BirdBrain Designs

a new grosvenor tote in blueberry

May 30, 2014 by Birdbrain 2 Comments

I have been in the studio this week working on a couple of new bags. Above is the work table with the blueberry tote in process. This is the same Grosvenor tote which you have seen here and here, but this time in a rich blueberry pebble leather. It is lined with a beautiful blue/red/green African wax cotton block print. The new modification comes with the inside pockets, each designed to hold your ipad, and all your other travel stuff you need to keep safe. Outside there is a deep zippered pocket, carry handles and a cross-body strap. This is a special order, but I have just enough leather left to make one more.

some of the winners from the Ontario Rug Hooking Craft Guild Annual Conference

May 26, 2014 by Birdbrain Leave a Comment

I am just home from the annual meeting of the Ontario rug hooking guild held in Oshawa this weekend and I wanted to share some of the winners of the rug display. There were so many wonderful rugs but, as always, it was hard to do justice to them in photographs. Here are some I managed to take. Our local rug hooking group was very proud that Mary Anne Keast’s wonderful piece was the winner in the pictorial category. Some of the other winners are pictured below: Barbara Lucas in the Mad About Texture theme category, Pat Lawson in the wide-cut category, Susan Clarke’s carpet bag in the original category and Jocelyn Gordon’s Animal Puzzle won the Craft Ontario Affiliate Award.

rug hooking annual, why I love CBC and more

May 23, 2014 by Birdbrain Leave a Comment

I am leaving this afternoon for our annual Ontario rug hooking conference in Oshawa. I have not been hooking very much this year, so I have only two small submissions, each self-portraits of a kind, and you can see them below. But first I want to share a link from the CBC. I was driving yesterday and I heard this on Michael Enright’s Rewind. The program focuses on a wonderful interview Peter Gzowski did with Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin. But what stopped me in my tracks and what I want to share with you is the very beginning of the program where Justine, a 26 year old medical student, writes a letter to CBC. This small segment captures the magic of the CBC and its importance to all of us. I encourage you to listen.

A second link is to an interview with Kaffe Fasset. He takes us through his sketchbooks and his wonderful fabrics. It’s under four minutes–give it a go!

And speaking of a life with colour, here’s what I found yesterday at my favourite second hand shop: a wonderful cotton scarf and a polka-dot cotton top. Perfect.

a new silver pebble bag

May 21, 2014 by Birdbrain 3 Comments

The most recent tote is all packaged up and on its way. The new owner tells me it is a birthday present to herself! What a great idea. I’ll be making more of these totes in the coming weeks. I like the combination of waxed canvas and leather with the heavy canoe canvas inside. Next maybe khaki and burgundy.

And here is a new Missouri Silver Pebble bag–this one a little wider and taller than the original. I really like this leather. It has a great heft to it and a lovely sheen. And it is a neutral bag without being drab. This one is a special order and there is one more of the same dimensions in the studio, soon to be in the shop. And then there is enough leather left for a Friday pouch. The exterior pocket fastens with a magnetic closure and there is a leather pocket for your phone inside. The cobalt, green and brown wax cotton lining is a nice surprise inside.

holiday monday

May 19, 2014 by Birdbrain Leave a Comment

I sat on the shore of Lake Ontario in the welcome sunshine today for this sketch. There was lots of gardening and studio work to be done at home, plus the finishing touches on my Kenya talk, but I loved settling into the calm and relative isolation of the shoreline, a calm interrupted only by birdsong and a flashing glimpse of one lone fox emerging for seconds in the green undergrowth. Wish I could have sketched him! Nonetheless, it was a perfect holiday afternoon.

Otherwise I have been working on a couple of small silver pebble shoulder bags, a little bigger than the one in this post. Below is a glimpse of them in process as well as the two pieces of Kenyan wax cotton for the lining. These bags have a large pocket on the outside which has a magnetic closure and a leather phone pocket on the inside. The shoulder straps are on the sewing table now.

And I am coming to the end of Americanah, a big riveting yet uncomfortable novel and the the best I have read this year. We follow the two main characters from Nigeria to the US and/or Britain and along with their journeys come unsettling questions about race, gender and so many of the easy assumptions we rest on. I’m betting this book will win the Bailey Prize this year. There is a full review here from New York Magazine.

a new tote and a repair

May 17, 2014 by Birdbrain 2 Comments

I made a couple of totes in leather and waxed canvas last year and they flew out of the shop. Recently, I was able to get some black antique waxed canvas (with the Eddie Bauer designation still on the bolt), so I wanted to make a few more of these durable totes. This one is trimmed in caramel leather, has a caramel leather adjustable shoulder strap and is lined in rugged canoe cotton. It is large, 15.5″x14″x6″, has three outer pockets and four inside. Pictured above is the ipad pocket and a leather pocket tucked in behind. This is a great working or travel tote, or even diaper bag, large enough to carry all you need.

You can see this tote in the shop by hitting the on-line store button in the sidebar on the right hand side of the post.

Below is Carissa’s well-loved and well-used tote/diaper bag. This bag has been in constant use for a year and a half, crammed full of all the things a baby needs. Finally, one of the straps gave away and the bag came in for repair. Pictured below is the repaired strap, ready to be back in full use tomorrow. I’m including this, just to remind everyone, that all bags made in the birdbrain shop are guaranteed.

thinking about kenya

May 16, 2014 by Birdbrain Leave a Comment

I’m giving a talk next week on my experiences in Kenya. So I have been thinking even more about my three visits to that country and how my attitude has changed over that time. My talk will focus on three woman I have known and worked with, and how their personal stories tell much of the story of the country. In April, Kenya amended its marriage laws to legalize polygamy, further undermining the position of women in that culture. In a country struggling with over-population, never mind deep inequality, this is a undeniable backward step for all. When the bill was passed, the BBC reported that the female MP’s walked out of parliament claiming, “that a decision to take on another wife would affect the whole family including the financial position of other spouses.”

After my first time in Kenya, my friends and family organized resources to support a bright young unqualified teacher to help her attend university and the wave continued in that circle to support four students in high school. Education is costly even at the high school level, and studies document the undeniable positive effect of education on the society as a whole. Here is an excerpt from Nicholas Kristoff’s op-ed piece in the New York Times Sunday Review, May 10, 2014.

That means that curbing birthrates tends to lead to stability, and that’s where educating girls comes in. You educate a boy, and he’ll have fewer children, but it’s a small effect. You educate a girl, and, on average, she will have a significantly smaller family. One robust Nigeria study managed to tease out correlation from causation and found that for each additional year of primary school, a girl has 0.26 fewer children. So if we want to reduce the youth bulge a decade from now, educate girls today.

More broadly, girls’ education can, in effect, almost double the formal labor force. It boosts the economy, raising living standards and promoting a virtuous cycle of development. Asia’s economic boom was built by educating girls and moving them from the villages to far more productive work in the cities

While the support for education is positive, I am now thinking beyond that. Much more must be done working with the people of Kenya and taking our lead from them. I’ve talked here about the hopeful beginnings of a small cooperative in Matangwe Kenya making hooked rugs. It could be a way for women to earn, to be in charge of their own incomes and to make decisions about how they spend that income. My thinking has changed radically from my first visit when I loaded my suitcase with donations for the school. I realize now that these ‘one-off presents’ are short-lived and encourage the thinking that someone else will solve the problem. The Nigerian protagonist’s comments on charity in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s striking, eye-opening novel, Americanah, (a novel I encourage you to read), clarified a growing discomfort I have had with providing and deciding instead of listening and facilitating.

A couple spoke about their safari in Tanzania. “We had a wonderful tour guide and we’re now paying for his first daughter’s education.” Two women spoke about their donations to a wonderful charity in Malawi that build wells, a wonderful orphanage in Botswana, a wonderful microfinance co0perative in Kenya. Ifemelu gazed at them. There was a certain luxury to charity that she could not identify with and did not have. To take ‘charity’ for granted, to revel in this charity towards people whom one did not know–perhaps it came from having had yesterday and having today and expecting to have tomorrow. She envied them this…Ifelelu wanted, suddenly and desperatley to be from the country of people who gave and not those who received, to be one of those who had and could therefore bask in the grace of having given, to be among those who could afford copious pity and empathy…

It’s complex to state it mildly. These are some of the questions I am grappling with–I hope with open eyes and ears.

back again

May 12, 2014 by Birdbrain Leave a Comment

My friend MB and I are going on a cycling trip in June, so we thought we better get going on our regime. This past Wednesday we cycled along Lake Ontario from one small town to the next and back again. Spring has finally arrived in Eastern Ontario and it was a perfect day for a ride. Now it was into the wind–but we really were not pushing ourselves too hard– stopped half way to sit on a patio and visit an art gallery where I was lucky enough to find a Kolinsky sable pocket brush which my cousin, John, recommended. Before the ride, I started this sketch of one of my favourite houses there, (the porch lights are really bright pink) and then added paint with my new brush when I got home.

The new tote made of black antique wax canvas and toffee leather is close to finished. It has a large double pocket on the front and a slip pocket pictured here on the back, a leather bottom and adjustable shoulder strap. It is just awaiting its canoe canvas lining which will have lots of compartments for computer, passport etc–and should show up in the shop by the end of the week.

screen printing for babies

May 6, 2014 by Birdbrain 2 Comments

I have been screen printing some baby gifts. Here are a few. I think the Bird with Attitude looks pretty cute on these 12 month old pieces.

evolution

May 5, 2014 by Birdbrain Leave a Comment

The first birdbrain post was on March 28 2011. I had begun making hooked bags and screen-printed canvas pouches and wanted a way to share what I was doing. In the three plus years since then, I have written 486 posts. This link takes you to those early days and my hooked bags and the very first leather bags–bags which evolved naturally when I was searching for a lighter option to the hooked bag. These two leather bags, the Grape and Espresso photographed in this post, are still in use and still look great. (So are the three hooked bags!) It makes me happy to see people using the things I have made and even happier to see the products standing up to the wear and tear of living. Over the three years I have had a few pieces back for repair–and I encourage this. I want the things I make to have a long life.

But today, I’ve been thinking about the blog and where we have been together. Travel to France, Italy, Germany, and of course Kenya–rug hooking, leather bags, screen printing and sketching. My early description of the blog which is still on the top right said it was a place where I muse about my creative life. And I guess I am still musing. And still creating.

On that note I’ve been designing some new bags. A little while ago I found some super black waxed canvas which still had the Eddie Bauer tag on the bolt. And I still have some great moss green waxed canvas in my store room. I want to combine both of these durable, waterproof fabrics with leather to make some shoulder bags and a totes. I like bags with exterior pockets and lots of options for storage inside. These bags will also have an ipad sleeve inside. I like to line them with canoe canvas because it is so durable. Here is the start of the designs. I’ll post them again as they take shape. And by the way, if you have any ideas about a bag or case you would like, please send me your ideas and request.One final note about what’s coming up. I got this wonderful pattern in the post last week from Donna Hrkman. I saw it when I was in Donna’s class in Seattle in March. I do not usually hook patterns from other designers, but I fell in love with this one. Donna added a baby bird to the design, making it a perfect gift for some of my favourite Birds. I’ve already started laying out colours. It will be good to get back to hooking. I’m a bit stymied by my large rug at the moment, and I think this Partridges and Pears runner is just the thing to get me back at the hooking frame.