Where does the time go?

It has been a long time, hasn't it? But rather a lot has happened in the meantime.

First I retired - early retirement, I've not quite reached pensionable age yet, but it felt like time to stop and let life become less stressful and more focused on my wellbeing; time to begin to look at all the various projects I've had in mind for a year or two. So at the end of August I hung up my library hat after 40 years and started wondering what to do.

Well that question was answered, in the short term by an utterly amazing two week trip with Colouricious to Bhutan. This wasn't a flash in the pan plan you understand, but something that I'd booked a while back and had been preparing for and getting gradually more excited about as time went on. Having decided on retirement, following that with the Bhutan trip seemed the most sensible thing to do, so off I went in late September.

It was simply amazing, the most "exotic" trip I have every taken, being rather a home body. And without anyone I knew, including the dear Man, who stayed at home, indulged the cat chaps' every whim and breathed a sigh of relief that he didn't have to go all that way..

Colouricious, who specialise in textile focused travel,  were a marvellous choice; the trip so well organized, that we eleven ladies (christened "Team Happiness" by our delightful local guide Subash) felt really well cared for. And the trip itself was such an experience.

Team Happiness at Buddha Point - Thimphu

What can I say about Bhutan, a country which defines itself by the measure of gross national happiness? So different in so many ways from home that it's hard to give you a sense of how it was. A mixture of some urban, but much more rural, awash with the sound of the breeze in the prayer flags; shining silver clouds and mist, that gave way to incredible blue skies and views through clean clear air. The sense of huge mountains in the background and vast spaces in between - I cannot begin to describe it really, but some photos will give you at least a little idea.

Chortens in the mist - Dochula Pass

Prayer flags flutter above Paro valley

Himalayan ranges in the distance - Dochula Pass when the mist had cleared

Our first couple of days were marked by urban dogs barking in the nighttime streets of Thimphu, shining mist and a very long road trip - roads the like which you haven't seen until you've been somewhere like this. For a significant part of the journey we rattled and bumped along exclaiming at one moment at the beautiful waterfalls and prayer wheels, and the next covering our eyes and wondering if we were going plummet down the mountainside - the Himalayas are doing their best to reclaim, despite the valiant efforts of the country to provide a safe modern road to get the population from A to B, or in this case from Thimphu to Bumthang, our furthest point East.

Where Thimphu, the capital city of Bhutan, was urban and obviously undergoing a huge amount of development,

Thimphu - bamboo scaffolding reaching for the sky

the more rural areas were, green, lush, captivating; views appearing and disappearing through the mist and cloud.

Gangtey valley

Paro - storm over the hills

Along the way, both there and back, we saw rice fields, their bright green layers echoing the contours of the land;

Punakha valley rice

Chorten in the rice fields on the way to the fertility temple

numerous temples and several dzongs - the administrative centres of each region in the country;

Monks gathering for a ritual - Paro Dzong

Trongsa Dzong rooftops

prayer wheels, which are everywhere; some that you can turn yourself, others that utilise the flow of water to turn them, all intended to release the chant "om mani padme hum" into the blue air to bring blessings to all living beings

Mother and child with prayer wheel - Gangtey Goempa

Prayer wheel with Trongsa Dzong in the background

We visited weaving centres where we saw the amazingly intricate weaving, on simple backstrap looms, for which Bhutan is so famous

I could have watched her all day

and went to the arts and crafts centre where students are taught the thirteen traditional crafts of Bhutan, including embroidery and painting.

no embroidery frames, and surprisingly low light levels for such fine work

such concentration - but he was larking with his friends a minute ago!

GNH? Gross National Happiness

On our travels we stopped at roadside markets to purchase local crafts,

opportunities to buy

lady with drop spindle enjoying being photographed by one of us

weaving centre wares

waved at passing traffic

captured the smiles of the locals

watched monks and lay people practice dancing for an upcoming festival

enjoyed the bright colours of the chillies drying in the heat (yes, it was surprisingly hot)

admired the beautiful faces of the nuns we met at their nunnery

enjoyed the theatrics of Subash, who explained so much to us, with such delight

did our very best to climb to the Tiger's Nest Monastery - a feat I and a couple of others didn't manage, but I was so proud of myself for making it to the half way point (2 1/2 hours of steep walking, puffing and panting all the way) that I didn't feel I'd missed out on the further climb, followed by 750 steps down and up to get to the monastery itself. Several steps too far!

The views on the way up were wonderful,

and our trusty driver Mr Chimi, who negotiated all those bumpy roads with a calm smile, took good care of we three stragglers, and posed in a tree over a steep drop for our fearful delight

On our last full day there we had the chance to see for ourselves what a Bhutanese festival looks and feels like - in our case Thimphu Tshechu. This was the most overwhelming experience. The day was scorchingly hot, the crowds all dressed up in their festival best - Kira and jackets for the ladies, Gho for the men, both are the national dress of Bhutan and people are expected to wear them for any formal occasion.

The dancers twirled and swirled in their fantastic costumes, all in the hot sun, while the music, very alien to our western ears, created an almost mesmeric backdrop to all the excitements

the clowns did their naughty clown stuff!!

the audience were seeing and being seen in their best festival dress

It was a wonderful trip, with great company and full of so many marvellous things. I will be thinking back on it for a very long time indeed, and could probably do several more long blog posts with endless photos had I the time and you the attention span!

Now, about those projects ….

A little indigo a little Japan a little Jude

I was deeply moved by the quilts of Shizuko Kuroha at FOQ in Birmingham last weekend. A lovely weekend spent with my daughter meandering up from and back to the South Coast.

This was my second time at the show, and again Christine was there exhibiting; this time with unFOLD, a textile group she belongs to. All the works were themed around Lynn Knight's fascinating book book "The Button Box". Here you can see Christine with her "Just Got To Finish the Mending", in the background and below, mending being metioned in the book as an informal contraceptive of sorts - read the book and you'll find out. Christine's piece, which we have watched develop during our Studio 11 days, is densely stitched over a deconstructed shirt, with the darning stitch so often used to mend, and mend, and mend in those days when we still did that sort of thing. It was marvellous to see it hung in the gallery space along with so many other thought provoking textiles.

If you look closely there's just a hint of a daughter in the background as well!

While there we also really enjoyed Ruth Singer's textile meditations on the lives of women prisoners. Again, such an inspiration to see how textile artists express their thoughts about life and ideas using the medium of cloth and stitch. A thing I aspire to, but haven't quite worked out the how yet!

But back to Kuroha and her beautiful indigo quilts, impeccably pieced and hand quilted, each one a symphony of movement and subtle colour. They really are works of art. She was there in her gallery space, signing books for eager middle aged ladies, amongst whom I include myself (though not in this picture); her smile so sweet as she inscribed the book with my name and her signature. 

I was touched to the core, both by her and her art.

On my return home I had a week off work, but am preparing for two momentous things: first, at the end of the month, after forty years of fulfilling work in my local library service, I am taking early retirement - a big step, but one I am longing for. The ability to just go to bed in the afternoon and sleep for a couple of hours will be transformative! Oh, and get on with my stitching, and weaving, and dyeing, and gardening, and perhaps a little piano playing, and a thousand other things that have been waiting for "when I have time".

Then in September, I am off to Bhutan. How easily that types itself out, what an amazing thing to be doing. One of Colouricious' textile trips, I will be beside myself when it happens. Will try and post a couple of updates while I'm there.

So, Indigo, Japan, Jude? What's the link you are asking yourself?

Well, I need to take a sketchbook to Bhutan, obviously. I loved the simplicity of the indigo quilts, and all sketchbooks should have a cover. Especially one made from a couple of pairs of jeans I haven't worn since my slim early twenties, but have always kept because "I'll do something with these one day".

And Jude? Well this is a sort of Jude house, patched and darned and quietly stitched.

updated yarn

A yarn can be something that you knit or weave or even stitch with, or it can be a tangled tale with twists and turns and little diversions along the way.

The first meaning is obviously what the image below is all about. Yes, a little while ago I treated myself to some lovely Noro yarn, on sale in a very fine wool shop near where I live, which was closing down. Both my loss and my gain. Then a couple of weeks ago I went out with beloved daughter to buy a dress for her for our wedding, and was lured into buying yet more yarn, as one is from time to time. 

I felt it only right that the less recent purchase should be knitted up first, so here is the knitting in progress, along with the pattern.

I have to say, I don't think I'll look anything like as fey and girlish in my version, but (and this is very important to me) the cardigan will be symmetrical across the front, not all skew whiff like the illustration in their pattern book. I have puzzled over this for some time; why oh why are all Noro patterns knitted up all any old how in relation to the (absolutely beautiful) colour changes in the yarns? A brief bit of research online found me this little gem of a phrase from the "blurb" on their website.

"Harmonize natural unevenness, asymmetric pattern and complex color to portray the beauty of the nature. Taking sufficient time to dye and yarn natural flavors and tenderness of materials to preserve their original characters"

Well - apart from the delighfully idiosyncratic translation from the Japanese, I guess the "asymmetric pattern and complex colour" explains the lack of symmetry. But when did you last see an asymmetric butterfly, or flower, or bird's wing pattern, or tabby cat's stripes? 

Nope, just can't be doing with all of that. My cardigan will have, I hope, perfectly matched colour changes across the front and the sleeves, which will give me great satsifaction. Yes that does require hunting through the remaining balls to find the one which starts as near as possible to the end of the previous one, and cutting out the excess but I can use that up in the collar, so no waste there! And what satisfaction when I finally sew it all together and the colour bands flow across my imperfect body in perfect symmetry!!

So, to my second yarn, the tale of the Damn Bloody Mouse - known as DBM hereafter. Yes, there is a link with the following pictures I promise.

We have two lovely cats, Rum and Raisin, who have shared our lives for the past ten or so years. We love them dearly, and feed them far too many biscuits but they are cats, and they do what cats do; catch things. Rum's catches ususally get crunched up on the lawn, though occasionally they are brought in for consumption overnight, with little bits left by the Man's chair in case he's peckish in the morning. Raisin, however, is a bit more squeamish. Once the excitement of the chase and catch is over, he's not quite sure what he should do with this poor wriggling furry thing. So in he comes clattering through the cat flap, a scurry, a yowl or two, and I rush into the kitchen to find a mouse (DBM) cowering under the dresser (where all good mice should hide) and a grumpy fat cat doing his best to get under the dresser. A cat and mouse impasse. I removed the cat, and found things to block up the ends of the dresser so that DBM couldn't escape. However, DBM had escaped already, to hide beneath the bookshelf in the sitting room. Aha, I thought, I can block up the wavy front esdge of the bookshelf with "more things", heavy enough and malleable enough to fit under the wavy bits and leave one small space for DBM to come out. The one small space was, of course, cleverly adapted with a humane mouse trap, baited with rather nice nuts and chocolate biscuits. No problem I thought.

Two days later, having sat each morning listening to little mouse scrabbles, and thinking, "oh, he'll be out soon, tidily captured in the mouse trap" I came down to find that two of the "things" used to block all exits had been wriggeld through and there was no DBM any more. And, to add insult to injury, DBM had been very grateful for the nice feast I'd supplied him, easily accessed by nibbling through the soft corduroy cover that ennables wheat packs to be heated up in microwaves before being applied to sore necks. Perhaps not my best choice for a mouse barrier!

So what does this have to do with the pictures below?

Well, for the next two nights I was awoken several times by little scrabbles and scuttlings in my bedroom. Ye Gods, I thought, DBM has found it's way upstairs and is negotiating the maze of boxes and whotnot under my bed. This is definitely Not Good. The first task, obviously, was to buy more humane mouse traps; the second to move all the boxes out from under the bed, then crawl about, with no thought of dignity, with torch and long poky thing to find the whereabouts of the DBM.

What did I find? A great deal of dust; a pen I'd lost; a single sock; a bookmark; an empy pack of aspirin. I also reacquainted myself with the precious contents of these many and various boxes: old writing cases belonging to Ganna and Mum, stuffed with letters, diaries, account books and the like; a complete handwritten draft of one of Gannas novels, along with the typewritten version that Mum did for her to send to the publishers; a small suitcase with a set of old reel to reel tapes which I know have all of us (me, Mum, Dad, Ganna and Grandad) talking many many years ago in Petersfield when Dad was still alive and playing with his new Grundig tape recorder. And this very fine collection of rug yarns, complete with the canvas (3' x 6') and a handwritten list of the amounts of every yarn there. 

Some were easy - just count the drums and you know how many pieces you've got, but I had a vision of Mum sitting and patiently counting out 929 pieces of green, 482 pale pink, 33 dark blue, 2 khaki ...... as all those below were just small remainders, carefully packed into plastic bags to keep them safe.

They have sat there I'd guess, for the best part of the last 40 odd years, kept for "one day" when she would have time to make the next rug. One day never came - it often doesn't, so here they still are, awaiting a hand and a design to make the best use of them, along with the list of amounts, and calculations of how many pieces would be needed to fill that canvas.

But what of the DBM? Not a sign, not the merest twitch of a whisker, nothing. But still, occasionally, I hear a little scratch and scrabble in the middle of the night. Not in my room, no no, in the walls of my room. I assume the wretched creature has found its way in somehow, and is now searching the fabric of the house for more tasty morsels. All we can hope is that a) it doesn't start trying to eat the wires, b) it finds its way outside somehow, without encountering an enthusaustic feline on its journeys and c) it does so very soon, as I'm rather tired of sleeping with one ear cocked just in case it finds its way onto the bed!!

Garden treasures

Promise delivered

and other beauties besides