A Chalk and Cheese Collaboration: behind the scenes of creating The Gentle Roller

When Philip set out to help me, I wasn’t particularly obliging – he even remarked that I probably hoped he’d fail. He would ask questions: ‘well what makes this wool felt, or shrink more than this one’ or ‘what makes you lay the fibres this way and not that way?’ ‘What does using this particular shampoo with a certain PH do?’ I would respond with either ‘I don’t know…’ or ‘that’s the way I’ve always done it,’ which made me appear as though I had the IQ of a gnat  or that I made felt on automatic, not really understanding what I was doing. ‘I do it intuitively!!’ as a response seemed inadequate. I wasn’t even embarrassed about my ignorance. 

Philip has a different mindset – he likes to know how stuff works, and what he can do to make it work better. Whereas, I’m more ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ type of personality (and my body was broken and still I thought I could carry on as usual). So, Philip did his own research – to see what made wool tend to felt more than other fibres; as well as enquired into what we could do to enhance that tendency towards matting/felting – did using a shampoo with a particularly PH make a difference to how fast the wool felted, for instance. There were umpteen questions he set for himself to answer. For the past ten years, he’s been thinking about all sorts of ways to ‘automate’ felt making and to help me work more efficiently. But I wouldn’t take him seriously. I waved him off with 'I like to use my hands', or 'you can’t make it felt any faster'. ‘That’s just the way it is.’ 

I can’t tell you the amount of times we locked heads because of my stubbornness to try something new, which if you really look at it is not at all ‘creative’. However, my body is broken (yes no longer in denial), and my recovery has been slow. Four years and I still suffer from numbness to both legs, and from night cramps that sometimes keep me up. Something had to give – and it was my attitude. 

Throwing my felt in the dryer was never an option – because I’m too much of a control freak.  I looked at the Snowy Creek felt roller but thought it too expensive, and I wasn’t convinced that it would help me roll my sort of felt – which is very fine. I like to use merino-silk blends, slippery carrier fabrics, such as old saris, as well as embellishments, such as velvets or gold threads and edges torn from saris – using up the ‘scraps’, which are all so resistant to felting.  My coats and jackets require several tens of thousands of rolls before I'm satisfied with the quality of the felt fabric. 

The Cooper sisters modelling Passion 
in the Square Coat (right), and (left)
the Summer Mosaic jacket

Philip worked closely with me – watching the way I made felt. We made samples – laying wool in different ways, using different surfactants in the felting solution, and over the months of testing and research, his prototype changed in shape and materials, as he was inspired to take his design to the next level. Now, that's a creative mind in overdrive... 

Philip, with one of the first protoypes.

When I made a large production run of scarves, I worked with an assistant, and Philip and the assistant monitored the roller – that’s how unrefined it was at the time. Now I can leave the GR and get on with other things. I don’t have to watch it, neither does anyone else. 

We’ve come a long way in two years, not least in the way we work together. It’s never been an easy collaboration, as we are chalk and cheese as human beings. And along the way I’ve come to admire and respect Philip’s skills and his determination to make things work, or to try something new – like make felt. I was prepared to give up and try something less back breaking – book-binding, consoling myself with the thought 'you love books'. Never mind that I really like making felt fabric too or that I'd be forsaking a passion. 

When Philip went to China last time round to finalize the ‘production version’ of the Gentle Roller, I prepared several scarves for him to test out, as I was unable to make the trip with him. We stabilized them with 1000 rolls or so, on a GR prototype, so the scarves could travel. While in China Philip felted the scarves using the roller and the fulling drum, with some instruction from me through Wechat ('How do I know the pre-felt is ready?'... 'I can't see the fibres coming through...' And from my end of the screen it was difficult to judge the pre-felt). The scarves weren’t perfectly done according to my finicky standards, but almost.

Gotta take off our felted hats to him for caring enough to take up the challenge of working with me despite all my moans, objections and hesitations, to make my felt-making, as well as every other felt-maker's, less dependent on tedious manual rolling…and for sticking with the project in spite of hiccups and hurdles along the way. Not least the one before us now of getting others to support us as we go forward into production ...

You can visit Kickstarter to pre-order The Gentle Roller.

Below is 'Blooper 5' from our Blooper selection - a window of insight into the Chalk and Cheese every day battle. 

The Year of Downsizing

‘Downsizing’ - one of these post-modern words with undeniably horrible connotations, and which can include situations where people are given incentives to take early retirement. It usually happens to businesses – now it also seems to happen to ordinary folk living in large houses. But is this just another inevitable step along the trajectory towards death? I quipped considering the move, that it would be the last before the nursing home or the graveyard.

We went from a McMansion in the West to a rambling house in the hills – and now a small bungalow in the more suburban part of the hills called Emerald, which has its special charms, among which is the Puffing Billy steam railway. 

The hardest thing was packing up my studio… No, that’s not entirely true, as the hardest thing was saying goodbye to Granddad tree, which included a ‘merging’ by shaman and body artist Orly Faya. This was a non-negotiable condition that I placed on moving, as I feel true kinship with this mountain eucalypt. It is like an ancestor that has taught me much about belonging.

The merge with Granddad Tree

Orly Faya painting Joni into a merge  with Granddad Tree

On the last day, when I said goodbye to the house in Ferny Creek and noted aloud to it all the things which had required my time and energy – how I chose this paint colour, how I sewed these curtains, how Philip and I laid these floor boards…it was in thanksgiving. It was to say how much I loved living here and what time and effort had gone into making it a home, as well as with what sadness it was to leave.

I told Granddad tree to behave – ‘don’t go dropping limbs or you’ll find yourself severely maimed’. When I knew I would never return, I said my goodbye. It was raining heavily and it seemed while I stood there at its giant girth, that it was raining tears on me. (Apologies if I bring up clichéd images of sadness and rain, particularly in Bollywood films.)

We’ve gone from a house where we had 7 sofas (we weren’t counting but was alerted to the fact by a visitor) to a house where can barely fit two in the lounge room. But in the scheme of things sofas don’t count. I miss my studio. While I packed I had it in mind to re-create something much like I had at Ferny Creek but perhaps this will not be possible. I feel as this relocation has taken up the bulk of the year – you don’t just put your house on the market, you put your life on hold, as well. I’m still unable to unpack my studio and it doesn’t seem that the situation will right itself for some time.

Now getting used to the new surroundings. The chooks seem to like their ‘cubby house’, which is very spacious. Albeit I’ve noticed Maudie dog and Bud cat rather melancholic. Are they too missing the studio views onto the garden? Maudie hasn’t a door of her own to slip in and out as she wishes. Bud’s outdoor activities have been curtailed, as he’s not allowed to go out at all but must amuse himself as an indoor cat.

Philip quickly built a new pond for our goldfish; and we had tradies around to make modifications to the house, including putting in a new gas pipe to accommodate a hydronics heating system, and more recently I had a red kitchen installed to replace an inadequate nonfunctional one. I couldn’t seem to take any pan out of the narrow cupboards without a whole bunch of other stuff crashing to the floor - and the cussing that went along with it. Red I thought would cheer us all up…I drew inspiration from Matisse, who said: “…I find that all these things…only become what they are to me when I see them together with the colour red.”

A new geranium red kitchen, not quite finished

Our experience of things in the new house will become what they are to us, when we see them together with the colour red, because red is a colour that boldly announces to you that it is there. It warms and delights. 

I have been in love with the colour red since an infant, when my mother dressed me in blue, unaware that it produced a violent physiological reaction that made me feel cold. I longed for red, and when I was able to choose my own clothes, took pleasure in getting together a 'little red outfit', which consisted of red slacks and a red lambswool jumper. There I was, not quite little red riding hood, but little girl in her red outfit embarking along her own path...
...

Back at the new place, in the shed among other paint cans and turps, I came across some Annie Sloane chalk paint and sealing wax, which the previous owner kindly left behind.  I didn't pay attention at first, but one day I woke up and thought 'ah chalk paint, I must find out what that stuff is'.  Admittedly, such sad colours (hardly colour at all) such as ‘Paris Grey’ and ‘Old White’, but still colours which I can utilize to familiarize myself with a new hobby of painting furniture. Chalk paint doesn't require sanding or stripping back the old varnish or paint - you can just slap it on right over the old layer. Just my sort of paint.  The hard work of stripping back the varnish on the bench top in the kitchen at Ferny Creek to make it more appealing before the sale,  was enough to have put me off 'restoration' for life. And yet here I am with lights in my eyes, contemplating painting furniture. 

I have my eye on a green called exotically, ‘Antibes’, for an antique dining room cabinet, which will hold itself up very well next to the geranium red of the kitchen cabinets, even though Annie Sloane advises a more sedate olive to accommodate red, which should also be used quite sparingly.  Obviously she's never come across Matisse! So, these are the things to keep my hands and mind occupied.  While fumbling around trying to buy sand paper one Sunday morning, I gratefully received a quick lesson about sandpaper from a nice man in the local trades store – for that distressed look so in vogue upon furniture. Thus, I have not been idle without a studio...

And ordinary life stuff has happened in the meantime, too.  Maudie dog has been sick with a stomach bug and other allergies.  Funny as it sounds I've had to start giving her a 'toilette' … Colour, however, through these ups and downs, continues to rule, influence, delight and heal… 

How things can change over 12 months. This time last year Philip was recuperating from Deep Brain Stimulation surgery and I was his ‘elephant touch’ carer. During the time of recuperation we lived mainly in two rooms - the bedroom and the kitchen, so it was the beginning of the end, when we realized we could certainly make do with less ...

Then my father passed away and ... well, grief is hard to process and put into words and it doesn't seem to have spent itself...perhaps I've managed to pack it up somewhere with all my other studio stuff still at Fort Knox self storage, and rue the day when I come across it in some cardboard box and have to unpack it...

However, up on the horizon, is a secret project that has been humming in the background tone of things for almost two years, which I’ll tell you about very soon…


Acknowledgement:
Thanks and gratitude to Danuta Ephemeralart for the support and photos taken during the Granddad merge.