Category: Craft

  • A visit to the white herons

    South of Māwhera Greymouth is the settlement of Ōkārito. A couple of weekends ago I spent three days in the area, camping out in a thunderstorm and enjoying the beautiful wildlife, scenery and weather of this part of the West Coast. One of the reasons to go down was to see the kōtuku – the…

  • The Loving Stitch

    A new book has been donated to the studio library: The Loving Stitch. A history of knitting and spinning in New Zealand, the book was published in 1998 by Auckland University Press and was written by Heather Nicholson. It features photographs as well as sketches scattered among the chapters and the book ends with a…

  • Sound engineering – bower bird style

    The great bower bird is known for its mating rituals that take place in tall arched structures made with gatherings from their native bush in New Guinea and Australia. The male bower bird loves to show-off. He performs in the court of his edifice to prospective females, picking up bits of food and decoration and…

  • The Australian autograph textile with a South African link

    In 1894, as was a custom in those days, a quilt was created to raise funds for a new Anglican church in Sunbury, Australia. People were able to subscribe to the undertaking by having their names, signatures, motifs or initials embroidered onto squares that were then stitched together to form the completed quilt. This particular…

  • Kate Beck’s Impossible Evolutions

    The natural world is almost impossible to imagine in its complexity and intertwined relationships and yet much of that world is under threat. Using Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) Kate Beck trains these AI machines to understand how insects, plants and their pollinators support each other, and allow us to think about what might happen in…

  • Spotify this week

    Each week a playlist is curated to reflect the blog articles. The whole playlist is available on the Spotify platform and can be heard by clicking on the player above or by searching for “Music to read a blog by” on Spotify.

  • Slow Violence: Anna Madeleine Raupach

    The Australian artist, Anna Madeleine Raupach, uses textiles and textile techniques to explore social, political and cultural aspects of today through science and technology. In the series, Slow Violence, the artist has used thermal blankets, used in emergencies, to depict maps of the devastating fires in the Blue Mountains of Australia. Embroidering through the blankets…

  • Max – the 8 year old fashion designer

    A fascination with fashion sometimes strikes at an early age. Meet Max Alexander, who, at age eight, has become an Instagram star. Having started to post on Instagram so that his grandparents could stay in touch during Covid, Max has a following from film stars and designers. It is never to soon to follow a…

  • Wool in the world

    As the studio in Māwhera Greymouth gathers speed – pictures to follow soon – so the hunt for wool yarns continues. Wool in Aotearoa New Zealand used to be Big Business. It still is sizeable but is nowhere near as successful as it used to be. Part of that problem is the rise of artificial…

  • This week’s Spotify playlist

    Each week the blog is accompanied by a Spotify playlist of pieces that are somehow connected to the entries. To listen to the playlist you can click on the player above or search for “Music to read a blog by” on the Spotify platform. If you have a paid subscription you will hear all the…