Keeping the Hands Going

You might remember I wrote a while back about the giant knuckle on my little finger. I did finally ask the doctor about it, feeling very sheepish about my trivial concern, slotted as I was, no doubt, between a patient with a brain tumour and one in a wheelchair. He took one look, kind of scoffed and said "It's arthritis." Apparently it's also in my right thumb. He grudgingly ordered an x-ray, which confirmed his suspicions. The knuckle in the little finger has a deteriorated joint. He suggested Voltaren to relieve the pain and inflammation, which sort of helps, but it's basically downhill from here.

Which is not welcome news. I need my hands. I have already given up weaving because of my back, and haven't spun in a year because I don't want to tempt fate, but there is something about holding a needle that seems to really bother my right thumb if I do it for too long. And a recent flurry of machine quilting left my hands mysteriously sore and achy.  So I checked around the internet and did find a couple of posts with good information especially for stitchers.

Quilter Jeni Baker has lots of good tips in her article Safe Sewing: Crafting with Arthritis. And Nordic Needle has a good piece on Hand Health. I also found lots of sites that gave warm up exercises for the hands, but doing them in a sinkful of hot water seems like it would be much more effective. Pacing and taking lots of breaks is just common sense, but I really need to DO IT, not just think about it.

I'm wondering about the upcoming gardening season, since that can be very hard on the hands. Some kind of extra-supportive glove is probably the answer. Any other good ideas out there?

Quilt Improv - Well, Sort Of

Since I have been sworn to secrecy about the quilts I have made to test Sherri Lynn Wood's improv "scores" for her forthcoming book, but I'm dying to talk about the experience, I'll take another path. I picked up a couple of books from the library that also use an improvisational approach, just to compare. The first one is Quilt Improv by British designer Lucie Summers.

I returned it to the library after a quick browse. What does that tell you? Well, it's a perfectly lovely book, but not for me. Her methods are still way too controlled - there is nothing here that made me feel like dancing on the edge of wild abandon. Instead, it's very structured and safe, and as you can see from the image on the front, very tidy. Summers apparently has a line of fabrics with Moda, and although she doesn't say if that's what she used here, the sample fabrics are contemporary and colour co-ordinated. She does suggest using scraps, and most quilters have huge stashes so one could follow her templates and be more adventurous in fabric selection. I'm not keen on her suggestion of tiny 12" square sample quilts and the "larger" quilts she shows in the second half of the book would barely cover my knees. Her design boards, while very photogenic, aren't really that helpful. For example, if you want to create a quilt based on a grid, she suggests seeking inspiration by finding images of things that are square, like tiles and lattices. And the text is low contrast and hard to read. But, who knows? If you have good eyes and have never designed your own quilt before, this book is non-intimidating and just might give you a few ideas.

I had a somewhat less lukewarm reaction to Yoko Saito's Japanese Quilting Piece by Piece, also from Interweave Press. She doesn't claim to use an improvisational approach, but indeed states that her quilting became much more free and fun once she stopped following patterns and worrying about cutting things perfectly. She too has a line of fabrics in her distinctive earthy palette of taupes, browns and greys. I have long admired her work and have a couple of her books in the original Japanese, but the text isn't really essential as the diagrams are so well drawn and the method clear. Most of the projects are bags - not simple ones either. Many require intermediate to advanced sewing skills in spite of their organic look. As much as I like Saiko's style, I probably wouldn't make anything from this book, but would enjoy it just for the beautiful images and inspiring techniques.

The main problem I have with both these books is that there is no real foundation for HOW to improvise - which for me means trusting your instincts, being responsive to the materials at hand, working from your core, creating space for spontaneity, testing your boundaries, being in the moment. This isn't easy if you haven't had much practise, but certainly can be developed with the right encouragement. I am very hopeful that Sherri Lynn's book will offer just such a nurturing and inspiring voice.

Cherish the Past, Adorn the Present, Create for the Future

The first thing I must say in my defense is that because I move so often, I regularly whittle down my book collection. Too many books is not the problem. In fact, I have gone from a peak of something like 40 boxes of books down to just 12 as of the last move. I am an ardent librarian, and I know which books I cannot live without and which ones can go on to another home. I swear, your honour, that I have no recollection of buying this book. In fact, the other day I saw it on the shelves of a bookstore and coveted it dearly, but I didn't have enough money to buy it. How it appeared on my bookshelf at home, right next to Early 19th Century Embroidery Techniques (which I do remember buying), is a complete astonishment to me. I plead early onset dementia, or the existence of a fairy godmother, to explain the presence of this book in my collection. It is not possible that such a treasure could languish on my shelf unread.

The book in question is Gail Marsh's Early 20th Century Embroidery Techniques. I took it to bed with me last night after discovering it on my shelf, and couldn't put it down. More thrilling than a murder mystery, more passionate than a Harlequin romance, it spoke to my soul. I couldn't get to sleep for a long time afterwards, thinking of the heights to which embroidery has so recently soared, and the relatively sorry state it is in now. (I blame WWII, but that's probably better left to social historians.) When I finally did get to sleep, my dreams were filled with the strong, visionary, incredibly skilful women, like Ann Macbeth, Rebecca Crompton, Louisa Pesel and Rachel Kay-Shuttleworth, who inspired and influenced  a couple of generations of stitching artists. I woke up wondering what the hell happened, that we could now live in a world where cross-stitched swear words pass for radical embroidery. (Etsy, I'm looking at you.)

Now, I know that there are many fine stitchers out there, and the art world has opened up to valuing context and concept as much or even more than technique. But less than 100 years ago, embroidery was not only taught in schools, it was seen as a means to improving one's life, to learning many essential life skills, to developing one's mind and creativity. It was a vital, surging force, and one I wish was still with us now.

P.S. The title of this post is from William R. Lethaby, architect, writer, designer, teacher, and esteemed friend of Rachel Kay-Shuttleworth, whose collection forms the essence of this book.
P.P.S. Needle'n'Thread's Mary Corbet has written a very thorough review, and she had a similar reading experience to my own. Check out her post for lots of inside pages.

How Shopping Drove Me to Drink, and Other Stories

Yesterday I went over to Nanaimo intending to do a quick in and out at Fabricland, the world's crappiest fabric store. (When there is only one fabric store in town, Fabricland will have to do.) They were having a 50% off sale, so the store was jam-packed, complete with their famous half-hour line-ups at the till. That experience, combined with long bus rides (where the driver announces with complete lack of irony that Nanaimo is the land of many malls), blowing snow and just missing the ferry back to Gabriola, led me to totally abandon my attempts at a healthy lifestyle. I went to the nearest mall and got a $2 slice of pizza and a single can of beer, which I drank in public, contrary to all laws and ladylike behaviour. When I finally got home, I had zero desire to cook supper, so I dined on popcorn and trail mix, washed down with a fairly decent pinot noir.

Then I went to read in bed with Ann Hood's Knitting Yarns, which surprised me with some very entertaining writing, particularly Taylor Polites' story of knitting for his chihuahua.

I have been amusing myself with small crafty projects as I plan the next big embroidery. Here's the beginning of a collection of pillows, made with an old floral sheet and thrift store doilies. I think I'll make some nice plump tassels for the corners of the rectangular one. I used a scrap of thrift store lace trim on the square pillow, and decided after I was finished that it was too white. Instead of taking it apart, I just brushed the trim with diluted tea and let it dry. Instant aging!

I've also been finishing my test quilts for Sherri Lynn Wood's book project. I have promised not to blog about them until her book comes out, when all the testers' quilts will be posted on an online forum. The need to share is driving me crazy. Maybe I can cheat and post a very small detail. (Update: I did post a picture, but instantly regretted it. It's good to know I still have some scraps of self-control.)

Amazing Nature

Gracie and I were out helping my friend Ranza look for her missing dog, when we were distracted by a group of black shapes in the water. Ranza snapped this picture on her phone - you can see the shapes just beyond the seagulls. We were informed by a helpful passerby that this unusual sight was a cluster of seals ( or sea lions, see comments below), floating on their backs with their heads extended out of the water and their flippers in the air, in a behaviour called rafting. Apparently they do it to regulate their body temperature. At this time of year the males are hanging out waiting for the females to arrive and mating season to begin. The spring herring spawn apparently has also just begun, so there will be lots of action out in the bay.

P.S. Ranza's dog was found at home, safe and sound.

Snow Daze

We've just come out on the other side of a huge snowfall and a two-day power outage. I know that for the rest of North American, that pales in comparison to the awful winter that many have experienced, but we are spoiled on the West Coast, and this kind of weather is a shock to the system.

One good thing about it all was my discovery of where all the hours in a day go. You know, those hours that I am always complaining about not having? Yes, sadly, it's no surprise: the damn internet. Without my endless procrastinating (aka "research") I found I had plenty of time to pick up and almost finish the above embroidery, which had been languishing in the work basket since last August. (I first wrote about it here.)

Exercising My Brain

I'm off down another rabbit hole of reading and research, this time, ironically enough, to do with NOT knowing. Or more precisely, being comfortable with the feeling of not knowing, of uncertainty.

Cy Twombly, Panorama, 1957

I'm a big fan of the very smart Alain de Botton. His latest book, Art as Therapy, is exactly up my alley, and I'm sorry to have to return it to the library tomorrow. He begins with his Seven Functions of Art, which are: Remembering, Hope, Sorrow, Rebalancing, Self-Understanding, Growth and Appreciation. He writes wonderfully about each aspect, but I was particularly struck by a passage about a painting of Cy Twombly's.

Contemplating Cy Twombly's dark, scratchy, suggestive surface is rather like looking in a mirror in which you notice an aspect of your appearance that you had not paid much attention to before, except that what's at stake here is not a row of molars, but your inner experience. There are moods or states of mind (or soul) that are perplexingly elusive. One often has them, but can't isolate or examine them. ... 

de Botton goes on to describe the painting in more detail. Then he says:

We are held in the moment of being on the cusp of something. We are about to understand, but have not yet understood. This moment is important because it generally does not live up to its promise. We abandon the process of reflection. Not much of a decision about the personal meaning of love, justice or success is achieved, and we move on to something else. Looking at Twombly's painting assists us in a crucial thought: 'The part of me that wonders about important questions has not had enough recognition. I have not taken proper care of it. But now I see this part of myself reflected in the mirror of art, now I can make more of it.'

Oh, I love this! He put his finger on something central to my own art-making process, one that I often feel I have to apologize for.  Just hearing someone else describe that feeling of being in the place between understanding and not understanding is liberating for me.

Being comfortable with uncertainty is a theme of another book on my bedside table (I hear James laughing as he reads this - the book is actually in a stack on the floor beside the bed, there being no room on the bedside table.) The Antidote, by Oliver Burkeman, is subtitled Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking, which sounds rather grumpy, but it is delightfully witty and sensible. He considers Stoicism, Buddhism, and acceptance of failure and insecurity as approaches to a more complex, satisfying and possibly happier life than the ones typically offered by self-help gurus. I particularly like his discussion of negative capability, wherein he quotes Aldous Huxley:

Proficiency and the results of proficiency come only to those who have learned the paradoxical art of doing and not doing, of combining relaxation with activity, of letting go as a person in order that the immanent and transcendent Unknown Quantity may take hold.

Yes, being in that place of uncertainty, of knowing and not knowing, being open - that is where art happens.

And finally, as part of my occasional research into matters psychological - I'm still trying to figure out what made Louis Nicolas tick - I came across a  brilliant talk by psychologist Joe Griffin, whose Irish accent I could listen to all day long, about his concept of caetextia, or concept blindness, as a more accurate description of autism. His talk is an hour long, and covers all kinds of amazing things like how our brains developed to allow dreaming, how to educate children to be better people and save the planet, and even why knitting permits greater concentration (you will have to watch right to the end to find that out!)
Click here to go to his site and watch the video: The REM State, Caetextia, and the Development of Self-Concept.