Mr. Knick Wiggles

My boy passed on. He left on his twelfth birthday. He changed me for the better, anchored me in reality when I was struggling. He was a true best friend.

Knotted Pile Rug Workshop

Philip and I took a knotted pile class last month with Sara Lamb. She is a fantastic teacher and an all around nice person. Here is the progress we made in class. Phil was the star student, I think his math brain just got it and off he went. He wound his first ball of yarn in this class. I was such a proud mate!

Phil is working on a spider design.

I am working on a star design. This is how much we both finished in the class.

This is how much I completed while watching the Olympics one night.

I took this class because Sara does some amazing work with silk knotted pile. She seems to specialize in bags (that is what our samples will turn out to be when we finish them)and recently she made a really awesome hat. Check out her blog archives on September 13, 2005 to see the hat. I would like to use this technique for cuffs and collars on art to wear pieces. That way I won't be spending years completing one piece, such as a floor rug, and I'll have that lovely silk next to my skin with it's beautiful pictures in fiber where I can see it! For some reason the link isn't showing up in blogspot, so here is Sara's blog http://www.saralamb.blogspot.com/

Creative Endeavors

I have been working on the Cottage Tea Cozy in Knitter's Stash by Marji LaFreniere. It is a perfect gift for my dear Irish sister in law. Here are a couple of photos of the work prior to the fun part, the embroidery and futzing with embroidery floss, ribbon, beads and other goodies. I am still trying to work out a way to make a miniature wind chime. Her birthday is today, I am late and she will understand. She truly appreciates and uses hand made goods.

I used a single strand of Cascade 220 on size 10.5 US needles for the building of the cottage, and a single strand of Curious Creek Fibers Nakuru in Rock Grotto for the roof, shutters and door. I think I will put a hose in the backyard and another set of shutters and flowers, rather than just decorating one side. It will be seen from all sides and this is a true Irish tea drinking lady we're talking about!

You Are Gonzo the Great

"Is something burning in here? Oh, it's just me." You're a total nutball who will do anything for attention. The first to take a dare, you'll pull almost any stunt. You're one weird looking creature, but your chickens don't mind!

The Muppet Personality Test

Beginning A New Textile Collection

Saturday, Phil and I had the opportunity to be the first people to look at and purchase items from Estelle's large Textile Collection. This is the most prized piece, in my opinion, of many wonderful peices we purchased. It is Nigerian fabric dyed in indigo with sewn and tied resists. It is large enough to cover a queen size bed!

Estelle Carlson Leader on these Fiber Trails

The following is a statement of love that I delivered at a memorial service for an artist in the fiber arts community of Los Angeles and the United States as a whole. She was a teacher, a traveler and an inspiration to all who ever met her. Estelle Carlson was an internationally exhibited artist who died with courage and grace of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) better known as Lou Gherig’s Disease on October 27, 2005.

This blog comes from my desire to document my art and the great gifts of inspiration and looking at the world through new eyes that Estelle gave to me throughout her days of dying and upon her death in the bequeathing of her extensive textile reference library and looms to me. A gift I still am amazed to have.


For those that don't know me, I'm Kristine Brooks. I met Estelle only two years ago, as a student in a Shibori in a Jar workshop she taught in San Diego. My fiancé Phil and I helped her move to San Diego to be near her sister Cathy in October 2004, brought her back to Pasadena to visit Alfred (her ailing husband) many times while he was still with us as she was unable to drive any longer. Phil and I were part of her primary care giving team until she passed.

What always struck me about Estelle was her indomitable spirit. She never let her illness or difficulties break her will. Even as she lost the ability to do many of the things she loved to do, she didn’t dwell on the past, or mope. She always had plans.

A few weeks before she passed, she looked over the schedule for the Symphony season, and asked us to get her tickets to some upcoming performances, including up to next March (2006). One of those was for a performance of Beethoven's 9th Symphony, the Ode to Joy, which started at 2 P.M. today (December 11, 2005). If she was still with us, that is where she would be right now, listening to Beethoven at San Diego Symphony Hall with a rapturous smile on her face no doubt.



She was always about what is now and what is next, right up to her very last day. We spent the day before she died with her, and as we left that evening, she said to me one of the very few things she was able to clearly get out that day. She said "I will see you ... tomorrow." Estelle said this with that well known flourish of her hand that those of us who knew her have seen many times when she was happy.

She met every day with grace and optimism, and did what she could, and let go of what she could no longer do. That level of courage is, and has always been, rare. We each can only hope to be as strong when it is our time.