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Friday, September 3, 2010

This week we received a wonderful email and photos from Dita Blom, the organizer for a Peace Felt group, Blomsterstuga, in the Netherlands.

Dita's group will be receiving a Peace Felt from a group in Corvalis, Oregon, USA and Dita's group will be Giving their Peace Felt to a group of introductory fiber arts students at the University of Hawaii at Manoa fiber in Honolulu, Hawaii USA

Dita was kind enough to also share the letter she wrote to her Peace Felt partners...read and enjoy!


My World peace

My felt peace By Dita
When I heard about the peace-felt-project for the first time, I became very enthusiastic about it. What a wonderful way of making peace! I think that peace cannot be without communication, love and kindness or softness. And that is where felt is coming in. Felt is strong, soft and warm.

The process is hard working, make a wholeness of loose fibres. And isn’t that exactly how you can make peace. Furthermore it is a creative process, which is also very important in dealing with different situations and different kind of people. But in the end it has become a new piece of fabric, a wholeness.



It was really nice to work out a form for our project. We were on a summer course in Sweden to felt and the celebrate the Swedish midsummer festivity, which is celebrated the first weekend after the 21th of june. They put on the maypole, make music, dance around it and have a good time with friends. Many wear flowers in their hair. It is the celebration of the summer, the light.



With that in mind, we started to make all of us one page of a peace felt book. Most of us did the wet-felting. Gretha used the needle-felting-technique.
I myself made the “rainbow” page. I used all the colours of the rainbow and laid out the wool in a circle, the form of wholeness with no beginning and no end, like the way the peace project functions.




As you can see, it has become a book with 8 pages, all different, but made with love to you. We hope that you will “read” it with our message of peace in mind.

Gretha:
I have made my contribution to the Peace-felt-project with a lot of joy; my inner word with the peace dove as a symbol.

My motto to life is Peace, but with a deeper meaning: also “react” peace! That is what I can see in this project: to make peace together, on a peaceful way and with joy working on this project and even more: to a world in which we may be One! That kind of peace is given for granted, but we need love for it. Peace is getting started in yourself, in your own hart. Get encouraged en be inspired by world peace!


About the group: we were a group of 8 women, all about between 30 and 65 years old. Most of us were regular felters. We all do have jobs, except one, who has been retired.



The first day of our course, we did a lot of dyeing: wool silk, needlefelt, yarn. Having a real rainbow on colours, we started felting. Everybody had chosen a few techniques and themes to work on or to learn about. And we did some trips in the environment.



On the picture enclosed, you can see us in the Carl-of-Linné-gardens in front of the house where he is born in 1707. He had started the botanical system: giving all the plants their botanical name which can been used all over the world. After this trip we started our peace-felt-work.



We all live in the middle and north of Holland, which is known by most people because of the mills, the wooden shoes, and our famous painters Rembrandt, Van Gogh etc. Most people know something about Amsterdam. And some know a bit about our footballteam because of the world championship in july. So now you have heard a bit about us. We hope you appreciate our contribution and enjoy it. We made it with love for you.




We are looking forward to hear a bit from you too.
We wish you all the best, a lot of felthappiness and a peacefull world to live in.
With love from all of us, Dita Blom

1 comment:

  1. its so fascinating to read your story... what a wonderful community of felters.

    ReplyDelete