This video shows the new installation in Alexandria, Virginia commissioned by the City of Alexandria Office of the Arts and created by SoftLab. I look forward to seeing it.
“The materials and interactive nature of the artwork reference the special type of lens used at Alexandria’s own historic Jones Point Lighthouse – called the Fresnel lens – the most advanced lens technology of the 1800s, which used a series of prisms to concentrate the light source and direct it into a narrow horizontal beam that was projected outward.”
Liisa Hietanen is a fiber artist from Hämeenkyrö, Finland. In her recent works, she knits and crochets life-size replicas of her friends and neighbors. See more of her work at her website.
When I was a Girl Scout, we cooked out a lot. We made campfires and sit-upons. Occasionally, we had a treat that involved wrapping biscuit dough around a (cleaned) stick and baking it over the campfire. When the biscuit was done, it was peeled off the stick and then stuffed with jam. I remember that they were incredibly delicious. I have not had one since I was eleven. Imagine my surprise to find a recipe for biscuits on a stick in a book of recipes of Norwegian baked goods when I was last at the public library.
Brighton, England-based textile artist Kate Jenkins has been recreating veggies, seafood, and other favorite foods in wool for the last 12 years. Jenkins got her start in knitwear design, but has begun to focus on knitting feasts rather than fashions. In 2015 Jenkins made her largest installation to date, crocheting dozens of sardines, mussels, clams, shrimp, prawns, lobsters, crabs and other delights from the sea for a full-size fish counter titled “Kate’s Place” at the Knitting and Stitching Show in Dublin. For inspiration Jenkins knits or crochets from life, always purchasing the food she plans on recreating for accurate scale and texture.
Saturday (third Saturday in March) was National Quilting Day. What was I doing?
My stay-at-home recovery time from knee surgery has given me the opportunity to pick up a hand-quilting project that has been hanging around for a while. It is a block of the month quilt with quotations that I like in the “signature” areas. There is still a lot of border to finish, but now I can see that completion may actually happen. It is nice to sit with the quilt on my lab as I sew. Cmdr. Sam Vimes likes to supervise.
Seattle-based pie baker Lauren Ko has a multitude of non-edible inspirations that influence her creative pastry designs, including textile patterns, architecture, and string art. These elements are woven into her colorful, and often geometric, fruit pies and tarts topped with thin, undulating strips of apples, precisely placed pomegranate seeds, and triangles of radiating strawberries. Often Ko will color a portion of her dough with natural food dyes like beet butter to add even more color to the finished dessert. You can learn step-by-step instructions for how Ko creates her enticing sweets in this video made by Tasty, and follow the evolution of her pies on Instagram.
Gunsmoke and Knitting 