So many unexpected and exciting opportunities have arisen for us since opening the shop. The latest is the Ipswich Beanie Project.
The Ipswich Art Gallery are currently exhibiting a selection of beanies from ten years of the Alice Springs Beanie Festival. We were honoured to be invited by the gallery to create a beanie which symbolises Ipswich and which we hope to enter in the beanie comp next year.
Our mission has been to incorporate community ideas (collected in suggestion boxes, in Cultiver, the Art Gallery and at The Swich Contemporary Art Space) and work these in with our own vision. It's a rather daunting task to create a piece which captures and represents the spirit of our home town but we have relished the challenge.
We were determined to source our raw materials from local small businesses and other local makers, so we have used homespun wool from our lovely stockist Mieke and all the tiny people were purchased just down the road from us at Voglers. Kyla has revealed herself as something of a crotchet genius (she only learned about three months ago). She whizzed up the beanie and has constructed a miners lamp and native flowers with nothing but a crotchet hook and some 8ply merino and I have been able to indulge my obsession with needle felting, making tiny wee trees for the tiny people to sit beneath. I don't want to give away too much before the unveiling next Friday but here's some shots of the little scenes we've assembled on top of the beanie:
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| family portrait |
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| the old folks |
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| farm peeps out for the day |
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| knock off time at the railways |
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| a man and his machine |
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| and here's the aerial view. |
Stay tuned for the big reveal next week and some pics of Kyla's amazing work.
x Bec
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