hits and misses and a very fine exhibition

"where are you headed, miss?"
asks the kindly conductor in an avuncular fashion
he looks at the ecoprint felt landskin arrayed across my person and adds
"San Francisco?"

"only in my dreams" i say

"well, in that case, i'll wake you at Albany"

it is 3.40am and i have just spent 6 hours camping in the Amtrak
rail station at Niagara Falls

i am on my way to Vermont, having taken a train from Hastings,
another from Toronto
and then a taxi across the US/Canada border

i am probably the only visitor to this area who has not bothered to go and gawk at North America's oldest tourist attraction

in my defence, it is raining cats, dogs and iguanas and i am schlepping a sodden bag full of exhibition along with my changes of undies, laptop, new cookpot [thanks Monika] and toothbrush

after winding up at Joshua Creek [a delightful venue created by the visionary Sybil Rampen]
i had three days of r+r [ie doing my own work] boiling up pots in the woods of Ontario



incidentally, i would have posted more images of that last workshop, but for the wifi only being available at about midday [otherwise turned off]. given midday is working hours when teaching, it made things tricky.
no wifi, no posts, less publicity for the Joshua Creek Arts Centre. too bad.

oh, and whilst briefly in Toronto i also had the great joy of viewing Dorothy Caldwell's latest exhibition.
exquisite. [after clicking on the link, find Dorothy's name in the right hand column and click to view images of the work]

joshua creek

after a little more stitching

i arrived in Canada

where the air is crisp

and the space we are working in is very beautiful

there are bees

more kitties than i have seen in one pile for a long time

and

i have some very adventurous students

who have decided to weave components for their

landskins

i'm enjoying this new class

but

can't help recalling the pavement in New Orleans

planning ahead

today i was taken on a tour of NOCCA
[the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts]
a wonderful school overlooking the Mississippi

i've had the great good fortune
to be invited there as resident artist for the month of November next year
so it was lovely to have a look around
begin to get a feel for the place and the people
and
leave a bundle behind
something to open up when i come back in thirteen months time

a bit of cloth
leaf sweepings from the back garden
of the place i'm staying
some slightly soft Concord grapes that came in my bag from San Francisco [my favourites]
and a piece of steel
that jumped in to my pocket
down by the railway track

and what has this image of a vegetable garden being cultivated in a bit of spare land to do with NOCCA?
think about the planting of seeds
and the potential for blooms and harvests...

here and there

and the inflight stitching continues

inFlighT enTertainMent

stuck for something to do inflight?

stitch on what you're wearing

delighted to announce...

'riverstitch' workshop at The Brewery, Goolwa, South Australia

this will be the only South Australian workshop for me next year
and i'm especially pleased because
my daughter Violette [whose hand-stitched cutwork lace appears in Second Skin and Handeye magazine
and who was commissioned by a Shakerag participant last year
to transform a garment using this technique]
will be co-teaching with me for the first time

we're also planning a class dinner at a local restaurant
and there'll be a talk [open to the general public] at the Goolwa Library

we may even manage a field trip to the Currency Creek Arboretum

here's the wrap

Work with bio-regional dye sources and gentle stitching during a week-long explorative journey in a private garden in one of South Australia’s historic river towns. Take windfall-leaf collecting walks to create beautiful dye samplers, gradually piecing them together to construct a unique and exquisite garment. India will guide participants in dye and construction techniques while guest tutor Violette will share her cutwork lace and embroidery skills [pictured in ‘Second Skin’].

Together we will spend five lovely summer days creating by reinventing and restructuring rejects from the wardrobe, adding scraps of new silk and wool together with hand-stitching, beads, buttons and of course plant dyes. We will create dye bundles and stitch samplers, explore ways of adding pattern to cloth and enjoy the delights of the sewing circle.

work

23 metres of milkymerino into the cauldron

for Zeega

before i get myself into another

flying sardine can

weather or not

two months is a long time to be out in the sun, given that 2 weeks in Australian sunshine is reputedly equivalent to about 25 years under museum conditions
so
as i'm away from home again [soon] for a while
and therefore shall not be able to sneekpeek inside the metal box
it seemed a good time to [once again] put some cloth to the test
the two pieces on the left are commercially produced cottons, the third from left is eucalyptus-dyed milkymerino, the four on the right snippets of silk dyed using the more delicate 'northern' plants

they are half in, half out of the box

assuming no birds try to steal them
or helpful family members decide to move them under cover

i shall open the box when i return home in November
and publish the results on these pages

be careful who you spill the beans to

...they might be a writer.
some time before dawn i awoke refreshed after a glorious bear-like sleep in transit over the pond and made a few notes from the previous evening...

the man who lowers himself ponderously into the seat next to mine introduces himself as an "empowerment psychologist" and although i am clearly tethered to my phone and skipping around between tunes, persists in attempting to converse.


he informs me variously [and without effort on my part] that he hovers between continents, spends six months each year in Australia, that he has a "very independent wife", that travelling is a lonely business, that he has been doing it for thirty-five years. 


out it pours, a muddy swollen river full of the flotsam of too much detail. the speakers planted visibly in my ears are no deterrent.
eventually he comes up for air. 
i use the interval in which his tortured cells are gratefully gulping oxygen to smile sweetly that i, on the other hand, am well content with my lot, thoughtfully stroking the thin silver band encircling my ring finger [which in reality has nothing to do with anything] and direct my attention back to the music, switching from Ben Webster inappropriately making whoopee on his sax to Leonard Cohen who somewhat unnecessarily but in delicious honeyed tones assures me "there ain't no cure for love"


the self-styled psychologist mutters something about taking a sleeping pill to "get through this boring flight", downs a couple of tablets with a flourish and is comatose within minutes.


must be strong stuff, i've seen sensitive horses take longer to succumb to intravenous anaesthetics.
enveloping myself in a leaf-scented shawl and some virtual hugs sent last-minute by a kind friend i drift into the arms of Morpheus myself, reflecting on the invisible line that separates men of honour from the other kind.


of course, i may have entirely miss-interpreted the poor chap, but it wouldn't have made half as good a story.