Sunday, November 22, 2015

New project in the making

Hubby and I spent about nine weeks living in a small travel trailer this past summer into fall. I loved it, we experienced new to us places, spent a lovely time with family and I started an tiny arts project fitting for living in a tiny space. Of course this project also carries an environmental theme as my previous Nest project does. It also has the mandate of using recycled items as in yarn scraps and beads bought at thrift stores and garage sales rather than new.

Anyhow, lets go back to the beginning. I knew when we left on our travels that as I need to keep my hands busy to still an over active mind that it would be a good idea to bring along crochet hooks and some yarn I purchased for making hats. Well into the third or fourth day bored with hat making I began playing with small crochet and ended up with a sweet tiny vessel. I was intrigued to stitch up another, so by the time we reached Vancouver Island I had two tiny crocheted vessels. Then to add interest of nature I thought to fill the inside of these vessels with found items that consider tiny environments. Well my wonderful sisters were onboard with my ideas and donated small butterfly brooches and bug fabrics to add to the vessels. Then of course to fit the mandate of found materials we needed to peruse thrift stores for crochet threads, and yarns as well as some small found vessels as all are not going to be crocheted, yet all will have handiwork in or on them.

The idea incorporates traditional handiwork with nature. The past ideology of grooming young women into marriageable prospects whom learned needle work and placed it into a chest for future use, though before my time I might add. The thought that these chests hold hope for the prospects of the future, for they were called Hope Chests.

Hope for the future of Nature is my theme. Using needlework and found objects to recreate nature  placed within tiny vessels. In a sense Nature is being segregating from self, confined within a tiny vessel.
 So far I have been working on crocheting many varied vessels.
 Some will be decorated outside 
 and some will extend the limits of the vessel as growth erupting from within.
Combinations of random freeform crochet hopefully elicit a feeling of growth on some vessels.
This is but a beginning so these vessels may look far different when completed.