Binomil – Jenolan Caves

I’ve just returned from an amazing adventure at Jenolan Caves or previously known to the Gundungurra people as Binomil. If you are a visitor to Sydney it’s a day trip to Jenolan and well worth the visit. The caves are entered by a grand arch of spectacular beauty surrounded by the Blue Lake which really is very blue.

I stayed a couple of nights in the Caves house which was lovely. It made night cave tours possible and allowed me to really ‘feel’  the quiet beauty of the caves. The caves were formed about 420 million years ago after being under the sea. Sea fossils can be seen in the rock of the caves. These shells contain calcuim carbonate which creates the  limestone crystalline formations and the cave’s limestone creations continue to be formed. A small stick of limestone crystal takes 100 years to grow 1cm!

I have visited the caves intermittently over my lifetime and when I saw them about 30 years ago I believed they were degrading, with tours of over 100 people through some caves.  But this time I thought they were better than ever and I felt hopeful about their continuing beauty and maintenance for future generations to enjoy. It is humbling to be in such a landscape of enormous natural history and totally inspiring.

When I’m in such awe inspiring places I’m always looking for the composers, musicians and artists who must be bowled over like me. The music composed for the river cave silences and trickles, artist’s in residence guiding with special tours, the textiles and paintings designed  to celebrate our human responses to such natural forces.  But there never seems to be any. Not obviously at least. Although there are some concerts in the caves the exuberance of everyday human artistic passion isn’t there. The shop was filled with souvenir magnets and the like which don’t do the caves any favours. I’m always disappointed in the lack of human interpretation present at these places…where is it? Am I missing something?

Obviously geology and textiles are a natural fit. So I’ve produced some tencel, linen/stainless steel, wool, and mohair pieces which capture some of my images of the Blue Lake.  This handpainted warp was woven on the Saori loom sett at 24epi (10epc).

Crazy weft Kasuri

Well, something went a little different to what I expected in my weft kasuri! It is very free form and improvisational looking when I wanted it to be ordered with design. I think I’ve found the error in my calculations for the weft allowance. I didn’t factor in a washed dyed weft length so I’ll work on that now. However, the design is still beautiful and I’m happy with it. It is very exciting weaving with bobbins full of  design, so I think the time spent is worth every second.

Kasuri effects range from nice subtle organisation to quite random marbled effects . It takes me lots of time to do my dyeing and tying but it doesn’t have to be that way!.

Kasuri or ikat techniques can mean unweaving and weaving to get the effects you want, so patience and planning can be vital in it’s process. These technniques are  unique and distinctive to woven cloth and other mediums copy the feathered patterns.

April Spools Day

Happy April Spools Day! I’m joining Meg’s challenge to show your spools. These are a collection of Saori plastic bobbins which are all wound with colours and dreams from a collection of weavers. I leave these so anyone can pick and choose what they want in addition to their own ideas. Sometimes I weave them all up into a new cloth. They are lovely and they follow me everywhere – When I do workshops or demos away from home I take a gazillion (is that a number!) of them to kick start the day.

The other photo is how I saw them in Saori-no-Mori in Osaka Japan. They are really left overs but reusable in every way. Some people wind lots of bobbins before they set off to weave and others wind as they go. Some have full bobbins left over, others plan down to the empties.

You’ll notice that some have stranding on them, i.e. multiple stands of yarn wound as one, and others are just straight wind ons of a yarn. Some are ‘fat’ with big plans and others have been used in cloth but cut off before it has emptied suggesting some sort of judgement about just enough of that colour used in the cloth.

They all have their own personality and style and are great to photograph. Get winding for 2013 and beyond.

Six metres completed

Finally, I’ve completed my hand-dyed tencel cloth which has been a slow adventure through Lord Howe Island, seaweed thinking and lots of blended bobbins. As the colour of the warp changed as I wove, it also tended to change my idea of what looked good in it too. So every blend reflects something new which I really like.

I’ve had many texts and emails from customers sharing their weave ideas and progress and they are so very positive and happy about how they are weaving and designing on the fly. I guess they wouldn’t text me with a bad or even benign story though!

This cloth looks amazing draped on a wall as an installation piece and as it so mirrors my experience in Lord Howe I’ll probably do that or maybe not. Still undecided and just enjoying looking at it.