Ahh for a paddle!
May 7, 2012, 7:51 pm
Filed under:
life on lismore,
in my studio | Tags:
life on lismore,
textiles,
bird brooch,
bespoke lampshades,
Kayaaking,
Paddling,
Lampshade,
Love Birds,
Love Lampshades
Gliding on a mirror.
The last two weeks have left me with little doubt that what goes around most definitely comes around. Oh yes, my teenage strut, swagger and lip has come back to wallop me square in the face in the form of my 13-year-old son.
To be quite honest I find the comments, in the main, hilarious because they’re so bonkers and well… hormonal. However, they don’t half get you thinking about the generational divide. Yesterday I said to Tom “What do you reckon we go for a paddle today?”
”MUUUUM, Don’t EVER say PADDLE . WHAT, are you trying to be COOL or something…Yeuuugh?”
“What? What am I supposed to say?” I ask with a grin slowly spreading from ear to ear.”It’s not FUNNY Mum. I mean just don’t TRY AND BE COOL ’cause you are SO not. “”Well what am I supposed to say then?”"KAYAAAAAK”"Oh alright then, Do you want to go Kayaaaaking?”" Uuuuugh”
Anyway, we did go Kayaking and it was beautiful. It was slightly marred because we coincided with a spring tide on the out and had to carry our kayaks on a journey that would have made Shackleton proud.Apart from wet exploits and teenage banter life offers me the opportunity to make lampshades and brooches for faceless customers with interesting names.
CHAOS TO …less chaos.
May 1, 2012, 9:08 pm
Filed under:
1,
in my studio | Tags:
bespoke blinds,
cherry blossom design,
Mogwaii,
Mogwaii Commissions,
roller blinds,
roman blinds,
The Artist's Way,
window blinds
In a frenzied cloud of creativity
There’s quite definitely a recurring theme about my life. It has to do with order and chaos and how I constantly seem to be on a quest to turn the former in to the latter be it with a hoover, sewing needle or Sage accounts.
Does everybody tangle with this issue in such a pressing way – or is it just us creatives? You see, what I’m wondering is this. Are creative people just actually very chaotic people whose lives are consumed with the process of trying to establish some order from the bomb crater of a brain that they have been born with?
Today I felt, for a moment, the satisfaction of a task achieved, chaos calmed and commitment attended to in the preparation and completion of fabric samples for a potential client.
Fabric stitched in to cherry blossom and honesty samples
However, 10 minutes later the cycle begins again but this time with linen and Bondaweb.
Perhaps if I shuffled out of this mortal coil and found myself ever so ordered I might not feel the compulsion to create, and that fills me with dread. I wonder if this is why so few artist run financially sound
enterprises? – because they are fearful that their creative urge will drain from their brain with the onset of filing systems and storage boxes.
Stitched Samples in their File, ready to post to customer
…just a thought.
Oh so orderly!
THE WONDER OF WEE TREES
Last year Roger showed unbridled delight as he proudly demonstrated a small leaf peeping over the top of his tree guard. Whilst making all the outward signs of being most impressed I quietly wondered what all the fuss was about. It’s a small tree … they grow!
Now, every morning I find some excuse to wander over to the croft. I usually mumble something about feeding the perfectly fat hogs or walking the dog, however foremost in my mind is the pressing desire to watch saplings.
Every day I walk measured and astute, like a judge at crufts, up the fencing line of our newly installed shelter belt. I monitor the shine of the leaves, the hue of the bark, the form of growth, but mostly I revel in the inner glow that comes from just watching my babies tentatively reaching out to the elements and flourishing.
Lambing Live
” A step closer…and I’m on you!”
Fortunately, along with the emerging lambs we are thankful for a sun which emerges from clouds. How blissful to walk in warmth with vitamin D liberally bestowed upon my winter weathered cheeks. I find many opportunities to shimmy out of my studio, down the stairs and in to spring’s glorious living room. Surely there is no more joyous sight than the primrose that crowd the mossy banks, than the insistent wag of a lambs tail as it buts mum for milk with its impossibly cute little nose.
That's the nose I'm talking about.
However, the whole lambing business is something we have yet to experience fully. This year I am more aware than ever that we too will, before long have to tread the croft at dawn attending to problem births and ,god help us, having to do that skinning thing.
Fortunately, OUR farmer/mentor has unwittingly shown us an awful lot as he goes about his long and eventful lambing. However, this morning taught me what a lot there is to learn. I was walking back from the croft, saw Archie attending to a sheep by his quad trailer when he shouted me over. He was expressing milk from the sheep’s udder and wanted me to open the quad back, grab the lamb which was inside. He hauled the sheep in and I placed the lamb our side of it to feed. I asked him why he was expressing milk and he told me the sheep had mastitis and he needed to remove any bad milk/colostrum so that the lamb could safely feed. “How do you know the sheep’s got mastitis” I asked, “Oh, you can just tell?”. I quietly eye the udder looking for any sign of engorgement. ..”and how do you know the lamb is hungry?” ” Hell of a racket it was making and mum wasn’t anywhere near it” Still, I also know that lambs make a racket when they can’t find their mum, and then there’s that business of skinning a dead lamb and tying it pelt onto another so that a mum who’s lost her own will accept another lamb because it smells right.
I’m glad, for now to be waking at a reasonable hour and spending my spring making love LAMPSHADES and silk curtains. I’m quite contended to wait another year before experiencing a sheeps birth canal first hand.
Jeff Love Sanj. Say it with a lampshade!
SUN – yum!
Soleil by Labokoff
I need vitamin D. I know this because I want to eat this picture, nay,I want to fall into it, clamber inside like a child into Narnia (in summertime!) I’m TIRED of grey.
Us Leasachs have now endured way beyond a fair quota of grey. All the farmers need to collect their silage is three dry days, THREE DRY DAYS! The silage fields lie dull and damp, the grass once fine and tall has slumped with exhaustion after straining too hard for the rarest glimpse of sun. Three dry days, that’s all we ask.
Yellow is like a drug to me right now. Do you think I need one of these sunlight lamps?
This is what I’m going to do. I’m going to get my fix of yellow by sneaking little linden green leaves and acid yellow sparkle into my commissions. Yes I am! Naughty, but oh so nice.
Samples for the next commission with a few sneaky yellow bits courtesy of photoshop.
Tractor trouble
The wonderfully anarchic work of Robert Rauschenberg
I spent a good chunk of last night panicking about yesterday’s blog post – about exploring the form and colour of a harebell. I mean WHAT IS HAPPENING TO ME! Where is my inner anarchist, where is the wild, gregarious abstractor, the foot thumper, the twister and turner of ideas. Obviously nowhere to be seen last night! However I am sensing some devilish, naughty little creations peeping over my creative wall so – watch out!
Not exactly the Brad Pitt of Tractors...but we love him anyway.
However, today we have been mending tractors amongst other things. Fred,Frodo, Trevor (see mammoth facebook discussion regarding his name) decided to rumble to a halt. It’s at times like this that I thank utterly everything that I have a man about who isn’t phased by cylinders covered in diesel treacle and fuel filters gunged up with something that looks like cat vomit. I like to stand by as a nurse might in surgery…predicting what tool might be needed next and handing it to the surgeon with attentive, quiet confidence and wishing I had spent more time listening in Physics and less time impersonating our very small teacher. It’s when Yorick asks me for an opinion that my mask of knowing is whipped from my being like the unveiling of a scooby doo villain. It goes a bit like this.
Yorick: Could you undo the fuel cap Sarah?
Me: Yeaaah sure! I wander quietly around the tractor tentatively tugging at anything resembling a knob until my eyes spot a likely looking thing that I can turn. I turn and turn and then the whole front bonnet thing falls off. Ooops! Wrong knob.
Fortunately we can address this imbalance in technical ability with my prowess when it comes to household administrative duties so I don’t feel totally useless in this duet of life and I do get to huff and puff occasionally and make Yorick feel incompetent. However tonight, with Trevor Tractor. I DID.
Bluebell Blind
August 29, 2011, 6:42 pm
Filed under:
in my studio | Tags:
applique,
bespoke blinds,
commissions,
diferent blinds,
machine embroidery,
made to measure blinds,
one off blinds,
roman blinds,
unique blindsPhew. I finally start to settle back into some sort of routine after the summer session where I felt a little like a ping pong ball in play – batted to and fro from A to B. In some ways great to camp a bit, festival a bit, explore a bit. However I increasingly started to feel the need to settle – a lot, and how better to ground myself than with the study of bluebells (harebells if you’re English) for a Roman Blind.
Sketching flowers from various angles for applique
Included with the blind was a complimentary lampshade made from the sample piece used to try out different techniques prior to making.
Tangle of stems and a flower head.
and the blind itself was much appreciated by a delightful client.
Harebell Roman blind set into the dormer window.
Next project…Sloe berry blinds x 2 and a set of curtains. So far so good.
In the spirit of recycling.
Can you remember these quilt patches from some time ago? The ones with the small birds and flowers. (see Post Tweedle Dee Dee) Well they have now been incorporated into a quilt…or at the very least, the start of one.
cuckoo and Maples
The patches were intended for my Dad, to be part of an 80th birthday quilt, but he is now 82 and announced last month that he and his partner Lois were going to get married. After some discussion among sisters we decided that the intended birthday quilt would be adapted to become a wedding quilt which could be pieced and layered here and quilted by their friends in Canada where they spend half the year.
Patch details
Each patch was cut from old table linens found in a number of charity shops. Incidentally this turned out to be apt given that Lois adores a good charity shop and has familiarised herself with just about every “Help the Aged” this side of Hadrian’s wall.
I had already introduced the Scottish connection with embroideries of local flora and fauna but I needed to introduce Canada in some way: Maple leaves was bonded to some patches and they would later be quilted at a Bee in Canada.
Maple leaves in Blues, greens and salmon.
the third verse of words of Kahlil Gibran’s wise wise words on Marriage were embroidered around the central square:
“Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping.
For only the hand of life can contain your hearts.
And stand together, yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the Oak tree and the Cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.”
Letters from the back
Strips of scrap fabrics in stoney hues were pieced around the text. In my mind they, to a certain extent, represent the stone pillars of the temple.
As ever, I find the back almost more enticing.
The top layer is not quite finished. I still want to add a border with the tunes that my sister wrote for Lois’s mum and Dad – Jean and Sherman Yelland.
So a wee bit more work and then layering up. We’ll probably have a quilting or two here before the quilt crosses to the other side of the world for the attention and stitching of friends further afield.
Central square before the stoney strips were set around it.
So this has all got me thinking about setting up a series of quilting workshops here on the island, perhaps with a bit of song thrown in. What do you reckon to that idea?
Electricity down down down.
No pictures today because I forgot to carry my camera to the croft both before and after lunch. However, the day most definitely warrants a post as it was an unusual one. It was the day when our barn was scheduled to receive its first pulse of grid generated electricity and consequently more than half the island had to do without between 10am and 2pm. The cafe and museum were closed as a result but the shop stayed open. However, it was difficult to distinguish between a parsnip and a carrot due to the dim light. I felt a glimmer of guilt in the same way as one might, having infected a school with chickenpox, however the guilt was overshadowed by the anticipation and excitement of finally lighting up the croft and hoovering the barn floor.
I spent the morning watching the electrician scale freshly creosoted larch poles as I wandered up and down the hilltop field zapping thistles with Grazon 90. At lunchtime I wandered back to the farmhouse with my neighbour Stephen, and we marvelled at the handsome, newly erected pole on our croft. After lunch we ambled back and it gradually dawned on us both that the handsome pole was no longer there. For a short while I wondered whether it had ever really existed. Had it perhaps just been wishful thinking after months, nae years of speculation? but as we approached it became clear that the huge beast had entirely fallen down…splat! It had crashed through the march fence bringing half of it down with it and warping the gate to boot. The event had also resulted in broken fuses and a badly bumped transformer. Ohhhh dear.
Mr Scottish and Southern and crew tried to appear cheery as they attempted to attend to the damage and figure out why and what to do about it. Something was mumbled about dry, stable ground becoming wet, jelly like ground and nothing was said about stays (or the lack of one). However, Mr S and S assures me it will all be fine in the end, whilst muttering ” Nightmare, nightmare”.
Tomorrow, our slightly less handsome pole will be re erected and the island will, once again have to abstain from cups of tea, computers, television and, in some case, income for the sake of our bright and buzzy barn.
Sun kissed caffuffle.
Half completed notebook covers.
Today the sum total of my textile production has been 6 half completed notebook covers, bound eventually for “Sheila Fleet” in Kirkwall. This is a pathetic amount of produce and don’t I know it.
My day was delightfully filled with providing electricians with cups of tea, cleaning and clearing work surfaces, hoovering my studio, ordering replacement bonnet for the mainland car, fixing email glitches and showing wedding photos and newly built barn to visiting rellies as well as writing a hall newsletter and making lunch, tea and a black currant pie for the croft workers and the boys accompanied by occasional pangs of guilt for not managing to clean the village hall once this month and I’m on “July”duty.
Today was about attending to the here and now and not side lining life for the sake of a tick list. It felt good. OK…off to pull thistles in the evening sun.
Boat Notebooks from the Tweed Collection.
