I’ve been making these little double-zipper pouches for the last month or so, every time I have a chance. I love combining the different pieces of leather. Each pouch is lined with water-resistant fabric and has a separate zippered front compartment. I think they would be great for travel for phone, passport and cards. I love the bright flash of colour on them. Pictured below is one example so you can see the interior and the reverse side. There are a few more! It’s a great way to use the small pieces of leather I’ve liked best. And they will all be in the on-line shop at the weekend. Write using the contact info on the left if you are interested. 

Here are a few sketches from my final days in Limoux in June. These sketches were unfinished, so I’ve been finishing them up and reliving the quality of the light in this lovely town. One of my favourite spots was the terrace of Le Monastère where we stayed. The first is taken from the balcony and the second in the courtyard. The last is a square just a block away.

My sketchbook by the end of a trip starts to be pretty grubby as you can see.  

This week’s New Yorker has a great cover. You can check out the story behind it here. Cartoonist Roz Chast has done a brilliant piece of work, a neat play on the phrase motherboard, just in time for Mother’s Day. And as you can see, the image is dynamic, depicting the evolution of the piece from the near blank canvas, to the finished cover. She has even included her needle. Those of us who work on projects like this know we are a bit crazy about documenting the stages!

But what is most intriguing to me is the video imbedded in the article describing the cover. In it, Chast reflects on the development of her style and then shows a large rug which is she is currently hooking as a tribute to her father. We see her sitting at her hooking frame working on it. I love the connection of drawing and other forms of handwork. And who couldn’t be delighted that handwork has been elevated to its rightful position in the Innovator Issue of the New Yorker?

Maybe it’s because I was in Orkney and the Hebrides in September. Or maybe it’s because I read four Peter May novels this year with his dark, broody plots and settings. Or maybe it’s because today is Charles MacIntosh’s birthday, the brilliant chemist who is best known for his invention to protect us from the rain and cold. Or maybe it’s because the moon is hiding these nights and the days are dark and bone-chilling. Or maybe it’s because we lost so many bright lights in 2016. I’m sure it’s a combination of all of the above which have brought me to listen to this wonderful poem by Liz Lochhead over and over today. You can listen here (which I heartily recommend) and read the full text below.

Merry Christmas to all Birdbrain followers. Here are a couple of Christmas images for you. I’ve already told you how I am going to miss my Page-a-Day New Yorker Cover calendar. This one is from one of my favourite cover artists, Charles E. Martin. Martin died in 1995 and many of his covers were on the magazine in the 60’s and 70’s. I love his buildings and his views of the east coast, and this colorful tree which just might inspire a new Christmas mat! Great texture and composition.

And from closer to home, here is another Christmas stocking, this one for Grandchild #3. I was able to use the last of the Scottish teddy bear sweater which you saw here and here. I wish you all the very best of the season.

Very early this morning, as I drove on a slushy, dark highway, I told myself the days are getting longer. We’ve turned the corner. Although it didn’t feel like it this morning, from here on in I know we will have more daylight each day. This is a reason alone to celebrate, not to mention having the family together again.

Below are a few of our Christmas things. We love to get these apples every year from a nearby orchard. They say local and seasonal in the best way.

I don’t think I’ve shared this adorable Santa hooked by my mother many years ago. Each year when I set him on the hall table, he makes me smile. 

And here are a few of the Christmas cards I sent this year, pictured with my new favourite brush, a #10 Da Vinci sable.

When I completed the whipping on my 5’x7′ rug, Annie, it was only two days before it was to be on display in our local gallery. My husband had made a frame to hang the rug on and that is where ‘she’ has been for the last month–on show. Yesterday I did two things. I bought rubber carpet underlay and then went to collect Annie from the gallery. Now the rug is happily in our front room with the Dillard quotation and the 65 houses that span a big part of a lifetime. I hope to enjoy living with ‘her’ for a good while to come.

Here is another trivet with night sky and colour blocks. I’m working out a plan for a bigger rug and I find it helpful to do these little pieces to see how value, shape and direction of hooking come together. I then sew a square of recycled wool on the back of the piece to make a trivet which is both functional and a splash of colour on the table.

The current gallery show of a few pieces of my rug hooking and an upcoming talk on rug hooking have caused me to go back and review my files. The rug hooking gallery on this site (on the right under Navigation) was in great need of updating. So I’ve been reviewing photos and adding the pieces that were missing. Giving a talk always causes me to reconsider where I’ve come from and, more stressfully, what I plan to do next. Finally finishing Annie after three years is its own kind of stress. What now?

At any rate, I hope you will review the gallery and see the rugs that I have done over the last 10 years. Here is one of my favourites, a chair seat long ago given as a gift.

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