Can wet-felting look cool?

The other day, my friend Dave invited us to a local amusement park and fair. At the 4-H show pavilion we saw oxes, sheep, goats, piglets and angora rabbits. A fiber farm from Chilliwack (Shades of Narnia) was selling roving, and I couldn't stop myself from buying this bag of fleece:



Each puff of wool is about the size of a large egg. While roving is commonly used for spinning yarn, this stuff is meant for needle-felting or wet felting. The bag contains 24 different colours. It gives a wide palette to work with, and it's as pleasing as a new box of paints.

I've never wet-felted before, and I haven't needle-felted for a few years. Felting seemed like an expensive hobby: the investment needed to buy a good variety of colours from Birkland Bros was too great for my student budget. So this variety-pack suits my needs perfectly, and since I bought it directly from the farm, it was inexpensive as well.

So now that I have all the materials and equipment to start felting again, my question is, what to felt? I'd like to try wet-felting, but I'm not crazy about the look of most wet-felted items. The usual aesthetic seems to be crazy colours + chunky details, and I'm just not into it. Nearly every book on felting follows this approach, which makes me wonder: is this look intrinsic to the medium? Or can wet-felting be used to create something more restrained?



Seeking an answer to this question, I grabbed a bunch of felting titles from my nearest branch library. Felt Me A Smile by Tokyo Sugiwaka has some cute needle-felted animals in it, and Not Your Mama's Felting had instructions for felting a 2-dimensional image onto a hoodie. But there were no wet-felted projects that that I liked. Everything was too embellished, too country-kitchen, or two 80s art-lady. (For the record, I do like Shibori felting for its sci-fi-ish effect, but I have yet to find a good application for it).

Clearly, it's time for some experimentation. I have visions of a cushion cover in my head, with stripes in a mix of sober and bright colours. Or maybe a table runner of some kind? Only time (and hot water and gentle agitation) will tell if I can wet-felt something that follows my own personal taste.

Modern Lace

There is a lot of down-time on set, when you're hanging around waiting for the next flurry of activity. I am spending this time knitting a triangular scarf in laceweight baby alpaca.



The pattern is Triangel by Caroline Lang. Lang is from Stockholm, Sweden. Is that why this scarf is so simple but chic? If you follow the link to the pattern, you'll see Lang's finished version. I love how the cascading V-shapes mimic the lines of a necklace or a V-neck top.

The yarn is Misti Alpaca Handpaint Lace (originally destined to be a Clapotis -- one of the other scarf patterns that really suits varigated yarns). The colourway is "vegan."

I think this scarf will add an insouciant, East-Van-ish touch to my fall wardrobe. Sometimes, scarfs can make me feel a little frumpy. This year I say NO MORE. I will not leave the house without wearing a scarf that makes me feel more awesome. This scarf should help. Alapca is pretty darn warm, so even though it's a thin knit, it's should see me through the whole winter in glowing emerald green.

A shot from set

From some on-location shooting of Outside Hope, the film that Curt wrote and I am doing wardrobe for.


The actors are Quincy and Kerry, two lovely people. If I had some assurance that all film people were as nice as the OH bunch, I would quit my four dayjobs in a heartbeat (no joke, I really have four dayjobs).

Confidential to my mom: hey mom! Do you remember buying me the belt that Kerry is wearing? It's from Creative Chaos, I think. It has jumping trout burned into the leather. Now it's a STAR.

Gentlemen!

So apparently Jesse Thorn, the host of much-loved podcast/public radio show The Sound Young America, also has a style blog. Or rather, a web series "about dressing like a grown up", for men. The Sound of Young America has introduced me to so many great books, comedians, TV shows and movies over the years. In 2009, it was not a stretch to say that if Jesse Thorn talked about it, I was going to seek it out.

So I'm pretty stoked that Jesse has turned to men's style. His taste is generally great and I liked his point of view: as a big geek, so he understands the fraught relationship many people have with fashion. In the first post, he explains why smart people should care about style

...clothing has much more content than just aesthetics. Clothing is a way we represent ourselves to others. This self-representation couldn’t be more significant. When you dress, you are making a statement; not a fashion statement, but a statement of identity. If you put on a jacket and tie, for example, you are signifying to others that you take the occasion seriously, whatever that occasion may be. If someone looks at you and interprets how you dress, they are not being superficial. They are reading the message that you wrote. If that message says, “I am to be respected,” then they will respect you. The language of clothing is as complex as the spoken word, but ignorance of it is no excuse. Can one earn respect in other ways? Certainly, and one should. But that’s no reason to open a conversation with someone by saying, without words, “this is not important to me.”

I would also add the following reason: well-dressed geeky men are, like, the most attractive thing in the world. Boys that are smart, culturally literate, and well-put-together? Rawr! In fact, the first thing I ever noticed about Curtis was his vintage-store slacks, not his excellent taste in music or evident intelligence.

Outside Hope

So I haven't been blogging much lately because 1) I've been working on a few secret projects and 2) I've been really busy.



Busy sourcing wardrobe items for a film, that is!



I had to buy all these stupid rings just to get one that looked like a wedding band.

I am working as the wardrobe supervisor for an independent film called Outside Hope. Curt wrote (and re-wrote, and re-wrote) the script. We start filming tomorrow. The leads are real actors, from LA, and we are filming with real cameras. I have spent the last week running around vintage stores, malls, and thrift stores, making lists, buying things, and taking them back again (props to Solid Threads, a vintage shop at 24th and Main, who opened early just so we could shop there -- and then gave us a discount for buying three items. They are also the best and least expensive place in town to buy men's Western shirts).

For the next two weeks, I'll be on set as often as I can. So I probably won't be posting much. I'll have lots to show you in September, though, as my to-do list attests:



I'm really enjoying my film work -- it's very different than my usual life, which is often quiet and solitary. But I also miss blogging and sewing! So I'll be back, I promise, just as soon as I can.

The Clapotis Effect

Simplicity is beautiful. Does that mean tedium is beautiful too?

My friend Leanne tweeted this this Tumblr page other day: http://thisishandmade.tumblr.com/

It's all 5-minute videos of people sewing, embroidering, knitting, etc. Unedited, boring shots. Just a person sitting there, making something. The gist? "If you can't sit through 5 minutes of mind-numbingly boring ass handwork, then you don't get to whine about how much it costs. It's just as tedious for us as it is for the viewer."

This makes me smile, because I recently stumbled on a little secret of design: often, the designs that I think look the best are among the most boring to knit. Seed-stitch-and-stockinette always look good, but they are tedious to make. Things that are fun knits, on the other hand, run a much higher risk of looking terrible when you're done. Using crazy colours, bulky yarn, or a million design elements or embellishments can make for a fun construction process, but your end result may look, well, regretsy-esque. Call it the Clapotis Effect*.

These videos are not about the Clapotis Effect. But they do nod to the sacrifices one makes while handcrafting. The process is not always 100% fun. There will be parts that are hard, and there will be parts that are tedious, especially if you enjoy a little restraint in your aesthetic. But it's worth it -- somehow, a tedious part of the creative process is never truly tedious to me.

* Because the Clapotis was a very simple, appealing and popular pattern but kind of a boring knit (or so I've heard).

Project Runway Season 8: Paperbag Skirt

I've been working hard on a few items that I can't post on this blog -- which makes makes me feel a little disjointed, because for the last year this blog has become part of my creative process. It feels strange to be busy creating and not be able to share it on the internet.

So, in the meantime, I thought I'd start doing a series of posts about the things I like on the new season of Project Runway. Warning to Canadians: the new season doesn't start airing here until late August. I've been watching it on a streaming site. I'll try not to spoil anything, but if you really really don't want to know, you shouldn't read these posts. In fact, you should get off the internet while you're ahead.

Things I liked from episode 2:

1. Mondo's tweedy paperbag skirt



Ever since I read Very Purple Person's tutorial for making a paperbag waist skirt, I've been casting around, trying to find an application of this technique that I thought would work for me. I'm not crazy about the 80s throwback look, and I'm also not eager to add a lot of fabric bulk to my waistline. Most paperbag skirts are pencil skirts, which also poses a problem (they never, ever work on me).

But I love this skirt -- it's unusual and highly versatile, and I think it would be a great addition to a winter wardrobe. And it's an A-line! I love A-line skirts, but they can get boring. The paperbag hem adds some interest to the silhouette. (I've also learned a valuable lesson: any time I don't like a style, I should try to picture it in tweed. A good tweedy fabric can go a long way for me.)

silk dress thoughts

I think I found a great idea for this sari fabric that I bought in the Vernon Value Village:



I'd love to use the simple silhouette of this dress from Jigsaw, a UK-based clothing design/retail/manufacture company.



I think I could approximate this using the Dirndl pattern in Built By Wendy Dresses. Now the question is -- how to use the ombre? Should it be side-to-side? Top to bottom? Mostly blue? Mostly violet? Something like this, maybe?