A Pocket for Juniper, Emily

A Pocket for Juniper.
Emily.
Needle felted Wool.

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about this piece.
Emily describes her piece, "Sometime back in the fall I started to knit a blanket for my baby-to-be. The white alpaca yarn shed like mad. That shedding, and my knitting attention deficit disorder (KADD) made me give up on it after about 15 inches. So I decided to maybe use it as a car seat liner. I tried felting it in the washer to make it less fuzz spreading and it shrunk to an almost useless size. It sat on top of the dryer and floated around the sewing room for months. I picked it up the other day and decided to make something out of it.

"Needle felting is one of my many crafty ventures. The delightful stabbing motion also helps alleviate some of the rage I feel towards...well, most of the universe. I decided to needle felt a pocket and then realized it was the perfect size for my precious pictures. The name comes from one of Nigel's favorite books 'A pocket for Corduroy.'

"Spirals are something I connect to. I practiced spiral breathing to help me through most of the unbearable pain, both physical and emotional, of Junipers death and birth. Spiral breathing also helps me get to sleep. My acupuncturist who valiantly tried to help me go into labor had spirals on her jacket and I was so drawn to them I actually went to try and find the same jacket for myself ;-) I broke two felting needles and stabbed my finger once making this. I also felted the button.

"The pocket is to hold the pictures of Juniper that my sister took while we held him for the 12 hours that we got to be a family. It will live on the shelf in my room that holds his urn (a hollowed piece of juniper heartwood from central Oregon), the little sculpture our midwife gave us, my broken ceramic heart, a postcard of a girl adrift in a small boat (how I feel most of the time), a beeswax candle left on my doorstep during the early days, and a picture of newborn Nigel and his daddy sleeping, to contrast with the picture of Juniper - forever 'asleep'."

about the contributor.
Emily lives in Oregon with her husband, two living children, a cat that weighs more than her dog, some fish, four rats and two gerbils. Her son Juniper was still born three days before his due date on February 3rd, 2010. She is not an necessarily artist, but sometimes likes to get her craft on. You can read her trite rantings on how sucky things are at The Nature of Balloons.