Meanwhile, there's Plarn!

Out in the world of larger art, we're getting ready for the September 20th Plainsboro Festival of the Arts, which I helped found about 18 years ago, and which has grown and grown, so I guess it's partly my fault...

One thing I'll be doing this year, aside from helping to person the embroiderers' guild area, is to work the Earthloom, a giant affair, for community participation, since that's the name of the festival doings.

So I thought hm, recycling and having fun and making a 21st century tapestry, hm, plarn is called for.  This is yarn created from cutting up plastic bags of all colors.  The art curator, Donna S., was unfamiliar with it, but courteously refrained from rolling her eyes, and we got together this afternoon, scissors and bags at the ready, and cut a few samples to put onto the ready warped loom. 

I packed down a previous iteration of weaving, as a nice base for the upcoming one, and did a sample weaving.  The yellow strip you see is the results of one grocery bag cut up.  And I've started putting leashes on, you see them at the sides, to keep the work rectangular as it progresses.

And here's Donna busily, and gallantly,  producing more plarn, with supplies of bags in the foreground. This is someone who is running a lot of major programs, all at once, while moving house, and getting offspring back to college.  A halo ought by rights to appear in this pic.

I also broke it to her today that you can knit with this stuff, and I have an idea about making a performance art piece using broomsticks for knitting needles and having several people knit!  I'll create the plarn, find the broomsticks and cast on a few stitches for starters, and we'll go from there.  I'm just sayin'.  


So the Festival will be a heavily fibrous day for some of us.   I will be indoors, since I can't manage to be out in the weather all afternoon.  But the loom will be in a window visible from the plaza outside so people can join us at will.  The event goes on all over the place, indoors and out, all the time.

And looking ahead a bit, there's loose talk about an Artist in Residence, that would be me, probably in the winter, creating a big tapestry of my own on this loom with people able to stop by and chat and ask and all that. Not using plarn, though, probably my own hand spun chunky yarn.
Fun abounds. Not much danger of boredom, I'd say.