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Deanne’s Book Launch Party

September 3rd, 2010

Save the Date…. September 29, 6 to 8pm

Deanne’s Book Launch

We’ll launch my new book Inspired Rug Hooking ; Turning life into Art in Atlantic Canada

just bring yourself for a visit……

it will be a  dessert party so come hungry for carrot cake, lemon cake, or german chocolate cake


capture the feeling

September 3rd, 2010
www.hookingrugs.com

seeing things from a certain perspective

Dear Diary, Today my neighbor Jan came over to tutor me. After she taught me five things we both agreed that I had enough to practice with on the new programs I am learning. You can only take so much in before you have to put it to work. I am learning, happily learning.

One of the things I am getting more interested in is photography, because with a picture I can really study the shape of something. Over the years I have hooked many trees but I always want to hook them again, better each time. I love to look at a tree with out branches above my head and see the tangle of form above me. They are so interesting. When I go to hook them I can never quite remember what I have seen so many times before. I need a quick reminder, not a photo to work from, that can be a hindrance. I just want a reminder, so that I have a better chance to capture the feeling.


fifty is not really the new forty

September 1st, 2010

Dear Diary, I am on a steep learning curve with some new computer programs. I keep up with all of this stuff because I do not want to get old and not be able to work  the things around me. I like to know. Yesterday I had the greatest visit with my nephew. He came in for a cup of tea, and it seems that now he is grown. We gabbed away like a couple of old friends. He is a writer, so we had lots to gab about. I was asking him about a couple of new writers, thinking how writing has moved away from the classical among younger Canadian writers. He told me that “gritty is the new hip.” I loved the notion and wrote it down right away. Gritty. Joel Hynes’s book, Down in the Dirt, comes to mind. Gritty, raw, shocking, but not really. If you grow up in Atlantic Canada, and manage to avoid gritty, you’re a rare bird, a special species all your own.

It also got me to thinking about brown being the new black, or fifty being the new forty. It’s all lies you know. Black remains black, and fifty is as fifty should be. My nephew and I were just shooting the grit….we both know that all that really is happening is change. It’s constant. One thing never really replaces another. What was will always be. Memory begins with breath, and brown never really replaces black, it just takes over where it left off.

Gritty is a new view, that comes with these times and it is media driven. Coarseness is so much more familiar to us on the radio, tv, internet. It is the new fodder for media. It does not replace anything, it is just itself. Years ago people sometimes referred to my father as “polished.” He was not educated but he was well read, spoke well, shined his shoes and wore a crisply pressed shirt. I run into people everyday who are polished. They keep themselves well, and carry things off nicely. “Polish” as in the “shine”, remains. It has not been overtaken. It just looks that way sometimes.

How could fifty be the new forty?  Why would you want it to be? Can you live ten years and forget it about so that you can say you are the new forty? In my mind every ten years  or so we profoundly change as people. We have some basic qualities that remain, but I notice that ten years makes me see things differently. So far with each decade I’ve seen progress, and there was not one of those I’d give up so that I could pretend I was ten years younger. The culture is obsessed with youth, and I won’t succumb. French tips and Long blond hair is only one kind of beautiful. There are many kinds of beautiful.

I love the book of Ecclesiastes. How oddly comforting it is to know there is nothing new under the sun. It certainly takes the pressure off creatively. You just keep doing what you are doing in your time and place. Ideas will come and go, time after time. It is the way of the world. On the one hand there is much change, but  on the other hand, so much remains the same.


pies, hooked mats and drives to no where

August 29th, 2010

Dear Diary, Today I hooked for two hours when my daughter came into my little studio and said , “Wanna go for a drive?”, So off we went, just driving around with no where to go. She said, “I love going no where, just driving around.” I felt it too. We ended up on the beach in Parrsboro, me eating butterscotch pie, her not even craving a bite of it. I have very little willpower when I see meringue pies, and host of other things. I was weaned on sugar.

The county I live in is in the thick of blueberry season so there were big trucks hauling berries, and the fields were mostly freshly picked, just waiting for the frost to return so they could put on the crimson coats. Lakelands, a bevy of rolling hills, one field after another is a favorite spot in this county after the first frost. I had no idea land could be that colour.

The rest of Sunday was surrendered to an afternoon nap. I admit part of Saturday had the same fate. I believe in naps like I believe in meringue pies.I have faith in them to restore me.

Tonight my hands want to hook, but I’ll let the heat subside a bit, and then back to the mat. Always back at the mat.


August 26th, 2010
hookingrugs.com

what's art?

Dear Diary, Like a good part of the western world I too am tired of the question what’s art?, but every once in a while it comes up for me again. The other day as left the Confederation Centre for the Arts I saw a wheel barrow on the front and for a second I thought it was an installation piece, then I realized a bunch of guys were working there. The wheel barrow had a great patina of cement and yellow handles and I said, you know, that is art to me. Art is in the mundane, the odd, the simple, the complex. It has no definition and requires no knowledge, just the feel of the viewer. I saw lots of great work in Charlottetown, but some how that wheelbarrow, on a cement stage struck me as art. It makes no sense and it makes all the sense in the world. One minute you feel like art is dead, the next you feel like art is everywhere.

I think the best thing is to not think too much about it, just let yourself respond to whats around. Art is in the bits of iron scattered around a yard, the old car left on the side of the road, the massive painting on canvas. Don’t look for it, just see it when it is there.

 

hookingrugs.com


August Newsletter from Deanne’s Studio

August 25th, 2010

News from the Studio

the bits and pieces of a studio life hooked together
www.hookingrugs.com August, 2010

You can order anytime online or by calling 1-800-328-7756

The studio is now on facebook and you can follow there as well if you are a facebook  user. I post bits there about my rugs, and what is happening at the studio.
There is a link on the webpage www.hookingrugs.com

Tips
When you outline in your mats, use several different darks, rather than all blacks. Today to outline a series of rugs I have been working on I used dark grey, navy, dark puple, blue plaid and black to outline. I find that using different colours on items that are up close to one another gves added definition to the image.

Workshops
http://www.hookingrugs.com/workshops.html

The workshops are already starting to fill up so if you want to come, call us to register to make sure you have a spot.

Hooking Freestyle May 5 and 6, 2011,
This workshop is about getting free and loose with the hook, while still working with a pattern. We will explore ideas around colour, design, perspective, texture and creativity while working with a small landscape design. It is a workshop for people who want to break free of rules, and begin working towards developing their own creative style. We will use many textures, wool, silk, and other materials to learn what they can do. We will explore the creative sides of ourselves and apply it to rug hooking. It is a playful adventure in rug hooking that emphasizes freedom of style, creativity, and getting the mat done. $295 plus hst

Hooking the Abstract   , May 16,17,18, 2011
This workshop on expressive rug hooking will focus on creating abstract rugs of our own design. It will emphasize creativity, flow, using colour, and hooking in the absence of design or pattern. I  have discovered the beauty of working with abstracts over the last few years, learning to hook freely on a backing with out drawing anything on it. The backing becomes a place for expressiveness, and the lines are created with the hook. It is a place to make majestic rugs in a freestyle. The abstract style is forever interesting, and adds a contemporary edge to an age old tradition. This workshop is about taking an old tradition  and making it contemporary. $ 475 plus hst


The Imagination and the Sea: Hooking the Sea with Playfulness   September 7,8, 9, 2011

Powerful seas, windswept coasts, raging waters, elusive mermaids, dancing fish, suspicious squid…this workshop is a chance to take over the coast and turn it on it’s heels. We will  hook playful patterns that emphasize the wonder of the ocean. This course will also give you a chance to create some sea inspired  designs of your own. We will explore all things coastal, seeking inspiration, and reimagining the traditional way we approach hooking the sea. It is about blue, but not only, imagine the sea, and all the things it inspires hooked in any colour your mind desires. This will be an inspirational workshop $475 plus hst

So Small Under a Big Sky: Hooking the Sky , September 12, 13, 14, 2011
by popular demand we will offer this workshop on hooking the sky again this year for a smaller group because we had to refuse so many in 2010. We will focus on making the skies in your rug magnificent and interesting. Paisley skies, diamonds in the sky, skies of circles, realistic bib sunny day skies, storm clouds brewing….we will explore these and more. The sky itself as a theme is limitless so this workshop will focus solely on this element, making the sky as beautiful as can be. $475

in the works…. for fall 2011 the big fibre art festival workshop is a great three day rug hooking workshop  October 12, 13, 14, on hooking people and  the power of story with a special guest… Sheree Fitch,

The Yarns We Live By: A Workshop about
Hooking People and the Power of Story with
Deanne Fitzpatrick and Sheree Fitch

to be held during the fourth annual Nova Scotia Fibre Arts Festival
October 12, 13, 14, 2011  $495

Quotes

” Each of us has a unique role in the life of the universe, and this is our time and place, and no one else can take that time or place. No higher destiny is possible than to live our own lives, be in our own time, take up our own place.” Sister Stanislaus Kennedy

New Products
http://shop.hookingrugs.com
oh there is so much wool, and yarn, and fancy bits and kits , it would make you spin. I can’t begin to tell you….

the audio book, paper blank sketch books, cushing dyes (four colours only), white starfish with cut wool,

DVD Hooking Rugs with Deanne Fitzpatrick
We are currently creating a 60 minute how to dvd, that shows how I hook rugs.It focuses on hooking a rug called Poppies on the edge of town, with lessons on hooking the sky, the sea, poppies, houses, foreground grass, rocks, and back hills
.
order Dvd

http://shop.hookingrugs.com/


Books

Crossing to Safety, Wallace Stegner I read it again and again, so I repeat my reccomendation for it once in awhile

I am currently reading a number of unsatisfying mysteries that I would not burden anyone with, I soon may unburden myself of them unfinished, I also read a good book called  Graphic Design for Non Designers but the truth is lately my reading is taking a beating and I am having a hard time getting into a good book. This happens periodically…I’ll just have to wait it out.

Inspirata
Well there is Queen Anne’s Lace with it fine aubergine centre upon the table, and there are fresh tomatoes and basil grown local, there are farmer’s markets, and fresh eggs from local hens. It is the time to harvest, the time to reap, and jump around with our baskets lifted to the sky

Recipes
the fine art of sandwich…..
get a local jelly, mine is  sage and red pepper from the Tangled Garden in Grand Pre
get really good grainy bread, mine is from Jacob’s Larder, a homemade protein bread
grill a chicken breast, and a little onion, cut it in thin slices, one breast for three sandwiches
thinly slice an avacado
a bit of iceberg letuce( it is the only real lettuce for a sandwich)
a bit of mayo
a fresh garden tomato with sea salt
Pile these things high, between the good bread and it is a summer supper

Diary
Dear Diary, The new deli , Simon Turner’s  Art of  Eating has opened up down the street and the place is lined up out the door. It is successful already, with lots of activity and buzz. It is as if the whole town has been waiting for a sandwich. The one I had there yesterday was delicious, and I’ll be back again and again, cause it looks to me like right now, that guy is doing just what he should be doing. He took a horrible old space and fixed it up beautifully, filled it with good food and magazines and hung out a shingle and said, “Come over and see me, buy a sandwich. ”
He is right where he belongs. I too feel, that I am right where I belong. in the past few weeks I have taken three short road trips to different places in the maritimes, wandering about , not doing too much, and this week, I am glad to be back in the studio. The heat has tamed a bit so this morning I hooked on some people rugs, getting in the mood for the workshop I have coming up. I tore up wool shirts and skirts in my studio, getting them ready to cut into strips. Just the sound of the fabric tearing gets me ready to work. I piled up bunches of new wool on the shelves so that new colours would be right at my fingertips. Seeing the wool makes me want to transform it, turn it into something more beautiful than it already is. It belongs with me.
You can feel summer start to slide beyond you, another one slipped away. Every September for years I missed the turning of a crisp new exercise book. I wanted to go back to school, or feel some kind of renewal. For me now these last few years that renewal has come in the shape of mats. September is my time to get back at it, a regular studio practice. Sitting with the hook, making things that at first seem as if they might be too big to finish until, I find myself suddenly midway, and thinking of what will come next. The end of August always makes me remember what it was like to begin again with a clean notebook. I still feel, I just fill my notebook with different stuff.

The studio is open year round 9am to 4pm Monday to Friday and Saturday, 10 am to 3pm. We are located at 33 Church Street next door to Mansour’s Mens Wear,
Amherst, NS, Canada

www.hookingrugs.com
1-800-328-7756

Y


alone with the hook

August 21st, 2010

Deaar Diary,  I can hear the leaves growing it is so quiet here right now. I can hear myself think. Eugene Ionesco, said”I long for solitude yet I cannot stand it.” I was sitting with my annual read, Wallace Stegner’s, Crossing to Safety , the tea was made, and I thought I was happy to have a few minutes to myself, yet I came here to write. Alone, but not really. It is the new world, this one where the world is with us all the time, at our fingertips. A curse of distraction for artists because you can only make work on your own. You can do cooperative things, and collaborate, but really our real work is made on our own, alone. I show up to make something everyday that I can, whether it is making a paragraph, or a few stitches on the frame. I show up on my own, and sit with it. It is just me and the work, the hook, the wool, the words, all getting strung together. You have to get used to your own company. You have to sit with yourself as if you were an invited guest. You can’t breeze through making stuff or painting, or writing, or composing music. You have to be patient, and kind, and sit politely with yourself, and wait it out. You have to show up for yourself. Solitude is necessary.


what’s in the bag?

August 20th, 2010

Dear Diary,  I think it’s true that most people want to be understood, to be known. It is why we like to belong, part of a neighborhood like the one I wrote about yesterday. I was reading a book by Robin Sharma recently and it had plenty of common wisdom in it. One of the chapters describes how several times he took plane trips at at the end of the trip he knew all about his seat mate, but the seat mate had not asked one question of him. I wonder about such a lack of curiosity in people. Is it that they just plain forget, or are not interested. Are they lost in a world only of their own making, or are they nervous to engage you in a question. I suppose their are many answers.

I am a naturally curious person so I have to hold myself back from firing questions at people. I love to know. As Brenda who works with me says, “She just wants to know, she doesn’t care, she just wants to know.” This means not that I don’t care so much, as I won’t evaluate. I just like to know, where people come from, what they like to do, the music they like, the books they read. The truth be known, I’d like to look through their purse, but don’t because I know it is inappropriate. I am curious about the name of their lipstick, the colour of their day book, needless things. I don’t want to know what they do for a living or how much money is in their wallet. I refrain from asking people what they work at these days, rather I try to ask what they like to do.  Once I was sitting having a beer at a bar with a few people and this musician I know came in with his big leather bag full of God knows what and I told him what I was thinking, that I’d just like to go through that bag, paper by paper, save me asking him questions.  Years ago  when I worked with a bunch of women I asked one woman what she had in the brown paper bag in her hand. She opened it, showing me,and saying, “three kotex…now ya’ happy?”. We had a good laugh since we all knew I had been hoping for butter tarts, or a sandwich she might be talked into splitting with me.

Questions about people run through my head like water runs through a tap. It is, like Brenda says, not so much that it matters to me what people are up to. Rather I just like to know what they are having for supper, where they got their shirt, or how they made out on their road trip. So the thought of not knowing something about the people I spend banks of time with does not make sense to me. You never know what kind of load a soul is carrying if you don’t engage them a bit. I don’t mind answering questions either, especially from friends. Sometimes when I go for a drive with my friend Don Miller he comes up with some big interesting question for us to play with on the drive, it is a pondering question, one for us to play with as gad about.

I think a big part of trying to be interesting is to be interested in others, because you learn from them, and it gives you a bit more fodder I s’pose you might say. I love discovering, whether it is a great rock on a raggedy beach or it is a connection between two people I never knew existed. We are linked to each other, in and out, over and over, and getting to know each other makes us more of a community.I like knowing what’s in the bag and who’s carrying it, what can I say?


one corner in amherst

August 19th, 2010

Dear Diary, I know it’s horrible for all the summer people, but I love a day that is cool enough for a light sweater.  My hooking took a beating this summer with the humidity. I hook for a bit in the morning but as the sun turns hot, I head off to the downtown studio to play with all the wool there, write, and meet the people who come to visit. A good part of my time there is spent preparing for workshops and getting ready for the fall. We have two groups coming to learn about hooking people, and another to learn about hooking sky, and the relationship between spirit and creativity. The second one I am doing with Don Miller, my friend. They are both full, and my expectations for them are high. I love seeing people come to town for the studio. I like to see them spend time in Amherst, get to know this place.

Yesterday, I dropped into the new deli, Simon Turner’s the Art of Eating. It is just two blocks from the studio, and I am waiting for a sandwich. I dropped in yesterday, and though he was not opened yet, it felt like a meeting place. He said, “I am not open but I can make you a cheese toastie.” I said I am hanging in for that big avacado and chicken sandwich he told me about. With in minutes there was a few more people standing in the door way, ad the place felt like it was always there. He has two big  gilt framed chalkboards telling me there’ll be oatcakes, and smoothies. The coolers are stocked with gorgeous looking food, and there’s an old antique red fridge, which he refers to as the sin fridge, filled with colas. It is a place I want in my town. I am glad he is opening his doors. It feels good.

He is next door to Heidi and Holger’s Old Germany Restaurant and plans to sell his sandwiches on their good home made bread. The Old Germany treats me so good when I bring our workshop guests there for lunch. I crave their chicken with home cut fries and yellow curry sauce on the side. The last six times I have been there I ordered the exact same meal. It is so good I don’t have the heart to try something different( so much for all that creativity advice I dispense about trying new things). A good meal is hard to find.

A few months ago Simon from the Art of Eating catered the opening of my friend Elizabeth’s  Damaris Wellness Centre and Aveda Spa, just across the street  from the studio and a block to the left. Elizabeth’s spa has been the talk of the town . She lit up the street with a big black awning, paired with red and white geraniums and licorice plants. She is making people happy day in day out, and bringing life back into our core. It makes me happy to walk by their geraniums. I drop in there to pick up soap for the studio, or treat for someone because I am glad to have them on my street. They helped to change the face of it, and I appreciate it.

Next door, My husband has a men’s wear store  (Mansour’s) that has been on our street for over eighty years. They have opened their doors to people since the great depression. I love watching people go by with suit bags, full of their wedding clothes, or feeling good about themselves cause they have just been dressed head to toe. Men hate to shop, and Mansour’s makes it easy for them. Robert has put cards for free socks in my studio so when you come ask for one and you can go next door, and get your husband some new socks on Robert. He wants people to go in and see the store, and know what he is doing in there, what his father did before him. It is a great store.

Just behind them, my high school  friend Patricia Ogden Leblanc gives pedicures, manicures and facials in my old studio place. Patricia is warm and kind, and when I go there it feels like old times, comfortable and easy. Across the parking lot, Darlene, always is happy to see you at Duncan’s Pub, and pour you whatever you need, whether it is a cup of tea or a guinness.

 Up on the corner, Beth Monroe, and her father run Pugsley’ s Pharmacy, where  I, comfortable can pick up my vitamin C, and know that she has a good store of really good chocolate, two basic necessities. Beth’s brick store front with the blue and white awning, was once owned by Charles Tupper, who was a father of confederation, and prime minister of Canada( it was a short run, but hey). I can count on Beth for anything from a lipstick to a good book. You never know what you’ll find there, and she has a sale shelf that makes me happy where she has ridiculously low prices on great stuff. Sometimes when I walk up the street I just go in her back door and walk out the front just so I can feel the place. I like it there.

This is just my corner of the town I call home. I like it here, I fit in. It is n’t perfect, but what place is. It is a place where people belong, and build a life. It is a hometown, a place where you can walk around and pick up most of what you need, and people will know you, and if you are fifty cent’s short, they’ tell you to come back tomorrow.


wine, women and goals

August 16th, 2010

Dear Diary, today, Katherine(formerly known as the mocker), and myself and a few women headed to the valley to see the wineries. I grow grapes in my own yard, but it is nothing compared to seeing them row on row, so cultivated, so beautiful.

In Canning, I used my digital camera to frame up the roofs of a few houses. I find using the camera makes me look at angles from a different perspective. It is  such a good tool for composition. I need to make sure though that I print off the good pictures, the ones that speak of making a mat. From the look off on the mountain, there is a patchwork, that would make a great abstract rug. You can see the influence of this view on the work of some valley artists. You can see it as a view, or you can see it as layers and layers of texture. It is more than a quilt. A quilt is not enough of a metaphor, or perhaps it has just been too heavily used.

I was also on another little road trip with my daughter this weekend. She went to an athletic camp where they talked about goal setting. On the way home we gabbed and she said her goals had really grown, then she started to laugh, remembering that when she had to write down her goals in grade three for a poster, her goal was to stop eating the black stuff out of her fingernails. They hung all the posters oin the hall. We laughed so hard. Little goals , big goals….