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Hand dyed Pendleton shirts waiting to be transformed

"Quote on Quote"
 These are what I find to be the worthy little notes  as 
I gather up stuff from the world around me and try to make sense of it all

 "Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life." Anne Lamott

"You can never have too many books, and you can never read a book too many times." Anne Rushton, my daughter's fifth grade teacher

"It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that maters in the end." Ursula K. Le Guin


"For attractive lips, speak words of kindness. For lovely eyes seek out the good in people. For a slim figure, share your food with the hungry. For beautiful hair, let a child run their fingers through it once a day. For poise, walk with the knowledge that you never walk alone. People even more than things have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed and redeemed. Remember, if you ever need a helping hand, you will find one at the end of each of your arms. As you grow older you will discover that you have two hands; one for helping yourself, and the other for helping others. " Audrey Hepburn  when asked to share her beauty tips.


The Workshops

 

Creative Rug Hooking Workshops

Schedule for 2008 now available:
Registrations being taken now
just added...primitive people course for September/08
 
 to register or for information call us at 1-800-328-7756 or email us at info@hookingrugs.com

 
New Products

Excellent yarn for grasses, and landscape, hand dyed, thick and thin,

spun in Chile, 242 yards, $14.95C

 

Noro Yarn $12.95C an ocean waiting to be hooked, night sky waiting to be seen
 

Hand dyed swatches $12.95 C set of six 12 by 4" graduated colours

We call these our cupcakes, bundles of joy wool all connected in colours to a theme

Moroccan Spice, Summer Sky, Deep Ocean, Maritime Landscape, Primitive People

An excellent ash gripper frame with the grippers bent over the side to hold your mat tightly, handmade $199C

Wonderful, colourful chunky yarn. Perfect for that highlight of texture you need in landscapes, flowers, or just for fun.

$8 C per skein, assorted colours available.

 

If you are a dealer or teacher and would like to sell my books you can order

 

Hooking Mats and Rugs, another version of east Coast Rug Hooking can be ordered from Creative Publishing International customer service line at 1-800-328-0590.

Hook Me a Story and East Coast Rug Hooking are available from Nimbus Publishing at 1 800- 646-2879

 

New One of a Kind Hooked Rugs

The gallery was updated in December, 2007 new rugs

More rugs can be seen on my GALLERY page.

Studio News

Wool Deals

1.Super Swatch Pack
$89.95 C $74.95 US
50 swatches approx. 5" to 9", by 16" each swatch
A package of fifty different colours perfect for the person who is getting started and needs a good stash of colours and textures. These swatches are pulled from our baskets!

2.The Texture Package
$59.95C  $45.95 US
bundles, and or swatches of highly textured wools designed to add special effects in your rug hooking. Tweeds, plaids, thicks, and thins, alpaca, slub, silk and wool yarns that will add interest and mystery to your rug hooking.

To order call 1-800-328-7756
 

More Supplies

Studio Visits

 

                  
 
Ideas

From the readers.....

This is where I'll post  some of your ideas, comments, diary feedback, and letters to me. Over the years I have had many interesting letters and I think It is time to start sharing some of them with you. Please send along your feedback. I enjoy hearing from you.

 

This lovely rendition of my Fish on a Platter was hooked by Sharon Macleod on PEI. She is just getting ready to bind it. The pattern is available on the patterns page of this website.

 Diane Krys sent a picture of her abstract rug. She has been experimenting along with texture and embellishments. This is her reaction to a trip she took here on the east coast and a workshop she attended at the studio.

Hi Deanne,
We're finally home from our big trip to the east coast.    It was an  incredible adventure for Frank and I.  We both enjoyed meeting you   and your class remains a highlight for me.  It was  the ultimate luxury to have all that time  stretched out in front of us to fill with whatever caught our 
fancy.   We left Amherst and spent a couple of days  on PEI.   As you  predicted, we loved it.  What a beautiful, gentle place. Those  shell studded ,red sand beaches and dunes were  the  perfect setting  to reflect on and process some of the ideas and  mental stimulation  of the previous days.   My  brain was spinning by the time I left  your studio. Like a kid, I filled my pockets with  blue and  purple shells, each one  more exciting than the last.  I think  I can  feel a rug coming on....   It was a wonderful experience;   to be  surrounded by your work and the warmth and generosity of your  personality as well as the   enthusiasm of the group.   I'm sure you  hear this a lot, but pictures of your  work in a rug hooking magazine  were the first pieces of hooking that really affected me on a deeper   emotional level.   They completely captured my imagination for what  rug hooking could express. ( and still do)    I'm  grateful that your  personal artistic journey has led you to teach. I don't know yet  exactly how your class will filter through me to my hooking, but my  instincts tell me that it was really important for me to have met  you, talked with you  and  taken in  your ideas and thoughts on your  artistic process and techniques. I also know for sure that I love  hand cutting wool and lots and lots of texture!!!    I brought home a suitcase full of fibres to prove it.   You've left me with an  expanded sense of anything goes to serve the idea and beauty of a  creation as well as  many thoughts to ponder on simply living in a  more artful,  conscious way.    I came to  appreciate how much work  you do on mind, body,  and spirit before you even put hook in hand.    Like a sprinter, it's not entirely about the 10 second run, it's  about everything  you do to prepare for it  that will determine success. (Not to imply you hook a piece in 10 seconds!)  Thoughts  and themes from the class weren't  far from my mind as we continued   on our travels. As we took in  music and film festivals, soaked up  the sun and scenery,    visited other studios and artists, met  incredibly kind and  interesting people at our Band B breakfast  table, reconnected with family and family history,  and ate tons of  seafood, I found myself thinking a lot about the stories,  inspirations and process behind all types of artistic works and  the  variety of experiences that can influence them.    They are the  layers of meaning in a piece, the subtle flavours of a work that will   ultimately  elevate a work from a technical exercise to something  much more,  even if it's only meaningful to it's creator.  Now my  challenge is to channel an incredible 3 weeks of  play, ideas and  adventures into some good hooking!       Your idea of balancing play  and whimsy with a thoughtful  and meaningful response really  resonated with me as something I want to work on.   So that's where I  will start.   Actually, I might start with a good piece of chocolate  just to get me going!    Take care Deanne,  I sincerely  wish you all  the best.     You are a true inspiration.   You were very kind to ask  me to send a picture of my work and I will do that.  I should be able  to get my act together in the next couple of days.     'Til  then          Diane  Krys ( from Edmonton)

 



Recipes

 

 

Leek and Potato Soup

Take two leeks, one onion, and fry in two tbsp butter. Fry til tender. Dice two large potatoes, and toss into pot. Cover with water(3 to 4 cups) and two teaspoon of chicken broth powder. Boil til all are tender. I then puree the potato leek mixture. Next add 2 cups of blend cream, salt, and fresh ground pepper.

 Serve with grated old cheddar cheese sprinkled on top.

 

 

Feta Pizza

I make a home made pizza crust, but you can use store bought if you want, and I take the little packets of marinated cubes of feta cheese and I add interesting ingredients with these in a bowl. I mix artichoke hearts, onion, garlic, spinach, or any combination of interesting things, and spread this with the oil marinade over the pizza dough. I top it with a little grated mozzarella and parmesan and bake the unbaked dough for twenty minutes on 400 degrees. It is a delicious pizza , no tomato sauce, just the olive oil on the bread. You can use things like sun dried tomatoes, fresh tomato, peppers, fresh herbs, mushrooms and unique cheeses

 

 
The Recipe Archives For More Tasty Homemade Goodies
The recipes were taking up lots of space and it was hard to tell when something new was added so I have all the recipes used on the site on a new page. Click on the link to find them.
 
 
Email Deanne

If you want to receive my little studio newsletter email me and you'll be put on the list
info@hookingrugs.com


The Gallery
 

 Four  Reproduction Prints Available

                                          

Four  Limited Edition Prints are now ready for sale. Click here !!!

These prints cannot be seen well on the computer. They are so well done they look as if they are tiny hooked rugs. You can see every bit of texture that was in the original rug. You can purchase these online using our safe shopping cart or call me at 1-800-328-7756 to order.


 


Deanne Rug Hooking Diary

The Latest News from the studio....

be sure to check here for the up to date information on what's happening.....

 

If you are in the Montreal area this winter...

Rug Hooking Show of hooked rugs by Deanne Fitzpatrick, Doris Eaton, Rachelle Leblanc and Margaret Forsey is at

 Musée des maîtres et artisans du Québec  514-747-7367  from February 7 to April 13, 615 St. Croix Ave, Montreal, curated by Denis Longchamps.

 

The Artful Rug Hooker 2008

A Feast of Inspiration

Thursday and Friday, October 16 and 17, 2008 featuring

 

Ginny Stimmel, Editor of Rug Hooking Magazine

Beth Powning, New Brunswick Artist and Writer

Valerie Hearder, Award Winning Quilt Artist

Joy Laking, Nova Scotia Painter

Janet Crawford, Owner Fog Forest Art Gallery

Rob Lyons, Author and Graphic Designer

Danielle Oulette and Gabrielle Savoie, Acadien Fibre Artists

Deanne Fitzpatrick, Rug Hooking Artist and Writer

 

The theme of the 2008 symposium will be a Feast of Inspiration and our guest speakers have been brought together to inspire rug hookers and other fibre artists. The format of the symposium will be based on the 2007 format, with adjustments learned from our first year and with new speakers and new ideas.

 

Won’t you join us for The Artful Rug Hooker 2008? It will be a Feast of Inspiration.

 

sym-po-sium – a gathering with a free exchange of ideas

This will be a dynamic two day Rug Hookers Creativity Retreat held in the parish hall,  Amherst, Nova Scotia with its goal being to bring together a group of rug hookers and fibre artists interested in developing their creative ability by learning from each other, other artists, and from myself. It will be two days of exchanging ideas, creating and developing hooking projects, feeling wool and other fancy fibres, dreaming dreams and turning them into realities, nurturing original thoughts. It will be a conference of creativity, where art and rug hooking meet. Imagine a room full of people who all still believe in making things by hand and that art is part of daily living. Imagine a series of speakers who have made a life’s work of these very things and have set out to inspire a room full of people. The cost is $250Cnd.A $75 non-refundable deposit is due upon registration with the balance due in October 2008.The 2007 symposium

was booked up eighteen months in advance so if you are interested please call and register your place at the event.

 

If you are thinking of coming to any of these, please call us as they are filling.

Registration

All workshops are lead by Deanne Fitzpatrick in her studio.

 A $50 non refundable deposit is payable upon registration.

Space is limited and the class fills very quickly so register early.

To register call or send cheque to:

Deanne Fitzpatrick

RR5 Amherst, Nova Scotia, Canada, B4H 3Y3

 

Call to register at

1-800-328-7756

We accept visa and MasterCard.

info@hookingrugs.com

www.hookingrugs.com


 

 

 

 

Pattern Catalogue (32 pages)

available with  90 new designs for $5($2 shipping)  to order call 1-800-328-7756

as well as patterns there is all kinds of bits and pieces about rug hooking, and even a few recipes in the mix

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Deanne Fitzpatrick's Daybook and Journal

This full colour daybook/journal is illustrated with Deanne's hooked rugs, and includes diary excerpts from the past four years.

On the left side of the day book is a hooked rug and a diary excerpt, on the right side is a daybook showing your week at a glance. At the end of each month are journal pages for your own writing and ideas. It is a perennial daybook, allowing you to fill in the days according to the year you use it.

Coil bound, 6 by 8",120 pages with over 60 full colour images

Pre Order your copy call 1-800-328-7756

 

Deanne Fitzpatrick East Coast Rug Hooking published by Nimbus

a book of stories and designs inspired by life on the coast.

Call to order your copy today

1-800-328-7756

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Artspots

The CBC has created a five minute artists profile video and five 30 second vignettes about my work. Click on Artspots above to view the videos.

 In January 2007 nearly 11,000 people visited this site. Can that really be true? Yep it is! I hope you enjoy your time cruising around here and that you find all kinds of stuff useful to you.

 

The Diary...

 

These are my rug hooking rambles....my regular bits....a place where I weave together the loose strands of my mind. Read lightly and take it with a grain of salt:

June 27, Dear Diary, I got the workshop schedule up. We are ready for 2009  so if you are thinking of making the journey there is a an opportunity to grab the train, take the plane, and visit Amherst Nova Scotia. It is a beautiful town full of lovely people. Today, as I walked up the street I ran into my sister  and she took me to the cafe (Bella's) where  we had a chicken salad sandwich, and planned a dinner for the upcoming fibre arts festival in October. It will also be the show of a local felting artist, Lisa Martin. The community has rallied around the Artful Rug Hooker Symposium and planned a fibre arts festival for Amherst in the fall of  2008. Sometimes lovely things can come out of a sandwich when you are part of a community.  The cafe has room for forty people so she'll host a dinner and an art exhibit at the same time. It all took ten minutes to arrange, just connecting people and bringing them together. A happy smile, and wanting people to have fun.

I wanted to tell you about a gift I received in the mail today. It was the most interesting gift. It was a packet of inspiration, and it was inspiring. A beautiful rug hooker from England mailed me a packet of cards, and copies of articles, and photocopies of interesting pictures that she found beautiful and thought I would like. It is like she made a magazine for me to have tea with. It introduced me to many artists I was not aware of. It is such a good idea to save all the bits of beauty we come across. The bits of fabric, the clip from a magazine, but then how nice is it to share that and pass them on to someone else. Now when I find a great postcard, you know I will have to buy two. It was lovely to receive but the real gift is what it might lead too in my mind. Oooh I love that path...down the windy road of my imagination, ferns brushing my legs and  blue creeping jenny under bare feet. Sleeping under the stars of ideas, midnight in the garden of wonder. My heart feels so light when I think of a new idea.

I am actually having a t shirt made that says..."There is nothing more beautiful than an idea." and I think it might be true.

June 20, Dear Diary, My mother had me on her forty third birthday. I have just turned forty three myself and can't imagine what a surprise I might have been to her. She took to me easily of course being the seventh daughter of seven girls. I grew up alone in the house with her and my father, like an only child in some ways but with this huge network around you that arrived for weekends. In a way it was the best of two worlds. I was born in a cottage hospital on the gut in Placentia. In the bed next to mom was Kathleen Maher, who was young and having her first child. If she had a girl she was calling it Deanne. If a boy she was calling him Dwayne. Dwayne was born eight hours before me, and my mother thought that she would use Deanne. She had already thought of six girls names on her own. So that is the story of my name. It would make a good rug, as would most stories.

My high school friend is coming tonight with her husband and kids. I am hooking a rug right now that somehow reminds me of her father. It is the head I think.  Often it is just a tiny element that leads to recognition. That is all it takes one good reminder.

June 18, Dear Diary, Lately I have been thinking alot about fear. I have always been a somewhat fearful person in some areas of my life, while in others I am more fearless. I am fearless with the hook but very cautious in other ways. Over the years I have come to accept my trepidation as part of who I am. Part of me says be fearless in everything, another part of me wants to coddle the part of myself that is slightly scared, and say that's okay. One  friend of mine told me that the only thing we are really afraid of is dying. Face that fear, she believed and you can do anything. The truth rings clear. My fears are often in the form mild anxiety , or worry, leading me always to imagine the worst outcome. A friend of mine told me she always prepared for the best possible outcome. She liked to plan ahead to ensure that things would work out. Like most of us she discovered that you can't ensure such things. She also told me that she took a workshop in Calgary on embracing fear in which she did all kinds of fascinating activities that scared her to death. She says that she remains afraid of change but that the workshop helped. One of my biggest fears is of losing the beauty that is around me, the freedom to create, the happiness, and peacefulness that shelter me.  Essentially I struggle with  the notion of deserving what I have.  It runs deep, and though I think about it as I hook, I have very few answers. I feel so lucky. I cannot believe that I get to make a life out of making rugs. How could I ever have guessed. My house is generally a peaceful place. I make my rugs, and carry on a beautiful little gallery in the downtown. My fears are my own to conquer and deal with. The one thing I have going for me is I am not afraid of being afraid of some things. My friend who took the course said it our brains way of protecting us. Sometimes it just goes into an overprotective mode. For the most part I know myself. I must be thinking about more than blue when I am hooking blue.

 I like to wake up to each day with the freedom to choose what to do that day. It is an uncommon luxury. Other than my workshops I don't plan much. On Monday I don't want to know what I am doing on Friday. When people ask me about the summer, the only thing I know is that I'll be busy on Sundays with family and I have one lunch date. I like that. My friends are sometimes like..."What is wrong with you?" I think they think I don't want to do things with them. It isn't that . It is just that I want the freedom to decide what I want to do closer to the date. Lately when I wake in the morning I walk to the window, raise my hands in "namus day", and thank god for the day, for the land around me, and the river below it. What is there to be afraid of ? All my own fears are with in me. Settle my own mind, which I am good at, and the fears, simple and complex ease up. When I was a little girl I worried about all kinds of things, and that little girls still lives inside of me.I used to worry if the stove was turned off, the doors were locked, and other foolish things. I am the same person I was at ten or eleven but I have grown layers around the person. Each layer is made up of experience, and knowledge, and faults, and mistakes. As adults we must mother ourselves, rub our own heads, assuage our own fears and douse out our worries. Worry is so useless yet there are few people I have met that don't struggle with it in some little way. I find that walking can be comforting as a hug from my mother used to be when I was a child. My hook eases my mind because when I am at it I am literally lost in whatever colours I am using, and my mind is free to wander around. Worry comes, and goes, but never has it made a problem better.

June 12, Dear Diary, We are planning a fibre arts festival for Amherst around the time of next fall symposium. The community noticed all the excitement last year and has come together to create some additional activities around the event which is absolutely lovely. I read today in the paper that Valerie Hearder, who will be one of this tears symposium speakers, lost some of her quilts when two suitcases where stolen from her car while she was visiting friends. She has offered a reward for finding them. If you have a chance be sure to visit her website and become familiar with the beautiful haunting images she creates in her quilts. It would be a beautiful thing if somehow we could mange to help her get these quilts back. Having your art work stolen would be heart breaking.

Tonight I took the time to plant a long row of sunflowers at the edge of our vegetable garden. The first packet I planted last week has emerged and now I see the [possibilities of how they will look from the road as I drive home to my house in September. How their tall statuesque figures will create shadows in the snow this winter as I snowshoe around here on stormy days. I love the leftover glory that remains in the way they stand so strong and tall even after all their youthfulness has gone. Reminds me of my father in law some how. My son stood above me as I did it. I had to go in the house and grab my jean jacket to take the chill of. These will be in their glory in the heat but now the cool evenings will let the water create their roots good and strong so their form can endure the winter. They are like the rest of us. Only our form stands in the winter. In the summer we are full of glory.

Mary, who works at the studio with us, painted some of the walls in the basement a great sunny yellow today. She is the soap maker, and is the creator of our “Coastal Woman Soap” . I out her mint saps all around the studio as I love the fresh mint smell. Downstairs looks likes it is full of possibilities. The theme of it is playground for artists. The colour scheme is “fresh and strong”. The feeling is use what you have and make the very best of it. Once I heard a woman talking about her mother, and she said her mother used to say, ”It’s not what you have it is how you keep it.” I loved that idea. It is an idea of appreciation. My friend Cathy Thurston , years ago was doing the dishes in my kitchen, and I can still see her holding up an old plate and telling me about the Buddhist idea of mindfulness, and how even drying a dish can be a prayer. That was nearly fifteen years ago. I bet she does not even remember it but I can still see her in all her exquisiteness holding that old plate like it was golden edged china. She was standing in front of our old cupboards that were painted forest green. It was the moment I decided to read more about mindfulness, but it was probably five years later that I actually got to it. Small conversations over dishes is now one of the reasons I don’t have a dishwasher but it did not start out that way. Our reasons for being the way we are develop and redevelop themselves. Who knows what bits and pieces of our caring for each other enrich us in what ways. Over the years we have transformed this old farmhouse but I remember nearly every swatch of fabric I have had to make curtains, every colour I have painted the rooms, and I can still picture it the way it was at different times in my life here. The other night when I picked the lilacs I was brought back to the first summer we were in the house ad I had painted the front room light blue and made curtains of navy blue and lilac, with lilacs all over them. That summer every day I brought in a fresh bouquet. I think it is time right now for me to get up from this computer and pick myself a fresh bouquet. Stay close to the things that nurture the soul, listen to the sound of the peepers in the ponds at night, and know that empty vessels can’t really be filled with stuff.

 

June 11, 2008 Dear Diary, I am turning the basement of my studio into a playground for  all the rug hooking artists who come here each year for workshops. I have fearlessly hung my own paintings...abstracts and poppies mainly so that people can see that fooling around and wasting time is worth it. We had the floors shined. They are old old old, and not really pretty but there is no fear about dropping stuff on them. Next spring I plan on doing two  rug hooking and creativity workshops with groups of twelve to fourteen so I had to revamp that space as a place where people could go to draw out designs and play with all kinds of activities. It is fun to recreate space. Brenda who works with me says we need a red leather  chair and I think she might be right. I took a course in May on using Creative Arts for Transformational learning at the Tatamagouche Centre and it got me thinking about what I can do to enrich the experience of creativity in rug hooking when people come from so far away to visit the studio. It led to a transformation of space, and a surge of ideas. I haven't listed  the workshops yet because I want to make sure  of how I am going to do it. If you want to know what is coming be sure to email me and ask to be put on the newsletter list.

I have not been feeling too philosophical these days, preferring concrete things like chairs and geraniums. I also had four workshops this spring filling the place with beautiful people and wonderful ideas and my writing has been left to my brown leather book. I have put some entries in there as I sit dreaming about the potential of my garden. I am getting better at that you know. Over the years I have learned a little more, and slowly have taught myself to make things grow.

May 27, 2008 Dear Diary, Last week I went away for a whole week and took a course. I had not done that in years. It was on using creative arts for transformational learning. It gave me new ideas for my workshops, but mostly it was exciting to be a student again. Learning freely under the total guidance of someone else. It was interesting to spend a week with a group of people I did not know, from al different backgrounds. Going away for me though is always about coming home. So many people tell me that as much as they love to travel, they love to come home. I am like them. Once I got home I happily returned to checking my nasturtiums that I have planted in the greenhouse and weeding out the gardens. May and June are months of promise for gardeners. I have become better at it over the years, paying close attention to what the good gardeners in my life do. Last year I managed to create a nice little garden out my back door. My rhododendrons made it over the winter but will they bloom? I am content to wait and see, and hope. Garden make you adapt. One of the things that made me a gardener, albeit a weak one, was the program, Recreating Eden, that is produced out west and shows on Vision TV. It kept featuring the most interesting people who created unusual or interesting gardens. It was shot beautifully and was rich in meaning. It was about responding to the land around you. Gardens tell you what goes where.   Last year, Margaret Mackenzie, and landscape architect came to my house for a cup of tea. She told me what the land around this house was calling out for. She knew how to listen to it. I had been trying to tell it what it wanted instead of just listening to it with my eyes. You want to give the land some shape but you have to look at the bone structure that is already there. I like what the garden brings out in me. At the shore when I needed mulch, there was no where to go to get it. I decided to gather seaweed of the beach and try that. It felt so great to be using what was naturally available. What was there for the taking. I like that it tells me to quiet down and be patient. The garden sounds a lot like my husband actually. The garden makes me rest in it. It tells me to get my book and sit still and watch it. It tells me that it needs me daily, not for everything, but for a little love and nurturing. In that way it sounds like my children. One friend once told me that when her children were little she did not have enough leftover nurturing in her to water a geranium. I understood that, neither did I. Perhaps that is why women often turn to the garden in their forties and fifties. We have fashioned ourselves into caregivers as we raised a family and as our children mature, our nurturing needs to find a new home. It is true here in this house on seven acres on the edge of town. The children are just blossoming and the garden is just getting planted.

 

May 9, 2008 Dear Diary, I made a rug with a blue field in it, only to find out when the rug was finished it was a river not a field. I love the possibility of learning from yourself whilst it is unknown only to you. I dream sometimes about rugs. The other night as I was falling off to sleep I saw a flat top house on cliff. It was huge, and the water was rushing towards the cliff. Last week I tried to make a painting, and there were waves in the painting. It remains incredibly bad, but the dream of the rug has a possibility in it. Making the bad painting may lead me to a good rug. Besides it is good to do something badly. It is humbling, and we all need that, though as a mother I am humbled daily. Perhaps being humbled in a more creative form, "creative humbling", is an exercise in itself. We need to do things we are not proficient at, to learn that it does not come easy. Truth is this happens with things you are good at. I am humbled sometimes by a bad rug that does not live up to my expectations. I have thrown them in the garbage at times over the years after looking at them closely and trying to rework them. Other times a rug that I love and find beautiful is ignored in the studio by visitors. Thankfully this does not bother me. If I believe it is good, that is enough for me. Where ever I got that sense of myself, I am grateful for it. Perhaps it is from my father. I link it to him even though I know he cared greatly what others thought. I do to in some ways, but not so much about the rugs. I am overjoyed when some one loves them, but I just feel respectful if someone does n't. Not everyone sees things the same way. Art is personal, and rugs are art.

I have just read Edna Staebler's diary. She was a writer from Ontario who wrote really wonderful cook books and also articles, and books. She was a wonderful diarist, and had all kinds of thoughts and ideas about writing. Someone emailed me with the suggestion and I thank them for it. It was lovely.

April 18, 2008 Dear Diary, I finished a small series of poppy rugs. They are rich red poppies. At the time I was hooking them I decided to go out and buy nasturtium seeds for the green house. I plant them early. While buying the seeds I found poppy seeds so I bought those too to put in the earth in the green house.  I  thought the seeds belonged with me as I was hooking the poppies. I play small simple serendipity games with myself. It makes my life a bit more magical in my mind. The magic does not always last. But if those seeds sprout a plant I will believe in the generosity of the cosmos. I spent time this week preparing for the texture in the landscape. Gathering thoughts and ideas and wool at the same time. The last few days I spent getting the little cottage ready for the season. George Davis ,my faithful friend comes to turn the water on. Yesterday he showed up out of the blue and put the water on early for me. I was standing at the sink with my back to the water and I knew just where I was because the seagulls were screeching. I was able to clean the place after the winter. I learned from a neighbour how to set a mouse trap, and I set them. Thankfully I did not catch any. I am not self sufficient when it comes to mice. I run like I am late for a bus if someone holds a mouse by the tail and wags it at me. I am a fool about it, even if they are dead. Once my neighbor, who lives a hundred yards away ran up to my yard because he had heard me scream. I saw a mouse in the garden while I was pulling weeds. He could not believe my scream was connected to seeing a mouse. The two things did not add up.

I am just a one hundred and seventy pound weakling I guess because I remain, a forty two year old woman, afraid of mice. The solution, I got myself a cat.

April 12, 2007 Dear Diary, Lately I have noticed that when I read a novel I read it as if I were trying to write. Sometimes when I would read a beautiful sentence I would almost feel resentful that I did not write like that. Instead of sinking in and enjoying a book I kept wondering if maybe I could write a novel too. There is a famous quote about an author who says ”When I retire I think I’ll do a little brain surgery.” To the doctor who says he plans to write when he retires. I like to write. I write about rug hooking, and I write this diary. I was starting to feel as if neither were that important, that I should be focusing on writing something big, something important. I looked at words lustfully, wishing I had strung them together. Sometimes this winter it dawned on me how foolish I was. How I was not looking at the gifts I had and appreciating them, Making the very most of them. If you look away from the gifts you have, and wish for other gifts, it is a distraction. I do not mean that you should not play and explore but I mean that you should hold your gifts in great esteem. You must not think you are better than others but gratefulness for what you have been given is necessary to develop your gifts. I want to grow in what I do, and appreciate others for what they do. When I read a novel, wishing I could write like that my focus was off the beauty and the art of what was before me. I was distracted not only from my own work but from art and beauty itself. It was a bit like visiting a friend and wanting their kitchen. Pointless, and a slightly nasty underside to your visit. You come home, not really loving what you have, when you know you do, you chose it. It is always difficult to confront our under belly, the side of ourselves that wants more, does not appreciate the enormity of what you already have. I like Charles Shultz quote above because it is such plain acceptance, such good sense. I can do that well so I am going to do it…a lot of it. I think these thoughts have brought me back to the value of small. I want to create a nice body of small rugs over the next little while. Rugs, because that is what I know how to do. Words to live by is what I’ll write because that is what comes to my head. No shame in that.

 

 

April 11, 2008, Dear Diary, I set up a tiny tea shop in one corner of my studio for the blooming teas. The little gift Brenda brought me from Calgary was so interesting I decided to sell them in the studio. You take this unsuspecting looking pod and pour boiling water over it in a glass pot and a flower blooms in your tea. You then have a beautiful pot of green tea to drink. What an unusual thing.I sold three rugs this week for the new fossil centre in Joggins. They have also bought two for their permanent display. The new centre is opening in April and it will be a centre to interpret the famous fossill cliffs not far from here. 

The deer are still nipping about my yard. I have just finished two square poppy rugs and three more of my women in dresses. I am going to have a great selection of interesting smaller rugs this summer. I also finished four tiny square poppies. My hands are nimble right now but the outside keeps calling me and I find it hard to sit still.

April 7, 2008, Dear Diary, I have seven sisters and five of them are in Portugal. It is odd to have a large family and have all of them take off to another continent. Often I might not speak to them for two weeks, or visit for that long, but that is different then not being able to. There is a comfort in them being a drive away. They are having a good time, and feasting on salt cod and red wine night after night. Who can begrudge them but I miss them and wish they would hurry up and be back in Canada.

Today the deer were in the yard again. It was our first fine spring day and three deer were playing on the hill. I went out to pile the wood for next winter, and the deer were just  twenty feet away eating the bits of spring peeking up through the tan grass from last year. They stayed while I piled as if I was a deer myself. I was amazed. For the first time I was not worried to turn my back on a wild creature, nor were they worried about me. I think I am getting quieter. Last year a butterfly landed on my knee one day. The chickadees feed from my hand at the Glen, a local nature preserve. So today I had the pleasure of being at one with the deer for a little while. It made me feel blessed and special.

Tonight I ache from work that my body is not used to. I took a walk as usual, but today I headed along the Bay of Fundy shore line ,on the marsh dikes in West Amherst. So there you’ll see that the water is jewel tone blue, with purple, and brown, and rose all around. If I painted it, If I hooked it you would say she is not realist, but you’d be wrong. The big chunks of ice had tumbled against the shore line, and in their tumbling had become slicked in chocolate brown mud. They looked like some kind of big ice cream concoction. Across the shore is Maccan, and Minudie. Both are fairly small, and hardly populated. Minudie is famous for King Seaman, a Unitarian, who had a huge shipping business that he ran from that tiny hamlet on the Bay of Fundy. He became a rich merchant. Years ago I went  and saw his big grand house and  further up the road found his grave marker lost in a sea of nettles. He came and went like everyone else. He rose, became rich and is now buried among the men who worked for him. Hard to figure why people try so hard sometimes. It must be about the challenge, the desire to create change, the drive to make things work. For so many it must be about more than money, and getting rich. Every fool knows that he comes, then he goes.

Back to Minudie, it remains a beautiful and dramatic place where, surprisingly very few people live. So the long walk, and the wood pile have combined, and turned my muscles to tight ropes beneath my skin. I fell asleep sitting in the chair reading The Gathering by Anne Enright. It was excellent by the way. I have a penchant for Irish writers, and the stories of their families. Newfoundland in the nineteen seventies was as much like Ireland as Ireland I think, at least the Catholic parts were. Anyway she won the Man Booker with it, so it is unlikely to put you to sleep unless you have pushed your body good and hard.

 

April 4, 2008, Dear Diary, When I was a girl, probably ten or so my mother's friend at the bottom of our hill had cancer. Her name was Ann, like my mothers name. They had been friends since they were girls on working on the base in the mess hall cooking for all the American Navy men that were stationed in Newfoundland at the time. Both, unlike so many who had married Americans and moved away, married men from Newfoundland and settled in Freshwater. They raised large families, and both had a late life baby. Her son Jimmy was about two years older than me. The last year of Ann's life my mother spent the days with her, and I went to her house everyday for lunch. She was in a hospital bed in the dining room, and my mother cared for her. Their friendship was long and strong. I would come there everyday for lunch, usually Campbell's soup, and sit on the day bed in the kitchen for a little rest. The day bed was covered with a big floral quilt with a grey background. Those days going there that school year stay with me as I enter into middle age. In those days my mother and Ann were in their early fifties, or late forties. I used to wonder what they talked about all day, what  they did when I wasn't there. It was interesting to me to think of my mother wandering around a different house than our own. It seemed such a foreign routine. I learned from my mother what friendship is. It took years for it all to sink in but it came. You don't gossip about your friends I learned. You tell them the truth, with kind intentions. You hold back the truth when necessary. You let them know you like them. You try to be good company. You make them a cup of tea.

 

I know my mother loved Ann , like a sister. I think of how my own friends have developed. I have six sisters so unlike people from smaller families I have never looked to girlfriends in search of a sister. I have six lovely ones, all of whom I like, let alone love. My friends however are something different, they are another kind of a beauty all of its own self. Today, in the mail , I got a card from a friend that I see all the time. I thought what could she be possibly sending me a card for. It was just a note that came in the mail that told me nice things about myself, about us as friends. It made me cry . She was so thoughtful to think of me, to send me a card in the mail, to bother to get my mailing address. We often don't know the mailing address of our bet friends locally because we see them. I had been out for a beer with her last week, and this week we had gone for a long walk. She sees me all the time, but she wanted me to know she appreciates me. How nice was that?

 

Brenda who works with me went away for two weeks and came back to town with two gifts for me. A tiny box of handmade Belgian chocolates that she told me not to share with my kids. They'd be just as happy with an Aero bar anyway so I took her advice. She also bought me blossom tea, which is a small tea ball that as you steep it turns into a flower. I ordered them for my studio after drinking the tea and watching the little art unfold itself. It was a gift that she knew I would be captivated by. The thing was she was somewhere and thought of me, and followed through. I have always been big on" the thought counts." As I have aged I have decided that thoughts are nice but actions count more, and I have tried to follow through on ideas I have about kindness. I remind myself that a thought is just a thought but a note in the mail to a good friend telling them you love them is something that you can hold in your hand. It takes the thought from inside of you and carries it into the world.

 

March 27, 2008 Dear Diary, I started working on a little series of small mats of women in dresses . They are all around 5 by 12 inches each. It is amazing to me still that such a small rug can have a personality of the character in it. It is creation, to create an idea of someone out of bits of wool and cloth. I imagine things about these little characters after they are made as if they were real. The woman in the apron with the green dots is prim. The dirndl skirt woman must be from Europe. Perhaps diary you think I am mad but I am not. What would be the sense of making such little tiny works of art if they were not imbued with a bit of life. For a while I was in the habit of thinking that only the big rugs really matter but this winter has been a revelation about the small ones again. Small matters, I keep saying, though I had been ignoring the small mat as really mattering. Now I am back at it, and happy to have found it again. It is like finding a little piece of art that you had hidden in a box under the bed that needed to be framed but had forgotten about. These little women in dresses are now ten in number. I think they will multiply, and go forth. Perhaps I need to make a few men as well if that's the case. We'll see.

 

March 20, 2008, Dear Diary I remember when I was studying counselling the most important quality seemed to be genuineness when you are working with people. As time has gone on this has become a very important quality not in counselling but in being. I am always talking about simple living, even though I have a furniture weakness, and I buy wool like I hook a five foot by five foot carpet a day. This year I have had a little guilt, felt slightly disingenuine, because I built an addition on to my cottage. When so many in the world barely survive I picked out hardwood for a little place on the shore. My friend says she has focused on being grateful rather than feeling guilt about what she has. Regardless, at times it is a bit hard to reconcile how some of us become so fortunate, while others struggle. Perhaps materialism is just one aspect of this. The same is true for mental health, health in general. There is no understanding life and the way things play out but gratefulness, thankfulness, along with consideration for the rest of the world is part of being genuine. Our cottage is my link with the shore these days. It is a half hour from my house. When my children were little I spent all the summer there in a one room cottage that had two little dividers for bedrooms. There was one tap of cold water that ran out directly under the house. We used my in laws bathroom next door. It was a little place but we lived there for two months. It has grown a little over the years. It still remains a cottage but we have own own facilities now, thank goodness. This year my daughters bedroom grew from a closet to a space that has room for friends. I could now invite someone to stay the night. We have a space on the water. I hook rugs on the deck. It came through my father in law, who bought it over fifty years ago. We made it our own. Years ago, anyone in Amherst who wanted a cottage could buy one for $500. It was so accessible to everyone. They have remained in families for generations. Mine is all pine, and the smell of wood hits you as soon as you enter. Pine is not so much in style anymore but it belongs there and I won't be changing it for fashion. It will remain as it is now for a long time. Here in March under the siege of freezing rain, I look forward to the warm sun on my back as I walk three miles on the tidal flats. I dream of cooking  food that I raid from my mother in laws garden. "Whatever is there is yours dear." she tells me, even though it is my sister in law that plants it. I pick lettuce, beans, pull carrots sparingly, there are never enough, while there is always too many onions. We gather there as a family. My children get to play where their father played before them. On summer nights they cross the lawn to visit their aunts and uncles and grandmother, walking up three steps to the shingled green and yellow cottage that their grandfather bought so long ago. They go in have a snack before bed, and sometimes  return for breakfast the next day. We take things like vinegar, and flour from each others cottage when the other is not around because at the shore the pantry is never quite stocked. Though it has gotten more comfortable over the years, it is still a place of "make do". I miss Theo, my husbands father, out there. He supervised everything about the place for years. When the roses came out, he was there to pick them, and pass you a bouquet. Every year I take in one of his white peonies, a single peony and put it by a window in a thin glass jar. It is a June reminder of why I get to be there in the first place, and I did this even while he was alive. He never came out before the heat of late June. The peonies often arrived before he did. So I am grateful. I know I am also lucky and fortunate. Life is not easy to understand, but acceptance is an important part of life. Accepting love, and grace, and good fortune gratefully, and being thankful is part of living. So is being good to others and sharing. Just another lesson in balance. It is natural to feel at odds with oneself and ones ideals at times. It is part of reconciling who you are and realizing how much you have, and how you need to be good to others.

March 17, Dear Diary, Last summer when I went home to Placentia, Newfoundland for a few nights we stayed in a bed and breakfast called the Rosedale Manor. I had stayed there before. It was right across from the board walk that lines the gut of Placentia. When I was a kid that boardwalk was three wooden slats of wood. After years of flooding and needing dories to get around town  a big steel boardwalk has taken it’s place. Not as pretty but imminently more satisfactory to those who live there which is what really matters. Phillip and Linda ran the Band B. Phillip was from down the road in Ship Harbour. Linda had travelled all the way from the west coast to take up a new life there. She was an artist, he was a chef. You can see that this is a good combination. My friend Tish and I wandered around Placentia after a long hiatus on the mainland. We walked the track where we had partied years ago. We visited lost family and friends in the graveyard. Newfoundland graveyards are beautiful places on hills overlooking rugged waters. They are littered with rose bushes and  grey granite. Most stones or group of stones have their own little fences, or concrete borders. Sometimes they are covered with white gravel. The stones are mostly white marble with praying hands or scrolls carved into the top. We lingered in the graveyards a bit adding a little melancholy to our trip. Returning home when most whom you know have left, or died is a lonely trip. Yet we were happy to be there.

After we came down the gravel road from the graveyard I went to the beach to walk. I always look on the beach, hopeful of finding something more than an old javex bottle that has been used as a buoy. I began picking up  big thick pieces of seaweed that resembled coral. I thought they looked like some ancient fossilized flower. I thought I would take them home. From the beach I could look across the mile of water to my childhood home on Old Settlement Hill. The white three story house still stands erect though no one lives  there anymore. As I bent down to pick  up the whizzled sea flower I found instead at my feet a small carved wooded boat. It was about five inches in length, a perfect little specimen of a cape islander. As a child I sat beside my father on the bed as he carved ducks, puffins, and small boats such as these. I could not believe my good fortune. I felt as if my father had been looking at me from the window of the house and dropped a gift at my feet. It was a little bit of magic, a lot of spirit, in a lonely but lovely moment, for lonely is not only what we usually think it to be. Lonely can be the beginning of reflection, the initial stages of understanding. Tish couldn’t believe it either, when I said, “Look what I found.” It was a boat that had floated around the water for years, and washed up with me to help me make communion with my past. It was because I wiled it to be a gift from my father.

From the beach we wandered up to a friend of Tish’s, Donny Pomroys. She had lived with Tish when she was growing up and now lived with her father and his wife. When we went in her father offered us a “snort”, which is a drink of whiskey or rum, or whatever is in the flask. He poured me  a drink, and then for mix poured something from another flask. Not willing to look a gift horse in the mouth, but knowing if I drank it I might feel like robbing a bank, I took a tip and sat back. What the…. I thought. I am here now, the man poured me a drink of I don’t know what, he must be eighty five if he is a day and it never killed him. Around my own house I am quite fussy about such stuff but there I was just appreciative. What a beautiful thing it was to just be appreciative. We had a drink, looked at Mrs. Pomeroy’s hooked mat of a cape islander boat, and did the usual catching up about who had married, divorced, died or ran away.

From there we went to the liquor store, and picked up a flask of whiskey to take back to the b and b.  The man at the cash said, “Yes I heard you were home.” Tish looked at me with her chin down and her eyes enlarged, and said”Yes now, there it is.” We slipped our little flask of Jack Daniels into a brown paper bag and slinked off. We had been in town three hours, one spent at the graveyard, one at the beach, and the last fort five minutes at Donny Pomroys. We were home alright. We had been away twenty years and the man at the liquor store knew we were home before we got there.

When we got back to the Rosedale Manor, there were five men visiting from the states. The oldest was Mr. Barron, who was over ninety. He had left Placentia when he was eight and settled in Boston. This was the first time he had been back to Newfoundland in over eighty years.  As a child he had lived in Dunville which was three miles from the b and b. I was fascinated with him. With him were his two sons in their fifties, and two grandchildren, aged fourteen and nineteen. For the other four it was there first visit. Over our two days at the inn we visited with the family. I was curious why he had never came back in all those years but had decided to come now. He was a very entertaining and talkative man but he did not have much to say about that other than his son had suggested it so he came. For me his journey was fascinating. On our second night, Linda and Phillip  cooked dinner in the dining room, a traditional meal of jigs dinner, with salt beef, roast, cabbage, turnip, potatoes, carrot and peas pudding, with gravy. We all sat down together and ate and talked. One of the conversations was about the character of Newfoundland men, who are known to be very sensitive. The stereo type is that they will cry at the drop of a hat. The banter between the Newfoundlanders in the room suggested that the men could be very sensitive either from their history of being on the water facing life or death everyday, or because they were always half in the bag. There were no conclusions. When one of the Americans asked about the general character of the Newfoundland woman, those of us in the room, agreed she was more stoic, and was most likely to say in reference to her husband’s blubbering, “I wish that old fool would shut up and sit down and go to sleep.” Then she’d bless herself and roll her eyes to heaven.. These are just characterizations of course, Newfoundlanders are as diverse and interesting as any other crowd. However, there that night as we talked away to people who were from away, our tongues were slippery with foolishness and a twinge of the truth we knew.

Tish and I headed out the next morning to Trinity Bay, saying good bye to Mr. Barron and his children, wishing them a good night and safe fight home. We drove all day to take a look at Trinity which we had heard about so often. We dropped in for a cup of tea with Tish’s aunt and then we decided to head into the city of St .Johns . We had both lived there for a few years and wanted to hang around. By the time we got situated in an inn and headed into the down town the fog had rolled in and the night was grey and drizzly. We walked any way and looked at the menus of the restaurants deciding where we should go. St. Johns is not a small city, and there are hundreds of bars and restaurants through out it. On Water Street, we stood outside reading a menu, deciding how to spend our evening when out came Mr. Barron’s, son to coax us in to have dinner with them. Tish looked at me quizzically. I tilted my head. She said “sure we’ll come.” We have been friends for twenty eight years. We understand each other. The five of them had just sat to dinner, and invited us to join them. We had another lovely dinner together in a fancy restaurant.  It could have been a fancy restaurant anywhere, with fine linen, and candles. The only difference being that there was a wide selection of doctored up cod fish on the menu. It was another bit of serendipity in our trip. Thinking we had left them for good in the morning, here we were sharing a meal again at night. I enjoyed sitting next to Mr. Barron senior. My father in law, who was ninety six, had died the previous fall, and I was reminded of him as we talked. Of course, I was also intrigued by his story, of coming home after eighty years. My imagination could not get past what that must have been like. It was all about my imagination, because Mr. Barron was not getting personal, with his deep strong voice, he was all polish. Polished and lovely. So there we were, two women from Placentia being entertained by the Americans, just as legions of girls from our area had been for several generations. Just a few miles from where we grew up was an American Navy Base that had come in the forties. Up until my generation , women from our area had married American navy man, and moved to the states in droves. Tish and I had the missed the chance, until our lovely evening, with Mr. Barron, his sons and grandsons. Mind you we were not being wooed, it was just goodness, a few people meeting on path, a bit of fun, and plenty of kindness.

Our trip home together was a journey. We were reminded that as much as were from there, we were also from some where else. We belonged where our children belonged now. Where we had once belonged as children, now belonged to us as a memory. We no longer belonged to that place in the same way. Once you have been away for a long time you only understand the way it used to be. You comfort yourself, thinking you know it but really, you knew it.  Twenty five years has changed you and it has changed the place that you knew once, and that once knew you

 

March  14, 2008, Dear Diary, The circle mat at the top of this page is the most old fashioned rug hooking design that I know of yet it makes the most modern looking rug that I make. Everything old is new again? I don’t think so. Change is happening really fast, we think it our experience alone, but then it did in my fathers generation as well. In the first half of the twentieth century came the tv, cars, phone, radio and air transport. This changed the world. In my generation the first real substantive change was home computers, and the internet. I think sometimes that technology has meant that my own generation has to endure massive change. We have, but so have most generations. We are not experiencing something new. We have not cornered the market on dealing with change. We are just another little blip on the horizon of man and woman kind, though while we are here it, thankfully,  our personal experience feels really important. Change is real for all of us, all of the time, and sometimes we can not see it in ourselves. At forty two, I know I am not twenty five any more, yet I feel that I am young, because I am. Recently I heard someone say we always compare ourselves up when it comes to our wealth. We look to those who have more than us. We could of course be comparing ourselves to those who have less than us, but we sometimes don’t. When we think of age we compare ourselves down, looking at those younger than us. My friend Rosemary says that women become their most beautiful when they are in their forties. Of course I love her for that. I doubt that many twenty year olds would feel the same. As I watch my son’s generation mature with their emphasis on face book, and cell phones I feel sometimes as if I have come from another less plentiful planet. Perhaps it is that they are teenagers that makes me feel so removed from them. As they enter into their twenties they will change again. From here in my farmhouse, with my rug hooking, and emphasis on simple things made beautifully by hand, I feel as if I am world apart sometimes from the things that are happening around me. A big box is a two minute drive down the road and has settled upon what used to be a horse field. I rarely ever go there yet it is an integral part of our town now. As comfortable as I am with technology I still feel that I’m a bit of an oddball in a changing world. I suppose many people are feeling this. Certainly as rug hookers we are lost in our own little worlds. We have stuck with something because it is worthwhile and meaningful for us. It is something we just can’t get at the shopping mall. We are satisfying a powerful need to create. We are soothing ourselves with our own hands, with our own minds and of course with each other. We are creating a world for ourselves that matters and makes sense. That is what we have to do, regardless of where we are or what is happening around us. We need to create communities that nurture us, develop us, and ease us into the future in way that we can embrace change. Technology is a beautiful thing in that it has helped us connect with rug hookers across the country, across the world. It will not replace the beauty of someone handing you a piece of wool to use in your mat at the rug hooking group. A computer will never smile back at you. It will never ask you anything meaningful, and care about what you say in response. As rug hookers we have held on to a traditional sense of community as we have embraced digital images, email newsletters and web pages. We know that we can build community on line but real community happens when we gather together, or visit each other. I feel less odd, less alone, because I know so many people believe in the same things that I do, and so many of those people believe in their hands, and the beauty of making things with them

March 11,Dear Diary, I write here because I need to write sometimes. I had an interesting conversation today with a woman who was thinking about writing a book. We both agreed that compensation was not the reason. Most writers would agree. You write because you need to. There is usually some desire to express a thought or an idea. Writing often happens because you are compelled. I was upstairs making the turn on a big mat when I felt the need to talk about this. There is no one here who wants to talk about this so I write. I have a conversation with myself and my fingers. I live in a small community. I don’t know any other full time artists who live next door, or down the street. The ones I do know are a drive away. I sometimes feel like calling them to talk about stuff but you can’t just up and interrupt someone to talk about some random idea that just popped in your head. You have the luxury of just breezing through this, or skipping it altogether. I can’t be offended because I’ll hopefully never know. Writing is really about a person’s need to write. It is about their desire to tell a story or share an idea. I like the idea that people read this diary. It often means that when I meet someone for the first time they know me more than I know them which can be peculiar but it is my own choice.

I enjoy expressing myself so freely ad easily. It is as if I have friends out there I do not even know. When I write here it is as if I am writing to myself. I try to forget that there are readers so I will stay honest but I am comforted by the fact that you are there regardless. Isn’t it the truth about the world in general. I visited a friend the other day for a cup of tea. She has suffered a big loss in the last few years. She is , regardless of it, a strong, resilient person. She said, “Why should I worry. I prepared for years that anything could happen, now that it did, people come out to support you. They are everywhere, your family, the people you work with, the community. If I was stuck they would be lining up at the door to help me out. What have I got to worry about.” Things are not easy for her right now but she is at ease. Having someone to talk too creates a culture of belonging. We need to cultivate that for each other. As much as we are individuals we depend on each other. Working alone so much, and being generally isolated from other artists, there are times when I need to talk, and I have found that I turn here at those times. I would love there to be a salon of idea people that I could walk into when I felt like it but that just isn’t right around the corner. I really envy the old men who have coffee clubs at the local restaurants. Eight or ten of them show up at the same time everyday to gab, and cluck, and tsk, and talk about tools or something. In our town there is another group of men I see meeting for lunch every Saturday. These are standing dates . Whoever comes, comes, but there is always a table full. They share similar interests, and talk about stuff. They are not even all friends but they have a standing date and they just talk about stuff. I’d like the same thing that wanted to talk about art, creativity and ideas. In leiu of that I have this room here, this computer, and a tea mug. I talk to myself.

 

 

 

February 28, Dear Diary, In his book, Eternal Echoes, John O’Donohue, said that many of the important things about us are invisible. He explains, our spirit, our thoughts all lie in the realm of the invisible. These very important things about us cannot be seen or held, but they are strongly felt, and are essential parts of each of us. We are more than the things we gather, the