Come to my Window, I'll Be Home Soon...

Years ago I had an obsession. It led my kids to believe, on top of my many personality quirks, that I was becoming a crazy birdlady. A throwback to Miss Jane Hathaway from ‘The Beverly Hillbillies’. I was lead by an opportunity which arose when my very best friend gave my son, Isaac, a Sibley’s bird guide and binoculars for his 11th birthday. Though as an artist I am continually gob-smacked by every nuance of nature, through Isaac I began yet another new journey into observing the world around me.    We live in rural Nova Scotia and especially in the migratory season, every look through those glasses was fruitful and inspiring. 

      In the meantime, I was hooked. I started a “life list”. I burst with glee whenever I added a new name. I joined a nature Nova Scotia website. Moments, maybe too many, were spent on the porch or just peering out our miriad windows seeing brightly coloured birds that in my time, in this very environment, I had never seen before. There they were swooping in to pose for me. The warblers in spring, what a shock. My first “never before” bird was a Yellow Warbler. It’s body flashed a luminescent yellow-golden and green with, as a male in breeding plumage, a streak of rusty orange on his head. He was the first of many new birds that in my lifetime I had never taken time, in stillness and quiet, to observe.
Did he just stop by on his way elsewhere? Had he been around through all of my years and thus far gone unnoticed? I wouldn’t have known my own back yard to be part of this creature's habitat. What else might we not know is living quietly under our noses and how should that shape the way we travel through this fragile, yet endlessly surprising planet.     

      I have had a relationship with “P’lovers” The Environmental Store for over ten years. Their website, www.plovers.net reveals a passion for all you could want in conscientious, earth friendly commercial practice. Thoughtful selection of original, local, nature inspired products both practical and aesthetic is their trade mark. These few photos featured below will soon be part of their most current inventory. (The ornithologists however, will have to forgive the artistic license taken on the needle felting of the northern cardinal, the yellow warbler, the American bluebird and the black capped chickadee.)

Webdreams...

   

     
      Wow!!!  It has been for ever.  Incessant needle-felting is the new day-to-day, its process, the interest, the sales, the orders, the workshops to-be and the blast of attention of late have me involved to the point of chaos. My blog nearly abandoned, I must admit the anticipation of a website makes me want to swallow hard and reach for the Geritol uttering senseless babble about keeping up.

      Overwhelmed as I have been by just word of mouth..I'm taking a deep breath and being sure I am ready for the attention that might come with more internet exposure. I'm trying to give some thought to how to present myself.   My son-in-law  Robin, who is far more gifted than I could ever dream in the ways of web design, has offered to build a website to promote my work,  taking the plunge and adding a retail component. It's along distance love affair. Ontario to Nova Scotia is a stretch with me hoping to convey the images and ideas that would represent "me"( whoever that might be ) and he so far away, with the wherewithal to capture it..

 
      The last time I had a moment to post I was finishing and order for P'lovers, a wonderful shop in and urban setting. At that time, I was hoping for big things. The whole summer was a bit of a nail-biter as sales came pretty slowly out of the starting gate. To keep from fidgeting about that, I took part in and awesome Arts Festival in a refurbished and revitalized old local school. I was accompanied by a fellow artist and new friend Sharon. She schedules and sources creative programming within the senior residential facility where my Mama resides. She recently asked me to teach felting in four different workshops there in the fall and winter.
     
      Our day together at the old school was delightful, though not the relaxing quality time we hoped to spend. We  thought we'd could spend the day as impromptu mini teaching day. Sharon is an artist as well is beyond eager to add needle felting to her "repertoire". As it turned out we barely had opportunity to touch a needle to wool as the public response that day was flabbergasting,..I have never talked so much. ( Those who know me would find that incredible considering my usual..) 

     
      Then suddenly life went boom. After checking in every two weeks or so to hear that my stock wasn't moving at P'lovers, suddenly they were OUT of stock,..all of them and they requested a new order due ASAP. That order now filled and delivered just this past Monday I was asked how quickly Christmas fuzzies might be available to be juried, ordered and made....so for the last three days I produced a few pieces for them to choose from. They are pictured in this blog.
   

Also, just today the old school's organizers have asked me to consider work shopping there too! The pace quickens, the pulse nearly flying out of my veins. Workshops looming orders to fill and commissions for Christmas...Gotta try for one more piece before sundown. Happy trails! I promise to return  with another post with more expedience than last...

     
     
   

Take a walk Down Memory Lane

      

      My gorgeous grand daughter has just mastered the "E-I-E-I-O" part of "Old MacDonald had a Farm". Imagine how cute that sounds on speaker phone when her Mama calls and she clamors to talk to her Nanajan. Imagine how mushy-gushy Nanajan is going to lose it when she gets to hear it in person in a few days when I fly up to visit! There she is below with her Dada on Father's day,..suitably "chapeau-ed" for a trip to the farm, sippy cup in hand and an adoring smile on her face. 

      With Mac Donald's farm in mind, I must master the felting of things that burst forth with a "meow-meow" here and a "cluck-cluck there". I have another order to fill that will put me on track. I mentioned Memory Lane Heritage Village in my last blog.

      I am honored to be asked to contribute several pieces to their gift shop. It's a hands-on working village. with interesting vignette's of life on the Eastern Shore in the '40s and '50s. Special programs and events fill the summer and fall months. Among so many other things there are lovely sheep and chickens and very happy barn cats and kittens on site. Lucky me to be able to pay tribute to these furry favorites.  

Spring has Sprung. The Grass is Riz and the Birdies are all in my Studio...

.      May Ogden Nash forgive my paraphrase...Spring hit the ground running, the grass is growing so fast that we can't keep up and the birdies are emptying my feeders daily. For the last few days there have been purple and goldfinches and a beautiful male evening grosbeak added to the myriad jays, sparrows, chickadees and greedy grackles and starlings. The robins wake me and the mourning doves coo all day. A raucous pair of pheasants squawk at each other and the laughter of a northern flicker makes me smile infectiously through out my day. Inside I am perched at my work table surrounded by colored groupings of fluff designated to replicate the feathered fancies I see just outside my open window.

      I am filling an order for an amazing store on South Park Street in Halifax. "P'lovers, the Environmental Store."  ( www.plovers.net )  I had  filled orders for this amazing store over a decade ago with very satisfying retail success. Life at that time became very busy with the fun of a growing family of four children taking precedence over my time to focus on my artwork. The youngest is twenty now so here I am..filling an order for this wonderful store.  
   
    At the expense of my garden full of weeds and my house knee-deep in dog hair and dust. I have been rooted to my work table. The orders are coming fast and furious as there have been calls from other venues as well. Last week there were a number of  pieces added to the Crafter's Room inventory. I had made nests with chickadees and their tiny eggs and they are so coveted that they are heading to five different venues. Cute, they are so cute, so guess I understand!

The little mermaid from a previous blog is on her way to Santa Barbara, CA. The lovely gal who will receive her has placed an order  earmarked for a Sunday school lesson on the "Creation" story from the Bible,..Imagine the possibilities there, so of course I can't wait to get started. She is getting me started on an initial four pieces but with myriad "birds of the air",.. "creatures of the sea" and .."animals large and small who will dwell in the dry land" the possibilities are mind boggling! My excitement at this time goes beyond words, you can be certain..

      Another two orders have come from very different venues. The  first is an historical village set in the '40s in Lake Charlotte N.S.  It is a growing, hands-on, amazing site called Memory Lane ( www.heritagevillage.ca ). There is also a focus on local genealogy there and attendance and attention to this nostalgic rural treasure is on the upswing. Have a look at their site and visit while you are in the area. I will soon have sheep and chickens and cats and kittens in their gift shop and gallery. It's a great spot and I will be thrilled to have inventory there.

      The second is the spot near and dear to me as I created signage, displayed and sold artwork at the Tourist Trap and worked there as a cook for several years. I love the young proprietress, Holly, as though she were one of my own.     

      You know the saying, "It never rains but it pours." Well that's how its been, literally and figuratively. We've had our first tropical storm of the season and buckets full of rain and fog. I have had a torrential downpour of exciting orders, all at once. Needless to say, the pace is dizzying. I have a few private commissions to fill as well so forgive me if cyberspace is quiet for a bit, as I will need to catch up to my orders. I'll take lots of pictures and post anything new and exciting when I have some breathing room......

Call me Ishmael...Whale Tails and Other Such Stuff.

      
      This past week I have been waging an epic battle twixt needle-felter and beast! The very word whale prompts a nod to the most famous ones in literature. The Old Testaments nasty whale ( from Jonah 1:4 to Jonah 2:10 ) and Herman Melville's "Moby Dick."  Two actual events were the fodder for Melville's tale. One was the sinking of the Essex in 1820, after it was rammed by a large sperm whale.  A first mate  wrote of the event in 1821 in a book titled  "Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-Ship Essex."

   
       The other event was the alleged killing in the late 1830s of the albino sperm whale Mocha Dick, in the waters off the Chilean island of Mocha. He was rumored to have twenty or so harpoons in his back from other whalers and appeared to attack ships with premeditated ferocity. 

   
        My contribution is neither antagonistic or albino It is somewhat the physiology of a sperm whale though the true representation of the species would be black and maybe barnacled. We'll call him "Starbuck" after the upstanding chief mate of the Pequod.  ( Interesting side note from Wikipedia is that the famous coffee chain was named to honor this character after the original  suggestion "Pequod's" was rejected.)


       Melville struggled with composition, writing to Richard Henry Dana, Jr. on May 1, 1850:

      "I am half way in the work ... It will be a strange sort of book, tho', I fear; blubber is blubber you know; tho' you might get oil out of it, the poetry runs as hard as sap from a frozen maple tree; — and to cook the thing up, one must needs throw in a little fancy, which from the nature of the thing, must be ungainly as the gambols of the whales themselves. Yet I mean to give the truth of the thing, spite of this."
     
      When I read this, I was halfway through felting the little beluga. who's ungainly flubbery formless shape was proving to be challenging when every photographic reference gave entirely different lumps and bumps. Its almost as though the "form" just flows about the underlying skeleton.  

Finding the "truth of the thing" may have escaped me yet.  More than once I thought of Ahab"s vengeful quote "..from hell's dark heart I stab at thee"..  I named him "Stubb" after the second mate. 

      The last little fellow is an Orca or Killer whale, who turned out very nicely. and flowed out of my  needle pokings with ease. To complete the trio of Ahabs "mates" he is "Flask" after the third, who was written as being  an ever pleasant ever-smiling  fellow from Martha's Vineyard.

       Its been a struggle here in my tiny village on the eastern coast of Nova Scotia but I'm certain I'm having much more fun than Captain Ahab. My labors have garnered me three new sculptures as a result.

Grinnosaurus - A Slap-dash Attempt at Describing How it's Done.

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       Many moons ago I promised a "how-to" blog... I did photograph this finished blue dinosaur in all of his stages so now its time to try to help us make sense of the process... They do say "those who cannot do teach"...well it seems I can do but Istruggle to teach, so perhaps the reverse is true too. It may be fruitless to explain the work because it  is less a "plan" than simply feeling your way through. Each piece is  the epitome of creative process beginning sometimes with out so much as an image in my minds eye.

      Beyond the picture above, of the finished work, the next, 

Picture #1- Is the balls of fluff and the tools of the trade. Pictured here are both raw "black sheep" wool rovings and a carded ball of mixed white and black. Also is pictured a brush "mat" for felting upon, so one doesn't stab themselves! There is on felting needle and two garden variety chopsticks. Knitting needles or smooth bbq skewers would work as well.

Picture #2 -  Shows the usefulness of the two chopsticks for twirling a thin sheet of rovings into a cylinder used for arms and legs and giraffe necks and octopus tentacles. You get the picture! Essentially, the beginnings of each sculpture are a variety of applicable shapes. I assemble parts and pieces and keep them aside for "assembly". 
      There are different grades of needles for deep heavy work as in the forming of the core or base of the sculpture and regular and finer needles for surface and finish work.

Picture # 3 - His body was a sizable gourd. First I made an egg shape and then a cone atop this made with a with a pile of rovings twirled obviously thicker at one end,  his legs toes and arms were pairs of evenly sized cylinders. You put the parts together by deep needling through both pieces with a bit of spare fluff in between. Its all sort of gradual. You get a feel for density, a feel for the directionality of the needle that produces the desired effect. I tackle form first and add color on the surface later with a finer finishing needle.


Picture #4 -  Parts that needed to be bent like elbows and knees and the right curve of his neck are done so by holding them bent and  deep-needling to keep them that way.  I have found they relax a bit so I bend them to the extreme and needle them sturdily. Even in his finished state he could be re-needled and his pose could be changed somewhat.

Pictures #5 and #6 - He sort of evolved as I went along,...18 hours in all, with giant yellow toes, one at a time, with claws. His back grew a set of lovely red scales that I made one at a time then poked in individually.  To get him to sit flat, I put him on the needling mat and deep-needled  downward while he sat flat, leaning the gourd shape back slightly  because by then I pictured him reclining on one big hand while waving or resting the other on his knee. After a bit of poking the fibers just molded to the surface of the mat and settled him into sitting position. 






  I do remember getting him to a point where everything was built but his head and not knowing how to proceed. I just wrapped a blob of wool around his head and began to poke. I  think the best way to learn is to put the materials in your hands and go. You really do develop a feel for it and each project teaches me more about the possibilities. Its important work completely, thoroughly needling on all the surfaces, around each angle and limb to leave a lasting even form. 

   
      Even as I write I realize all the little nuances that made him are hard to describe and so fine, (..like his nostrils and his smile...the ridge of his nose...) that they'd be hard to demonstrate. But the finished fella makes me smile, and as always, so satisfying that I just want to do more!

A Mermaid's Tale...? Most Aptly, "The Rime of the Aching SaltyHag"

      It surely has been a stretch, busy and sometimes lucrative but most accurately, a long, long stretch!  I must apologize and confess my embarrassment at being presumptuous enough to say I would craft a figure a day until I'd encompassed the alphabet and then proceed to fail so miserably. 

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      Life, as they say, had other plans. I have been in the midst of many things.  A lovely trip to North Carolina with most of my precious and wonderful family, a brief getaway to  Boscawen Inn in Lunenburg with my spouse, prepping Isaac's  hundreds of daylilies and the vegetable garden and navigating the shifting and unpredictable quicksand that is planning long term care for an aging parent. 

     
      In and around all of that, the small needle felted critters that I so enjoy creating have been selling rather quickly at the Crafter's Room. The growing number of collectors have commissioned some work as well.  What suffered in the process was taking time to write my blog and having the presence of mind to photograph the pieces I did complete. The opportunity is lost as they have gone to new homes through the shop.  I did capture this teeny sheep, who now resides with his friends big white sheep, big brown booty sheep and my younger brother and his darling wife of 29 years. 

      Also, here is a tiny chickadee minus his little dirty birdy feet, (..they're coming just as soon as i find a suitable gauge of wire to  fashion appropriate tiny ones as the previous felted ones looked way too "Foghorn Leghorn" to be taken seriously.)

      The piece for today, this wretchedly foggy May 11th is  "M"  for Mermaid. I love her. I was asked to create her for one of the lovely folks who buy my pieces. She may have had in mind something larger.  This one is,  maybe, 10"  long if you stretched out her tail. But I won't be upset if I get to keep her!

    

       It was fun to tackle  this one as I haven't dealt with flowing hair yet,..or surfaces an thin as her tail. Since they all come out of my funny little brain instead of a pattern book each one is a new "first".  Right now , I've just come in from the garden,...as grubby and salty and haggard as you might assume, but at the end of the day this parting silhouette of the tiny sculpture makes me eager to sit and do the next piece...

      Stay with me, I will post again as soon as I can!