Slowly slowly with pegs

 I have been saving the threads I have solar dyed from the gardens and kitchen both here and in Scotland for several years now.  They have been randomly wrapped on old pegs, labeled with hasty calligraphy and left in bags and boxes. Waiting.

I suddenly realised that for one of my exhibitions next year, that they might come into their own; so I brought them out of their cupboard and began to play around with ideas and notions.

I must admit, just spending time with them, selecting complementary ones from Scotland and Australia and gathering them together has been a delight.

The original pegs - a mix of square and round heads, messy labels and quite random wrapping of threads. Some pegs look like they have trousers on!

As mentioned, I really do enjoy their company and how they look - I think they are forever photogenic.

But those labels were bugging me, so I created new ones, and made them tidier. Much happier.

I also re-wound them so that they are more uniform in the wrapping, and unwound them from round headed pegs all onto square headed pegs.

And because I haven't yet worked out how their labels will be attached, I wrapped teeny weeny rubber bands around them to hold label, peg and thread together in the interim.

And then I lined them up and thought they were looking rather rigid and less lively than before. Less lively was OK because they were too wild for me before, but now they just looked a bit too tight.

And so I started unwinding a few threads and thought now we are beginning to play and breathe again.

And then because I thought the warm white background might be a bit bland, I tried out some grey paper, which I think has potential.

Of course, this all happened over hours and over days as I meditatively wound and unwound threads, played with positioning and responded to how they looked by trying some new things. The piece is well underway, but there are still quite a few issues to resolve and decisions to be made.

Slowly, but I hope, surely, we will get there.