This is Kris Kokborg. She’s one of the intrepid citizens of Cordova who does just about everything. She participated in the Mushroom Dying workshop I took. She heads the 4H Summer Music camp. She knits and spins and dyes her own yarn. In fact she recently spun, then knit then copper-dyed a sweater for her husband Eric.
On Saturday, Cordova Arts and Pageants, an organization that brings performers and artists to town for concerts and workshops held a Wearable Art Show as a fundraiser. I recently volunteered to help them out, and I offered to MC the event in a not so subtle attempt to get out of making a piece for the show. The theme of the show was recycled materials. There were some amazing entries, from a Warhol-inspired campbell soup-can dress to a recycled full-metal bikini. Since this is a fiber blog, let’s focus on Kris’s knitted ensemble.
The entire outfit is made from reclaimed grocery sacks. The skirt is knitted in strips and sewn together. Kris had been chatting with me about the outfit and asking if I had any ideas for the bodice. I mentioned the idea of fusing the bags, and she ran with it, looking up instructions on the internet, she created the top with a quilt-inspired design and then punched holes around the arm opening, picked up stitches with more plastic bag yarn and knit down for the cap sleeves. There’s fishermen’s lead line strung through the bottom of the skirt to give it shape and stretch it out a bit. The hat is crocheted, and she’s wearing an old piece of net as a shawl. You can see other entries and all my photos from the event on flickr.
Also last week, my girl scout troop learned to sew. They made hats out of polar fleece sewing up one seam, creating a drawstring top and sewing buttons onto the brim. Everyone finished the project, and they seemed quite pleased with themselves.
I’ve been feeling a bit neglectful of blogs lately, both in posting and in reading because my attention has been drawn more to other online sources of information such as twitter, facebook, flickr, etc. Especially Twitter–the instantaneous nature and the short amount of time that Twitter takes to use has made it especially appealing lately. To that end, I’ve been procrastinating today trolling for ways to effectively collect all of my online activity. I haven’t found any ideal solutions, but I have created a “friendfeed,” so all my online activities are captured in one place and so I can follow other online friends. If you visit my actual blog page, you can see my feed in the sidebar; if you use an RSS reader, you can go to my feed page.
I have nine teddy bear garments to crochet between now and the end of November, so I’d better get back to it.