SELVEDGE MAGAZINE

My cousin, Diane, who is two years older than me and therefore wiser, has come to visit overnight with her husband, Ham (short for Hamilton). More about this later maybe, but right now I’m in an kind of ecstatic trance induced by a pile of magazines called “Selvedge” which describes itself as “the fabric of your life: textiles in fashion, fine art, interiors, travel and shopping.” The website begins with an animated flip-through of the mag which will tell you more than any description of mine. A quick set of other websites is below, each a delight to look at and think about, regardless of what you might actually order from them. I included a short snippet of their self-descriptions.

www/selvedge.org
Selvedge Magazine... offers the world’s finest textile photography, unparalleled design and peerless writing

Open a copy of Selvedge and you sense there is a philosophy that Selvedge readers subscribe to. A belief system based on a cerebral and sensual addiction to textiles in all forms. Readers share a belief in the importance of their material surroundings and a passion for the beautiful and beautifully made.

Our aim is simple: to provide a textile publication which fits seamlessly into their creative lifestyle. Directed towards an international, discerning audience, Selvedge covers fine textiles in every context: fine art, interiors, fashion, travel and shopping. Selvedge Magazine... offers the world’s finest textile photography, unparalleled design and peerless writing.

http://www.loopknitting.com
Loop is a knitters heaven that has to do with all things 'knit', with knitting and crochet classes, gorgeous and quirky knit homeware, knit accessories, haberdashery and vintage buttons.

What is your dream fibre?
I have so many favourite fibres, it's hard to choose. But if I were pressed, I would have to say our Synchcronicity. A blend of silk and merino, aran weight, it is a single ply fibre with unbelievable luminosity and depth.

http://www.alchemyyarns.com
Alchemy is the creation of Gina Wilde, a sculptor, painter and fibre artist; and Austin Wilde, a former marketing executive and musician. Nestled in the rolling hills of Sonoma County, California, between the vineyards and the old apple orchards, Alchemy is a funky little fibre farm. As a work family, we custom create every skein of Alchemy with love and attention. Our intent is to share our passion for colour, natural fibre, and contemporary design with artists around the world.

http://www.rickettsindigo.com/
Contemporary science tells us that color is a sensation experienced because of the differing wavelengths of light waves. To me this is only part of the story. As an artist, my sensation of color is also informed by that color's material substance and the process that gives color form for me to reflect upon.

Materialized from the soil, rain, and air around them, plants physically embody place. Plants also embody their individual histories, as well as the history of their species and its interactions with humans. Using gathered and cultivated plants as dyes I transfer their color to cloth with traditional dyeing techniques honed over centuries. The colors obtained are enriched by each plant's historical, cultural, and physical substance as well as by the connection across time to all who ever worked within these traditions.

www.clothalolics.com
We sell authentic vintage and new Japanese silk kimono, imported from Japan so that you can buy with confidence, knowing that you are purchasing not just an elegant piece of clothing, but a future heirloom. We have a wide range of Japanese silk kimono fabrics in various weights and weaves: damasks, crepes, ikats, tie-dyes, etc. We've also got a small selection of hemp/cotton blends and fine wool fabrics.

http://foglinenwork.com/
Fog Linen Work produces a large line of linen products for the home and linen clothing.
Its products are leading and defining the natural life style trend in Japan today.
Sekine continues to be inspired to create beautiful simple products for daily use.
Ads always include linens and yellow cats:


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My aesthetic innards are torn between the simple, spare, enduring, pale lines of a Montana winter horizon and the hysterical, brilliant, pow-in-the-eye of Blackfeet fancy dancers. I mean, I really cannot decide which is my true preference and I don’t want to. But I want to run my hands and eyes over all these surfaces from French ticking pocket dolls to living Japanese yellow cats on linen squares. This mag gives me Russian peasants so swaddled in layers of quilted coat that they look like matryoshka dolls, all in red, yellow, purple; and then desert nomads draped in taureg blue.

Also, a lot of really weird stuff that is pretty much of a puzzle when one tries to figure out what to do with it. A lot of strange spindley coffee-brown rag dolls in intricate dresses and at least once a row of lambs in bright sweaters with pompoms on them. Things are both witty and comforting, as in the felted wool tea cosies in the shape of sheep with black velvet faces and ears. Once was a series of knitted balls, each with an exquisitely embroidered bright “moth” or “butterfly” on it. Calling them “mothballs,” the creator could suggest no particular uses. Mary Emmerling, my fav interior decorator, would put them on a brass tray in front of the sofa, just to admire and touch. Isn’t that enough?

These are items of “material” culture: silk, wood, bamboo, alpaca fibers plus whatever else an inventive person could think of. But for me, here in this village, it puts my hands on the kind of yarn worth working with. I can find ideas for things like used denim, either to overlay into a bricolage of patches or to tear into strips sewn together to make a rag rug. Recycling is in, but with a luxury touch, maybe a little gleam of something copper-colored, a brass button.

Diane remembered my reading chair, which was once my mother’s chair bought when she married in 1938. Right now it sports an unfinished corduroy slipcover, bright orange, overlaid with the Navajo blanket Tina Giovanni sent me, and fortified with a down pillow for the small of my back. The pillow is covered and ruffle-edged with orange material I bought so many years ago that it’s faded, which we think adds to the richness. The images on it are from India: elephants, flowering trees, and men in turbans. Diane and I like is the textures -- velvety cotton, strong wool, shiny cotton -- the various oranges, and the jokes of India Indian on Navajo Indian and of sweet and puffy ruffles against severe geometry.

The magazine called Selvedge (self/edge) is expensive but, oh, what a wealth of networking! I don't know how Diane could bear to give me so many issues! Thanks, Diane!