Segovia - city of textures.

Portrait flat needle felting

This is a needle felted project I made for my sister-in-law of her cat after her multiple requests. Took me a long time, I kept having to put it down for days and come back with fresh eyes.

For not being a trained artist, I think it came out pretty well.

It always surprises me how you have to mix the colors. For example I started out with the eyes the exact shade of pale green as his, but that of course came out too flat. The trick of "Painting" portraits is to portray all of the lights and shadows. So I did the eyes with an layer of the pale green and then used the greenest blue I had for the eye's shadows, and a golden yellow for the eye's highlights.

My Ipad was a very useful tool in making this, as I could load the photo onto it and zoom in quite easily to see all off the shades, and colors.

The whiskers were just some loosely plied white 2 ply wool from Norway. I over twisted the yarn and then felted it down. Without the extra twist the yarn just kind of fell apart. Even with loose (top, roving) wool I find that it is best to give it some twist with your hands before felting it down when you are making thin lines.

I am going to leave this as it is for right now. I realize that it is a little creepy with just the head, but how to make the area under the chin is eluding me right now. Maybe I just need to put it down and come back with some fresh eyes. So far the cat's owners are very happy with the result, so that is a win.

Needle felting 3D time.

Lately I have ben having a need to be creative. Just choose to make something, and not really care how it turned out. (Which is a harder concept then some of you might think, at least for me.) I guess that I say lately, but I made these needle felted monsters August 25-28th, and it is about time that I share them.

I made these monsters, one a day for four days, to try out different shaping techniques and to help expand my creativity.

We have your run of the mill one eyed horned monster:

Mutant crab monster:

Mutant three eyed bunny head monster.

Two legged lizard/dino monster. At this point I stopped the series, but I learned a lot and it was very freeing. Plus I have a stack of monsters now. Who knows, maybe the local hand craft stores will want to sell them for me. Maybe I should make kits?

Does anyone else get these runs of creativity?

Xisqueta

 

I am going to make a blanket statement as say that spinning your own yarn is not as popular here in Spain than in the States. I think a strong reason for that were the years of upheaval under dictatorship. It is not that the history is lost, just harder to find. My new personal hobby is to find out what I can about the spinning history in Spain. 

Right now there seems to be a global "local" movement  The idea is that people want to know where their food, clothes, products come from. They want to support local trades people to keep up the local economy. I think that there is a need to "personalize" products, to know where they come from.

In the textile industry in the United States there is a strong trend of people wanting to know down to the sheep where there yarn and fiber come from. I whole heartedly agree with this trend and I am happy to say that there is a least one company in Spain* that also wants to personalize where the fiber comes from. Obrador Xisqueta  (site in English) This company is named after a breed a sheep raised in the Catalonia Pyrenees.

Picture from here

You can see that these sheep have characteristic face markings. Information about the breed: rare sheep breed link (in English), another link about the breed in Spanish. It is both a good meat sheep and a good fleece sheep.

The above graphic is the logo of the online store  Xisqueta. This website is in Catalonian, the language of the Catalonian region in Spain, but Google translate seems to do a good job, go over and have a look. There they have goods for sale, yarn, felted objects, fleece, a spindle and art made by local crafts people out of the fiber. This company linked to above is deeply committed to preserving this breed. This breed is on the edge of extinction. There are no profits for the website, all money seems to go back into preserving the breed and paying the farmers fair market price for the wool. All of the farmers are listed on the website. All over Spain Shepherds still very much depend on their sheep for income.

Taken directly from the website:

Activities

The activities that the association carries out are focussed in one main action: to buy wool from shepherds in the area (25.000 kilos in two campaigns). This fact initiates a series of activities that are summarised in:Training of artisans and craftsmen;

• • Training wool for all ages;
  • Workshops for schools, civic centers and multipurpose;
  • Buy wool to the shepherds of the area;
  • Creating a collection of products under the brand "Xisqueta";
  • Virtual Store: promotion and sale of craft products;
  • Revaluation of the shepherd's job;

A nice article of the fair trade mission of the company. The company seems to be working, they are even staring to sell cotton lined machine knit sweaters out of the wool here (link in Spanish).

Photo found here

Well I "knew" about this company over a year and a half ago when I went to All You Knit is Love, a yarn store in Barcelona who carries some of Xisqueta's products. But at the time I did not realize how cool this organization is. I also did not realize that in their learn to Spin kit did not only have the Xisqueta wool, but a traditional Catalonian style spindle. They are out of roving right now, there will probably be more in Spring during shearing season, but I ordered a spindle.

Stats: The whorl is removable and can go on either side. There are clockwise (left to right) swirls on either side of the spindle. 

Weight: 30 grams

Measurements: Whorl: 4.25cm diameter, 0.75cm thick. Shaft: 22.5cm long, at it's widest point it is 1cm, shrinking down to 0.5cm wide at the tops.

The wood is Boxwood, a very hard and commonly used for utensils.

Full disclosure, I did not like how it was packed (bubble wrap envelope, nothing else) and it arrived unfinished. I had to sand and apply wax, luckily I had those things on hand. There was one really rough patch under the whorl area. The picture are after sanding and waxing. Despite this I think that it is a marvelous spindle and well worth the extra effort needed to finish it. I do not have a video of me spinning on it yet, although I do plan to make one, but here is one in Catalan with Spanish subtitles from the website.

*I hope to find all cooperatives out there in Spain like this one. For all I know there might be several hidden in little pockets around Spain. It is not as easy to find things online here as it is in the States so it might take some time, but it will be a fun and rewarding search.

Kinnearing Madrid

To  Kinnear is to take a photo on the sly, without others knowing. It can be rather fun activity. Mostly it is fun because when the camera is so far away from you face it is hard to judge what is a straight shot and if you are in fact taking a picture of the object that you desire.

I have discovered that in it's cover and with my headphones attached my Iphone makes a very good Kinnearing device.

 I have left these pictures unedited, and un-straightened to give you idea of the difficulties of Kinnearing. I took pictures as I walked mostly, and I walk kind of fast which leads to the camera not having time to focus, but some of them came out. I took more pictures then are shown here, I deleted the blurry ones.

This is my walk to the park. Madrid seems empty for two reasons: One humans move a lot making the pictures blurry, and two I have a healthy respect for other privacy.

A park, a Cathedral and a Moorish wall walked into a bar.

Greetings from rainy Madrid. It is, as the British would say, bucketing down out there. I am not sure how this effects my plans to go to Segovia tomorrow to go to a museum and do more research on the history of spinning in Spain....

However these pictures were taken from last weekend, when it was hot and sunny. Fall is definitely upon us. This will be another picture heavy post.

The park next to the Basilica from yesterday's post.

A charming view of the Southern part of the city over tiled rooftops.

I do not take many pictures of the working class neighborhoods, and I will try to take more.

I love the name "Santa Maria de la cabeza" (Saint Mary of the head).

This is the Catedral de Almudena, and that old wall below it is was part of the wall around the city when the Moors were in charge.

In front of that wall there is a small Moorish park,

with an awesome six pointed star fountain.

It only takes about 10 minutes walking to reach the other side of the wall. It is astounding to think how big Madrid now versus then. This Northern part of the wall is partly excavated, below ground and covered with glass. For those of those of you that know Madrid a little this part is very close to the Opera.

Looking up from the wall (you can see the glass barriers surrounding it).

I love the name of this street "Street of the Embroiderers", and sure enough there are two women working on a quilt.

When you are downtown you have to look everywhere, even up.

This is the Plaza de Cibeles. The Statue/fountain of a queen being pulled in a chariot by two lions is one of the most represented symbols of Madrid. Since it is in a busy roundabout it is hard to get good pictures.