Hooking

new year sunbird reflections

January 1, 2014 by Birdbrain Leave a Comment

I sit in the bay window at the back of the house, morning light over my shoulder, enjoying the antics of the juncos and blue jays at the feeders — and — hooking a Kenyan sunbird. My mind jumps to Louis MacNiece and the poem I first encountered in high school. The world soundlessly collateral and incompatible…crazier and more of it than we think, incorrigibly plural. At 18 I had only the slightest notion of the pluralities, the incompatibilities and incorrigibilities to come. I contrast the world of my small Ontario city with its birds pecking in the snow and the world of Matangwe Kenya with its glories and its desperate needs. I will be there again very soon, planning to hook again with the local men and women, to create some beauty and hopefully move a little closer to a sustainable enterprise.

I am hoping that this year we will hook some of the beautiful flowers and birds around Matangwe. I decided to begin with a sunbird using some dyed nylon hose I had. I was trying to capture the magical incandescent colours. Last year we worked with t-shirts, and of course, my goal is that all the materials we use will eventually be sourced locally. And yes, I will pack t shirts and hose into my duffle bags this year. But we will also scour the local markets to see just what is available to hook with and see what beauties we can create with local goods. I am inspired by the hooking being done in Guatemala. Below is one these rugs which was on display at the Textile Museum in Toronto last spring and here is a link to Jen Manuell’s work there.

thank you Ontario Rug Hookers

December 16, 2013 by Birdbrain Leave a Comment

The rug hookers in Ontario are a generous lot. Below you can see some of the hooks that have been donated for the rug hooking project in Matangwe, Kenya. Thank you to everyone. To Claude who, in spite of illness, met me in town to donate her hooks. To Anne B. who collected hooks in her area and lugged them to the One of a Kind show for me. To Dianne who mentioned the project in the Ontario Hooking Craft Guild newsletter. And to the many other hookers near and far who heard of the hooking project in Matangwe and gave up their spare hooks. I have almost 100 now. And lots of burlap too.

This is year two of the project. If all goes as planned this year, the women and men in the Matangwe community will draw patterns of the stunning local birds on the burlap and make hooked mats which we will eventually sell. I will be taking some t-shirts and dyed nylons which we will cut into strips, but my hope this year is that we begin to use local used clothing with the plan to eventually be self-sustaining. We will also begin to make our own hooks and hopefully find a source of local burlap–so that the project can continue after I leave. Thank you again for the great boost!

hooking houses

October 7, 2013 by Birdbrain 1 Comment

Our local group of rug-hookers attended a great two-day workshop with Anne Boissinot on the weekend. The topic was hooking houses. Anne is full of fun and has much to share about the techniques and the art of hooking architecture. She is a generous and knowledgeable teacher who kept us on our toes and on task almost every minute! It was a full and rewarding two days as you will see from the pieces below. These are not all the pieces from the class–but the ones I managed to photograph at the end.

Wendy’s tenant house:

Carol’s garden shed:

Lise’s village scene, a Joan Boyle pattern:

Jane’s Japanese Christmas card which she got permission to hook:

Mary Anne’s pictorial–we have to admit she didn’t manage all this in two days!

and Liz’s house:

campbellford hook-in

September 9, 2013 by Birdbrain 2 Comments

My friend Mary Anne and I spent a perfect day at the Campbellford Guild’s hook-in. This was our first time to attend, but we are already making plans to go back next year. The venue was a lovely park in the centre of the town on the shores of the Trent River. We hooked, visited and ate delicious goodies as sailboats and other watercraft passed by. Could not have been more lovely. I didn’t take too many photos, but here are a few.

Some great pieces were on display: Mary Anne’s Sin of Choice is almost finished and Lise’s Fish are done. I am not sure who hooked the final two pieces, but I loved their whimsical approach.

a day in the city…

September 8, 2013 by Birdbrain 2 Comments

I love this view of the backside of the Art Gallery of Ontario.

rug 2 I went to the city on Saturday for two main reasons. First I wanted to to see Ancestry and Aristry, the display of Mayan textiles from Guatemala and secondly I knew of a good quality leather remnant sale.

Toronto was in the midst of a deluge, and of course crowded to the hilt with Film Festival goers–Brad Pitt arrived just after I walked along King St–(no I didn’t see him!) But my umbrella and I were able to get to both of my venues with ease. The display at the Textile Museum was wonderful. I especially was interested in the three hooked rugs from the Thirteen Threads Cooperative where Mary Anne Wise has been teaching rug hooking. Jenn Manuell was there this year and posted great photos on her blog. The colours and vitality of all the work, mostly embroidery and weaving, were outstanding–and the women have carried these qualities into their rug hooking. Of course I am interested in how their techniques of using traditional motifs and patterns can apply to hooking in Kenya. And interested too in the fabrics they used which seemed to be pretty much what they could lay their hands on.

I was thrilled to get this 4 kg pile of good quality leather remnants. I find that a small piece spurs my imagination and I come up with new designs which would not occur to me if I had lots of leather. The red piece in particular beckons.

I also got a new punch for hammering out circles, so am thinking about a series of polka dot pouches. Stay tuned…

update

September 2, 2013 by Birdbrain 2 Comments

My rug has been spending the summer at the cottage. We were there for the last while, so I got a chance to spend some time with it. The one end is close to done. It may not look like much progress, but the rug is almost five feet wide so it takes a while to make it across. The text is done on the other end, but there is lots of hooking left. Each end will be this blue as-is texture–but I will have to get out the dye pots for the colours in the centre. I am hoping for a subtle transition to blocks of green, yellow and orange. The hooking I am doing now is almost meditative hooking, the kind I like best, but soon I will have to decide on the main part of the rug–design and background. And that takes thought and planning. Concentration. But for now I am enjoying the sun on the water, the calls of the loons and the slip of the wool through my fingers.As far as bags go–here is the lining for the new one. I hope to show you it finished tomorrow. It is made from a rich brown skirt cut on the diagonal. This bag is a good size and classic birdbrain, including the lining of brightly coloured squares from a European market and the screen-printed bird pocket.

hooking and thinking

August 23, 2013 by Birdbrain 5 Comments

I am still working out so much about the blog world. I spent the week making bags, photographing them and posting them. Thank you to those who have followed me through the process and purchased. I was overwhelmed with the speed of your response! Since I am a one-person operation and the sewing times are sporadic, there is no set time for new work and no way, other than the blog, to show you. Sometimes, people write to me and ask me how they go about buying a bag. I don’t do shows and I don’t advertise. Once a year I open my house for a Christmas sale. But really, the best way is to check in here once in a while and see what is available in the on-line store–or email me with a request. All the bags posted this week are in the mail and off to new owners.

I haven’t been working too much on the rug, but will have more time in the next few days. Learning lots about hooking text. Although I traced the font, I find the actual hooking is more like handwriting. Each letter, although related to its cohorts, is slightly different. And then there is the world of meaning behind the quotation. Time to think about that as I hook. The templates you see scattered there will form the design of the middle of the rug. Right now I am thinking they will be in a spiral–but that will develop as I hook the text at either end.

Thank you for your support and have a great weekend, all of you. The weather here in southern Ontario is spectacular–even though there is that bittersweet touch of fall in the air.

more on hooking text…and the passing of an icon

July 19, 2013 by Birdbrain Leave a Comment

I mentioned yesterday that ideas and images seem to come into my world exactly when I need them. It’s like when you are thinking of buying a yellow car and all of a sudden all you can see are yellow cars. I am working on a new rug and thinking about the role of text in it–its placement, its relationship with colour and the other images on the rug. This week I discovered Ed Ruscha and quoted his musings on using words in art. Then as I was actually hooking the letters on the rug, I encountered Taryn Simon on Wachtel on the Arts. There is very little in the way of contact with the outside world at our cottage, no internet or cell and the Globe and Mail is one and a half hours away. However, I do have the CBC when the radio is behaving, and it makes ALL the difference. I think Eleanor Wachtel is a national treasure and I save all her interviews with authors as podcasts so I can listen as I hook. My reading list is generated by listening to Eleanor. I have discovered Maggie O’Farrell, Rose Tremain and countless others through Eleanor’s gently probing questions. And every once in a while she will have the most poignant interview with an old favourite like her recent surprising talk with John Le Carré. I don’t always catch her program on the arts–but this in-depth interview with a most interesting conceptual artist is definitely worth a second listen. Simon, as it says in her bio, investigates the impossibility of absolute understanding and opens up the space between text and image, where disorientation occurs and ambiguity reigns.

Alex Colville died this week. A large print of his painting To Prince Edward Island hangs where I see it first thing every morning. When we saw the real thing in the National Gallery we were surprised both by its relatively small dimensions and the overwhelming power of the image. I have had versions of his work with me since I can remember. Here are the two I love most; it is a visceral attachment.

words

July 18, 2013 by Birdbrain 3 Comments

It is a curious but recurring event in my life that just the right book makes its way into my hand at just the right time. I happened upon this quotation from Ed Ruscha this past weekend. (Above is one of his images.)

I like the idea of a word becoming a picture, almost leaving its body, then coming back and becoming a word again.

I had not even heard of Ruscha before (and he is, I have subsequently learned, one of Time’s top 100 most influential people of 2013) but his approach to text immediately resonated with me. I have been hooking the Annie Dillard quotation and musing the way one does when the room is quiet and the fabric slips through one’s fingers magically looping against itself on the canvas. The quotation seemed to capture that dance from word to image to implication to association to memory to longing and back again.

finishing and starting

July 4, 2013 by Birdbrain 5 Comments

I made it back to the shoes after several weeks and finished the background. It’s always a happy event when I go to my wool baskets and find the perfect skeins for whipping. The top one I bought years ago on Queen Street in that pricey wool store and the bottom one is Alpaca (should I really use this beauty for whipping??) given to me by a very dear friend. It is from a local farm. As I pull the wool through my fingers, the city and rural images will play through my mind. I should be able to finish this soon and hang it in my studio. It says everything I want to say.

You know, I don’t put anything here that I don’t think is top-notch. But there are some items that for one reason or another have that edge. I had a recycled cobalt skirt two years ago and some special people got pouches (you know who you are). I love to see them pull that cobalt from their bigger bags. I was in my favourite recycling shop twice within the last 6 months and each time I found another cobalt skirt! So–I made a small pouch yesterday and today, taking advantage of the V on the front of one of the skirts, I made a bigger pouch. And I think it is great. I love the slightly bigger size, the playful lining and the wristlet.

Check the on-line store for this one.

And for the starting–I am at the earliest stages of my next rug. It will be 5′ x 7′, or as close as I can come to that. It will have text at either end. Wendie helped with with the font in the Primitive Course–and I got as far as having the words on tissue during the class time.

The Annie Dillard quotation was in a building window on W85th street in New York City. It may still be. But for the five years my sister lived on W85th I passed these words each visit and thought about their implications. Recently I saw them again on Brainpickings and was able to read the full quotation. It was then that I knew it would be on my next rug. I think all rugs are autobiographical and symbolic, but this one will be even more so.