Welcome to the inside of my brain

Normal people look at this and say “oh dear, don’t you EVER clean your lint trap?” I find it next to the laundry sink, dried out, because whoever took it off didn’t bother to throw it away (cough cough I am pretty sure I know who) and say WHOA LOOK AT THAT!
So here’s my idea. I need to enlist as many friends with laundry sinks as possible to help me make more, because I thought of a really cool art piece to make with them.
If you have the kind of laundry tub where the tube from the washer empties out into it, you know what I mean and you probably already use these. Want to help? Comment, and I’ll get a new one out to you with a postage-paid return envelope. You just have to let it fill up all the way, like this one, and let it dry out completely before mailing it in (otherwise…gah).
Bonus points if you’ve just felted a bunch of stuff and it’s full of woolbits! (Dye is going to be involved at some point)
Lately I’ve realized I’ve been slacking with the fine art pieces. I don’t do many unless there’s a specific show coming up, or an idea strikes like this one. But with the One Million Stitches project going, and how I spent this last weekend, I’ve got an art art itch to scratch.
(On Friday I got a call from my favorite studio neighbor announcing he’d gotten us a present but it was really heavy and could I please come help bring it up from the loading dock? It was a 1980s Flintstones vending machine, and we ended up spending the entire weekend making it over into an art vending machine. It’s fully functional, and we filled the eggs with candy and some other silly prizes just to get it done in time for an event at our studio building, but the Big Plan is to make art for inside each egg…)

Here it is in all its glory. Fred will probably be replaced eventually, but again, it was a question of timing.
I’d forgotten how fun it was to take stuff apart and turn it into something new and unexpected. I got to do things I don’t normally do day to day, like paint, and cut plexiglass, and use an orbital sander. It was a really good reset switch for my fiber brain because it got me thinking about things in new ways. So, as I said when it arrived: best. present. ever.
Sometimes you find beauty and inspiration in some really weird places.

Tagged with: Knitting