Author: Verónica

Woven Hair Textile

| Verónica

More photographs from the husband taken at the Bangkok Art and Culture Center in Thailand. This textile is called Trailak (The Three Characteristics of Existence), 2012. It is woven entirely of hair.

Trailak by Thanawat Muncid

The placard reads:

From his faith towards Dhamma regarding Trailak (The Three Characteristics of existence) that teaches people to consider on truth of impermanence, incompleteness and non-self. This teaching inspired the artist to weave hair that is the symbol of body or impermanence to be created as a mixed media in the form of a pagoda referred to something we should remind and pay respect at all times. The objective of this artwork is to express idea, emotion and feeling obtained from considering corpse that is the mark of death in order to refine our mind from lust and omit wickedness with the aim to do good things and reach pure heart according to Buddha’s teaching.

Trailak by Thanawat Muncid - Close-up

I am assuming that the weaver used human hair to symbolize impermanence. The pagoda is incredible, with so much detail to give it its shape and ornamentation. It is rather interesting to me how buildings such as churches, temples and other holy places can last for centuries far outliving the humans who built them.

Spinning Silk in Thailand

| Verónica

My husband is traveling in Thailand and sent me these photographs. I think he knew I would like them. This first photograph shows a Thai man spinning silk. Look closely and you will see the delicate silk thread being pulled from several silkworm cocoons.

Spinning Silk from Cocoons

They were taken at the Jim Thompson House in Bangkok. Jim Thompson, as I soon learned, was an American architect who moved to Bangkok after World War II and subsequently established the Thai Silk Company. Look at all those silkworm cocoons!

Silk Cocoons

I love this photograph of a beautiful Thai girl winding the silk thread.

Winding Yarn

I have high hopes of receiving a hank or two of Thai silk yarn when he returns. (Hint, hint).

Frogging

| Verónica

After returning from a trip to Toronto a few years back, my husband presented me with this humongous hank of luscious kid mohair. It’s 450 meters of beautifully soft lime green yarn from Fleece Artist. I wound it into this gigantic ball of fluff.

Fleece Artist Kid Mohair

I started knitting a drop stitch shrug from a pattern book called Parisienne by Colinette. It’s the one called Montmartre.

montmartre

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I was almost half way done when I put it down … a couple of years ago. Here’s part of the sleeve.

Unfinished Mohair Sleeve

I could not figure out where I left off and the pattern is rather convoluted due to the increases. Plus, from where I stopped, I needed to start decreasing in pattern and completely forgot my sequencing, despite my margin notes.

Frogging in Progress

These two smaller yarn balls are the unravelled evidence of my procrastination.

How I Learned to Knit

| Verónica

When I started knitting, I picked up a pattern book of sampler afghan blocks. I knit 20 different patterns in 12 x 12 inch squares. It was a great way to learn to knit a variety of stitches and I ended up with this soft creamy throw to curl up with on rainy days.

Sampler Afghan

Sampler Afghan Blocks

Pattern Book: Sampler Afghans, Leaflet 932 by Leisure Arts.

How did you learn? Any tried and true methods?

Illuminating Blogger Award

| Verónica

What a great way to start off a new year. Dre at Grackle & Sun shared the Illuminating Blogger Award with Agujas. Dre illuminates me with her step-by-step yarn dyeing experiments. She uses only natural plant dyes and is even growing her own dye garden! She and her husband recently celebrated their 16th wedding anniversary. Thank you Dre and wishing you many more years full of joy!

Illuminating Blogger Award

In return for the award, I must share one random thing about myself: I am trying to learn Mandarin Chinese. I’ve been taking classes at the Chinese Community Center and hope to travel to China so that I can practice.

I also get to pass on the award to five other blogs. So, without further ado, here they are:

    1. Travel Photography by Dmitrii Lezine – Fantastic photography and time-lapse videos of interesting places around the world
    2. Bottleneck Consensus – Textile design and other artistic endeavors
    3. Itchier Feet – Journey through Ethiopia through amazing photos
    4. Alicja Kolakowska – Designs beautiful and interesting jewelry, and also crochets
    5. First Bar – Graphic designs inspired by nature