life is beautiful

 

We packed up and left our Quebec City apartment in good time.
Ned had planned that we go see Montmorency falls, and it was beautiful.

Then we drove along the north shore of the St Lawerence river and it was beautiful.
We went through Clermont, where Ned had spent two weeks age 13, and it was beautiful.

We spent that night at a b and b with a French speaking hostess and it was beautiful.

The next day, we were up early again to eat her blueberry pancakes and catch the ferry across the St. Lawerence, so beautiful.

 Then we drove through more of beautiful rural Quebec towards New Brunswick.

 Occasionally we stopped at beaches for Marjan and Wim, our friends from Holland.

Life is beautiful.

sometimes there are moments of perfection

I'd like to talk about the perfection underlying life

when the mind is covered over with perfection
and the heart is filled with delight

but I wish not to deny the rest.

Judy Martin and Penny Berens

In our minds, there is awareness of perfection;
when we look with our eyes we see it,
and how it functions is mysterious to us and unavailable.

When we live our lives it's something like a race - our minds become concerned and covered over
and we get depressed and have to get away for a holiday.

And then sometimes there are moments of perfection
and in these moments we wonder why we ever thought life was difficult.

A new 6 inch book using the text from this 2012 post. 
It will be for sale at the gallery shop

We think that at last our feet are on the right path and that we will not falter or fail

Judith Quinn Garnett designer, OJ Graphix printer

 We're absolutely convinced we have the solution and then the moment is over.

Not to Know but to Go On                                          Agnes Martin

All above text is by Agnes Martin.

The images are of Not To Know But To Go On, the daily journal I kept in stitch between my 2010 and 2013 birthdays.  One complete skein of cotton embroidery floss was stitched up each day for over a thousand days.

This piece along with Penny Berens' Daily Scratchings plus NEW WORK by both of us will on display this summer in Halifax Nova Scotia at the Mary Black gallery.   July 13 - August 26.

the cloud in me

I visited Connie yesterday.
Our visits are more emotional now.
She moved into a nursing home August 8.  She is 89.
I've written a bit about her before, here and here.
When we met I was in my early 40's and she was in her late 60's.

Actually, she is the same age as my mother would have been if she were still alive.

She has such yearning.
I reminded her that she has an inner cloud of memories inside her.
And dreams. 
She said that the memories made her sad....but I think that will change.
I think they will save her.

Images are of finished new work for my exhibition in October.
 still one more large one to go xo

Penny Berens with her work and mine

Penny Berens with her work (one)

her work (two)

her work (three)

and then with my work side a

and my work side b

The two of us work with local plant dyes, hand stitch, repetition, wool cloth.
Together, we looked at our work in my studio during Penny's visit to Manitoulin last week.

Penny Berens' Daily Scratchings

 This post is about Penny Berens of Nova Scotia Canada and her amazing Daily Scratchings.

"The section above starts with the woodpecker stitched on October 2nd, 2012 and then the next day, a depiction of a trip up the Annapolis Valley to see the eye doctor.  For the 4th, I did that line of looped stitches, representing a day spent with the group of stitchers and hookers called 'Loose Threads'.  For October 5th I was thinking of things in the negative!  And the next section was for Thanksgiving weekend.  I was thinking of how days wrap themselves around one another.  Cotton threads stitched on damask."  Penny Berens

"In this image, the journal starts on Monday the 12 November 2012, when I stitched a flight of Canada geese that made me think of hieroglyphs. Then on Tuesday the 13th I watched a Murder of crows pestering an eagle on my morning walk.  They surrounded him in a tree and made a huge hullabaloo.  This was followed by a day of rain.  Cotton thread on hand dyed cotton."  Penny Berens
In Daily Scratchings, Penny Berens recorded the seasonal changes that she experienced while walking in the rural area near Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia.   In the above image, Penny's work is shown installed in exhibition in the Yarmouth adjunct of the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia. 

Using hand stitched representational drawings and rows of abstract marks she documented the day that she had lived through.  

 

Penny’s visual and tactile witnessing of natural phenomena became a journal that holds four years of time. 

 On my most recent visit with Penny, she kindly brought out her journal and we went through the pages.  These photographs are from that time last October.

 

 Above, Penny's work as it appeared in the Inverness Art Centre on Cape Breton Island in Oct 2015.

Penny's love of the natural world and her close observation of it is communicated with joy, love and hours of time. After four years (2012 - 2015) of dedication, she stopped working on this journal.  

"On December 31, 2015 I completed the last stitched entry in my 'Daily Scratchings' journal.  I noticed towards the end of that four year project that my entries had become more and more exploratory rather than recording the small daily events in my rural life,  therefore the time had come to make a change.  Creating larger pieces of work through daily practice still fascinates me however, as well as setting myself small challenges."  Penny Berens

Visit Penny's blog to find out what happens next for this prolific artist.

I feel as if I know her

 This embroidery is from South Africa.

It was stitched by an artist named Leah.  Leah wrote a note and tacked it to the back of the piece ( about 14 x 20 inches).  The note said that she liked lions because they are strong animals.
Because of her hand work, I feel as if I know her.

The above embroidery is also from South Africa.  The initials of the artist are prominently marked on the left.  The size of this piece is also about 14 x 20 inches.  There is a wide variety of stitches.  Look at the seeds and chicken foot prints on the ground, the cloud in the sky, the comb and energy feathers over the larger hen.  The border.

The reverse of the embroidery is also powerful.  Seeing work like this I wonder if I am correct to advise others to try to make the back as neat as the front.  Why?

Valerie Hearder shared these (and other beautiful pieces) with us last week at Penny Beren's home in Nova Scotia.  I went there for four days to enjoy a most nourishing retreat with these old friends.

Valerie Hearder, Penny Berens, Margi Hennen, the two dogs are Kayla and Shandy

I'll never forget that we watched the Justin Trudeau majority results together.

Q:  Why do I like these embroideries so much?
A:  They have integrity.
      The marks are varied.  They are bold.
      The artist spent time and thought on her work.
      I feel as if I know her.  I feel her hands.  
      I understand that she observes her world and that it is urgent for her that she communicates about those observations.

Normal School Sewing Book

 

Today, a post about the Hamilton Normal School Sewing Book, loaned to me years ago by my friend Nicole Weppler, curator of the Gore Bay Museum here on Manitoulin Island.  Above, the sample for beautifully executed patchwork mending.

Patching:   a patch is a piece of material inserted for the purpose of strengthening worn or thin places 

The student's name was Helen J Scott, she was in the grade A class, room 4.  It was 1910. 

Normal school is not where you go to become normal.  Normal School is a term for what we now call teacher's college.  My mother went to Normal School in the 40's.

Sewing is the process of drawing thread through material by means of the needle. 
Cloth is the material made of animal and vegetable fibres

RUNNING

straight stitch

1.       stitches and spaces are of equal length

2.      Looks the same on both sides

3.      Stitches and spaces follow each other straight along the sewing line

4.      The stitch is as small as the cloth will permit 

OVER CASTING

slanting stitch

1.       Looks the same on both sides

2.      Stitches and spaces are of equal length

3.      Stitches and spaces are at right angles

4.      Stitches are always parallel and so are the spaces

Use – to prevent raw edges from ravelling

HEMMING

slanting stitch

Description 

       1.  looks the same on both sides. 

       2.   Stitches and spaces  form right angles.

       3.  Looks like overcasting, but the thread is carried through the body of the cloth and over the edge.

Use  to fasten an edge smoothly to the body of the cloth.  A) hems  b) facings 

 FRENCH SEAM

 FELLED SEAM

PLAIN BUTTON HOLE

Definition- a button hole is  a slit in the material with the edges protected and strengthened by thread and used to slip over a button to hold two pieces of cloth together

Marking – mark where the shank of the button should come.  If cutting with ordinary scissors, mark a point at both ends of the button hole

Cutting – when cutting stick point of scissors in at the shank end of the buttonhole and cut a straight slit the required length.

Do not double the cloth but cut through all the layers at once

Whenever possible, the cut should be straight with the warp or woof

Making – 

1. Make the stitches deep enough to prevent fraying but not to look clumsy

2. Stitches not crowded but close together – just showing the cloth between

3. Begin almost any place with two or three stitches in the same place about the width of the stitch from the edge, hold the thread down firmly with the thumb, throw the thread over the needle to make a loop then draw this firmly and smoothly in place.  

4. Repeat. 

EYELETS
HOOKS AND EYES
SEWING ON BUTTONS

DARNING

Definition:  Darning is the process of inserting new threads in material in order to repair worn or broken threads

 BAG
size of bag  width 5" depth 5"

 The book is hand bound with a shoe lace.

I appreciate this book.