Our macramé commission

Our new artwork!

We commissioned this piece from local maker Alison Pascoe of Astrl Fibres. Actually she’s originally from Canada but she’s fully integrated into East Belfast these days! She’s been a regular yoga practitioner at Maitri too, at Oonagh’s YogaClub for a long time and now at Iyengar yoga classes.

At the start of the covid pandemic, Maitri Studio was the recipient of an unexpected grant, the YogaSupportFund from Liforme. To this day we’ve no idea who nominated us! It was aimed at helping yoga studios through the hard times of lockdown when our incomes were so uncertain. We have also been donated small amounts of the years, from Oonagh’s fundraising classes to teachers donating rent payments that weren’t used rather than accepting refunds.

In the end Maitri Studio was helped through the pandemic by our supportive landlord and by the council grants and rate relief. We therefore wanted to use the money we had been given to add beauty for all to enjoy, while supporting another local business.

We approached Alison with our thoughts about what we wanted – natural looking and able to hold low maintenance plants to add some more life to the waiting area outside Lily & Maple room by the honesty library.

If somehow it could express our values – togetherness, community, love and kindness – then all the better.

Alison took these themes and merged with her feelings about Maitri as well as the practical inclusion of the same knots that feature on our wall ropes.

“The process of creating a large and complex wall hanging has so many stages before even one knot is tied. The design has to be mapped out, the measurements are calculated, and all the strands are cut – in this case 14 metres for each strand! The mounting dowel has been cut to size, sanded and oiled to bring out the natural grain. The next step is to mount the strands and for this work I’ve used the pile hitch. I love the way this knot adds a lovely detail to the mount as well as keeping the strands extra tight. This is the stage I love the most, the beginning of the journey, so full of excitement for what is yet to come. It’s a good time to reflect and add a bit of intention to the practice. The words that came to mind were ‘growth’ and ‘grounding’ - I will try to weave the positive essence of these words into each knot.”

We hope you agree that the outcome is beautiful and adds to our space wonderfully. Enjoy!

Check Alison out on instagram @astrlfibres where you’ll find some reels of her at work on this commission, as well as link through to her website shop for items you can purchase http://www.astrlfibres.com/.