Skip to main content

Circle Craft Market

Vancouver


Circle Craft Christmas Market acknowledges the entry into the Christmas shopping season for Vancouverites. The market has been around since 1973 and grown to hosting 310 artisans. It has to be held in the Vancouver Convention Centre since I've been attending it, giving the shopper room to linger, touch and examine everything.

A friend and I attended it on Saturday from 11 am to 6 pm. Yes, that's 7 hours of looking, getting inspired and making a few purchases as well.  Of course I was most interested in those selling knit wears like Craftworks, Mimi and Vividworks.  But the most astonishing item was seeing Sola Fielder's exhibit.  Although she was selling hats and scarves, it was the item shown above which is 11.6’ x 5.3’ that completely mesmerized me. 

From a distance it looks like an aerial photo of Vancouver focused on the downtown. But look closer and you can see that this talented artist has used recycled textiles, mainly yarn from thrift shop sweaters. This particular work took the artist five years to create this show-stopper. Please go to the Sola Fiedler website so you can get a closer look at her work for yourself. (The photos are so big they don't fit into this format.)  Fielder was pleased the tapestry will stay in Vancouver and be available to the public.  However the most amazing part of this story is Fielder has also created large tapestries for other Olympic-hosting cities including, Las Vegas USA, Salt Lake City USA and Sydney Australia. (Go to the websites to see them.)

The talent it takes to find sweaters in the right colours and texture, to turn them into thread/yarn, and finally the overall artistic talents to create such works immensely impressed me. Hats off to you the very talented Sola Fielder.

What a lovely way to spend a day impressed, awed and at times overwhelmed by creative genius.  


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Anatomy of a Sock

I've been knitting socks for a relatively short time.  One of the disconcerting things for me as I started following patterns for socks is the pattern designer assumes the knitter (in this case that would be me) knows all the parts of a sock.  So I thought I'd devote a post to improve my own knowledge about the anatomy of a sock and maybe some of you will learn something about the humble yet necessary sock as well. Here's the names of the parts of the foot as I know them. #49 ankle, #50 heel, #51, instep, #52 ball, #53 big toe, #54 toe, #55 little toe, #56 toenail. There are some parts more important for this discussion; first the heel of a foot is generally used to refer to the entire C-shape from the ankle to the instep.  Speaking of the instep, it refers to that curve near the bottom of the foot.  And what seems to be missing in the design above is the sole which generally refers to the bottom of the foot in total or plantar aspect in more technical terms...
5 comments
Read more

Yarn Barf

It's back to quirkiness and time to step away again from the cuteness for a while.  But as you see I'm someone who slips from one to the other without much effort so anticipate this back and forth to be my new normal. A dramatization of me in the midst of my startitist frenzy Yarn barf .  I'm willing to bet you hadn't thought of putting those two words together, had you?  It just so happens yarn barf can be a reoccurring pain for those of us who use yarns that come in a skein instead of a hank.  (No pun intended regarding the current Noro virus, well maybe a little pun.) Skeins of yarn wound by the manufacturer These are hanks which need to be wound into balls  If you look closely at the picture on the right you'll see the start on the millet yellow skein at the centre right of the photo.  Its start can easily be seen coming from the centre of the skein onto the violet skein to the left.  Easy to find, right! ...
28 comments
Read more

Yarn Usage II: Crochet vs. Knit

All four swatches were made.  Each is 6.25" or 15.875 cm square; each prepared with the same sized yarn and needles or hook.  It took 25 stitches to get the appropriate width for the knit swatches and only 20 stitches for both of the crocheted squares.  That already says something, but I'll get to it in a minute.  (Don't know what I'm talking about here?  Check out this post first.) Unfortunately, you'll just have to trust me that four swatches were prepared and that they were all the same size.  In the excitement to get to measuring and weighing of the swatches, no photographic evidence was taken.  Luckily for me the results of this research doesn't have to be reviewed by a jury of my peer.  This blog post will be the sum and total of where this information is published. The remains of my four swatches What can be shared, however, are the balls of yarn rewound after the weighing and measuring was completed.  You will note the size ...
5 comments
Read more