A Head Full of Tunes

When I first heard the theme for the 2019 Alice Springs Beanie Festival, 'A Head Full of Tunes' I had my idea immediately. I just had to work out how to achieve my vision. It took quite a lot of time to decide on my method and a few attempts to realise it into being. Finding photos of Australia's iconic Lyrebird was a start, as was borrowing my mother's lyrebird feathers, found on some of her many Lyrebird Stealth Walks into the Victorian Wet Sclerophyll Forest of the Dandenong Ranges just outside Melbourne, Victoria.

Mum didn't take us to church on Sunday mornings, ('tho I did choose to attend Sunday School for half a year aged 6), instead she and Dad took us up to the nearby damp, misty forests of Sherbrooke, where we learnt to locate a dancing lyrebird by his 10 second calls as he finished his hunt for breakfast and reached his favourite dancing mound. We would creep thru the wet bush, getting ever closer, freezing motionless at times as we waited for him to commence his dance, and become oblivious to us, watching in trance and listening to his repertoire of all the local birds in his territory. They are very shy birds in their natural environment.

When I was in my twenties, I was fortunate to meet a lyrebird up in an enclosure at Healesville Sanctuary, Victoria. 'Chook', as he was called by the staff there, had been rescued and thence raised at the sanctuary, as an old friend working there told me, after I had been trying to mimic his dance, while my then partner Ernie, a landscape and nature photographer was taking photos. Steve also said, 'Next time you come, call him, 'Tjook Tjook Tjook', and when he comes, offer him your arm, he'll hop on. he is really friendly"

So next time we went, I called him, offered him my arm and he hopped on and began 'clomping' his very strong clawed feet on my forearm, so I got him off and rolled my sleeve down and tried again. Chook resumed clomping his feet, first one then the other, then he flipped his feathers right over his head and under my nose and began dancing in full feather array. His white filament feathers shimmering and tickling my nose. Then he began with his Tjook Tjook calls, two very piercing, resounding calls that seemed to rebound deep in my nasal passages. It was an awesome and very incredible event, that has stayed with me over the years.

So with these early connections to the acclaimed Songbird of The Forest, it was natural for me to want to make a Lyrebird Beanie for 2019's theme, 'A Head Full of Tunes'. But just how, (?), was I to make the feathers? I thought about asking friends down south, to see if anyone had any just hanging about, but looking at the one main feather of mum's I thought that full size might be a tad to large to send in the mail. So I began to make trial feathers..... and making plans and ideas for this massive project, sometime last year, I believe.

But it wasn't until just after new year, that I really began to get serious, and began to actively work on my Tjooky beanie.

After cutting out a shape from an old woolen blanket, I soon migrated onto a found grey woolen 'witches hat' with a brim, that I felt I could use for the surrounding forest. I cut this grey felt hat down into a more bird body shape, with a more upright stance, and then made a foam bird head shape from packaging foam, for a mold, to needlefelt the head.

Then I cut two Lyre feather shapes from sheet foam packaging material, and began needlefelting the colourful main feathers that frame the strings, (the vibrating filament feathers).

It's one thing to start making these pieces, but how were hey going to stand up in a semi-ful display? That was the question that I constantly asked myself all the way thru.

Early on back in January, I found a recordable device, that I could install inside this beanie, with a short 10 second recording of a Lyrebird's repertoire. Late one night I set about teaching myself to use it, find the right bit to record, and work out where I could place it and how people could activate the recording.

After deciding on the speaker being inside the head, the obvious choice for the 'On' button, was inside a beanie. I made 4 small green beanies before I felt I had the right one, and then make pockets inside the two lyrebird wings. Lyrebirds do not so much as fly, they Glide. They can leap 8 feet into branches without using their wings at all, gradually reaching a pleasant perching branch high in their favourite fragrant trees, like Blackwood Wattles, Sassafras and Musk. When they wish to return to their raised nest down in a protected gully, they launch themselves into a very graceful glide, back to their lifelong partner.

So after many hours of needlefelting the lyrebird's back,

I then made two wings, (with hidden pockets to house the device and hold spare batteries),

which covered over all the previous work ! You get that, when you attempt making something with no pattern or plans, just vague ideas that change as you progress.

Working on it periodically I tried different methods of feather making but couldn't trial the wire needed for the two main feathers until I felt the felting was completed. So it wasn't until the final few weeks before the send-off deadline approached, that I finally got a Round-Tuit.

As you can see, my studio, in which I also live in is a very busy place, I usually have a number of projects on the go at the same time. I work on one, for a while, then leave it as I cogitate on the next steps, or the next colours. I find this process has worked for me these past 10 years, as suffering Chronic Fatigue, I haven't had the same Oooomph and Energy I used to. To be creative, I find I need Energy. Without it, my mind goes blank. I can stare at a half completed work such as a simple crochet beanie, and fail to be inspired to work out what the next colour could be. If I'm feeling tired, I just have to wait. It may take a day or two, it has even been more, especially after serving chai at The Rainbow Chai Tent for a weekend festival. But after that allowed resting, recharging break, I can pick up that same hat, and voila, it is finished and I can turn a so-so beanie into a work of art, that I failed to see in my fatigue.

When it came closer to send off time, I went to the post office to buy a large tough-bag, thinking to send the tail-feathers separately. The appropriate sized box already weighed nearly 500gms ! Even then the feathers would need to be sqashed, I presumed. Buying the large flat paper envelope, would give my my size parameters for how large my display feathers could actually be, and so I began the process of working out, how I would send this large, precarious beanie ......!

I made my own box out of lightweight corflute from an old placard and it proudly weighed in at 2.45gms as did the beanie inside at that stage, but it was just a tad too small. The beak would come out quite bent out of shape after staying in overnight. So I made another slightly larger pyramidal box, with my largest sheet of scrap corflute, a real estate board, destined for another placard. Little realising that this corflute was a heavier 5mm not 3mm. It was a lot harder to bend the flaps. And still not that much bigger. So I went a bought a new, large sheet of 3mm corflute, making a third mailing box.

I also found I had to make my own corflute insert for the large tough bag, in order for the tail-feathers to arrive in the shape I desired.

But when I finally took the two parcels for their final weigh-in check, we discovered; my favourite post office woman Katherine & I ( who always likes to see what I'm sending each year), both parcels now weighed over 500gms each! So, in the end we decided that it would be cheaper postage in one combined box. ( I did cut off quite a bit of the inside cardboard the boxes have for increased strength for heavier packages.) They are also the only local post office that doesn't charge the box's possible capacity weight, (8kg). When I was actually sending it off the next week, I asked for a COD form to fill out for the possible return, if it doesn't sell. Instead of the $25.78 to send it, I would have to pay $10 for the COD plus $60 something for a box weighing something like 1.078 kg !

I bought the post box, forgetting my beautiful white corflute, resting in the bin below counter as I dealt with all the pieces of possible forest follage I'd been adding to parcel and taking out to vary the total weight. And bought a 5kg Red Post Bag for the return, saying "Scratch the directions for a COD, for a boxed return, please wrap the filament feathers in the foam sheeting material and Gently Stuff it in this bag instead" ....... LOL what a saga !

But it didn't end there ..... and luckily I had a few extra days before my guesstimated latest departure date, as on the day before I thought I was finished with my 'pin-on' tail-feathers, I set the who beanie down flat on the bench as I was about to wrap the white feathers. Shock horror ! When sitting or being held with the brim in the flat position instead of draped over a beanie stand, the white filament feathers were pushed directly onto the green beanie, housing the Squeeze Button, which Beaniefest Punters needed un-impeded access to.

The white feathers are made of stiff interfacing, glued onto a piece of floristry wire, and if brought into contact with the needlefelted bird, get snagged very easily, therefore they need to lean backwards.

Luckily I still had one final day before the possible 14 days for 'slow mail' boxes to arrive, so I set about inventing, designing a 'buffer' to keep feathers at the right distance away.

I'm always amazed at how things work out for the better, when you encounter a problem. In having to come up with a solution, I inadvertently rectified the very fiddly process of pinning the tail-feathers into place and the somewhat in-effectual camouflaging of the nappy pins I used. Now it is all one unit and if it is placed flat on a table, it actually has a much better display of the feathers, which are in the process of moving into the full dance position, or retreating back into non-dance mode.

Also in the last week before sending, when I began the final additions of the surrounding forest onto the brim, I had a sudden desire to make radial changes. Early on I had made a pair of tree ferns on an attached pipe cleaner, I had sewn them on, but they were at much the same height as each other and not looking very interesting. So ripped them off, grabbed an old beanie from 2009 that I had made in response to the Mega Fire Storm fires, which had started on my birthday 7th Feb 2009. This beanie had never been to beaniefest, and it was in need of a major overhaul, as the central Eucalypt Tree that rose up from the crown, has had a very decided lean to it for a long time. I had been thinking about fixing it some way .......

So, out came my little pointy scissors and I cut the tree out of the beanie and re-worked it into my new beanie, giving the Lyrebird one of the tall trees of it's forest home, minus the koala. Also it gives Tjooky, something to hide behind. It has a much better balanced appearance now and I re-attached the Tree Ferns at staggered heights.

The treeless beanie will be re-fashioned into a beanie for someone with a high ponytail of hair and the koala will grace something else in the near future, no doubt. It isn't the first time I have cut up on old work of art, textile creation. Last year, I pulled a needlefelted emu off an old favourite, a Melbourne Cup extravaganza, of an emu and his two chicks dreaming of going to the Melbourne Cup. The royal blue feathers surrounding them had faded by it's constant exposure in our local gallery and altho' it had claimed a Runner-Up prize in 2007, it was looking extremely tired, so I used the emu, cut back a bit inside, as a bas-relief emu, highlighting the giant emu of the Night Sky, which encompasses a large swathe of the Milky Way. The Southern Cross being like a Crown and The Pointers like a Necklace.

It was an enjoyable process making Tjooky in The Forest and I value the time I had with this beanie. So often it has been such a rush to finish and send, that I feel I haven't had enough time with my creations, especialy if they are sold and don't come home. One year I didn't even have time to get some decent photos, in my rush to make the deadline.

I think I'll finish this post here and make another soon with the final finished 2019 Beaniefest competition beanie, with video.