Eco Materialism At The Wetlands

October 19, 2020

Looking For Lilies

My grandmother is an avid gardener and she is very proud of the water lilies growing in our summer-home pond and so am I. I’m always excited to see some when I go to feed my grandpas fish in the pond. It fills me with zen to see the fishies munching away at stale bread right next to beautiful and majestic lilies and lily pads, and I’m sad I couldn’t go visit this year. When I heard that Prof. Amy Youngs is taking the class on a tour of the wetlands I was hoping to spot some water lilies there. But I found none, just a bunch of reeds trying to take over. Later on, I learned from the class that there are water lilies in the vicinity, just pads, no flowers. But, it did feel like home though. As I walked along the boardwalk into the flood of phragmites, it reminded me of the beaches in Estonia. When I emerged back in the middle, I was in awe of the view. I knew that I will forever remember this moment and the beautiful warm day made me fall in love, I needed to solidify my memories even more. Because a rush of nostalgic and happy childhood memories flooded me like the wetlands. And I decided the only thing missing from my life right now, in this moment, are water lilies.

But how to bring water lilies into the wetlands? Crocheting to the rescue. In a way, I wanted to expand

Heaven Is Here On Earth

my Framing The Non-Human project and dive into yarn bombing in water. And this spectacular view and vibe just had to be brought some more attention to. It was quite tricky when thinking of materials as respectful to the wetlands, as budget and petroleum products always seemed to get in the way. In an ideal world, where I’m not held back by finances, I would have used lotus leaf nano-coating for waterproofing, cotton rope at least 1″ thick for hand-crocheting, and bombed the wetlands with three giant flowers. The alternative & cheaper way: one giant flower with handmade rope, wine corks to keep it afloat, and good old shellac for waterproofing. As a teenager, I did quite a bit of creative knitting like giant socks for my grandpa or scarves with cuss words knitted in a row (I was inspired by my assignments in home-ec in Estonia). I remembered that there’s this technique for making a quick chunky scarf on your fingers (ideally with thick yarn in proportion to your fingers). So I decided to use this technique for making a quick makeshift rope. Didn’t quite come out to a 1″ thickness, but better than nothing and good enough for crocheting with. Each petal took me about 12 min to crochet and 4x spools of cotton twine gave me approx. 1680 inches of rope. After a couple of practice rounds, I ended up weaving the rope intermittently with crocheting the flower and it worked out great as this was my first time attempting this pattern and I wasn’t sure of how many yards of rope I would need. *Shout out to Bob Oxendorf for donating some wine corks.

My day documenting my handmade water lily was with a bit of a hiccup, however. The gates were loooocked, oh dear O.o! It felt like I was locked out of heaven, is it cus it’s Sunday and god is resting on Sundays? Or are students not allowed there on Sunday? Or has the pandemic closed the gates early? It definitely felt unjust that I’m not allowed in all of sudden. C’est la vie. I turned away sad and wondering where those water lily pads are hiding that my class had spoken of. Luckily they weren’t hard to find and yarn bombing the water turned out to be just as fun as I expected. It felt like fishing for art and it completely felt like a bomb when the crocheted lily hit the water, the splash was certainly loud enough, and I’m grateful the corks kept it afloat because the weight made it fully dip under the water when it landed, bringing all sorts of seaweed critters and even a leech along for a ride up top. The only thing missing from the scene was a frog. I’m always used to seeing some sunbathe on the pads next to the beautiful lilies, the frogs in the wetlands seem a lil’ bit more camera shy when humans are shuffling around them. Let’s remember to float like those chilled out frogs at my summer home do (see video below), stop shuffling for a moment, and take in the wetlands with me.