direct flight to Edmonton. I did have time this morning to purchase a lovely Icelandic wool cardigan from the Handknitters Guild of Iceland, nice to know that the money goes directly to the makers. I also walked up to the cathedral, take a look at the website for pictures it is a really interesting building.  http://www.visitreykjavik.is/hallgrimskirkja-church

When I was checking out of the hotel this morning I met 3 people from Yellowknife waiting in the lobby for their bus tour.  They had been in Germany and we’re taking advantage of Icelandairs stay in the country for a few days on your way to or from someplace in Europe for no extra charge.  Then when I got on the bus to the airport there was another Yellowknife couple. It is a very small world.

There are a number of oupictures that I did not share so I thought this would be a good day  to share them. I have some pictures that I took of the weaving studio.  

   

I thought you might like to see where Amanda worked for her month.

On May 1st I took this picture out the studio window on the river side. If you look to the left of the picture you can see the sod on the roof of the Textile Museum it is very brown.

  
  
On May 17th I took this picture and finally this is a picture that I took yesterday, see how much greener it is. 

 

Even if we did not get a lot of warm weather we did get enough for the snow at our level to melt and the grass to green up.  

I did not show you any pictures from the Textile Museum. These are knit shoe inserts, there would be your Sunday go to meeting inserts. The weekday ones would be less ornate.

   
 

These are some Icelandic traditional dresses.

   
       

Glad I don’t have to wear any of these restrictive dresses. 

And finally these daffodils are growing by one of teacher age, I was suprised to see “wild daffodils” here.

 Off to bed shortly, it has been a long day.  Thanks for reading.  

it is just after 11:00 p.m. And we arrived in Reyjkavik about half an hour ago just in time for bed. Johanna and her husband Gunnar gave us a ride but we couldn’t leave until after a board meeting and then Johanna had to go home and assist a sheep who was in trouble giving birth, unfortunately both lambs died. When she got to the Textile Centre to pick us up Gundrun, the artist who is putting up her exhibit at the Textile Museum, locked herself out of her room and no spare key to be found.  This all meant we were not on the road until just before 7 and then we stopped at the site where the last beheadings in Iceland happened in 1830 and Amanda and I took pictures and walked to the execution site.  We also stopped for supper so late arrival but we are here safe and sound. I did forget my jacket in Johanna’s vehicle and she was good enough to bring it back to me, what a great lady.

I am sure you are wondering what I did today if I could not felt.  Believe it or not I stitched on the tapestry,  this is the part that I stitched, I worked on the thing that looks like a light blue column. I only managed to get about an inch or so completed in one and a half hours but I will have my name in the book when the tapesrtry it is completed of people who worked on it. 

   
 I packed up two boxes to send home by mail. One is full of Icelandic wool batts and the other is full of extra stuff from my suitcase so I could have my new felt pieces with me. I think it is important they travel with me. 

It was nice getting a ride with Johanna as she told us the names of mountains and stories about trolls and pointed out tolls corner and we got dropped off right at our door. It was a nice way to end my time at the Textile Centre with a lovely drive with interesting companions. 

I will try and do another post tomorrow with a few photos but right now it is time for bed. 

This will be the last post from Blonduos, it is sadto be leaving.  The exhibit was this evening and not a good turn out but it was nice to meet a few new people and talk about textiles. I have attached some pictures of Amanda’s wonderful weaving and some of our guests. 

   
   
I have to go to,the post office tomorrow to mail myself a big box and to Reyjkavik late tomorrow afternoon.  The box contains most of the Icelandic wool roving I purchased here.  It won’t quite all fit but I am only leaving behind the colours I am least fond of and hopefully someone else will enjoy using them either to spin or to wet felt with. 

This is the picture of Under the Sea II, I took lots of pictures of how it is set up as I won’t remember and this seemed a very nice balance, different textures and colour, some short and some tall.  I really like the latest version of my underwater world.   I spent a few minutes this afternoon working on a couple of felted bracelets, one to give Johanna for all of the extras she has done for us, like taking us to Reyjkavik tomorrow. 

 

It is still overcast windy and rainy but I did manage to get a swim and water jog late this morning. I will miss the pool not necessarily the walking outside in your wet bathing suit but the lovely warm water in the hot pool that’s for sure. And I will certainly miss the Textile Centre, what a great place to have spent the last 4 weeks, wonderful studio space, comfortable accommodation and Blonduos is a very nice town to stay for a while. 

I hope to get a little retail therapy in tomorrow afternoon or Saturday morning in Reyjkavik, really have not purchased much except some tanned fish skins so looking forward to seeing some nice hand knitting that might have to come home with me.  Thanks for reading. 

it is my 2nd last day here and tomorrow will be busy cleaning up the studio for the exhibition and packing stuff up. It is called an exhibition because if it was an open house or an open day then all of the offices in our building would need to be open and that is not what is is happening. Only Amanda and I are showing off what we have been up to the last 4 weeks.

Today I finished the last 4 pieces for the exhibit. They look pretty good, more coral tubes. They fit into the background and add height. Tomorrow morning we hope to get a decent picture so we can move the exhibit from the bedroom back to the studio for the show. I went online this afternoon to start to register for the Salt Spring juried show.  I needed an artist statement about the work and I had 100 words to sell them on my piece, that is if the pictures don’t. I wrote some words and had Amanda help me polish them and I think they sound pretty good. This is the first time entering a show where your work needs to be approved to get in and it is nerve wracking.  There is a lot of money at stake and I imagine they will receive 1000’s of entries.  This is the link to the  website:  http://saltspringartprize.ca. I will know in July if I get choosen and I will sure let you know if I do.

  
We went back to the Textile Museum this afternoon for a look around with no one else there. What a fantastic museum it is devoted 100% to Icelandic textiles. You can touch a lot of the items there, with those oh so fashionable white gloves on. The workmanship is so wonderful, looking at some of the items you know some of them must have taken 100’s of hours. It does inspire one to want to make an Icelandic inspired something or other. 

The waves are really rolling in tonight, I don’t think I have seen them this fierce before.  It is nice and safe sitting in y bedroom watching them out the window glad I am not out on the ocean tonight.  It is hard to tell from this picture but they really are big waves. 

  
That was my day, thanks for reading.

Only one piece completed today and I am not sure it it will make it in the final “show”. I wanted to try Icelandic wolf and tanned fish leather again so this is my second go, it kind of looks like an upside down tie to me.

  
As I say this may or may not make it. Amanda and I moved all of the pieces to one of the extra bedrooms this morning that up has better light so I could get some good pictures. I also asked her to pull out a pieces that were not adding to the exhibit. This is what it looks like now. 

  
I have 4 pieces on the felting table laid out, now the rolling and rubbing begins. They will add height to the left side and middle of the exhibit. Once all the pieces are in place I will look it over again and see if I agree with the culling that was done, I do tend to get attached to pieces and have to have them included but this time there were only 3 pieces that needed to be included. The 2 corded pieces and my new favourite piece from yesterday. Please let me know what your thoughts are. The final picture will be better than this one, this was to give us an idea of placement. 

So if I don’t have much to show you then what was I up to. Amanda and I went to see where all of the wool that Istex purchases from across Iceland is washed.  Istex stands for Icelandic Textile Industry, any real Icelandic sweaters are knit from Istex wool. If you are interested this is their website.   http://www.istex.is/english/about-us/. 

Back to the wool washing place. Local farmers bring their wool in and the rest of the wool from around the country is trucked here. The process starts by going through a matchine that fluffs it, I am pretty sure that is not what the manager who gave us the tour said the machine did that is my version of what it does.  Remember we are talking filthy dirty wool full of hay and straw and poop and anything else that sheep might get into.  So though the fluffing machine, along a short conveyer belt and into the first wash that is 40C and has just soap and these very gentle large combs that move the wool ever so gently along.   The water coming out of those tanks was really disgusting. Then into the next tank that has soap and soda, not sure if something was lost in translation but the soda breaks down the grease in the fleece and finally some clear water to get the soap and soda out. Off to the drying matching that was at 96C and blows the wool through an oven and then along a big pipe into the final machine that packs the wool into bags weighing 350 to 400 kilograms. Pretty heavy wool. All of the wool they have in the washing factory right now are seconds. The wool will not be made into yarn but will be sent to England by ship to be made into carpets. The wioll arrives there in very big bags and from the time a bag is dumped into the first hopper until it is being packed only takes 10 minutes, it was taking much longer today as one of the machines was jammed.  It was great fun to see how the cleaning process works on a commercial scale. 

I went to the pool and swam and water jogged and sat in the hot pool. As I was minding my own business in the hot pool about 25 or 30 teenagers arrived, I saw their bus leaving. I am not sure if they had been on a school sports trip but it got lots louder with all those raging hormones. 

That was my day, thanks for reading. 

Today I feel like much was accomplished in the felting studio. I finished the orange coral tubes, drum roll please. Each tube is about 5″ high and it takes 35 to 40 minutes to make two of them so this type of piece takes a lot of time. I don’t see large numbers of these in my future but I really like the look of them.

  
First thing this morning I cut out the marbles and made many cuts in this, my new favourite piece. It is just so wonderful, one side looks very bark like and I can see how I could make a very realistic tree should I feel the urge. I needed to take pictures of both sides so you could see the different colours, it is just so wonderful.  This one is 15″ high. 

   
 Late last week I tried making some kelp to add height to the piece and the kelp did not make the cut but what, wondered I, could I make that would give the piece some added dimension. I have an inspiration piece on the wall and it has a large orange hollow tube coral.  I know how to make hollow tubes but this needed to be much bigger and stand up in its own. I used a resist that was 18″ high hoping to end up with 12″ of height once it was felted firm enough to stand up. I ended up with 3 completed today and I like each and every one of them.   They stand about 11″ high. 

  
Last Friday I received an email from Icelandair saying there may be a strike of ground handlers on May 31 and June 1st, my flight leaves on June 1st. I could get a full refund or change my flight for no fee if I wanted to get out before the strike. I thought about it over the weekend and checked the news hoping the labour dispute had been settled but no change so this morning I called and changed my flight out to May 30th, my Canadain North flight to May 31st and my hotel reservations in Reyjkavik and Edmonton. And wouldn’t you know it late this afternoon an announcement that due to some movement the strike has been delayed by 5 days and is now starting on June 2nd, lots of other groups were doing rotating strikes. So had I procrastinated I would not be leaving 2 days early but the decision was made and having been here for a month I am ready to go home and have no regrets about the change in plans. 

Only 2 more days until the open house so much felting to be done in preparation.  Thanks for reading. 

i have a few pieces to show you today and we have a new roommate for the week. First the new roommate, her name is Gudrun and she is going to be installing an exhibit at the Textile Museum this week. She is Icelandic but lives in Copenhagen. I am not sure what her exhibit is about, I do know she has some dresses that her mother made 70 plus years ago and other old pieces of clothing, tomorrow I will find out exactly what she is up to but it is nice to have another person around.

We had a visit today from a group of women, and one man, on a Helene Magnusson knitting trip around the West of Iceland.  They were visiting the Textile Museum next door.  Amanda met Helene in Reyjkavik the end of April and she went over to talk with her and invited the group back to see our studios and what we have been working on. A nice group of fellow wool enthusiasts.

I had a productive day in the studio. First thing this morning I finished that darn marble piece, I threw it and rolled it for half an hour then rinsed it out and it is still drying so tomorrow morning I can cut the marbles out and  cut into it and it will be work of art!  I did finish the four small pieces, there are only three of them now, I was trying to use some horses mane on a piece and it did not work so the piece went into the garbage.  These are the three remaining pieces, I like them all but especially the one with the curly locks. 

  
I then started on another piece of dead coral as I need to add some height to the piece, they are relatively easy to make just boring.   The piece looks like a rock when finished, not very exciting but when you put a some felted pieces on the top they look pretty good.  Please ignore the safety pins, as soon as it dries I will stich it up, I just want the wool to remember the shape I want it to stay in hence the pins. 

  
I finished the final 4 coral tubes, they are drying and will be attached tomorrow, that piece took my about 3 weeks to finish and it is not that complicated, I guess I did not want to make anymore tubes.  So that was my Sunday. Lots done, still more to complete but I feel like I am on track to be ready for the open house on Thursday.  

Thanks for reading.

i only have one finished piece to show you, I do have one marble piece that I set aside to finish felting in the morning.  I want it to shrink more and I was running out of patience and needed to quit for the night.  I also have 4 small pieces laid out ready for the felting process to begin. This is what I felted this morning. I incorporated some fish skin in the piece. It was a learning experience and I plan on making some more pieces with fish skin, I think this piece is fun.

   
 I realized that I did not show you any of the tanned fish skins last night so here they are.  In the first picture are the more expensive pieces, the green shiny one is perch and the bluey one is cod. The next picture are the seconds that I purchased, I laid them out so I could enjoy the look of them all together.

   
 One of the small pieces that they had for sale at the fish tannery was a brooch with felt balls.  I knen I could make one but if I didn’t make it right away I would forget so this is my prototype. It is a little small, the leaves are only 2″ long but it gives me the idea of what to do. I happen to have brooch clasps with me so this one is ready to go, perhaps for sale at the Firewed Studio in Yellowknife this summer. I need to come up with some more contemporary shapes for brooches, any ideas anyone?

  
I did get to the pool this afternoon for a swim/water jog and a sit in the hot pool.  The pool is closed on Sunday and Monday is a holiday here so they are closed then as well. After going to the pool I stopped at a new cafe that opened today in town and had a bite to eat. It was good food and it is nice to see a new business opening here. 

Hopefully I have a bit more felting to show you tomorrow, I did finish 2 more coral tubes, only 4 to go. 

Thanks for reading.