BOOK - BORO -2008
Rags and tatters from the Far North of Japan

Only a few decades ago, Thoku (Aomori) was synonymous to most Japanese with dire poverty. A home to dirt poor farmers who, out of desperate necessity, created an astonishing textile aesthetic out of BORO = rags. The frozen north was too cold to grow cotton, so the local folk grew and wove hemp for clothing. The tiniest precious snippets were saved. They soaked worn-out old clothes in rice-rinsing water in order to loosen an pull out threads, stitching over ripped and ragged layers as thick as they could. Long before ' recycling ' was drummed into our heads, here were people whose loving frugality towards cloth was a genuine engrained in their lives - yet total forgotten today. The beauty and sheer compositional skills of these boro creations inspire the fashion and design circles everywhere.

VALENTINE MESSAGE

A variety of Valentine cards I love :

EMBROIDERY
Machine and crosstitches on paper collages

COLOURCOMBINATIONS  - 2012  PART 1

COLOUR COMBINATIONS 2012  PART 2

I took a picture of a beautiful vase of flowers and turned it into a colourcombi project.

Collection handkerchiefs
I have started sorting out my collection of handkerchiefs, here is a start:

 Collection of some of my vintage embroidery:

Bee's world

For a while now, I have been making dolls, which consist of different kinds of paper - vintage material - knit - old print designs -tapes etc.
My idea is writing a story to go with these girlfriends living in bee's world, ........when I get the time.
I would like to present : bobbi - sherry - doris

I WISH IT WAS SUMMER - some new prints ideas

BOOK - POSTCARDS OF THE WIENER WERKSTATTE - a Catalogue Raisonné

The Wiener Werkstatte, or Vienna Workshops, was founded in 1903 by architect and designer Josef Hoffmann. In 1907, the Wiener Werkstatte began publishing a numbered series of postcards. Many of them were designed to celebrate holidays, fashion and humorous topics. A selection of these cards will be on view at the Neue Galerie New York on a regular basis as part of the permanent collection. All the mayor WW designers created postcards including Hoffman, Oskar Kokoschka, Egon Schiele and Dagobert Peche.

For myself it is a spectacular book, very inspiring. The colours and the combinations are really special, as the style of drawing and composition. A few samples:

TIME FOR TIGHTS

Some fun tights I have designed 

GERHART RICHTER 

A visit to his exhibition at the Tate Modern in London.
I was fascinated by his early work based on black and white photos. When you get up close , his technique is incredible and the effect is amazing. 

The grayness of Gerhard Richter's work is instructive, and distressing. It comes, of course, from black and white photography, from snapshots, newspaper pictures, portraits. In any of these forms, precisely because they purport to be records of reality, photographs are actually furthest from reality. The moments are not false but the records are falsifications that inherently disregard what came before and what came after. They are, in other words, or can be, works of art.

Richter was born in 1932 in Dresden, where he lived through the rise of Hitler, the war, and the installation of Communism in East Germany. He studied art there, was successful in a kind of modernist Socialist Realist style of painting, and then left in 1961 for West Germany (Düsseldorf), where he remains (near Cologne). Most of his work in the 1960s is photographically based. He had been a photographer's assistant as a youth and now made scrapbooks of photos, some of which he projected and rendered into paintings. Most are of families, vacation scenes, fashion shots, but occasionally a newspaper photo intrudes of American planes bombing or of emaciated naked dead bodies attended by vultures. The references to tragedy in his paintings are sideways, often personal, sometimes private.

LONDON

One of the oldest pubs in London - The LAMB & FLAG - Rose Street -  Great food and a lovely admosphere.

The Oldest Restaurant (1789) in London - RULES - Maiden Lane  - 
Fantastic food - great cocktails and charming waiters. You can just image yourself dining in the 19th century. What an experience !

GARDENTIME at CHRISTMAS
In my mother's garden in England

My inhouse garden in Amsterdam - The 2011 Xmas tree

HAPPY HOLIDAYS

Advertisement in the VOLKSKRANT MAGAZINE (dutch main newspaper)

One of my sock designs for winter 2011-2012 KIDS

BOOK : SIMPLE STITCH

Very stimulating book with brilliant photos on simple stitching. The photos are so good, you can understand without reading the japanese explanation.
Contents: back stitch - outline stitch - running stitch - chain stitch etc etc.

BEE KNITTY

Just finished my smartphone woolly. Knitted in lovely soft japanese Sonomono wool (melange and boucle)......maybe the start of a BEE KNIT LINE.

SAUL LEITER EXHIBITION

Joods Historisch Museum - Amsterdam 2011

KNIT
Jaquard knit in combi jersey+purl stitch

PRINTS - Trees in a different perspective

' The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago, the next best time is now' - Chinese proverb

KNIT - JAQUARDS
I am just addicted to designing jaquards and fairisle, knitted in a combination of different yarns (hairy/boucle etc) or in a combination of different gages. This can be used in allsorts of articles. Here are some ideas.

COLOURCOMBINATIONS PART 1

COLOURCOMBINATIONS PART 2

BAG - BIRDS ON PAINTED BASE

FUN KNITTING

KNITTED CARROTS

KNITTED MUSHROOMS (edible)

KNITTED MUSHROOMS (in the woods)

 KNITTED LEAVES

KNITTED TREE

KNITTED BAGS 

Special knitbags in different stitches and yarn

Leather with thick bouclé yarn

Jaquard knit with leather finishing

Fun jaquard knit with leather finishing

Cable knit with leather

Jaquard knit on small metal purse

BOOK

Blackstocks Collection by Gregory L. Blackstock
Drawings of an artistic savant.
He has used his gifts of extraordinary visual and auditory recall to engage an audience. This book contains of pictorial lists. A retired Seattle potwasher draws order out of all the chaos with pencil, black marker an crayons. It is truly amazing.

A look inside:

CUT OUT Wallpaper project

Started of with cut out (special japanese paper) flowers stalks

Made a placed print in my Texflash Design program

The effect as wallpaper in different colour combinations

 Exhibition Fashion Museum Antwerp

WALTER VAN BEIRENDONCK

Dream The World Awake

I love his details and handycraft

Walls of his inspiration 

Some of his creations (randomly chosen). 2 big rooms full of his designs. A must see !!

There is loads more to see; films, catwalk impressions etc.

It is a great way to spend a day in Antwerp. First start around the corner of the MOMU at Le Pain Quotidien for brunch. After the exhibition visit their bookshop, many great books to look at. And finally walk (8 min) to the best chip shop 'FRITUUR nr1' near the Grote Markt in Antwerp.

DIFFERENT KNIT IDEAS

knitted base for plimsols

knitted base for clogg-boots 

BOOK - In the sea there are crocodilles - Fabio Geda (2011)
Based on the true story of Enaiatollan Akbari.
An inspirational and incredibly moving story of a 10 year old boy's harrowing journey from Afganistan to Italy. Based on his close collaboration with Italian novelist Fabio Geda. He reconstructs the young boy's memories, perfectly preserving the childlike perspective.

PRINTS

Loads of birds being used at the moment for prints (textile and paper).
Here are a few of my allovers:

BIRD COLLAGES