I’ve returned to the screen printing. This stencil turned out to be the last one on the old, damaged screen. One day I decided to go buy a new one. I’ve been looking second hand for months and finally decided I’d like to be able to get a clean image to the extent my skills allow!
Oh my! The difference was immediate.
And they went directly to high vis for the large number of actions we’ve been running in the last couple of months.
Filed under Craftivism, Sewing
I have been gradually applying some of my rough screen printing to our extensive collection of upcycled high vis vests.
We have quite a number in all kinds of high vis glory…
And it isn’t complicated sewing.
As you can see, they are not an entirely matched set!
However, they do the job and here is a stack of plastic fabric that is not going to landfill… even if still not exactly high fashion!
Filed under Craftivism, Sewing
You may have detected that I am not a fan of fossil fuels. Because burning them is driving the intensity of climate crisis and I am in favour of the continuation of life on earth. Anyway–we needed a banner to help us communicate our opposition to fracking in the Pilliga Forest and farmland around Narrabri, in NSW, where First Nations people and other locals have been opposing a gasfield for 10 years already. If you want to know more–check this out.
A LOT of us have written to SANTOS about this issue, me included. The letter that came back was pretty unedifying.
Some people have been putting up stickers. And a bunch of us dropped by to make our point more dramatically. With our banners!
Photograph by Peter Barnes.
Filed under Craftivism
Over lockdown, I have powered along creating stencils from old wallpaper and using water based, low toxic inks on sheeting from the op shop and other scrap fabrics for Extinction Rebellion.
My skills are not first rate but they are a good match for the equipment I had available (one old battered screen that dates back to the 1980s when I learned the basics!) I’ve created bags, left some as patches, and created labels for our sizeable collection of pre-loved (or maybe just pre-worn) high vis vests… bag linings also from fabrics that have been rescued from landfill.
First the green series…
Then the pink series…
And frankly, so many more! But I’m sure you get the picture…
I have had some fun making labels for the high vis and I think I still have a series to go… and now, I would really like a screen with my favourite graphics on it, and a break from text, though my hand cut stencils have certainly done the job.
Filed under Craftivism
I’ve been working on my fabric stash for quite a while, and found I was now struggling to decide what could become bags–and my attention turned to the plant dyed woollen blanket stash. Having made quite a few larger items–the question of what to do with the small scraps arose (inevitably). And so, a very large number of needle books came into existence.
And then some more, and some more. The stash of random small quantities of string went into the mix, and eventually home made string also got used!
I guess I will now have to work on creating some mending kits…
Filed under Craftivism, Leaf prints, Natural dyeing, Sewing
I have a friend who has made several beautiful reverse applique t shirts with lovely images of plants or insects. Then she made a couple with the Extinction Rebellion logo (a circle representing the earth with an hourglass shape in the centre that symbolises time running out and the urgency of action). I loved them! When she said she would offer it as a crafternoon project I decided to try and give it a go–I guess that was an indication she thought it wasn’t too difficult, where previously I assumed I would not be able to do this.
The hard part for me was getting the image right. In the end, it was cereal box stencil to the rescue.
T shirt from the op shop with a little image on it that I thought could vanish in the process.
I tacked another piece of old t shirt under it and then had a go!
And–result! I made two! And gave them away at a working group meeting to people who will use and appreciate them.
Filed under Craftivism, Sewing
This tree has had several beloved tree banners in the last few years. This one is well and truly eucalypt dyed at this stage, and the fact that it is made of biodegradable fabrics is showing too.
I had been planning a new banner for a bit, and found companions for the ceremony one fine evening. So we added a new one.
So now it has two banners!
And the tree is as glorious as ever. Long may it stand.
Filed under Craftivism, Eucalypts, Natural dyeing, Neighbourhood pleasures, Sewing
Needless to say, every big day takes preparation by many people. I can’t completely imagine the preparation that has gone into the thousands of people who have joined the Extinction Rebellion and converged on London, blockading streets and bridges in an effort to compel their government to act on climate change and ecological breakdown. In our relatively little place, though, I can say some of what’s been happening behind the scenes.
As high vis vests continue to trickle in, (for marshals to use in keeping people safe on the streets or when doing banner drops) and patches emerge from the screen printing (and stitching) rebel, I’ve been stitching them on to keep our collection growing.
Then there was doing a quiet recce at parliament house, where I can highly recommend the tour. It is informative and there are some beautiful things to be seen as well as some evidence of the corruption that featured in the colonial period to be heard of! Above, some of the suffragists responsible for our state granting women the right to vote (after Aotearoa/New Zealand led the way) as well as the right to stand for parliament (included in the Bill as an amendment, expected to sink the Bill and defeat the suffrage–there has to be comeuppance sometimes!) The women’s suffrage centenary tapestries in the lower house of parliament were woven by local weavers as a community arts project and there are many members of my Guild listed as weavers.
Here, the red line in the carpet over which a white gentleman (Indigenous people not even recognised as citizens in this period, let alone as able to stand for parliament or vote) must not step with a sword. Yes, a throwback to English history. Then there was the preparation of a rebel outfit for a certain poster child, at the request of her mother.
And then came the big day. Inspired by Scottish rebels, 13 of us who had trained and prepared for the role went on a tour of parliament and then declined to leave the lower chamber, where we formed our own citizens’ assembly and each delivered a speech about our fears for future generations if our governments do not begin to tell the truth and act on it by taking emergency level action on climate change and the ecological crisis. Here our police liaisons explain the situation to our charming and very informative guide. He was astounded that we would pass up the opportunity to see the upper house!
Here one of us is on the phone to the Premier’s office.
A lighthearted moment with a possum who survived two boys’ childhoods and told me “if we don’t get action on climate change, and soon, we’re all STUFFED” at which I had to point out I thought the possum was (just barely) stuffed already.
I suggested rebels bring a pack of cards or their knitting just in case of a long wait. Then I left my knitting at home–oops–but others were better prepared!
And then eventually we were, as the TV news put it, “forcibly removed” with our suffrage foremothers looking down on us. I think they would have understood. And Joyce Steele (in blue on the wall in the image below) the first female MP in the state, elected in the 1950s–she was looking down on us too. I have a soft spot for her, having encountered her reading Hansard. She spoke to the Bill that eventually decriminalised abortion in our state in 1975, the first time in the history of the state that a woman had been able to speak to this matter in parliament in the period since English criminal law was imposed over Indigenous law through colonisation. Though clearly not a big fan of abortion, Joyce Steele was equally clearly unable to remain silent. She had heard the terrible stories of the women in her electorate who had come to see her on this issue over her life as an MP, as well as being prepared to speak to the lack of sexuality education and access to contraception in her time.
With Joyce looking down, we were removed from the chamber and taken out to the stairs where our fellow rebels and some media and my beloveds were waiting. And may others join us as a result. ABC TV coverage from 8.05 here. Local news here. More at xrsa.com.au.
Filed under Activism, Craftivism
Hello dear Readers, I have designed a knitting pattern. You can, should you wish, download it from Ravelry here. You see it here in handspun coloured merino with eucalyptus-dyed wool contrast. But allow me to explain.
It is a big time in the life of the world, with even conservative estimates by scientists telling us that we have less than 12 years to take emergency level action that could keep global warming to below 1.5C. Even 1.5C warming will have, and is already having, massive impacts on the earth and all who depend on the earth for life. Including you and me. It isn’t as though I’ve been sitting around. I’m doing the little things that depend on my being one straw in a very, very big haystack for impact (online petitions, postcards, letter writing, voting).
Last week I joined the thousands of Australian school children who went out on strike demanding climate action. Their speeches showed more understanding of climate change than anything coming out of our federal government, which is still supporting coal mining and oil drilling on a massive scale. The school students had more clarity than our state government, which has only partially, temporarily, banned fracking because it destroys farmland (and thus costs votes though these things certainly do matter in their own right)–not because of the impact of burning fossil fuels on global warming. I sing with a posse of climate singers who were out on the weekend telling the good people of our city about the issue and giving people the chance to write to the leader of the opposition about this issue.
And yet, on this day when world leaders are meeting in Katowice, Poland, to talk about what to do about this–there is just no coverage in my country of this critically important meeting. My government is not on track to meet the inadequate targets set in Paris. And the high pitched screaming sound between my ears when I lie awake in the middle of the night worrying about climate change is not quietening down.
My heart soared when I saw that a new group in the UK called Extinction Rebellion have served their demands on their government, and that they are framing the climate and ecological emergency like the existential threat that it is. On their first Rebellion Day they blocked all the bridges across the Thames River and brought central London to a standstill. This is a strategy of escalating nonviolent civil disobedience designed to compel the governments that are failing their people and the future of our world to take emergency level action.
It may not succeed. But it has to be attempted, because scientists have been patiently explaining and then explaining in tones of increasing panic, and then explaining with tears as they set out the loss we already face: and governments are not listening nor acting. Fossil fuel companies are continuing to fund political parties here and elsewhere. The current federal government is not even close to having a rational policy on climate. And nowhere are there signs of action being taken that comes close to responding to the grave threat every life form on earth now faces.
So, dear friends, I have decided to commit to being an organiser for Extinction Rebellion. And I also decided to design a beanie, watching all those English folk out being arrested and protesting in the chill weather of their winter as we head into the searing heat of our summer. I knit it in the week a tornado hit a town in our state for the first time in my memory. If you have questions about Extinction Rebellion, I hope you will roam their www site, find them on social media, and go here scroll down and watch their briefing on climate change and what we can do about it. This is an invitation to act with courage in times that demand no less. Let’s step up, for the love of life.
Filed under Activism, Craftivism, Knitting, Natural dyeing
The stash of fabrics that will never become clothing has dwindled very much in the Boomerang Bags period, my friends–this time, some metres of an open weave black fabric became many handles and a few bags. The little ?indigo? patch featured here appeared on the Guild trading table the other night with a little label about how it had been resist dyed with pegs. Cute as a button!
This fabric was a gift from a person I used to work with many, many years ago. It had years of use covering a small table and hanging on the wall, but had been tucked away for some years. Now it will be out in the world again in all its glory.
I had evidently patched together leftovers of my last Boomerang Bags episode, (and not only for linings–lots of these bags have jeans pockets from jeans that are no more, patched together with other scraps into linings). So there are some bags with a black front and a patchwork back, or vice versa.
And then–the motherlode of wide wale corduroy. This had a $2 tag on it from the Salvos. I think I had a long period of wistfully looking back to a specific pair of corduroy pants I had near the end of High School and beyond–I remember them as chocolate brown and with a paperbag waist. I felt like a sensation in them for some years. Eventually someone told me how bold she thought I was I was to wear them–or perhaps the green pair that replaced them in the early 1980s, with, ahem, secondhand suede winklepickers–on a first date with a mutual friend who was stylish and, well, judgmental. At first I was surprised and delighted, if puzzled, to be judged bold. Then I realised I was really being told that I had worn a very unflattering outfit to a first date, and with a style queen. Sigh. As it happens the outfit did not kill the date and we went on to have a relationship in which I received quite some instruction on how to dress!
Anyway–I am entirely unsure how I come to have so much wide wale corduroy in my possession, unless it was a wistful longing for my younger self feeling like a million dollars and able even to consider a corduroy paperbag waist as a style statement. But now it is all gone–all the maroon and two different shades of black of it. I do wish I hadn’t given away those suede winklepickers though!
Filed under Craftivism, Sewing
Local & Bespoke 