perpetual spring

may 2012

see it in progress

project: ice cream party

This project was a collaboration between addoley and lyndon in conjunction with graduate students from Washington University's Sam Fox School.

                       

We've noticed that ice cream seems to have a way of heightening emotion and bringing people together. Think to the familiar image of a woman who has just experienced painful rejection crying over a pint of ice cream, or to the other extreme, an image of children chasing an ice cream truck.

A cinnamon heath ice cream played a major role in getting addoley and lyndon together nearly eight years ago in Baltimore. So in this vein, an e-mail was sent requesting proposals for flavors. These flavors were curated down to six:

avocado lime

pink peppercorn honey

bourbon date

cucumber melon

lemongrass vanilla rum

chocolate irish car bomb

Flavors were chosen for their creativity and deliciousness potential - with practical concerns factoring in to weed out flavors involving expensive or meat-based ingredients. Over the course of a month, addoley and lyndon spent many days creating and tasting, inviting participants and other friends to an ice cream party in the afternoon on May 15, 2012. 

By creating homemade ice cream in flavors that were invented (and not commercially available), we sought to create a unique and enriching ice cream experience for our community of friends, which include lyndon's classmates and my coworkers.

side effects for some

you ate it, now rate it
participants rated each flavor on a scale of 1 to 5

my personal favorite

after everyone left, we made milkshakes.

darn it!

 a new project

my very first darn job - may 2012

I think a lot about waste. How I waste. What we waste. Wasted time and wasted money.

And then I had beautiful-but-holey socks that I didn't want to throw away...which led to this project.

Background:

For the past few years, I've primarily been wearing wool socks (specifically smartwool socks) because they are ridiculously comfortable, and when you walk a lot, you need comfortable socks. I like the idea of merino wool: its naturalness and renewability, its thermal and odor-resistant properties (I wear these socks many times before washing them!), its resistance to dirt, and the fact that it grows on sheep.

I first learned about the wonders of merino while living in New Zealand, where sheep are a pretty big deal. L worked in menswear in a department store, and Icebreaker (one of the NZ brands they sold) let each employee pick out any item from their catalog. He got an amazingly thin but warm hoodie that he still loves to wear five years later. It was an incredible to get that for free because, in case you didn't know, merino wool is pretty expensive - but definitely worth it.

It's interesting to think back to the (before mass production) past, when clothes were precious because there were laborious hand-processes required to make or have them made. To make wool socks, someone would have to shear a sheep, wash the wool, hand card it and spin it to make a yarn, dye it and then knit it. After all that, it would be insane to toss a pair of socks out because of a hole. 

So back to my socks. They were expensive (relatively) and treasured, and I didn't want to waste. During a visit to Portland back in January, my mentor Erica Edwards of Quotable Content showed me a wool pair she had darned that had felted together nicely. My mom had talked about darning her underwear during hard times in her twenties, and though, thankfully, times are not too hard for me at the moment, I decided to follow in the footsteps of a tradition of repair and give my socks a longer life. 

I happened to have an orange ball of wool yarn. So I darned them.* And then I darned another pair, and soon enough I could wear those socks again without my toe poking out. I liked the contrast of the new yarn to the old, that it added to the visibility of my work...knowing and seeing that I had done that.

Proposal:

This is where you come in. Send me a worn or holey pair of socks that you love and I will repair them (for free), photograph them, and send them back to you. 

Near the top right of this page is an "E-mail: Click Here" button. E-mail me to get the address to send them to. Tell your friends and co-workers. Send them to this page if they want to know the background story. My only requests are that you only send one pair, and that I can choose whatever color of yarn that I darn well please.

Thank you!

click here to see the darn it sock gallery




*Darning is the name for the method of repairing holes or worn areas in knitting or fabric using a needle and a thread (of a similar material to the original garment).  

work in progress

may 2012

I loathe styrofoam, but a few slabs of it came with some furniture we bought, so I've been putting it to good (re)use in the studio as a surface to organize and photograph on . 


The sunlight was trickling in beautifully through the blinds and across the floor as I snipped away with my favorite scissors. Meanwhile, the B was hanging out in the studio too, now that the semester is over...busy with his needlework project. 


I should have more photos soon as this project progresses.

In other news:

Scripts and Systems

If you happen to be in Lexington, KY between May 24th and July 15th, you can see this piece.
Lexington Art League @ Loudoun House: 

209 Castlewood Drive

 Lexington, KY 40505