This gallery contains 24 photos.
I’ve been a busy crocheter this winter. Since Christmas I’ve managed to pump out some pretty cute pieces. This is the Valentines collection. If you’re interested in purchasing, please just DM me on facebook or comment here. You can also reach me at created@justydennis.com. I accept email money transfer and cash.
My Gido (grandfather) came to Canada as a young man from Kyiv, Ukraine. His name was Myroslaw Nalesnyk, which he later changed to Maurice to fit in better. He met my Baba (grandmother), Nelly Chomyn, in Saskatchewan and they were married and had four children. My mother, Olga was the oldest. Then there was John, William and Orlene. They’ve all passed away but one and he has been astranged from the family for so long that I don’t even know where he is. That is the historical information about my Ukrainian roots.
There is so much more I’d like to say about my grandparents. They lived in Toronto while we grew up in northern Ontario. They would come to visit and bring a trunk full of presents for us. Mostly, I remember the dark, fresh cherries and the Toronto Kovbassa (kielbassa) that you can only find in Toronto. Any other sausage just doesn’t measure up. One time, my Gido was working in textile factory and he brought a trunk full of suede scraps for my mother. She worked for weeks to sew together full length suede coats for all five of us girls. With fur around the collar and cuffs, we felt like little queens. I wish I had a picture of them because they were just so lovely.
These are the good memories I have of my grandparents and they are the reason I have a fierce connection to my Ukrainian roots and a heart full of sadness and anger for what the Russian army is doing to the Motherland and my people.
Earlier this year I raised $500 by crocheting and selling blue and yellow hearts. I still don’t feel like I ‘ve done enough and I want to continue crocheting for Ukraini. In the previous post I mentioned the sunflowers I was working on. I made 250 of them and installed them at the Ukrainian Embassy in Ottawa, Ontario. My heart filled with joy in bringing joy and sunshine to the gates of the embassy. Staff were appreciative and thanked me and I told them it was for them and my Baba and Gido and for all of Ukraine.
A week later and all of the sunflowers (save a few in a dark back corner of the fence around the embassy) have remained where I placed them. It is highly unusual for a yarnbomb to stay intact for over a week. I want to attribute it to respect for a war torn country. I won’t make it mean anything about me because, none of this is about it. It’s about solidarity and frustration over a situation that I cannot change. BUT I can stand with the people and express my camaraderie, compassion and hope for a better tomorrow.
SLAVA UKRAINI !
I’ve made art my entire life. I’m really not myself or grounded if I am not creating something. But my art alone has never amounted to me sustaining myself. I’ve always had to hold down a day job that has very little to do with my creativity. I love my job, I just would rather spend as much time on my art as I do on my day job. We all have our drathers.
Lately, I have seen a surge in sales from my creativity. I feel good knowing that people love what I do and are willing to pay for my time and effort. I’ve really loved the crochet Easter Parade and have sold 90% of everything I’ve created. That is a new level for me and I can’t ignore it.
I also can’t ignore that I’ve been able to find a balance in creativity. I almost always feel guilty for not painting as much as I should. And, tonight I’m working on crocheted sunflowers and also a homemade ramen with crab, chinese greens and thai basil.
I want to include all of my creativty in the kitchen, in the studio and sitting hooking in the living room. Just to be clear, hooking is endearingly referred to as the act of crocheting as well as working in the sex trade. I’m of the chrocheting genre, just to be clear. Now, the trick is to sneak in a painting or two and feel even more balanced.
So tonight’s blog, after two glasses of wine is entitled, “Hooking and Ramen”. I really went all out in the kitchen and am currently working on a Ukrainian sunflower yarnbomb. Could life get any better?
I am coming out of the funk that goes by the name of “Pandemic. You would think with all the extra time I had to myself that I would have painted more, crocheted more, created more, but I barely did any of that. Sure I crocheted 500 lollipops in 2020 but because of the pandemic I couldn’t pull off a yarnbomb safely for me and others. 2020 proved to be a very grief filled year for me in that I lost my Mom in May and my dog on Christmas Eve. Looking back, I can now say that I need to cut myself some slack and not worry about how productive I was. I came through it all and now….
Now that restrictions are lifted, my fingers are ferociously hooking up a storm. I’ve created an Easter parade of larger amigurumi and I’ve also raised over $500 for Ukrainian Humanitarian Emergency by crocheting blue and yellow hearts.
I always get pulled back to crochet and people seem to really love it. They’ve loved the Easter Parade so much that I can barely keep up but I will do my very best.
I am working on a Spring yarnbomb because those lollipops have to go somewhere! If I get the go ahead from the location I want, you can look for Lollipalooza sometime in May. In the meantime, enjoy the parade. And yes I do take requests but remember, I only have 4 fingers and two thumbs and I hold down a day job soooooo, it won’t be a fast amigurumi fix for anyone. I’ve said this for years but it holds so true since 2020, “patience is no longer a virtue, it is a necessity.”
You can view additions to my Easter Parade and other collections in my Facebook Album
You have seen the posters, heard the buzz and now I’ll fill you in a little bit more. Otown Bombers will be doing a yarnbomb in downtown Ottawa on May 22nd.
The object of their affection? Yup…crocheted lollipops. These will not give you cavities or a sugar rush but they will lift your spirits after yet another lockdown. That is our hope and intention.
We will add some colour to the drabbiest downtown neighborhood. Yup, I love my hood but it has really taken a beating during the pandemic. We will be yarnbombing mostly Bank Street and sides streets off Bank.
One place in particular that doesn’t need much improvement is High Jinx but we are bombing them anyway just because we love them and they have a perfect front garden. You’ve been warned Karen and Leigh!
If you have a suggestion of a place that is just screaming for a little colourful love just reach out to Justy and we will see what we can do. Also, if the lockdown is not lifted then Lollipalooza will have to be rescheduled, again 😦
I’ve tried and tried to quit hooking but something always draws me back to it. It’s like an addiction that can’t be fixed. It’s like an itch that can’t be scratched. And when I get the idea to hook again nothing , and I mean nothing, can stop me. And, it goes on for ages and ages and I can’t seem to pull myself out of it. Thankfully I can be easily distracted by bigger, shinier things, but, don’t kid yourself…I will be back to hooking in no time at all.
No, this is not the confession of a secret sex worker. This is the admission of a highly skilled and addicted crocheter. As many of you may know, I am the founder and creator of the Otown Bombers, a yarnbombing group that took the city by storm way back in 2012, when we covered a bus in crochet. Since then we have created our own projects, almost been arrested twice, and have been hired to yarnbomb places such as the National Arts Centre and shops like A Curious Thing. We’ve all been pretty scattered for the past few years but we are still avid hookers and bombers. We annually yarnbomb Dundonald Park because it is where we did most of our hooking as a group on sunny Sunday afternoons.
I had an itch to bomb in January so I began a private endeavor in my apartment building. Our building has been through so much in the past year but the icing on top of it all happened in December when we were subjected to daily false fire alarms and mostly very early in the morning, 3 am to 7 am. They finally caught the person pulling the alarm as an act of revenge on an ex who lives in the building, but the moral and energy levels of tenants was evidently depleted.
So, I hooked. I crocheted 110 different appliques with magnets, attached them and instructions to a game I invented called, Doorsy, and just launched the game yesterday, February 26th, 2021. So far, I have had a lot of positive feedback. The goal of this game is to boost the moral of my neighbors and collectively bring us closer together in trust and love of play!
I guess I should clarify, that the relationship between hooking and crochet is the crochet hook itself as the implement for the creation of such vibrant and delectable yarn projects. You know, just in case you’re still scratching your head about the opening paragraph.
Here are some of the various magnets I made.
As we all plummet into a new lockdown let us all remind ourselves what creative, enduring and wonderful creatures we all are. In honour of that fact, I’m taking a course with Patti Normand to delve into the world of sculpture. I’m learning how to make figures at the moment. I’m totally turned on and excited for each new instruction. I’ll do my best to add updates. Here is the first step….you saw it here first!
I’ve come to a place in my artistic life where I need to jerk myself away from the traps of technology and just shutter down for a bit.
My son visited me a few weeks ago. He came to spend time with his mother and to kiss his babies goodbye. See, for quite a few years he has been collecting some rather impressive vinyl. If I had appreciated them like he does I would not have asked him to get them out of my house. He gave them snuggles and then sold them all before heading back to Calgary. It was very hard on him. But it took spending several days listening to them with him to really get it. THIS SHIT IS GOOD. And his eclectic variety in music still makes me shake my head.
After he left to go home to his beautiful wife, my two sisters, the oldest and the youngest, descended upon my home to visit me and my mother who lives one floor above me. She has dementia so I am working hard to give her as much independence as she can have for as long as she can have it. That was a beautiful weekend and I loved the true feeling of family that I came away with.
This is week one of nobody in my home and I thought for sure I would dive into the studio and start the next project. My team, The Otown Bombers, had completed a yarnbombing of an entire park three weeks ago. I am proud to say we broke a record with this one. No media coverage this time, but I did post our own signs requesting that, while we know our stuff is awesome, could you possibly leave it for two weeks before you steal it so that the whole community can enjoy our art form. I also posted a Thank You at the four corners of the park to the Algonquin for the use of their land. It was a good bomb.
But I did not dive into a new project, I ignored the studio for two days but finally went in with the intention of tidying it as it had become a dumping ground. That done, you would think I would be inspired to start a new creation right? With a pinch of shame I say I was not inspired. I dragged my ass for 5 days more.
Tonight, as I walked down the hallway I caught myself peeking into the studio. I walked back to the living room and sat my big ass on the couch to watch tv. After 30 minutes of that felt uneasy. I went past the studio again and said to myself, “Don’t go in there.” Then I heard myself ask myself, ” What are you afraid of?” And my damn self replied, “If I go in I may never want to come out.”
This is the reason my life feels so mundane lately. I’m not feeding my soul, my calling, my intelligence and passion. I’m stuffing it with digital, meaningless and utterly consuming techgarbage. TV, Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, asscheck, spitneck, when the heck this shit gonna let me alone! Realistically, I had to ask my own self, ” when am I going to walk away?”
That would be today. I am challenging myself to pay attention to the artist that I am. Realistically I know in this day and age and my level of discipline, that I cannot walk away permanently. I am connected to a lot of special people through technology that I otherwise wouldn’t have the resources or energy to stay connected to people I love.
So, what am I willing to do? Well, sitting here listening to my son’s Rolling Stones, Black and Blue, I am willing to trade one noise for another. I will be replacing the the hum of the internet for the scratchy whispers of all the vinyl in my possesion and if I run out, I’ll just buy some more and learn to appreciate the passion of collecting music like my son. I challenge myself to leave my tv off for 30 days. No more News, Netflix, Crave etc. that keep me bound to a big screened idiot box. I will refrain from social media. I will post nothing. If in an urgent moment, only private messages to save a life or help someone. I can do anything else I chose while listening to music. I am allowed to listen to music online but no videos.
Now, that I’m blogging about this is kinda oxymoronic, yes? Ummm yeah, and it will be my last public post for 30 days beginning June 1st. My birthday falls within the 30 day challenge but if I don’t do it now I know I never will.
You ever have one of those moments where the idea is larger than you logic or fear? This is one of mine.
I hope this made some sense to fellow creatives who get or are snarled in the morass of THE MUNDANE. It happens more often than our free frolic but I do hope this is a way for me to push myself past the swamp and onto the beach.
Justy Dennis 