April 2006

April 1st - 4th

I labelled up the remaining scarves, amended the stocklist, wrote a despatch note, made up a parcel and waved bye-bye to a big group of twist-dyed scarves. I decided to send them twisted up as if I rolled them on to a cardboard tube as usual they would probably arrive squashed. I still have to send a further, smaller batch to another gallery.

While tidying away a heap of life drawings I opened up some dusty old portfolios under a bed and an old airline label fell off. It was a Loganair Glasgow-Skye label, so probably about twenty years old. Loganair stopped flying into Skye many years ago but I remember it as one of the most magnificent air journeys I've made because the Glasgow - Skye section went by way of Inverness. It then crossed very wild mainland, flying west over the mountains. I've travelled to some amazing places but not much beats the west coast of Scotland. So another souvenir joins my studio pinboard gallery, but first I photographed it on my windowsill, together with other odd reminders of former times and lives. William Morris said we shouldn't have anything around us that wasn't useful or beautiful. Maybe I'd add - or that doesn't serve to remind you of something you'd like to remember from time to time.

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Key to detritus: Top left disappearing: old Richard Hudnut talcum tin given to me by some Australians squatting in an island house in the Thames, Maidenhead, 1980s; screw, origins unknown; shell, ditto; edge of jar removed from Victorian dump, Abingdon, 1990s; old squashed kettle whistle from Skye beach 1980s; bone counter from Great-Aunt's collection of same, probably 1920s; dead fly, just dropped by; two Indian coins from 1980s trip; Loganair Glasgow / Skye label, 1980s

April 5th - 6th

First, here are a couple of new images. Before I say why they are here, I'll try to put something into words.

A couple of years ago, at Coughton Court just south of Birmingham, I saw a chemise supposed to have been worn by Mary, Queen of Scots at her execution. There was nothing to illustrate or support the fact in terms of stains or damage. It was just a verbal claim, on a museum card, about a textile in a glass case. But I couldn't look at the textile in the same way again, even if the garment itself looked not a jot different, and also, even if the information was false. Information - any information - changes objects and they acquire "history" in the eye of the viewer. Does it make them more real? Does it make a story more real? I know these aren't new thoughts and I am sure there are theses written on such concepts. Artists make work about this phenomenon. Museums must have to think about it very seriously all the time.

When I photographed the airline label and odd objects a couple of days back it was really in the sense that they reminded me of something and reawakened memories. These images illustrate something that happened to the objects and you can find out about it here. That way you have to look at them first without knowing anything! I shall hang them on my studio light-pull to remind me of their extraordinary history.

April 7th - 8th

I had a couple of days out of the studio this week. My Berrimilla brother was visiting and we had a trip to Boscastle on the Cornish coast on a glorious spring day.

Back to work. The studio is in a mess and I have had a small tidy-up. Now I have lots of wax to iron out of scarves before a steam. As the weather is reasonable I can do this with the extractor fan on and the door wide open. I have finished the run of Lizards (see March if interested) and need to replenish my stock of twist-dyed scarves as the last lot went out this week. I do have some left, actually, but their colours don't create a wide selection and I need to address this. The batch of silk blanks that I have been waiting for has arrived so I can get on with it.

April 9th

I steamed a batch of work yesterday. One of the Lizards is a total write-off and I don't really know why. The dyes have bled badly, overspilled gutta lines and ruined the background.

I hate not knowing why something like this happens, because I don't know how to prevent its reoccurrence. Some areas were heavily dyed, and perhaps there was too much steam so that the dyes bled before they actually started to set. This can happen if the steamer takes a long time to reach boil (it didn't) or it's a cold day (it wasn't). Last month I had some steamer problems. I didn't post them here but sent this to the Dyers' List for comments:

....I've had my upright steamer (for setting my acid dyes on silk) nearly
20 years. In that time it has had two new elements. My work has changed
over the past three or four years - I am using a lot more wax -
although much of this is removed prior to steaming. I have also moved
to a soft-water area. I do normally rinse the boiler out but it hadn't
seemed stained or particularly caked in scale.
A month or so back I had water damage on one roll of silk and put it
down to a hole in the wrapping foil or careless loading. But yesterday
as I watched the water coming up to the correct heat I noticed that the
water started to boil and rapidly overflow. It was frothy and
unstoppable, like milk boiling over, even when I turned down the heat.
I quickly turned everything off and removed the work waiting to steam.
The Technical Department was called in in the form of husband and
daughter. Both nodded sagely and pronounced the phrase "chemical
reaction". We descaled the boiler; element, sides, perforated plate
etc. We rinsed and cleaned and checked the boil and the function of
the thermostat. Everything seemed back to normal. The water bubbled
without frothing and was certainly not threatening to overflow.
I don't know what was happening chemically. Did the scale build-up
inside the boiler "melt" as the water reached a certain temperature?
The purpose of this message is to recommend a regular descale in your
steamer to help prevent ruined work.

I had a very helpful technical reply which indicated that the bubbles emerging through accumulated scale would be very small and might have caused the frothing. However, I am now wondering if the newly-clean state of the steamer also means that the water comes to the boil more often and creates more steam, causing me this new problem. I will need to do a test on a gutta'd piece of work before I know I am safe with this assumption. There was a variety of work in the steamer, and the rest is ok although I have some fuzziness on some pieces which I think is the result of wax not being hot enough. It all goes to show that however long you've been playing a game, you always have to keep on your toes. And it's dangerous to mix metaphors although I just got away with that one..

One of the reasons I am working in textiles was what I learned many years ago travelling in India and the Far East. I had not previously perceived that textiles could be vehicles - or carriers of meaning - as opposed to performing a simple function like clothing, insulating etc. This was due to my ignorance and the fact that in my own culture textiles have largely fractured from their traditional base. In India and Indonesia I began to understand that textiles can be vital components of ritual and thus everyday life, respected as much as any work of "fine art", and which needed to be made with intense commitment and adherence to prescribed guidelines. This offered me an insight into how I felt I might work.

Last night a group of monks of the Tashi Lhunpo Monastery visited Torrington to give a "performance" of sacred dances, chants and music. These followers of Tibetan Buddhism are based in Mysore, India, but of course are living there in exile. In the performance they used separate textiles, such as lengths of silk, as symbols and carriers of symbolic colour but their costumes were in themselves stunning, made from patched, appliquéd and embroidered Chinese brocades. It was a powerful and moving experience and included chanting, playing of the Dungchen or long horn, Cham, or dancing in the Tibetan Monastic Tradition, and a demonstration of Taksel or the Art of Debate.

I bought these Dukar Wheels from them; they are protection wheels prepared and consecrated by the monks as part of the powerful Tantric practice of the deity Dukar. They are made by winding threads of coloured silk around a paper covered card which contains, I think, a prayer. I have seen that you can buy these from the Tashi Lhunpo website if you follow through the links (along the top) to the shop. The "backs" are just as interesting as the fronts but I forgot to photograph them.

April 10th - 12th

I have started some more Meadow scarves and have raised the wax temperature slightly to make sure I don't get more fuzzy lines.

A minor curiosity in a week of running dyes (see 9th April above) was some printed paper in which flowers from the local market were wrapped. It happened to be raining as I came home and I noticed odd green stains appearing on my hands. By the time I was in the house, the paper seemed to be melting. The design was remniscent of a Japanese or an Indian double ikat weave - and it was washing off so fast I had to put it in the sink! Then curiosity overcame me and I turned the tap on to run water over it. I have never seen anything like this before. It's the stuff of nightmares if you are a dyer. Imagine - a silk scarf that did that on someone's posh white suit. I suppose on the paper it's some form of ink but I have never seen one that simply washes away.

April 13th - 15th

Feeling sad about the deteriorating political situation in Nepal I looked out this sketch made on a street corner in Kathmandu in October 1994

Just carrying on with more Meadow scarves. Here is a pic of latest steamed (but not dry-cleaned, so still waxy) Meadow scarves from the last batch. On the far right are a pair of organza scarves; one clamp-dyed as a demonstration to students in a recent course and the other one, looped up, is twist-tied. I spent some time in the garden too and sowed parsley on Good Friday according to an old country custom, although how or why I know the custom, I can't recall. As Good Friday moves about each year there isn't sensible weather logic to it although, Easter being dated via a lunar calculation, perhaps planting in Full Moon week might encourage germination. Parsley is notoriously slow to germinate. There's an article here for parley surfers which illuminates some of these mysteries and also indicates it's the male head of household that should plant on Good Friday. Another article refers to pregnant women or witches being the only people able to grow it. All of which rules me firmly out of any equations as I managed to grow some last year despite my clear inadequacies as a post-menopausal female. Perhaps, though, I am a witch without knowing it?

If so, I can do without cats as Familiars, black or otherwise. Because what our local varieties like the very best is to visit my newly-planted seed beds and plant peripatetic poo in with the parsley, rocket and radish. So after sowing seeds yesterday I pushed several bamboo sticks strategically into the soil and with some cotton warping thread created an Anti-Feline-Defecation-Textile-Event. Cat's Cradle with a big difference. I just hope they can't poo off a tightrope.

April 16th - 17th

Believe it or not, the cat defences failed on the very first afternoon and I found large holes scooped where I'd sowed parsley. Much old-hag-type-spitting-and-cursing followed - I suspect the cats had been selling tickets to use the facilities. So out came the warping twine again and I put spiky bramble branches along the seed-bed edge. Maybe there's more than a little truth in all that stuff about needing to be a witch to make parsley grow. The new stockade doesn't look pretty but so far it seems to have kept the blighters out. To cheer me up, my neighbour told me the first swallows have arrived.

This is the side of an old shed on the edge of town. I may do something with the idea of lines, breaks, colours.

April 19th - 26th

I've been away in Malta visiting my very elderly mother. It's a very beautiful time of year in what is left of the Maltese countryside. Here are some images from my trip. I will add some drawings from my time there in the next few days.

Eyes of Horus, Boats, Planes, Tyres and a Bath Mat

	This Osman towelling mat has annoyed me for several years. When I first noticed it at my parents' house 30 years ago I had been studying Celtic Knotwork. There is a fault in the design because the rhythm of under and over must be consistent. I often wonder who was responsible for the error, if anyone cared, or anyone except me ever noticed.
The Alps, flying north	Here's the man mending the flat tyre on the National Express coach taking 44 passengers plus me from Heathrow to Exeter on my way home. Astonishingly, a small Yale-type key had caused the blow-out, lodged in the tyre wall and flung up from the road. We were delayed 3 hours. The tyre man was efficient and it was interesting to see how he worked.

April 27th -28th

Here are some of the sketches I did this week in Malta.