90 PUNCHMAGAZINE.COM also sources finer fleece from Alpacas by the Sea, a herd raised in Montara. “The alpaca wool is whiter than the Romney so it’s good for clouds and waves,” Birgitta notes. When Birgitta first became interested in this malleable medium, she ran across a Craigslist post for free fleece from shorn sheep and raced off to the Russian River region to pick it up. “I packed it into our SUV. I just filled it!” she recalls. Back at home, she poured hours into the laborious process of cleaning it and cutting out foxtails, dirt and sheep droppings (or “vegetable matter,” as it’s delicately called in fleece circles). “It takes a lot of time, but the process makes you ‘bond with your wool,’” Brigitta says. Her spouse, returning from a trip, came home to find a frothy white cloud in their living room. “My husband thought, ‘Did you take the insulation off the attic?’” ground of a scene where cows graze in the distance. In another, she draws the eye to snarled fishing nets on the docks off Pillar Point Harbor. Like a bird collecting for her nest, Birgitta gathers up strings of all colors, textures and sizes. While contemplating a field in need of individual blades of grass, she’ll mentally flip through her inventory, then suddenly straighten. “Oh, I think I have that green somewhere,” she’ll say—and off she’ll flit, bringing back just the right one for the job. “Embroidery thread is so bright,” she notes appreciatively. For future projects, Birgitta would like to try free-motion sewing with a machine. “It’s a bit of a learning curve,” she notes. “You have to sort of get it into your These days, Birgitta works out of her studio—namely, her converted dining room. “I’m always trying to figure out how to fit in it,” she chuckles. She sorts dyed wool of all colors into heavy-duty metal cubbies that used to hold bolts of fabric. “It’s the antithesis of light, fluffy wool!” she observes with a smile. As Birgitta adds layers to her wooly works-in-progress, she starts texturing them—adding white beads for flecks of sea foam, incorporating real seashells beside felt sea stars and sand dollars, crafting the tentacles of a sea anemone from yarn she found at Fengari, a shop in Half Moon Bay. She also stitches in details, the embroidery adding a greater sense of dimension. “You can do these optical tricks that make you feel depth,” Birgitta explains. In one image, she brings swaying stalks of tall grass to the fore- {home & design} ABOVE (clockwise, from left): Crab Season; Wavecrest and Redondo Beach; Surfer’s Beach; Mt. Tam from Loma Alta; dog detail from Fort Funston; kite surfer detail (Birgitta’s son) in Surfer’s Beach. PHOTOGRAPHY: COURTESY OF BIRGITTA BOWER AND M STARK GALLERY
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