Wet felting uses water and agitation to create fabric from animal hair/fibres (we’ll be using wool). This two-night class introduces wet-felting technique in the first session, with a follow-up night of experimentation and production! Participants will leave with at least two pieces of felt fabric made from merino wool and/or local, naturally dyed fleece. Felt fabric will be suitable for use in the vessel class as well as for mixing with salmon leather or other personal projects. All materials included.
Are you clumsy with the drop spindle, or new to spinning and need some assistance and help getting going? If you find yourself too familiar with the ‘drop’ part of the spindle, this clinic will help get you spinning with confidence and more control over yarn production. Time will be spent learning proper carder use, understanding fibre staple lengths in relation to drafting process, and controlling the twist entering the fibre supply. Those with some basic familiarity with a drop spindle will get the most out of this clinic, but new spinners will learn much to help in understanding the process. Includes all materials and drop spindles for class use, personal spindles and carders welcome.
Join Sharon for an evening of exploring different braid styles. General focus will be on learning simple flat braids either 5, 7 or 9 strand, as well as a round 4ply braid. Using natural materials from our gardens as well as some of Sharon’s hand spun wool, participants will leave with braid samples ready for use as hat bands, straps and more in other personal projects. Sharon has been very inspired in the last few months with the versatility of braids used in a variety of ways and is looking forward to a chance to geek out on these simple bias weave methods with others keen to learn. All materials provided
Note: a pre-req for this class is knowing the 3 strand braid.
What projects are your dreaming of for your winter making nights?
Spend an evening with David at the Fabulous Horn Shop cutting local hard woods and antlers from his saved stash for buttons and closures that will come in handy for your knitting, weaving, felting and leather work projects.
All materials for buttons included, students will hand saw, sand and drill their own buttons.
Free, limited Space. tickets here Please show respect… if you take a ticket, show up!
Stinging Nettle is a plant with many gifts to teach those willing to risk getting close. Urtica doica, the variety that grows both here and throughout the UK, has clothed our collective ancestors as have the other Urtica species that grow around the Northern hemisphere. Join Sharon Kallis for a walking tour around the nettle patches in Trillium Park and learn the stories and knowledge Sharon has gained from both the plants and her many teachers over the last 15 years. Rain or shine, after a short walk, time will be spent under-cover processing harvested nettle stalks. Dress for the weather.
Trillium North Park, corner of Malkin and Thornton Street.
In this workshop participants will work with Cease, learning about the plants while making a salve that heals hangnails and in general, cares for our hard-working hands that have done us so well through the garden season.
Cease will have started a batch earlier for maximum potency and each participant will leave with a jar from the evenings collective labour. We are thrilled to have Cease join us at Trillium to harvest from the healing plants that are growing at MOP and Trillium.
This is a wonderful opportunity to spend time in a small group with the Indigenous Plant Diva and share stories from the garden.
This whimsical project at MacLean Park before the Outdoor Movie Night on August 17 marked a turning point in EartHand’s AIC residency at Strathcona: Rebecca and Anna collaborating on a piece, the last one Rebecca will do for the residency before moving to a farm in the Fraser Valley.
Using graphite sticks and some of the homemade wax/tallow crayons Rebecca made for EartHand’s Soil to Sky project, Anna and Rebecca invited community members to stroll up and make rubbings of leaves and bits mostly collected from around MacLean Park (one very engaged person also went home and brought some things from their garden!). Most of the rubbings were done on a large sheet of cloth that will be transformed as it is included in more artwork to be done at events this fall. We also experimented with rubbings on silk organza and pieces of coarse linen — so beautiful, each with their own unique qualities.
When we were experimenting with different media for the rubbings in the weeks leading up to the event, Anna said this (and Rebecca thought it was brilliant):
“I like the graphite, it’s kind of ephemeral — like it could be there, and it could be gone — which is important when you’re talking about place and community.”
The final Fibre & Dye walk in the series was held on the warm and sunny afternoon of July 20th. Our journey began at Strathcona Community Centre and continued through MacLean Park, Strathcona Park and the Cottonwood Community Garden. Cottonwood is a rambling garden, full of botanical surprises including established mulberry shrubs, shade tolerant figs, ripening plum trees and a recently, and rather violently, chopped down banana palm.
During the walk, we marvelled at how the parts of Strathcona we were travelling through rapidly moved between wild, cultivated, agricultural and industrial space—there is such a remarkable amount of diversity (plant, animal & cultural) held within a few city blocks. As we walked, we breathed in the pungent oils of aromatic plants, touched the roughness of comfrey and the stickiness of butternut leaves, and absorbed the visual abundance of blooming colour growing along the route. Observing and encountering plant life is not only about looking with our eyes, but also about touching, smelling and tasting—as through full sensory engagement we may more easily build and rebuild complex connections with botanical beings.
Back at Trillium Park we extracted goldenrod (Solidago canadensis) and revisited the dye-bearing potential of tansy (Tanacetum vulgare). Anna and Jennifer wished to re-examine tansy at the height of its blooming period and to compare its colour with goldenrod (our domestic “super dye” plant), which was just entering into flower. Tansy tends to hit warmer yellow notes, while goldenrod is known for bright and lightfast yellows. Neither plant disappointed our expectations!
Draft of the longer container’s mural design by the Summer Heat YouthDraft of the shorter container’s mural design by the Summer Heat Youth
Last week the Summer Heat Youth group began working with artist Alex Ruiz Ramirez to draft the mural design for the shipping containers that form the north wall of the Children’s Garden on the Strathcona Campus. The shipping containers hold the emergency supplies for the School and Community Centre, so even though they sit side by side like a set, one is under the jurisdiction of VSB and the other under that of the City and Park Board (that’s actually three different governing bodies, for those of you who are counting). Hats off to Liza Tam (Strathcona Community Centre) and Brenda Racanelli (Park Board), David Lewis (City of Vancouver) and Jason Eng (Vancouver School Board) for coming together on this project.
This is a project that is dear to many kids and staff at Strathcona. When we began the We Grow Where We’re Planted map at the Multicultural Fair in March, I was blown away by the number of kids who said that the school, or somewhere on the school grounds, was their favourite place in the neighbourhood. Many of them mentioned the garden. Childcare Coordinator Veronica Light is well aware of the importance of the garden in the lives of the kids at the school and in her care — and also well aware of the staff’s struggles to keep it safe and maintained in spite of off-hours use that can include drinking, drug use, and even sometimes as a latrine. Veronica quietly welcomes campers who are good ‘night stewards’, respectful and protective of the space as sacred for kids; and said to me way back in February that they wished for a mural to enhance the sense of place, encouraging everyone to see the space as sacred to kids at all hours.
So when Alex sat down with the Summer Heat Youth for their brainstorming sessions, he talked about these aspects of the project and asked the youth to turn back the clock a little bit, to think about what they loved about the garden when they played in it, imagine it with those younger eyes again, and bring their hopes and wishes to it. What do they love about this neighbourhood? What do they hope for the futures of the kids who are playing in the garden now? When I joined them for the first hour or so, everyone was sitting on the benches in the garden intently sketching out their ideas with pencil and paper as Alex went around, quietly encouraging and engaging.
The mural was completed at the end of July, and the difference in the garden has surprised me — I knew that the sense of place and presence of the kids would be stronger, but the magnitude of the change is really stunning. The Summer Heat Youth did all the design work and painting, and I was touched to see the way they acknowledged the land and waters in their imagery — the salmon, salmon eggs, trees — and also the human world — bridge, houses, playground.
Deep thanks to the Summer Heat Youth, Lianne the program coordinator, Gabe the youth coordinator, Alex the artist, and all the behind-the-scenes folks who helped make it happen. May it bring joy to the garden space and everyone through it for many years to come.
Insect yielding orange… an uncommonly small Japanese beetle?
Domestic variety of St.Johns wort
On the warm Saturday afternoon of June 22 we met outside the Strathcona Community Centre at 601 Keefer St and our keen group of over a dozen participants strolled east past MacLean Park and south along Hawks, admiring trees and flowers, observing the landscape and considering the time and events that have passed since it was ancient forest and wild creatures, its streams thick with salmon and trout, when the Coast Salish made and kept the laws of the land, the ways of being here.
This time our route took us through Strathcona Community Garden, where we stopped to visit nettles and the rewilded area in the southeast section. Anna said that last year, when she was doing the Wayfinding walks with Nicola, there had been St.John’s wort everywhere, in profusion. She had thought it would be the same this year, plenty for a big dyepot; but that hasn’t been the case. What influenced this shift?
Once again Jennifer brought beautiful handmade notebooks for everyone, and we spent time at Trillium carefully observing and drawing the flowers, and making notes about the dye samples.
EartHand Gleaners Society 