how I feel (March 2, 2010)

I have finished my own piece - 

those are mixed feelings about moving to US and time spent in academia. As I wrote before, the wool I used came from worn out woolen socks. Moving to US for me was like taking apart my previous life and trying to re-knit it in something new. Yes, I became known as a creator of crocheted hyperbolic plane model, therefore one of them made it on this piece also. I am not hiding all the knots in the piece because I have had many knots I had to deal with on my way. 

The rest of it... well, it was the purpose of this whole project that I would make a piece and could say - this is how I feel... 

so here it is (more pictures in the album):

the story of the yarn for my piece (January 28, 2010)

when I came to US as proper Latvian I had in my luggage woolen socks for me and my little daughters. Some socks were knitted by myself, some by other relatives. Latvians have a proverb that "one cannot his/hers life to take apart like an old sock and re-knit it again". Children grew out of their little socks, my ones became worn out , and I took them apart to save the yarn. My life in US had to be re-knit, so I decided that it is very appropriate to use for my part in this project the yarn from our old socks. 

beginning on January 26, 2010

story in textures

Jan 26, '10 8:27 PM for everyone

I am starting a new project "Story in Textures"

I'll try to explain what I have in mind -

let us say right now I definitely have feelings about how it is to stop teaching - but I do not want to put them in words, and if someone would ask me - "how do you feel about retiring now?" - I wish to make this little piece instead of the answer, so I could give the person to see it, to touch it, and I could just say - this is how I feel. 

I believe that everybody has/had such experience when she did not want to put her feelings in words.  It could be some awakening love - have seen young girls carefully choosing the softest and nicest yarn to make a scarf for their boyfriends because they do not want to say "I love you" yet...
It could be anything - joy, anger, sorrow, disappointment... It is like somebody would ask to finish a sentence "this is how I feel about...." but instead of words use fiber.

I am happy for anybody who would like to share "fiber story" to make a piece and sent to me. I am not asking for a big piece - something between 20x20 up to 50x50 cm. If the story comes with it - very nice, but if the story is "in fiber" and does not want to be put in words it is also ok. I would also understand if there is just a piece called "this is how I feel about..." or even "this is how I feel now".
just to have some fiber texture - crochet/knitted, felted, weaved - does not matter. 

Fiber stories will be continued

 It was the very first evening of the conference Textures on June 15 - even not all participants had arrived yet in Riga or were fighting jet lag (particularly people who came from US, Japan or Australia). My keynote was the only event before the opening reception, so I was not sure how big will be my audience. But Soros auditorium in Riga Economics School was almost full. Since this lecture was opened to general public, I was happy to see not only the conference participants. 

The time for the display of our project was not long - before the lecture I had quickly to set it up with David's help.

But after the lecture people did not rush immediately downstairs to the reception. As you can see they stopped to see the display. Link to the former "webplace" of this project was to all participants well before the conference. (In a foreground you can see some of my mathematical models.)

All the fiber stories are back with me now in Ithaca, including two new ones - Inga gave me her submission in Dublin and Tija gave it to me in Riga. These stories I will add to the rest of our account.
 Thank you all very very much for the time and thoughts you put into all these stories. It meant a lot to me that you decided to support my idea for the reasons I do not wish to describe here but some of you know very well. Now I am thinking about making another piece to add which should be about the support of friends.

I will move here all the stories from the previous site since this is more user friendly and do not require joining another social network. Please let other people who might be interested to know, particularly if you think that doing something with fibers can help them.

But today, feeling guilty for not having nice pictures from express show in Riga, I took all our pieces out to the lakeside. I felt like you all were with me!

 Somebody (is Andy Goldsworthy in the area?)  had made this intricate stone sculpture. First I thought of placing our project around it but that would mean to get some of our pieces wet or possibly destroying the sculpture.

I decided to place our pieces on the shore.