Surfacing: a story

Surfacing is 14 Mile Farm's tribute to the seal maidens in the folklore of my northwestern European heritage. I remember reading stories and tales of the Selkie as a child and they always left a taste of sadness, of longing, and great depth lingering like the taste of salt after a visit to the shore.  As you may know, the Selkie is both seal and woman.  She puts on her fur coat to swim with flippers amongst her kin and she takes it off to walk with legs on the land of men.  She is a shapeshifter, living liminally between two worlds.

The sea speaks symbolically to our emotions, to the tidal pulls of love and desire or sadness and grief.  In the same way that our inner workings of heart and soul may be invisible to the casual acquaintance, there are currents and cross currents, whole worlds unseen beneath the surface waves of the sea.  The sea is a great Mother, nourishing all her children who live within and about her depths.  She follows the pull of the moon, creating tides,  just as woman's womb follows the cycles of waxing and waning in the night sky.  The sea is deep, powerful, and ungoverned, as untameable as the soul.

The tales of the Selkie that I grew up on were tales of love and loss.  The Selkie would doff her sealskin to become a comely lass with liquid brown eyes and dance naked on the sand. She would fall in love with a fisherman or a farmer, a handsome lad from the village.  He would steal her sealskin and hide it in order to keep her on land.  They marry and have children and are very happy.  But as the years go by the woman grows first restless then sad, her eyes always drawn out to sea.  Neither her children nor her husband can comfort her in this nameless grief.  Then one day she finds her bundled sealskin where it was hidden by that handsome lad become loving husband.  She unwraps it down by the shore, puts it on, and dives as a seal into the waves.  Her children and their father mourn for her when she does not return.  But from then on, on certain days, a seal with liquid brown eyes watches the family from the rocks on the shore.

As a child I was captivated and heartbroken by the pathos of this story.  Now, as a mother and artist, I seek to bridge the worlds of shore and sea.  The Selkie is drawn by that which is most integral to herself, she surrenders to the deep sea-pull on her soul.

This warp asks the questions: How can we honor the work of the woman's soul?  How can we support her deep inner work without requiring the sacrifice of love and family life?  How can we create a legacy for our daughters that does not demand they sacrifice either themselves or those they love?  As mothers, how can we integrate the wild sea that pulls at the secret depth of the soul with the warmth of hearth fire and the home?

Surfacing will be woven in a network drafted twill evocative of waves.  The warp is 100% long staple Egyptian cotton.  There will be a variety of wefts including Seacell, Marine Silk, and 100% seaweed viscose.  I'm so deeply pleased to be able to weave with seaweed for this particular project.

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Artwork by Jessica Shirley.  Buy an art print here.

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Snowdyeing Seaweed

I'm truly and deeply in love with doing my own dye work.  This was snow-dyed, which is a technique that requires ceding much of your artistic control to the process.  It was a really fun reveal for me, seeing what the dye job looked like once rinsed and dried.  I'm excited to play more with yarn and snow and dye together.  One of the benefits of living in Interior Alaska is that I have snow available to me for at least half of the year! 

This skein is made of 100% seaweed, processed in the same manner bamboo is to make rayon.  It will be used on my upcoming warp "Surfacing" which is inspired by the selkie of northwestern European mythology.  I love the romance of using seaweed to weave a woman who shapeshifts into a seal!   

Snowbirding

Snowbirding was initially part of a weaver challenge wherein two weavers go head-to-head designing off of the same inspiration.  My dear friend Brianna over at Moth and Moon Fibreworks and I were paired with an image of a tropical beach at sunset.  

Neither of us met the deadline and both ended up producing distinctly autumnal warps.  After dyeing the yarn, I became inspired by the birch leaves just starting to go yellow in lace patterns in the forest canopy, the crampbark hinting at crimson, and the delightful earthy smell of boreal autumn taking over the woods in September.  The geese and cranes both gather for their annual migration away from the cold and the snow that will settle over this land I call home.  
It is a common thing in Alaska to flee the winters:  Retirees, those with the abundance of luxurious means, those with light pockets and lighter bags who want the freedom of wandering.  They seek the sun.  We call them Snowbirds.  They snowbird (it is a verb as well as a noun).  They return for the glory that is an Alaskan summer, called by the majesty of this land and the magic it conjures in even the most mundane soul.  And in the winter they go south.  
My inlaws are both retired now and in the sunset of their lives, and the last few winters they have made their home in Hawaii.  Their apartment opens onto a lanaii with a shared pool and a garden in which my father in law tends coconuts, mangoes, papaya, loofah (like the sponges!), hibiscus, angel trumpets and more.  The view is clear to the ocean and the horizon beyond.  As I contemplated the inspiration picture my mind kept circling back to sitting on the garden steps next to their lanaii, to watching the sun slip gloriously over the horizon, to the warmth of the night air and the smell of tropical flowers that met us in December when we visited last.  

The first baby wrap piece off of this warp featured a butter soft buttery yellow merino weft.  Three of the four wrap pieces of this design found homes in Alaska, which absolutely warms my heart.

My jewel-tone loving heart simply adored working with the deep purple eggplant weft on this piece.  This piece was a semi-custom; the mama with whom it eventually found a home was able to choose weft color, weave pattern, and length.  She was inspired by the monarch butterfly symbolizing new beginnings and its annual migration.  She chose to add random weft stripe accents in orange to add to the visual interest and really highlight this homage.

This shorty is the only wrap piece that lives "Outside" (as we Alaskans call the Lower 49 contiguous states of the USA).  The delicate pink of the skinny bamboo viscose weft brings out the tones of the horizon at dawn.  I'm continually entranced by the way that the weft shifts the overall feel of the piece.

This ring sling piece ended up staying local to me, going to live with a mama just one town over.  It was woven with a natty Egyptian cotton weft.  This slightly thicker weft lent a smooshy floppy thickness that is ideal for cush and support in a one shouldered ring sling.

I was able to really play around with wefts, weaving off a number of cowls and circle scarves as well as this baby blanket, backed with quilting fabric with a tropical motif.  Below, you see a skinny blue mercerized cotton weft, a hand dyed mercerized cotton weft in pinks and golds, and a cream/natural wool knitting yarn.  

(P.S. They are currently listed for sale in the shop! )