Textile Museum

I may have mentioned this before, but I can't say it enough. I fricking love Toronto and the entire surrounding area. It has to be one of the best places in the world for a knitter to be. On Friday, I managed to convince the DH to visit the Textile Museum of Canada in Toronto because I missed going on Thursday. I didn't have very high expectations for knitted items because they don't have very many in their online collection. Boy was I wrong!

Let's start at the beginning. Well, at the very beginning, I woke up at 5:30am to drive to the airport to pick up the poor boy. We went back to Lisa's (and Richard's, I guess he lives there too, but he doesn't knit) for a short nap before hair cutting. Hair cutting was... a disaster, but let's forget about that for now. We made our way to the Bata Shoe Museum which was pretty damn neat. I discovered that my favorite living shoe designer is Louboutin which I had already suspected (what is it about the red soles that is so compelling?), but no I'm not going to start buying his shoes. That would be absurd.

What I found really disturbing were the shoes for Chinese women with bound feet. I have read about foot binding, but I didn't really understand what it entailed until I saw the shoes and did a double take when I read that they were for full grown women and not children. Apparently, the ideal foot size was 3 inches long. THREE INCHES. Think about that for a moment. Disgusting. Okay, moving on.

We made our way over to the Textile Museum, and it was even better than I had hoped. The museum is very small and the exhibits are on the second and third floors. The first room had a lot of information about various fibers. Here's Schmoopie fondling fibers. He had a fun time making me feel the fibers in the numbered boxes and trying to guess what they were. I can't tell the different wools apart to save my ass, and the fibers weren't processed which made it very difficult to feel the differences. I failed hemp and alpaca.

I thought this display of various naturally dyed yarns was cool, considering I had just dyed a bunch of yarn the previous night (though not naturally).

What really made me wish I lived in the area was the equipment they had. There were needles and yarn, looms, and a spinning wheel for anyone who wanted to give it a go.

I did a few rows (I don't even know the correct terminology here) on the loom and loved it. I knew it was time to back away from the loom. No need for further addiction here.

We went through what they had in the permanent collection which was very inspiring, but not much knitting. Then we moved on to the Shadow Box exhibit which includes a bunch of "boxes" or wood frames that many artists designed around. Each one is being auctioned off. One of our favorites was the Studio Reno Jellyfish by Kirk Dunn. And I liked the pretty reds of a quilt inspired one.

There was also a paper mache chicken and other neat boxes. Lots of them used fibers in various ways.

I don't know how I almost missed this one, but DH was all "Don't you love that one?!"

You can see all the boxes here.

We passed a poster for a Kaffe Fasset exhibit, and I just about shouted with glee until DH pointed out that the date was in 1994. It was an old poster, and those pieces were no longer there. However, one of the current exhibits is Fray and included a lot of contemporary knitted art.

First up, we have some fibrous furniture:

Then, we saw Sassmunk, Sassquog, and Sassfag by Allyson Mitchell. These immediately made me think of Stephanie's post about a stash weasel. See the resemblance, no?

Come on, this dude is scary looking!

The next few pieces were body parts. We've got phalanges, vertebrae and brain:

I'm not sure what these are, but the fact that they are made with human hair creeped the DH.

DH loved the title of this one. It ain't gonna lick itself also by Allyson Mitchell. I couldn't photograph the whole thing, so I took shots of the breasts and crotch area, of course.

Another work by Allyson Mitchell, named Orangina:

There were some abstract knitted pieces that I thought looked interesting. I wouldn't mind decorating the home with stuff like this, but I don't have enough space. This is about a yard wide:

And last but not least was a set of large knitted art by
Kathryn Ruppert-Dazai, these were really big, maybe 5 feet on each side?

Twin white, I don’t love you (2005)

The conversation (2005)

I don't remember the name of this one.

I really loved the visit to the museum, especially how the artists thought outside the box of traditional applications for knitting. The abstraction was really inspiring, and I hope this helps me push my own boundaries when I think about knitting. If you're ever in Toronto with some time to spare, I heartily recommend a visit!