A Typical Day...

There's a wonderful series on YouTube produced by Art Documentaries, entitled "What Do Artist's Do All Day?"   Each clip is short -- 15 to 20 minutes, mainly, though some run to half an hour; sometimes there's more than one part to the story of each artist.  The artists come from a variety of media: music, photography, painting, sculpture...

I've yet to see one about a textile artist, but I've not exhausted the series, so perhaps one will turn up.

Then there's my own work...an 'artist' who carries that moniker with some reluctance, because, well...I struggle with the reality of it.  It's the old "pretty versus pointed" debate rearing it's ugly head again in my consciousness -- likely as a result of a great deal of time to reflect since I've not been held in thrall to the distractions of Facebook since Ash Wednesday.  :-)

The thing about the artists in "WDADAD?" is that you don't see them doing anything unrelated to their work -- making it, shipping it, flogging marketing it to galleries, supervising installations.  You never see them cleaning the cat's litter box, or walking the dog...vacuuming, dusting or doing their laundry or the dishes...making a meal, mowing the lawn or shovelling snow...washing the car or cleaning their eaves-troughs (gutters)...

My days seem far more mundane; at least, in part, because I have to do those things or perish!

Waiting for me this morning.
I'm the dish-washer!

Before you go pouring a cuppa and settling down with some stitching to watch the "WDADAD?" series...here's a glimpse at a typical day in this erstwhile artist's life.

4:30 a.m.: Wakened by the cat, who wants to be fed and let out -- unless the weather is terribly inclement; in which case, she comes back to bed with me.  I'm there doing my Morning Pages (bless Julia Cameron!) -- two or three pages of all-one- paragraph-in-a-stream writing to clear the head.  This is followed by quiet time -- part of my faith practice, which includes prayer -- usually by candlelight.

5:00 a.m.: Handwork for an hour, usually to the background of The Road Home, "an hour of music and spoken word" produced by broadcaster Bob Chelmick on CKUA radio, and available through streaming as well...HERE.  Currently I'm working on my tunic top for my "MOG" (Mother of the Groom) outfit, and the first of a series of stump socks for MOB III, giving them equal time as far as possible.

Stump sock cuff
Pattern: Knitted Stump Socks
from Yarn Lover's Room (no current URL);
Yarn: Sock It to Me! Collection "Esprit" 
from elann.com (discontinued)

6:00 a.m.-ish: Another hour in bed, but with the computer, checking e-mail, answering or initiating correspondence; doing online banking; and ....playing a set of challenges in MicroSoft's Solitaire Collection...my idea of fun instead of Sudoku or the crossword.  I also have breakfast...which I generally take back to bed so I can read some of the blogs I follow while I munch.  Pookie-cat spends this time stretched out on my legs, so I can't go anywhere anyway.  :-)

7:00 a.m. -ish: Up, washed/dressed, to my desk to do "real" computer business -- blog posts (like this one), or hard-copy stuff, or an online class (in season)...or to do chores (dishes, laundry, etc.)  I might also use some of this time to wrap items being sent away to a show, or to a volunteer for MOB...

9:00 a.m. -ish: Into the sewdio.  This week that includes work on my piece (12" square) for this year's SAQA Benefit Auction, piecing blocks for the Japanese taupe quilt (also known as the JTQ or the Wedding Quilt or the WQ) -- work that has to be done involving my cutting table, iron, and sewing machine, or working in my "messy room" doing painting or mono-printing.

11:00 a.m. -ish: Break for the mail -- I have to walk down to the Post Office for it -- and a bite of lunch.  Generally also check e-mails (and Facebook, in the 'regular' season)...If it's snowed, I shovel at least the front walks, which are en route to the P.O.

Noon-ish: Back to the sewdio or in the living room, which is where I like to do my hand-work.  Currently I am piecing the rest of the background for my next 15 x 15 piece, and doing sashiko-style hand quilting on the WQ.

Hexie background - WIP

2:30 p.m. - 3:00 -ish:  This time varies by the seasons, but during the fall/winter, as the days are short and cold, this is usually the ideal time to set the stitching aside and go for a jog.  I'm out the door around 3:00 for a good 45 - 50 minutes.  If I deem it too cold and windy, I'll put in an exercise DVD that takes about the same amount of time.

4:00 p.m. -ish: Winding down.  I check e-mails, read blogs, start dinner, and sit down with more stitching and perhaps a glass of wine.

5:00 p.m. -ish: Dinner time!

6:00 p.m. -ish and afterward...depending on my energy level, I do more hand-work or simple quilting (i.e., piecing), accompanied by an audio-book or one of the afore-mentioned art clips from YouTube.  I also enjoy Bonnie Hunter's "Quilt Cam", episodes of The Quilt Show, the replay of a Craftsy class (Joe Cunningham's my favourite), or Craft In America (either on PBS Videos or YouTube).

Pookie likes to watch too...

8:00 p.m. - ish: Generally, to bed with a cuppa (decaf) and a book (usually a cozy mystery) and lights out when I stop following the words on the page...pretty much always before 9:00 p.m.

By the repetition of "-ish", you can tell this is a pretty flexible schedule.  Today, for example, those dishes still await...and I have a parcel to wrap for the P.O....and this blog post isn't being finished very early in the a.m....and so it goes.

Tomorrow's another day at the shop, and Friday?  An Artists' Date with my friend and SAQA colleague, M.  There are two exhibits in Edmonton we want to see (Tom Thomson and The Group of Seven at the Art Gallery of Alberta and X3 -- a collaborative exhibit which includes the fibre artists from Contextural Fibre Arts Collective  of Calgary (my friend arlee barr is a member)  in the Feature Gallery at the Alberta Craft Council) -- landscapes and textiles...who could resist?

Now if you'll 'scuse me...I'm late for the sewdio!  Before I go, I'll link this to WIP Wednesday over at The Needle and Thread Network...and see you later!

Time for Tea

I've spent much of this past week thinking about tea: its origins in China; its migration to Japan and from there to England via India.  

I've not drunk much tea since I "discovered" coffee on a trip to Italy in my early twenties. Nowadays I generally drink tea only when I have a cold -- because when a cold happens my taste buds reject coffee entirely in favour of tea with honey.  So why is this 'royal' libation, soother of nerves and calmer of coughs, currently on my mind right now, when I am -- to all appearances -- hale and hearty?

Blame it on my 15 x 15 Group!  :-)  Hot on the heels of our latest "Reveal" ("Mono-print"), we have our next theme (deadline: the end of March) -- "East Meets West".

What arose first in my mind was TEA...a beverage believed to have been first developed in the Orient, in China, thousands of years ago, that made its way Westward in the seventeenth century A.D. (or C.E., if you prefer) to the British via Japan (which had imported it from China even earlier -- in the ninth century).  The Brits introduced it to India (we won't go into Imperialism and all that!)...and India is now one of the largest growers and exporters of tea in the world.  (For a long time, India out-stripped China in this; in recent years, China has reportedly regained its supremacy.)  

Tea at the Empress Hotel, Victoria, B.C.

In Canada, due to strong British influence, tea was the hot beverage of choice for a very long time...but after World War II, Canadians as a whole began to drink more coffee...apparently under the growing influence of their neighbour to the south (the U.S.)  There are still, however, many tea-drinkers among us -- whether of British, Chinese, Japanese or Indian heritage and others -- and I suspect that even those Canadians who are avowed coffee-drinkers are hard-pressed to pass up a "true English tea" -- meaning the beverage and all the attendant goodies -- when invited!

In recent years I've witnessed the rise of tea shops in malls in Calgary, Red Deer and Edmonton.  There one can purchase a hot cuppa (to stay or to go), and/or all the equipment and accoutrements to make one's own perfect pot at home.  My son has developed a taste for Japanese tea (indeed, he has a fondness for all things Japanese), so for his birthday a few years ago I bought him a cast iron Japanese-style pot (similar to the one in the photo at right) and some tea for brewing.  

For years, along "Gasoline Alley" at the southern edge of Red Deer, there's been a shop that's a favourite with tourists:  "Cindy's Tea Room & Gifts".  When I needed to replace my only tea pot  --purchased by a long-ago suitor in Montreal's 'China Town', its top had been broken -- I went there and found my "Blue Betty" (cousin to the traditional "Brown Betty" and, I think, prettier!).  This is a very British-looking pot, eh?!  I may no longer be an avid tea-drinker, but I love this pot's curves and it's classic over-all shape, and its beautiful deep blue colour.

Blue is a colour that, in part, symbolizes peace and healing.  In the stash of fabrics I've been using for the Japanese-style taupe quilt I'm making I have some lovely blues, blue-greys and greys that I don't plan to add to the taupes and browns in that quilt...so I decided to use them for the background of my 15 x 15 piece, which I wanted to piece.  

As to the type of piecing, I've decided on hexagons -- and English Paper Piecing.  Though the piece is relatively small, I'm using 3" hexies -- in part to make the handwork go more quickly.  In another effort to streamline the process, I decided to use freezer paper as the template material so I could simply fold and press the edges of each hexagon prior to stitching them together.  First, though, I drew out a schematic for the layout:

15" square; 3" hexagons

Then I traced the shape onto freezer paper and ironed it onto the back of each fabric:

Next I reversed the freezer paper to make it shiny side up, and pressed the edges over:

I think they're so pretty -- in a tranquil sort of way...

Finally, I laid them out "in a pleasing composition" on the original schematic:

That was Wednesday.  I've now begun to piece them together, which is equally soothing,  and to ponder exactly what I'm going to place on this background once it's finished.   True to the original inspiration, it will have something to do with tea...

Meanwhile, let's both grab a cuppa (make mine decaf coffee, black, please!) and head on over to see what Nina Marie and friends are doing at Off the Wall Friday, eh?

Have a great weekend, everyone!