living the crafting dream – in Deutschland

It feels like it’s time for a bit of an update around these parts, having neglected the Wind-Up Sheep for a little while. There’s not a lot to catch up on: I just moved to Germany, learnt German (ho ho ho) and got back on with normal everyday life again. Except a bit more German-style this time (i.e. I now eat a lot of rye bread, cabbage and wurst, and am very happy for it – all I would improve is the beer, but I’m sure that’ll come). I’m slightly ashamed to say that I’ve become a bit hooked on Instagram in recent weeks – just like the rest of the world, it would seem – something I never thought would happen. And although I wouldn’t want to put my lack of blogposts down to that alone, as evidently my dedication to the slow-blogging cause runs deeper, I would say that it’s playing a part. It’s like instant blogposts, without all the writing. Super!

My crafting corner

But, back to the real blog. This week I’ve been living the dream; that is, I haven’t had any work to do, which is almost unheard of, and so I’ve been crafting to the max, littering every corner of our flat with different projects on the go, and weirdly enough, actually making some significant progress! Above is a view of my crafting station (please forgive the assorted fluffy creatures – they seem to follow me around, I don’t know how), surrounded on all sides by different projects. The most significant progress of all has been on the patchwork quilt. It has been lingering in a pile, with one-quarter of the machine quilting complete, for some years. But as I recently began planning a new patchwork quilt, and given the number of patchwork quilts I possess in various stages of completion, I made a vow that I had to finish one before I could start another. So on Monday I dragged it out and finished the machine quilting, despite my sewing machine’s attempts to prevent me.

Quilting!

Then on Tuesday, I spent the morning dreading hand-sewing the binding of the quilt, and so procrastinated by planning three future knitting projects in detail (including buying the patterns on Ravelry and finding the necessary wool from my stash). It required such strength of will not to cast one on, too, that even I am surprised that the yarn still remains untouched on the coffee table. Eventually, I summoned up the courage to do the right thing, and I trimmed, folded and pinned the edges of the quilt and began sewing the binding. As I write, I am less than one full side away from completing the binding. You might ask, what on earth am I doing here, when I ought to be finishing up that quilt? Well it turns out that spending hours on end hand-sewing quilt binding, even when supplemented by music, online documentaries and podcasts, tends to lead to a cooped-up feeling of crazy that no amount of quilt-completing satisfaction (or even procrastiknitting) would cure. But I know it’s going to happen, either today or tomorrow, and I am feeling very chuffed about that. I never finish quilts!

Autumnal Speckled Sock

Other than that, I’ve also casually turned out a sock over the past week, and embroidered half a hand towel. I love it when things don’t take forever. It’s far more exciting, and a more energising, inspiring process making things fast. I know I’ve got one more sock and another half a towel to go, but I think a significant difference about life in Germany is, at least so far, that I feel like I have a lot more time to myself. Before I moved, I was doing three jobs in the space in which normal people do one, which really meant that I did a lot of working in the evenings and at weekends, which was really boring, and it made me feel underproductive (craft-wise, that is). But here, now that I only have the one job, all of a sudden I have tons of time on my hands! I am also especially pleased this week, as never before has a making week been so successful (cast your minds/eyes back to this one, where I think I mostly unravelled a lot of knitting). Sometimes I think the freedom of having a whole week to do nothing but make things is too much, and I panic. But not this time. All I would lament this time is the lack of cassoulet, and the company of my mama – my favourite making companion – but I have confidence that we will sneak in more duck-and-crafting sessions in not too long. Duck en croute, anyone?

a taste of east anglian life

One Saturday at the height of the summer, I went on a long-awaited trip to Stowmarket to visit the Museum of East Anglian Life. Outdoor museums are one of my absolute favourite things ever, so when I discovered a few years ago that there was one I hadn’t seen just down the road from me, I made up my mind to visit it while I still lived nearby. The trip involved trying out a whole new bit of train line that I had never been on before (always fun), and when we arrived in Stowmarket I realised that, museum aside, the town itself was very pretty and worth a visit. It was one of those really super-hot days, and the sun was shining like there was no tomorrow, so it was the best kind of day to visit anywhere. The station at Stowmarket is beautiful, with curly Dutch-style gabled roofs. Part of the station building was for sale at the time – it would have been tempting just to move in then and there.

Inside the museum, which is right in the centre of the town – just a ten-minute walk from the station – we soon discovered what an enormous range of different things are bundled into East Anglian life: everything from farming equipment to old reconstructed shops and workshops (including a huge, working printing press), to the largest collection of gypsy caravans that I’ve ever seen. Unfortunately I don’t have any pictures of those to share, but they were quite something. And then on top of all their usual exhibits, it just so happened that when we went to visit there was a bonus collection of quilts on show to boot! OK, I lie. In truth it was no accident – I knew this would happen all along, I just thought it would look like a more innocent suggestion for a daytrip if I neglected to mention the quilts. There were several great quilts there, and one really lovely one that I particularly liked made out of wool tweed fabrics, quilted in concentric circles:

I have always wanted to make a patchwork quilt out of wool fabric. I love these colours, and I’ve always thought it would make for a perfect autumn or winter throw (especially in times when I have dreamt of living in very cold places). But I also have to share a picture of another quilt, even though it wasn’t by any means my favourite, simply because the sentiment of this patch is one that I wholeheartedly agree with. Where on earth would we knitters and textile lovers be without the humble sheep? I commend the maker of this quilt on her well-placed respect.

And speaking of sheep, if like me you are a fan of these adorable but disappointingly nervous woolly creatures, I recommend so highly that you take a trip to the Museum of East Anglian Life, as it has in its grounds by far the friendliest sheep that I have ever encountered, anywhere. These sheep were so great: they actually came running towards us as we approached their enclosure, and they even allowed themselves to be stroked! How many times does that happen with sheep? In fact, their inquisitive nature meant that they were quite hard to photograph, as they were quite keen to get intimately acquainted with my camera through the fence. I ended up with many pictures just of bits of sheep face, taken far too close-up. This was more along the lines of what I was looking for:

I also recommend the rabbits, while you’re there. Always happy to be fed the greener grass from the other side of the fence. We got along super well.

We also saw inside lots of old buildings, had a lovely walk along a riverside, and finished off the day with ice creams in the sunshine. So all in all, it was a great day out, and one that I would recommend to anyone in striking distance of Stowmarket. Or even anyone who’s not – the sheep are really worth it.

my textile pilgrimage

Last month I went to New York on a textile pilgrimage, of sorts. Most people thought it was just a regular holiday, but given that I was the only one of my friends to have an interest in such things, I would say I did pretty well for sneaking in textile exhibits all over the place. I only hope I didn’t bore the socks off my (geologist) companions – though in fact even if their little socks did drop off out of sheer textile boredom, I’m sure I saw enough fossils and dinosaurs to make up for it. First off, we went to the Museum of Natural History, where, in between dinosaurs and dead animals, I found a selection of examples of weaving by Eastern Woodlands and Plains Indians, like the bag below. They used a huge variety of different patterns and colours in their weaving, as well as several different weaving techniques, the likes of which I hadn’t seen before, which produce really striking designs.

Next we visited the Met, which is like an entire city in itself, and I think probably the most amazing museum I have ever set foot in. I wanted to move in right then and there. They had a small collection of African textiles, including several beautiful blankets woven in strips of even length and sewn together, just like the ones I’ve been reading about recently in this book (a gift to myself one quiet afternoon…). There also happened to be a special exhibition of Andean tunics, which I made a beeline for. There were quite a few: some with geometric patterns, and some with creatures woven into the designs, like the fierce cats on the tunic below. Fierce cats seemed to be a recurring theme. They even had several mini tunics, which were only a few inches long, and which often resembled the full-size ones exactly. Apparently these mini tunics would dress little gold and silver figurines, which were then used as religious offerings.

A few days later we went to the American Folk Art Museum, which stood up exceedingly well next to the Museum of Modern Art (all except for their display of Issey Miyake’s A-POC Queen Textile, which was way cool). It contained all the character and soul that the MoMA lacked, and to top it all off, they even had a huge exhibition of patchwork quilts displayed over three floors (thanks to 2011 being the Year of the Quilt! What luck!). There were so many to see: quilts with patches in the shape of states, to make up maps of the US; examples of crazy quilting, with all variety of different stitches between patches; applique quilts; quilts for special occasions made from velvet and silk; and genuine patchwork, made from scraps. The close-up below is just from one whose style I particularly liked, but I could have featured any number of amazing quilts.

And finally, the part of my trip that most resembled a pilgrimage was our one-day trip to Washington, DC, with the primary aim of seeing the Textile Museum (we saw some more dinosaurs here too, at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, as well as the White House and the Capitol and so on, but they were really just a sideline). It was a bit of a mega outing, as in order to get the cheapest trains (which still weren’t cheap) we had to get up at 4am, only to return to bed at 2:30am. The Textile Museum was only fairly small – much smaller than I had imagined from looking at their website – but what they had on display was definitely worth seeing.

There was a special exhibition on the theme of ‘Green’, which included both pieces that were green in colour, such as a lovely embroidered C19 Chinese silk robe, and pieces that were green environmentally-speaking, for example made by re-using and re-purposing found material (like this embroidered strip by artist Maggy Rozycki Hiltner). Then upstairs, there was a selection from their permanent collection on the theme of recycled textiles, which included several different kinds of patchwork quilt from various cultures, an amazing Japanese man’s coat, and a navajo blanket, painstakingly made from re-woven threads.

All in all, quite a textile-packed trip for something that wasn’t explicitly meant to be. I would say it was a wild success.

accidental patchwork

Last weekend, I think due to the shock to the system of having four days off instead of the usual two, I accidentally embarked on a brand new patchwork quilt. This was just hours after telling myself sternly that I still had two patchwork quilts on the go that needed to take priority in the finishing list, and promising myself that by no means would I touch this until I had completed one of the others. Then I was left alone in the house, and when there’s no one about to keep me on the straight and narrow, there’s no telling what I might get up to.

So inevitably as soon as the front door was closed, I scampered off up the stairs to find the rotary cutter and a ruler and a mat, and set about cutting a hundred or so pink and blue fabric squares. I ought to explain that this is the result of some of the bounty that I returned from New York with. I made a visit to The City Quilter while I was there, and it was sort of beyond my wildest dreams. I only brought back a fraction of the things that I saw that looked interesting – I’m sure I only scratched the surface – but such is the fate of the girl who goes on holiday with friends who don’t share her fabric interests…

I ended up coming home with (amongst other things!) a pack of one hundred-ish little pre-cut patchwork squares, and I bought a couple of yards of lovely textured Japanese fabric in pink and blue to mix with them. It took me most of the afternoon to cut the squares above, and once I’d finished, I laid them all out over the kitchen table, and spent a happy half hour arranging the patterned ones in the gaps. Unfortunately the kitchen table wasn’t big enough, so you’ll see that I had to improvise a little extension on one side.

I’m sure that this is by far the speediest patchwork I’ve ever made, as by the end of the evening I had managed to sew the vast majority of the squares into strips, and only had a couple left to do the following day. Sadly I can’t claim to have carried on at the same pace all weekend, and I can’t yet show proof of the finished object, as the strips are still in a bundle in my living room, with numbers pinned to them so that I can’t possibly forget what order they’re supposed to go in, while I summon up the strength for my next mega straight line sewing session.

the best birthday present ever

I read in the newspaper yesterday about what has to be the absolute best birthday present ever: a free exhibition of 650 patchwork quilts in New York city. This was the resulting gift from a millionaire husband to his wife on her 80th birthday, when she asked for “something I’ve never seen before” and “a gift for New York”.

The photos from the event are spectacular, with row upon row of red and white quilts suspended in mid-air. The design of the exhibition is really incredible, and I hate to think how much effort went into setting the whole thing up. I just watched a time-lapse video of the setting-up process, with cranes and all, which was fun. Despite the fact that all 650 quilts are red and white, the variety between them is huge.

The only part I regret about this amazing story is the fact that it lasted for less than a week (surely once they’d gone to all that effort it would have been more worthwhile to keep it on for longer???). I’m actually going to New York in two weeks’ time, and this would have been a really fantastic thing to see. The upshot of it all, though, is that at least now I know exactly what to ask for on my 80th birthday.