At the end of last year I joined FibeShare's The Weaving Kind online community because I want to explore new ideas and materials in weaving and hopfully create new concepts while I'm at it.
The idea is every month we are faced with a new weaving related challenge and then share our experiences of it in the form of photos and descriptions in Instagram.
The January submission is to weave with something we've never used for weft before, and potentially also a material that isn't orginally intended for weaving.
After the first shock I came up with a bunch of materials I could try weaving with like climbing rope, electrical chord, pencils, hair, cooking spatulas and icicles (woudn't that be cool!) but finally felt strongly enough that I wanted this to be a kitchen related piece of some sort.
As I live in an arctic climate the summer is always short, and half the year I really miss the smell of the earth. Living up here also stops me from fully devouring myself in one of my would-be favorite hobbies which is gardening.
So I started thinking I wanted to weave something edible. I think a kitchen garden has a very special scent that I enjoy, so I wanted the piece to be fragrant too, even if it would end up being shortlived.
I do collect a fair share of nutrition from the surrounding wilderness in the form of mushrooms and berries, but those have limited weaving potential.
One ingredient I can't live without is onion, especially spring onion. Green is also my favorite color.
I eat a lot of vegetables and their subtle beauty is in my opinion often underappreciated compared to fruits and flowers. They show off a rich variety of colors and textures that often inspire my work.
I used a heddle loom for the project, the same loom I use for all of my work.
I used Taito's open weaving studio downtown. Since the loom is used for real textiles by others I had to be careful not to get much onion juice on the reed when doing the beat-ups.
Time will show how this piece will age, whether the onions will dry beautifully and persevere or if it starts reeking and I need to throw it out.
If nothing else, I figured out a good way to hang herbs for drying for next summer.
