bike riding

Heading into work today I ended up riding for a bit with 2 of the guys from Howies, in London for the weekend at the sample sale.  Cycling is one of the most pleasant and environmentally friendly methods of transport around, but the thing that pleases me most about it is the choice you have in how you travel.  You chose your own speed to suit your mood (or time constraint), chose your own routes and distance and also how much you actually ride, be it one day a month or every day, every journey.  I have cycled approximately 80 miles this week and been on public transport for about 9 and about 9 miles in a car.  The bike-based journeys (mainly commuting) have been the ones where I have had the most constructive time to consider my day (ahead or behind me) and have also been the most efficient for my needs.  I believe bike-riding for ones commute to be a truly philosophically Slow way of travelling (and occasionally just plain old slow).
This Slow method of transport is well documented for many reasons but for me it is special for the time it allows me just to be.  My ride today slowed considerably when we started chatting and was all the more pleasant for it.  The photo above is one of the first from a series I took all the way from Hackney to Knightsbridge a few months ago, a commute I did daily for 18months about 5 years ago, and it makes me feel, looking from a bikes-eye-view, excited about the start of a new journey and about how fresh the day looks. 

A postcard of my Slow Theory

It's a hard life in the fast lane...

Cats are, in many ways, the pinnacle of Slow living!

Hand sanding

This weekend I will be sanding by hand 8 of 31 maple tiles for a new flooring idea.  I enjoy the process of sanding wood by hand as it allows the mind time to work through other ideas and thoughts, whilst physically working towards a beautiful finished piece.  While mechanical sanding is a lot quicker and very useful for shaping and precision lines etc I have not been able to get the organic shapes I want only with a machine.  I also love the connection that the hand work offers me.  As someone who loves the sensory stimulation gained by touching and feeling materials, the tactility of handwork like this offers immense satisfaction.  I like the way my hands and arms feel tired after this work and the occasional blisters!  I feel that it also offers me a small insight into the times when machines weren't so readily available, if at all for this kind of work and for the effort that went into producing a fine finish on old furnitures etc.

The tiles in the picture are maple, although they are not the tiles I will be working on this weekend.

AR in textiles

Listening to an old Veganfreak podcast with Gary Francione talking about how demand from the public leads to bad meat production made me think - does demand for wool and silk lead to the harsh farming methods used in fibre production.  I think so.  This isn't just limited to protein fibres (wool, silk) but also in cellulose (cottons, linen) as farming for cellulose is also environmentally harsh, and does not include leather or fur production as they are a whole different ball game, both as processes and in ethical terms.  However as wool and silk directly use animals they could be seen as being as morally wrong as battery farming. 

Does consumer demand lead to bad farming practice - I think the answer is yes.  Demand for cheap woollen clothing leads to practices such as mulesing and to sheep being treated as commodities rather than as living beings. 

Silk is a tougher question as it is not known for being cheap.  Silk is produced by boiling cocoons to release the fibres the silk worm has spun aound itself.  However, if the cocoon is left until the worm has morphed into a moth (which chews its way out) the fibres are damaged so the worms are boiled inside along with the cocoons.  Personally I see this production method as highy unethical, however as poorly fed and housed silk worms produce poor silk they tend to be kept in slightly higher conditions than a lot of other non-humans used to produce things for humans.


More about this when I have thought about it further.

Textiles from the Burrell Collection

A recent trip to the Burrell Collection, Glasgow brought these embroideries to my attention.

Also these 3d embroideries, amazing gold work.

And this lovely beaded leopard. 


The stitches in all of them were tiny, the beads also tiny, and all done by candle or day light, I find that incredible. 

Ulla Von Brandenburg

 

I went to see Ulla Von Brandenburg's work (pictured) at the Pilar Corrias yesterday.  Based on old railroad quilts these super-sized details were both beautiful and inspiring.  

Quilts were often made from old work clothes and other well worn clothing, nothing went to waste when it didn't need to.  

I saw another quilt exhibition at the PMA about 18 months ago, again hugely inspiring.  The Gees Bend quilts appealed to me both for the care and time taken to make them, the irregularities where different fabrics met and off-geometric shapes that resulted and also in that so little material was binned.  Spent clothing became quilt panels or innards.  This lack of waste and full use of existing materials is something that is not always thought of, however some designer-makers are pushing their work as far in that direction as possible (and many include green thought processes in their work).  

Bespoke quilter Katherine May said 'what is the point of me selling this very considered product if I just wrap it in plastic which will just get thrown away - I wanted to lessen the landfill not add to it! So at the moment I am thinking of ways that packaging can be reused.'  This is a train of thought that leads down an interesting path - in my mind it starts with Japanese furoshiki (cloth gift wrap) which can be reused afterward the gift is opened.