Make Piece

I have been doing an internship now for a month for a company called Make Piece. It's a knitwear design company based in Todmorden, about half an hour on a train from Manchester Victoria. Behind the label there is two ladies: Nicola Sherlock and Beate Kubitz. Make Piece is all about sustainable UK produced luxury knitwear. All the yarns are coming from the UK, they even have their own sheep (60 shetland sheepies to be precise). They were recently on Country File on BBC One. The episode doesn't seem to be available on iPlayer anymore...

I go to Make Piece once or twice a week to work with their machines. My new favorite machine is Brother Chunky ( I can't remember now what number it is, but I am looking to buy one, so if anyone hears anything, please let me know! ). Even though working with chunky gauge machine, the garments that I have made, are knitted with fine yarn. I also work in my own studio during rest of the week to carry on practicing the designs that I learned in Make Piece studio.

The toughest thing to learn has been fixing things. When I started to use machines, I used to just do practice samples, where it didn't really matter if I just started again. In the point when I started to produce garments, I was so careful that I didn't really make any mistakes anymore (cos I didn't really exactly know how to fix it if yarn broke or I lost a stitch). It was the new way of managing the tension by hand rather than trough tension wire that got me into few blood pressuring pickles, but luckily I have gotten trough that stage where I constantly snapped the yarn. At this very minute though, there is a garment in my studio that I have to undo into a certain point. I think I haven't done the "undoing" right, as it has turned into a god forsaken mess. I did fiddle with it for nice three hours today, but when the sun started to go down, I decided to go home. I am hoping to wake up very early tomorrow to go and see if my heart is healed enough from today's struggles and I could just carry on. I have started to find my Finnish "sisu" from inside me since started this internship. (Sisu is a word or a saying about Finnish people, that they are very stubborn and don't give up, I didn't really think that I fitted in that stereotype until now). But I am there to learn and I think after a while I will be seriously good knitter.

Here is some designs by Nicola Sherlock that I have learned to knit at Make Piece: (images from www.makepiece.co.uk)


Foxglove Shrug





Edgeway Shrug



Garments on these images are not the actual garments that I made, they are just images to show which ones I have been knitting at Make Piece.

To see more of Make Piece beautiful designs go to:

www.makepiece.co.uk

They also have a blog:

http://www.makepiece.co.uk/pages/NEW-label-we-want-your-help.aspx?pageid=415

So,

Let's campaign for wool!

Kisukiskis

Valpuri

Taiwanese Breakfast Club

During my Artist Workshop training at the Chinese Arts Centre I have met Yu-Chen Wang. Yu-Chen is a London based artist originally from Taiwan. She is currently doing a residency at the Chinese Arts Centre. This residency is her first and longed one, as after her graduation from Goldsmiths she has been working in design.

Yu-Chen is really open person, telling honestly about her personal life and it also reflects a lot in her work. She has told us (artist in the Chinese Arts Centre) about her development as an artist. She also told us her worries and struggles that she has had with trying to work and stay in this country, but also about other stuff that many of us artists face after graduation. Money worries, settling in the "real" world (I don't think I need to explain this part too much, we all know have learnt what that is once coming out from University), trying to figure out what is it that you are. It's not the most simple thing to figure out, even if you have got the medium clarified.

Today though I got an invite to go to a Taiwanese Breakfast Club that Yu-Chen is organizing every other saturday during 8 weeks period. Today was the first one and I was ever so excited to attend. I got e-mailed a menu before hand:

Menu: Sweet Potato Congee; Spring Onion and Pickled Radish Omelette; Seaweed; Tofu with Dried Soybean; Peanuts; Dried Cabbage with Carrots.

The Image is from Yu-Chens blog, which I will put a link on here at the end of this post.

I had nice chats with people at the breakfast working in different industries. The residency space in CHinese Arts Centre is so cool. It's a portion of the whole space, next to the gallery, with a studio space and a kitchen, and the best part of it is a little upstairs bedroom. There is metal ladder leading up there and it is like a little attic room with a tiny window looking to the street. Somebody described it well saying that it is like a cabinet you get in an overnight train. The best thing about it is that I heard that it's got it's own built bathroom as well. I don't know why I am raving about that room so much. It just seems like such a amazing way to do work. It's isolated and public at the same time somehow. I would love to work that way some day for a while. I think I will apply next year to do a residence.

There is a lot of thoughts in my head at the moment about being an artist and learning to be a designer as well. Both of the worlds are so attractive to me. I enjoy doing both kind of work, but I just have to find a balance and really have to master my time management. I also have to stop feeling guilty about not doing the other thing when doing the other thing, it's like having two lovers at the same time... or I don't know, two siamese cats who both want to be your favorite (?!)

My biggest inspirations and the things that I feel connected in the art world at the moment are

The Chinese Arts Centre

www.chineseartscentre.org

and Yu-Chen:

http://yuchenwang.com/blog/
http://yuchenwang.com/

Me and Yu-Chen share an interest in old machinery and one of my "to-do-list" has "Go to the Musem of Science and Industry" as Yu-Chen told me all about the old knitting and other industrial textiles machines that are there at the moment. It sounds amazing!

I also want to put my friend Joel in here, even thought I think he deserves his own post. He is amazing photographer and one of the most influential and closest(even though he lives in a different continent) people that I have in my life. Because of him I often question my existence as an artist and think about what paths to take. Hopefully I have more time to write about Joel soon.

http://www.joeljagerroos.com/

http://www.theresejoel.com/

Kisukiskis

Valpuri

Learning at the CAC (Chinese Arts Centre)

Samples for Emma to see:

The punch card is made from the book KnitMaster Volume 4. It was funny though, as the pattern in the book, advices you to punch around the holes that you are actually meant to punch to create the pattern. Which means that the pattern card comes out negative. So I was a bit confused first, when the background color became the pattern color and the second color became the main color. If that made any sense to any of you. What I did, and will do in the future though, is make sure that when I knit with this punch card, I will change the main color in the 2. feeder and the decoration color in to the first feeder. And that way I get continuous pattern, instead of a stripe. Okay I have probably bored the mug out of you now.

These samples are made for a dress that I am designing for my friend Emma. She showed me a model of a dress she wanted, I made a mock up (that will be in the previous post with the test shots for the spring collection). And then we looked out some patterns together and Emma picked this funky retro one!! (Everything in that book is retro though, but this one is screaming retro, especially with the colors I used!) I hope the grey color gives the contemporary effect for it.

Testshots and PHoto Shop playing

Dedicated for Sophie and Gareth:

The spring collection has been under construction and now me and some other creatives are planning to set up another photo shoot for the garments I have produced since January. On wednesday I had a fitting and I took test shots with 3 beautiful women who have kindly offered to model this collection for me. I have also recently set up Photo Shop in my fancy laptop (yeah I know, I didn't have it before, but in my defense I used in school! ... also I struggle with this high tech computer stuff to set it up, yes shame on me), and I just couldn't resist having a little play with the photos last night. I really enjoyed it, haven't really touched Photo Shop since I left university. The Photo Shopping of the photos might not be up to everybody's high professional standards as I tend to like playing with the contrasts and color mainly, so the ones with a critical eye, turn away now. But I tell you this much, if you do, you going to miss all the beauty that it is in these girls (and the knitwear). These photos are just tests and a little glimpse of what will be coming up in a couple of weeks.

The Black Bolero, 100 % lambswool

The Black Top with Phone Motif, 100 % Lambswool, Lambswool with acrylic blend




Blue Dress "Mock-up", 100 % Acrylic "Designed for Emma"

The Hedgehodge Top, 100 % Acrylic

The Grey Top with Cat Motif, 100 % Merino, 100 % Lambswool, Lambswool with acrylic blend




The Jumpsuit, 100 % Acrylic



Thank you for the lovely models, Gemma, Sandra and Leonore, for coming to the fitting. I am looking forward to working with you!

With Love

Valpuri

Short films are good therapy for a sunday flu

Knit and Natter from clive tonge on Vimeo.

Sunday...

Nice Sundays everyone. I haven't been updating my blog as often as I would like. I have quite a few things on my plate at the moment. All good things. I started a work placement in a beautiful knitting studio and shop called MakePiece:

http://www.makepiece.com/

I am learning new techniques with a designer and trying to learn and experience how it is for them to run this small business.

Makepiece is a label with ethics. They have their own sheep, they use domestic knitting machines (that doesn't use electric, same as me).

Tonight MakePiece will be on BBC 1 on countryfile. I am excited to watch that!

Another thing that I will start tomorrow is a workshop artist training scheme at the Chinese Arts Centre.

http://www.chinese-arts-centre.org/

The current exhibition there is "The Human Error" that is about the interaction between humans and machines.

"HUMAN ERROR Trailer from Household on Vimeo.

For the exhibition at Chinese Arts Centre, Household have created works that explore the relationship between machines and their users. The smooth operation of our daily lives relies heavily on the assistance of various machines. Technology makes our life easy but frustrates us when it lets us down. The exhibition highlights our reliance on machines to complete daily tasks and emphasises the potential for human error.

The artists have a specific interest in the use of machines in mass production; photocopiers, printers and scanners, which all work to speed up and streamline our work. We easily forget how we managed without these machines before we invented them. Household will produce large scale interactive sculptures, which invite visitors to cooperate in order to make them work. The machines will overcomplicate simple tasks and require a minimum of two or more visitors to run them, encouraging human error. Visitors are encouraged to bring friends or collaborate with other people in order to complete the tasks. The collaboration necessary to operate the machines follows the ethos of Household projects.

The show will open with a week of demonstrations led by the artists. For the duration of the show, video instruction, manuals and diagrams will be left as instructions for visitors to carry out the tasks themselves. The "machines" designed by Household will be suitable for users of all ages.

To guarantee you place on the workshops, please place a booking via Eventbrite using the links below:

Human Error Machines Demonstration with Household artists
Saturday, 19 February 2011
2PM http://human-error-demonstration1.eventbrite.com"

The introduction is from the website:http://www.chinese-arts-centre.org/ from the part "What's on?"

Bye for now, I will get better with this updating, that is a promise to myself!

HUMAN ERROR Trailer from Household on Vimeo.