Mulling

The great gift of these few months where I’m not on the road has turned out to be the ability to mull.  I’m sure like exercising, I don’t do nearly enough to make me a totally healthy person both physically and creatively.  And actually mulling while walking is the ultimate meditation when you are just thinking creative thoughts and not actually worrying about something. Which is what I do when I am on the road, all my lone thoughts are focused on the job/class/plane flight/packing/shipping etc.

But now I have this really special luxury of having time in my day to mull.  It sounds like a cooking term, like “put all the ingredients in a pot and mull around and season to taste”.

I spent the day yesterday in NYC, with my dearest friend and old college professor Carol Westfall.  We combed the Metropolitan Museum of Art for new exhibits, Japanese Brushwork, 18th century pastel portraiture, 19th century photos from British Portraiture Artist Julia Margaret Cameron, John Forbes Watson’s Indian Textile Collection, paintings and provocations from Balthus, an early 20th century French painter, and some feathered hangings from Ancient Peru (circa 600-1000).  And of course, we saw the exhibit Interwoven Globe: The Worldwide Textile Trade, 1500-1800.  This is an important exhibit and it was interesting to see textiles grouped by region and theme and date.  Much of the exhibit was from the MET’s own vast textile collection but it was good to see works from other museums.  Mostly the textiles were created for trade, sort of production textiles if you will, and much of the exhibit featured embroidered cloth or printed textiles destined for foreign markets.  I didn’t take the time to read through all the exhibit notes, and completely understand the trade routes and the political environment that created or stood in the way of much of the exporting of cloth through the ages.  The show is huge and there is a lot to see.

But here is the thing.  I wasn’t really awestruck, or hugely inspired.  I’ve been mulling over my response to this show, and I’m sort of jaded in that I see textiles like these all the time.  I live 30 miles from the MET, the museum at FIT and I go to a lot of museums when I’m on the road.  Most of the textiles with a few exceptions were created to be traded or sold (sometimes traded for slaves, now there is a story) and though told a story, they weren’t exceptional pieces of cloth to me.  There were beautiful motifs, and images embroidered or printed on the textiles, mostly faded from their original glory, but I’m always impressed with how a cochineal red can hold up from the 1700’s.  You can actually read all the exhibit notes online and work through the slides of the complete works in the installation here.

I always come home from a day of museum exploration exhausted both physically and mentally, but I think about or mull over what I’ve seen and I can’t help but think that any exposure to art/textiles/nature/politics/food/shopping/fashion bloggers etc. alters the way I view the world and ultimately my work.  Last night, I sat down and swatched  something I’ve been wanting to knit, something I’ve been mulling over in my head for a couple weeks, while I finished up the sweater from my mother-in-law’s handspun from 1976.  I like separates that work with things I already have in my wardrobe and I have two large cones of silk/wool from WEBS from a couple years ago.  I combined the two different shades and used a seed stitch for texture and I want a simple top down round neck pullover to wear over a shirt and layer.  I washed it up this  morning and I nailed it.  Mulling it for a couple of weeks narrowed down what I wanted and now I’m on my way with the next project.  At least in knitting.

Meanwhile, I am sewing the skirt I cut out from the brown wool crepe, which was from the trim fabric from the coat I just finished. (see previous blog post)  I’ve made this skirt before but this time did not underline it to reduce bulk at all the converging seamlines near the waist.  I may regret that decision, wool crepe should always be underlined.  We will see.

I kept mulling over the pile of leftover scraps from the coat I just finished and a different pile of pattern pieces from a motorcycle vest I copied last summer when I was teaching in Asheville.  I bought this vest on a sale rack, and have always loved it and had it in my head that I’d one day copy it.  I’m half toying with , or mulling if you will, making it up in the leather I bought during my fabric buying trip to NYC last April.  But I want to make it first in something else, and this leftover handwoven fabric kept calling to me.

I found a length of burgundy silk noil in the stash, perfect for trimming and facings.  I spent the weekend cutting out those pieces.  And I cut out two more tote bags from some of the remaining larger hunks of leftover handwoven.  All this sewing gives my brain a rest for more mulling.  Mindlessly following pattern directions and sewing a skirt gives me time to think about “what if”.

And I keep wandering over to the board I have where I wake up each morning and move the felted strips around the board to see where they take me.  This is a fun exercise and I’m getting a series of cool photos, which may in themselves turn into something.  I switched to smaller pin heads to have less in the way in the photos.  The little balls are easy to photoshop out.

Later in the week, Carol and I are heading down to Rutgers University for a one day symposium on Book Arts, which should get me thinking about more stuff, more mulling, and hopefully more inspiration.

Stay tuned and happy mulling…