Nest Series: The Garbage Nest

 

When garbage becomes home

This nest, comprised of plastic garbage bags, candy wrappers, and other bits of refuse fished from the trash, proved to be the trickiest to figure out.  I decided on knitting as the technique, but then had to invent a really wonky pattern that involved starting to knit from the tips of the pattern below, keeping them well separate, and adding stitches to each of four panels row by row until I merged them all together to form the nest wall. To construct, simply fold the triangular edges under, overlapping, until they form the base of the nest and stitch together.

How to knit garbage

How to knit garbage

Miraculously, when folded in place and stitched together, it does indeed form a nest.

The nest

I cannot think of anything better to make a cozy home in this nest than my extensive collection of pop-tops from cans, which I use for everything from jewelry making to assemblage to wall hangings. On reflection, I realize nests would be a perfect system for storing random art supplies.

A clutch of pop-top tabs

I thought this Nest Series has come to a fitting end with this garbage nest, but that was before I harvested roots from my bamboo. Stay tuned. . .

Nest Series: Krishnamurti Nest

 

Krishnamurti Nest

Next up in the nest series is the Krishnamurti Nest, inspired by a number of week-long retreats I've had the great good fortune to attend at the Krishnamurti Foundation of America down in Ojai, California. Situated on the site where K himself lived and taught, the setting of orange groves, pepper trees, and abundant wildlife is surrounded by the Topatopa Mountains. One pepper tree in particular, the tree under which K experienced a transformative spiritual rebirth, (backstory here), warrants special attention and a loving pat or two on its trunk.

This nest is partially made from one of the booklets offered as part of the superbly facilitated dialogue sessions run by Richard Waxberg and Deborah Kerner. The nest has been built to house an abundance of pink peppercorns and leaves from the property where K used to live.

Materials: booklet pages

Materials: pink peppercorns and leaves

Each nest in this series has required reinventing construction techniques based on the unique materials being used. In this case, thin wire was wrapped in strips of paper and used as a framework. More paper, cut into strips, was braided and then woven in and out of the infrastructure.

Nest building in progress

Nest building

The final nest is light, airy, and almost as magical as sitting on the back lawn during a K dialogue, listening to the birds and the rustle of trees and realizing, I am all of this.

The nest

Nest Series: The Seaweed Nest

 

The Seaweed Nest

The winter of 2025 seems to be a time for huddling down and nesting, and here we have number three in the Nest Series.  This organic creation was inspired by a rain walk on the shores of Lake Merritt, Oakland during one of the many atmospheric rivers that hit the Bay Area coast in the past few months. A king tide had created a surge that threw mounds of seaweed and shells onto the lake path. I collected a bunch, took it all home, and created this.

King tide seaweed

Really cool seaweed

I've worked with seaweed before (check past Seaweed Projects), and knew the trick was not to try to stitch or otherwise fasten the raw material together, but to mold it into the desired shape and keep tweaking the molding process as it dried.

Molding the seaweed

Tweaking the mold as it dries

One of the challenges in this nest series is to decide what to house in a particular nest. In this case the decision was relatively easy. I opted for a combination of seashells tossed up by the tide and a few choice pieces from my collection of sea beans. If you have walked the shores of Costa Rica, Nicaragua, or East Africa, you have encountered sea beans — seed pods that drop into waterways or shorelines and are carried away by the tides to travel to distant shores. For those curious to learn more, "What the Heck is a Sea Bean?" is an entertaining post with a sea bean identification guide.

The nest

A clutch of shells and sea beans

On to the next nest!