Dear Diary, Today there was an article in the Halifax Herald about my rugs. Suzanne Robicheau writes a column called Shop Therapy, and she featured my kits, rugs, studio. There was a nice picture on the front page of the arts section. When she called a few weeks ago I told her that her column always makes me want something. Last year she wrote about Morrocan Tagines , and I have been looking at them longingly ever since. She also reminds us about the “slow” movement. One thing for sure is that rug hooking is part of the slow movement, embracing time and wrapping it around yourself instead of trying to whiz through it.
This weekend I shopped myself a little. On friday night I went to the store where my son works and had him fit me out in in new walking shoes, and I bought myself a few little things including a tiny glass butter dish for 4.95 that as it turns out , is so thick it insulates your butter so that when you take it out of the fridge you can actually spread it on your toast. I am going back for a half a dozen of those. It is clear glass, beautiful, and like the new add for becel, stops toast brutality. No more ripped and torn toast but with butter, mmmm.I’ll buy them for people I like. All the better they are found downtown. I also splurged on a sugar dish for $7.95. For four years, since I broke the cover on the big clay one I have had since I moved into my house, my sugar dish has had a” handmade” tinfoil cover. The thing I am starting to notice is that siince I took the studio out of the house, my house has become less of a priority. As my children have become older their gear and stuff seems to have priority in the house and it is less and less in my control. There is the back room that used to be the studio, and because it has no tv it remains in my domain. I can keep it tidy, though there are often the big shoes of four or five teenage boys littering the door to the kitchen. I never complain about those though because when those boots are there I know where the boys are.
My only real domain is my little studio upstairs where I make my rugs. It is a small room, maybe 12 by 12′ , with slanted ceilings. In here , I keep a tiny laptop, my rug hooking frame, all my wool, my sketchbooks, a radio, a lamp. After comimg back from my friends, Gabrielle Savoie’s studio I moved a day bed in here too. It is just an old spool bed my neighbor Rosemary had in her barn, but I have ten pillows on it , and I can always get comfortable there. I keep a golden throw that Kim Ellis made out of curly locks and slub, and if it is cool, I lay it over me. I read there under the lamp. A studio needs a bed. There is no door to this little spot, but there is a set of stairs, and as you walk up them, there are three big windows that look out over the big wild Manitoba Maple that overwhelms the yard. On the walls I keep pictures of my parents when they were young. I have the fishing rod my father bought for me when I was a teenager, a photograph of Nowlans canteen that a friend at Acadia took. I have bits and pieces of my life pasted where ever I feel like. There is a net needle I was given on my last visit to Petit Forte, a big creamy northern moonsnail that Adeles friend Mallory brought to us. There is a duck my father carved when I was a girl, a broken celtic cross made out of peat moss that I bought at a cathedral in Galway, Ireland. my daughter broke it last tear but I keep it just the same. It is a ruin. There is the wool cupboard that Layton Ralston made for me when I first set up my studio. Layton was good to me when I started out. He made my frames, and built me the exact cupboard with names of colours on each little drawer. He died probally ten years ago but I think of him often. There is a wooden yard stick from Douglas Brothers hardware in Amherst. They were closed before I move here but somehow that stick survived and it ended up being the one I use to mark off all my mats. I have a bunch of Newfoundland stamps and a sign that says “Think” to hang my skeins of yarn off… as if I needed a reminder. There is a piece of white marble from a shattered altar of the Catholic Church in Paradise, PB, NL, that my father attended as a child. He was an alter boy to Father Fyne, a dutch preist, who served Placentis Bay in the nineteen thirties. I went there to the abandoned village when I was fifteen with my cousin, and our Uncle Donald. The church was gone then, except for the bell and the four huge posts that held up the roof. The alter was smashed all over the floor. It was another ruin, a much greater one. I brought the piece of alter home to my father, because he had told me so many stories about Father Fyne. My father left a long time ago, and the triangle of white marble is mine now. It as as meaningful to me as anything I own. I also have a small carved wooden boat I picked up on the beach in Placentia when I was last there with Tish. I see it as a gift from my father, a piece of magic that appeared at my feet. The dark drop leaf table I am writing on here in my little studio came from the cottage at Amherst Shore that my father Theo Mansour bought in the forties. It is not the right height, or shape for a desk but it serves me, and it belongs to me in a way that a new desk might not. There is a Rodin postcard of female nudes that I bought for $1 at The Art Gallery of Nova Scotia when they had a shoe of Auguste Rodin. It has been there for three years and I still marvel at the simplicity, and exquisite beauty of it. When I was a teenager my sister Rodin’s the Thinker hanging around the house. My other sister had given it to her as a wedding, or anniversary gift. I love the form of his work, and the postcard brings me to it every now and again. I keep a streno pad, some post it notes, pens, pencils, a few pictures and a tiny table to hold my tea. There are a few cds, though I barely play them. It is all mine. By some peoples standards it is a fortune, and by others , it is not much. It is all relative. If I had to leave right now, I’d grab the pices of marble and go, but thankfully I can stay. There is an empty rug frame that begs have a piece of burlap strengthen its shaky bones and I am going to answer it’s call. This place serves me, and yet, it is my master.
Thankyou, Deanne. I could see your private little studio, but I remember it full of yarns and odd fibers. Do you still have the rug on the floor, the gray one with a large building and boats – I thought maybe it was a fish factory?
Your big boned women have morphed into a rug that helps me remember my best friends from grade school – thankyou for your many wonderful inspirations.
I have just returned from the Amherst 18th century encampment, the trip to your studio and all the treasures we purchased. These are the stuff of memories too. I still cannot get your lovely hooked rugs out of my mind. It has inspired me to “get cracking” and perhaps return for a workshop one day. Your writing style is pure delight and i am urging you to keep your posts for a book please….happy hooking in the meantime …you go girl…