Deanne Fitzpatrick Rug Hooking Studio

Dear Diary, there is a big wind up today and the water is rough. I love it. It is all I can hear, more even than my thoughts. I sat and did six rows of hit and miiss squares with the waves banging against the shore. Once in a while you could hear someone squeal with delight when a wave hit them. Sound overtakes our mind some. It can be soothing, like a mantra, or it can be like a grate, depending on the sound. The water, the waves are a calm sound, though they themselves are no way calm. They are strong and agressive, crashing, yet they lull me. Between that sound and my hook thrumming, I am lucky I am not in a trance. Perhaps I am.

Marion Kennedy taught me how to hook twenty years ago

Dear Diary , It will be twenty years ago this fall, that Marion Kennedy taught me how to hook rugs. Marion was very strong minded , and quite abrupt. Essensially she showed me the stitch, and said, “now go finish it.” When I questioned whether I should pull something out, she said, “just finish that one, you’ll get better as you go along.” At the time I was twenty five, and Marion was about sixty five. We were generations apart but she had an appreciation that I might want to approach rug hooking in my own way. She taught me how, and let me find out the rest. She never imposed a bunch of rules. I only met Marion three times in the next twenty years. Once she came to a hook in we had in Amherst, the next time she came with her good friend Kay Purdy to my home for the afternoon, and I drew her a pattern of hockey players. Last summer I stopped to visit her at a nursing home where she resided after becoming ill. This winter, her daughter called me to let me know that her mother had died and that I was invited to join them for a memorial service at the Pictou Lodge in July. I went last Friday to learn about and celebrate Marions’  life. Though I only knew Marion a little, I did know her. She was a woman who said what she felt. She was expressive, kind, and giving. It was clear that she was a good mother, who raised a good family, and pursued her interests and passions through out her life. In a slide show put together by her family they featured many of the rugs she had made over the years. I could not help but think, all we leave behind is what we make of our lives, what we create, our children, our handwork, our love and forgiveness, our spirit.
I was honoured to have been included in such an intimate portrait of Marion. It was held at the Pictou Lodge, on the shores of the Northumberland straight, where Marion liked to take people for lunch. Her son, and daughter, spoke lovingly about her, and her son in law held a sweetgrass ceremony. On the table was a beautiful photograph of Marion, and a recipe booklet that she had developed when she ran a strawberry farm in Ontario. I learned that she raised her children in Ontario, and moved back to Nova Scotia later on in life. I learned that she picked up rug hooking after her children had left home, and she was feeling the empty nest. I learned that she liked clothes, knew how to hold a grudge, but could forgive. Alot of the things I learned about Marion were things I knew from meeting her just a few times. I think that through just a few encounters, I did know the real Marion. I was reminded that though it might not seem like you really know someone well, sometimes you do. Some people are so much themselves all the time, no cover, no show, that small encounters reveal alot. I love this kinfd of person, the kind that Marion was.

I was also reminded that small encounters change lives in dramatic ways. Marion and I, though we met only a few times had a great respect for each other. She, in a few moments with a few words changed the course of my life, and lead me to fine place. A place where I could become fully myself.  She taught me that I own my own hands and I am the only one who should tell me how to use them. She taught me that rules in rug hooking are for the maker of the rug to decide, not a teacher or a guild, or a book. She taught me resolve. Though she never talked about any of these things at any length, I felt them in the strength of her hands and in the light of her eyes. She might have seemed grumpy but she sparkled, a most interesting combination.

We are here on this earth, my mother in law, always says, to be good to each other.  I agree. I think we are here, to facilitate each others journeys, to teach, and to show,  to learn and to lead. Marion Kennedy facilitated mine, and I am lucky to have met her. She made a difference in my life. Our encounters were few but they mattered. With each other, we were each ourselves, accepting of each other. She lead me gently, and freely let me go where I wanted with a craft so that it mattered to me. Marion was always proud to acknowledge that she had taught me how to hook, and I was always proud to acknowledge that she had.

Marion Kennedy's Strawberry recipes

Dear Diary, I imagine that beautiful new ideas keep coming as long as you are looking foor them. Today I went to buy a few new magazines, just for the pleasure of a rainy day at the shore. As I poked through them, nothing was quite satisfying. I left with a good old reliable one, and the weekend Globe, and proceeded to mine the pages for ideas. In the middle of the read I jotted down a note in book, thinking that if I wrote it down, I would be more likely to do it. I have ideas that come and go, and generally I try to write to write them down if they have enough worthiness to reconsider later. The truth is though, sometimes I never get back to them for months. I try to review the bits and pieces that I write in my various books and journals every once in a while. The other day I did a small sketch of an idea I had for someone, and I could not bear really to have that sheet torn out of my book. It was an enormous moleskin sketch book, that was a beautiful gift from someone this spring. I had been savouring the book for sketches I was spending time on, keeping it precious, but I decidede to give that up, and start using it freely. I did the playful little sketchy ideas in it, but could not rip them out to give away. I joked that these were a record of my life. He photocopied them while I read the Amherst Daily. Sometimes when I go over my old sketch books now, the absent pages make me wonder what is gone. Most of the notes and drawing I make are inconsequential, but they are all a record of my tiniest moments, and I know that those tiny moments are all adding up to a life .