printing – something from seaview

A cat crisis …

There we were – on the afternoon of Tuesday 11th September – quietly enjoying a balmy early autumnal afternoon in the conservatory with our two cats, Eggy and Ilsa. Some serious bird watching going on too.A few minutes later I went into the garden to water the plants, and Ilsa followed, ambling off somewhere …

Suddenly – noise – drama – and there down the path I could see Ilsa in the forecourt, but ….. under 5 dogs. There was a terrible din – they were all barking furiously while the dog-owner and his young son tried frantically to pull the dogs off her. I don’t really know how to convey in text my absolute panic and horror. Suffice it to say I dropped everything I was carrying and tore out into the forecourt, yelling blue murder to those dogs and their owner.

Miraculously Ilsa escaped the dogs and fled over the neighbours’ wall, but then – perhaps in her panic – she continued into the nearby field. So the dogs followed her – as did we all. At last we were able to pull them off her, and, with her scooped up in my arms, get her away from the dogs.

At first it wasn’t clear how wounded Ilsa was, but she was breathing extremely fast, and I didn’t want to explore her wounds then and there for fear of making her more anxious. So we had a brief sort of conversation with the dog-owner (who seemed as stunned as we) and his son, and set off for the vets.

The vets were lovely – professional and quick to give immediate treatment. It transpired that Ilsa had been bitten on her rear right leg and her lower belly and was bleeding quite heavily from this wound. However, they were particularly concerned that her breathing was so fast, and feared she might have also sustained a puncture wound on her lung. So she was hospitalized for the night with antibiotics, painkillers, and tender loving care.

But she was OK. Extraordinarily for such a dog attack, she hadn’t been ripped to shreds and left as meat. The more I think about it, the more amazed I am that worse hadn’t occurred. Had the dogs just been playing with her?

After leaving Ilsa at the vets, we went to see the dog owner. In part this was because I was aware that he’d had his young son with him who had been extremely distressed and tearful during the attack, and I wanted to give reassurance to this little boy that she would be alright. I’m glad that we were able to do that because his mother reported that she’d put him to bed looking like he’d seen a ghost. Poor little lad.

It transpired when talking to the dog owner that he’d been walking staffies and pit bulls and a chihuahua, and it had been a single disobedient staffie that caused the damage to our cat. I really want to emphasize this because it’s not really what we are led to expect about such dogs. The dog owner immediately said he would pay the vet’s bill.

Of course, the problem only occurred because he was walking his dogs off the lead past our group of houses …..

The next day we brought Ilsa home. It turned out that she hadn’t experienced any lung damage. And we were reassured that her wound should heal fine – but take time as she was pretty bruised.

Oh, poor little Ilsa. This what a cat does when it feels terrible – burrowing deeply into nice safe soft places (my unspun fleece basket) …Nevermind we thought – she needs to take her time as the vets said. But she’ll be back to normal soon.

But she wasn’t. Over the weekend she deteriorated and next week she was so poorly we headed back to the vets, only to be told that the antibiotics hadn’t worked and the wound was infected. So they whisked her back into surgery, put drains in her infected belly and gave her different antibiotics. Her poor belly looked awful …We’d been warned that suppurating drains make a terrible mess, so drugget preparation was necessary. Our sitting room became a hospital ward (cat litter included) …Perhaps nastiest of all (to her!) she’d come home with the dreaded cone …Now a cone is horrible on all small animals, but is also a particular problem if you happen to have a very flat face. Drinking required almost full immersion …Perhaps most worryingly she stopped eating, so we embarked on a program to syringe liquid high energy food into her mouth at regular intervals over the day and night. I made myself a bed in the sittingroom …Despite all this love and care, she was getting more and more unwell, so back we went to the vets as a second weekend approached. We were at this stage more than slightly dazed from lack of sleep and worry about Ilsa and the growing vet bills (no, of course we didn’t have pet insurance) …

Horrific news. Her wound was now so infected that the vets had to clean out a great hole of necrotic tissue (mercifully not on any of her organs) and she needed to spend the weekend at the vets on a drip with more antibiotics. Her huge wound required sluicing out a couple of times a day.

We were allowed to visit Ilsa on Sunday in the surgery, and frankly it was almost more disturbing than not seeing her. They were looking after her beautifully – faultless efficient medical care, very lovingly administered …But our little cat wanted to come home!We finally got to take her home on Monday, but had to return her to have her wound washed out every day that week.

The good news was that she didn’t require a cone, and coped very well with living with her horrible hole …How we welcomed the news after a week of regular expensive sluicing trips that she could have her wound stitched and stapled! It doesn’t look very pretty …But she really did seem to be so much happier – and so were we!Apart from anything else the dog owner had given us a decent contribution to the vet bills. It nothing like covered the whole expense of course, but at least made us feel that he recognised the damage that his dogs had done.She was starting to get back to normal pursuits, joining Eggy in the woolly room with me …And even taking tentative steps outside – tail up, a happy cat!Even back to a little mousing with Eggy …Whew!

Today Ilsa went to the vets and had the staples removed. The stitches lying under the staples come out in a couple of days. She’s been pronounced nearly back to normal – well, almost. The bite damage to her leg is lasting and she will never quite have the mobility she once had with that leg – and there’ll be a scar! But hey …

It’s been an overwhelming month. Partly the horrifying initial attack – though that did not turn out be as bad as we originally thought – but even more the rollercoaster of worry about her increasing infections and the rising costs of veterinary care. We felt out of control.

So we haven’t been out and about on long trips, but there has been quite a bit of quiet sewing and crocheting …

After my malaise earlier this summer which I wrote about in my last blog post, I was suddenly inspired to ask my cousin, Polly, if she had any of her fabric prints that I might embroider. (You can read more about her fabric printing in our earlier GiveWrap posts). These are some of the prints she sent me …I was very taken with the deep orange print with swirly yellow lozenges. It’s quite small, but once pieced together with similarly toned fabrics gave me an interesting start …The lozenges spread out …Until I reached the point where I am now with the piece propped up on a tall chest of drawers while I decide about the edging. I can either go for the darker spotted fabric (on the right) or the lighter fabric (on the left). What do you think?That embroidery was very pleasing to do – calming and meditative – and helped keep me occupied in difficult times.

I also crocheted these little Toft elephant friends for some little girls who have a new baby sister – a very belated welcome present to all the family. When I wrote about my listlessness earlier this summer, somebody wisely told me that there is nothing like making presents for others to give you your mojo back. Thank you, friend, you were quite right!What a relief to be back to normal!(Cats find mice in the darndest places!)

Christmas cards

Visitors to our house at this time of year may be struck by what a lot of Christmas cards we receive …

Well, I have a confession to make: one of the most treasured parts of Christmas for me is getting out my old Christmas card box. Inside I have a large collection of old cards – and some of these old cards come out to swell the numbers (so to speak) year after year. It is not that I want it to appear that we have a huge number of friends! – no, it’s because these are old cards that I love so much that I return to them year after year. Just to open the box makes me feel all tingly …Like many parents I have saved the cards my children made when small. I find them fascinating to look at again because they reflect so clearly their changing interests as they grew up. Helen aged 8 was drawing cats just about everywhere …Several years later she was still adding cats to the Christmas ensemble. This is one of my favourite cards because I so love the joy she has captured on the surrounding faces – and especially Mary’s clasped hands.But then – one year we got this! (She was 17 by now). I wonder if you know who features here?!! At 9 my son James was all about dinosaurs and monsters ….Apart from my children’s cards, there are cards I save because I just love the pictures. I’m always a sucker for a beautiful angel …And this is an enchanting nativity with that little bare-buttocked angel worshipping in the foreground …I love representations of the Madonna and Child that capture some small realistic moment in a child’s life, like this baby playing with his mother’s beautiful coral beads …And what a contented baby this is, playing with his toy apparently quite happily so that his mum can get on with her reading!There are Christmas tree pictures I have kept because I thought one day they might offer inspiration. I am very taken with this embroidered tree …And I really like the clever simplicity of this paper tree, just a sharp fold in the centre of the card …I’ve always planned to copy in some way this beautiful Matryoshka card that we bought in New York’s MOMA …Other cards catch my eye for their humour …Or their charm …Some are topical …Some are just fun …And some are I think slightly weird (but still very fascinating) …There is often a knitterly card from my cousin Lucy (who, like me, loves to knit) …And we often get the most beautiful rabbit cards from my sister Marian – who keeps rabbits, of course …I’m a cat person myself so couldn’t resist keeping this card from an old work colleague …In some circumstances there is a family joke behind the keeping of the card. The maths teacher (no, not Stephen!) who made this card was definitely not known for his happiness!This looks such an unremarkable little card …But inside – written in haste – the teacher’s thanks for timetable support look more like tit – oops, oh dear!This little card completely changed the way we see Christmas – why Father Christmas drops presents!! We must hurry outside to check there’s none around here!There’s another group of cards that have changed in relevance to me over the years. These are cards that I originally kept because I loved the pictures. Then, over the years, I came back to look at them only to find the people who sent them had died, so these cards have gathered an extra most poignant significance. The oldest one is from my grandmother – a tiny little slip of a card, but inside she has written in her very elderly shaky hand about the imminent birth of my first baby (her first great-grandchild) …I kept this most beautiful card from my ex-husband, Hugh. We had a most acrimonious divorce, but his suicide in 2007 made me look quite differently at anything tangible we had left from him …This card came from my father, and I kept it originally because – as I described above – I so love Madonna and Child scenes where there is a glimpse of playful interaction between the mother and babe. It is now extra treasured because my father passed away in 2015 – and also because it is a painting which belongs to his old Oxford College, Magdalen. He was very deeply proud of his time there …A work colleague of mine at Exeter Library sent me this card. Angela always found the most distinctive and beautiful cards. She passed away in 2011 – she was almost exactly the same age as I am …I so love this beautiful bird of peace card, sent to me by my dear Devon friends, Eileen and Len, some years ago. Len passed away in 2016 – this card brings back very happy memories of a really lovely man …One of the most poignant cards I have is from my Uncle John. A talented artist, every year he would have one of his drawings made into Christmas cards. He was very ill with throat cancer when he sent this card and wrote inside how he could no longer “write, call, eat or drink or talk and am v. frail and shrinking.” He died soon afterwards …His is not the only card that I treasure because he designed it himself. His daughter Polly always sends round wonderful cards. We have enjoyed making shared GiveWraps for the last few years, and this card is very definitely GiveWrap-inspired!Other Christmas cards of hers hark back to an older Christmas – womb-like and mysterious in ivy …And I too used to make Christmas cards! These are ones I made for the Westcountry Studies Library in Exeter. My work there entailed looking after their historic collections of prints and drawings, so it was a bit of fun to take an old picture and add a festive Father Christmas element …What I love about handmade and hand-designed cards is that everybody plays to their strengths. My mother is a truly most gifted needlewoman – so her cards were always hand-stitched …My brother Henry makes a fine card, interplaying his photos of the season to give a glorious colourful montage …And Anya, Stephen’s ex-wife, always sends a strong print. This is Mick Jagger, The Christmas Cockerel! Isn’t he a fine bird?!Every year Stephen’s cousin Peter cooks up something witty and imaginative – I’ll let this one speak for itself …He comes from a family tradition of fine handmade cards. Together his parents, David and Bar, created some wonderful cards. David was the poet, Bar the artist. The front is not very prepossessing …But isn’t the inside clever?!This one is probably my very favourite of theirs …I love all these cards that I have shown you but my very favourite cards always came from Stephen’s Aunt Barbara (another Barbara) – she was a print-maker.And perhaps loveliest of all, because most simple – and most powerful – in its colour and message …There is something else in my Christmas card box – something that doesn’t really belong there because it’s not a card, nor is it Christmassy. This is a cutting from the Crediton Parish Magazine sometime in the 1980s, – a prayer for the New Year. While my Christmas card collection is in many ways about looking back through my family and friends, this extends my thoughts to those I do not know whose experiences over the past year may have been very different to mine. Call it perhaps a Quaker-like meditation for holding all those others who we do not know in the light …Belated Christmas wishes and Happy New Year to you all – may 2018 be good to you! May you flourish like the bay tree!

Yet more GiveWraps!

This is going to be an indulgent post! I have been making lots of GiveWraps. It’s the birthday season in my family and Christmas is in the offing, so there’s every reason to have a little play with colour, yarns and fabric. Given a nice sunny day (so the light is good in my little Woolly Room), I went into production mode.If there is time, I like to make GiveWraps with particular people in mind. It’s my daughter’s birthday at the end of November and last year I made her a very special GiveWrap using bits of animal print fur fabric scraps left over from her teenage sewing experiments.This year I wanted to do something different. I’ve got some Very Hungry Caterpillar fabric (always a family favourite) – what about that? The caterpillars are interspersed with familiar scraps: the grass-green chintz was left over from blinds I made in our old house, the pink and blue flower fabric was used for curtains in her bedroom …..She likes both cats and the designer Alexander Henry. Happily these two likes come together with some of his wild and wonderful scratchy cat fabric. I think these cats are just wicked! I have some interesting printed scraps from my cousin, Polly (with whom I set out on this GiveWrap adventure). Here is her Microcosm enclosed print in the centre of this blue GiveWrap. She has printed it on an old tablecloth that once belonged to our grandfather. You can see his name embroidered on the plain linen. I’ve kept it in partly because it is our shared story, and partly because it is an example of beautiful craftsmanship in itself.I had a few tiny scraps of Microcosm enclosed left over and wanted to emphasise the facial aspects of the print so I put them with these pieces from my old and very worn-out yukata. I love these Japanese ladies! The yukata was originally white – and a reject from my mother. I dyed it turquoise – a great success – and wore it and wore it and patched it and patched it. Eventually the time came to admit defeat – but these lovely ladies have found a new life in my GiveWraps, and don’t they work well with the purple?! There’s a faintly mauve tone in their kimonos which is why it all works together so well.There are more people in this print of Polly’s. The figures on the right are her as a little girl beside her mother. I thought long and hard about how to make this GiveWrap. I definitely wanted to emphasise the vertical lines so eventually settled on tree and leaf prints. It seemed to be important to place the print on the right so that the figures could look over the GiveWrap – and Polly’s fish print just snuck in on the left.Now for some dragons – but what on earth was I going to put with them? I knew that I wanted to pick out the orange of Polly’s dragon prints and contrast it with green. Then, by chance, I came across this owl fabric with its orangey-reddy-brown owls on a soft leafy green background – just perfect! Lots more leafy fabrics in the mix as well. I deliberately set the dragons in two columns “facing” each other and “upside down” to each other (so to speak). It’s a trick borrowed from the yukata ladies above that I particularly like.There were still more of Polly’s printed dragon scraps. These dragons have been printed on a very fine gold silk, and – don’t ask me why! – they set themselves in browny-grey fabrics, and then the Alexander Henry scratchy cats just asked to join in! Sorted!!On a roll now, I made yet another GiveWrap I really struggled with this one. The fabric in the centre is from a very beautiful Indian silk dress of my grandmother’s – alas, perishing. You may just be able to see that the pink flowers are picked out with gold threads – so much work in it. It was a very straight short shift dress – so not a lot of material – and I had no idea what to do with it, except, of course, make a GiveWrap. But I found it a hard challenge to find colours and patterns that married with those delicate colours.

As it turned out, it is a very sentimental GiveWrap, using lots of pieces that have strong associations. The small brown flower print is from the first dress I ever bought myself – in the 60s! It was kept because my mother loved it – and used it for patchwork. I’ve added strips of the soft brown needlecord that was leftover from a dress I made my little daughter many years ago. How nice to have found a home for these special pieces. But will I ever be able to pass this GiveWrap on?And lastly two knitted GiveWraps which I have been working on by the fireside in the evenings. Here I was using up scraps of knitting wool and some chenille too. These are knitted in linen stitch which gives a pleasing woven effect. They are such fun to put together – it’s really fabric creation at its most basic. Little odd strands of contrast colour lift the whole. One knitted in reds and pinks ….… and the other has some orange in the mix.Time to tidy up my little Woolly Room and turn to other projects. It’s a tiny room and I have to be very disciplined as I work.All these GiveWraps have labels on the back. I’ve given up using the computer for labels, finding it too much of a struggle for my printer. However, Anne Wheaton has some helpful advice on printing labels and perhaps when I’m next making GiveWraps, I’ll try one of her methods.

GiveWraps

About a year ago, my cousin Polly and I found ourselves searching for a textile project we could work on together. We had lived quite divergent lives but as we approached the age of retirement discovered a new friendship from our shared love of textiles and gardens – and family history.

We cast around, floated various ideas. And then I came across this blogpost by Rebecca of Needle and Spindle on GiveWraps. Lightbulb moment! – could this be what Polly and I were looking for? I emailed the link to her in hope, got an enthusiastic response, and we were away!

In a nutshell, Rebecca’s idea – implemented with her friends at the Needlework Collective – was to replace our wasteful culture of disposable wrapping paper with handmade re-usable gift-wrappers. Each GiveWrap gets a label on the back, giving the maker’s name, locality and date. Then they are set free: given, wrapped around the gift and the new owner can re-use them so (ideally) they get passed on and on and on. (Some people have been known to keep them because they like them so much …)

Polly and I were inspired. She is an artist and print-maker; I am a knitter, spinner and sewer. We were excited at the prospect of making gift-wrappers together, both because we love making things with fabrics and prints and colours, and because it is so sensible – after all, it is horrendous that so much wrapping paper gets thrown away after Christmas and birthdays.

So this is how we started. Polly gave me some of her fabric printed pictures and I stitched them together with a sort of patchwork of fabrics. This is one of the first GiveWraps we made together – one of my favourites. I wonder where it is now?There are stories in all these GiveWraps. There are stories in the fabrics I have used, where they have come from, what people I associate with them. There are stories in Polly’s prints too. (She will explain more later on.)

We were having such fun! We made contact with Rebecca and the Needlework Collective and told them how much we were enjoying ourselves making GiveWraps. Rebecca was kind enough to write a follow-up blogpost about our English take on their wizard Australian idea. By Christmas, we had made lots of GiveWraps together to send off to family and friends.We decided to set one of our GiveWraps flying back to Australia, so we sent a GiveWrap to the Needlework Collective. (The fabrics and prints have stories: Polly has printed the Japanese character for eternity in red, along with other patterns, on an old napkin that belonged to our mutual grandfather; I have stitched it onto a green backing that was once a dress belonging to my Australian grandmother.)And we received one back from them. (This one also has a story: it was made from worn and much loved shirts by Rebecca and embellished to just brilliant effect with simple decorations made from these same shirts.)And then – as is the way with the best bands – there came a point when we decided we were going to do our own thing. Not, of course, that we were splitting up – we still planned to work together again…

I’ve got a large collection of knitted tension and pattern swatches, and they lend themselves so well to GiveWrappery. This is a sample for a beaded cardigan I made myself. I have crocheted round the edge of the swatch to finish it off.These knitted swatches got me thinking. Why not knit a GiveWrap straight off? Here is my first attempt. It looks woven but is actually knitted. (I think it is what is called Woven Stitch).You can make GiveWraps from all sorts of things. Another cousin, Lucy, gave me her beloved pink cashmere cardigan when it literally fell to bits and became too moth-holed to wear, hoping I’d find some use for it. I patched the moth holes with stars, cut the arms off and gave it a fabric backing. Whey hey! – it’s a GiveWrap. Lucy got her Christmas present wrapped in this GiveWrap that year.When my mother moved to a retirement home, she gave me all her sewing materials, including these blue squares of fabric, pre-cut for some project she’d had in mind. They make a nice GiveWrap – and, of course, I used it to wrap a present to her.The best GiveWraps are made with people in mind. My son’s girlfriend, Barbara, loves cats, so I knitted this GiveWrap for her one year. (I don’t think she’s passed it on 🙂 )For my daughter Helen, I dug deep into my stash and put together a GiveWrap of all the animal print fur fabrics she loved. (I know she hasn’t passed on this GiveWrap 🙂 )This GiveWrap was made with a very special friend in mind. I wanted to convey to her what it is to live here in Northumberland, within sight of the sea. I was sewing it when the fields around the house were gold and yellow, and sky and the sea were oh so blue.Enough of my GiveWraps! Now I’m going to pass you on to Polly for her to tell you about her GiveWraps and the stories behind them.

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For me the pleasure of the GiveWrap project has been in connecting with people: with Katherine and family history, with Rebecca through her original inspiration, with the friends I pass the GiveWraps on to, and more widely through Instagram. It’s a way of sending my work out into the world. It’s about value which has nothing to do with monetary value.

I was already printing a bit onto fabric with Akua inks, but with the GiveWrap impetus I went into full-scale production! As well as old family linen I used beloved worn-out clothes, and rummaged around in charity shops for interesting fabric. I got out my old lino blocks and was pleased to see these images reincarnated as repetitive patterns. Here is an early one, printed onto a woven silk scarf that Katherine’s mother (my aunt) had given me long ago.Katherine asked me to print something for her mother’s birthday – it had to be blue, her mother’s favourite colour. It turned out very blue indeed! She then backed it with her old Japanese dressing-gown and beaded the edge beautifully. Katherine is an ace sewer whereas my sewing is perfunctory – I prefer the messy business of printing and developing an image that way. You can see our mutual grandfather’s name embroidered in the corner, most likely by our grandmother.I rarely plan ahead, but start somewhere and then see where it takes me. Even when I think it’s a disaster, the Japanese kanji for eternity – repeated and dancing across the surface – will miraculously pull a design together. Katherine’s father tapestried this symbol onto a cushion cover for my parents’ 40^th wedding anniversary, and it has become a recurrent motif in my GiveWraps (did you spot it several times in Katherine’s blog as well as in these last two pictures?)

Rebecca sent me a damaged table-cloth all the way from Australia and I had such fun working around the spoilt area and turning it into a GiveWrap. Here is the finished result:With a close-up of the rescued area:I sent it back to Australia with little English presents from Cambridge for her family. The backing is from a duvet cover I made for my parents in my 20s, fabric I still love.

Friends started giving me fabric once they saw what I was doing. I was inspired by an old sarong to print fish onto a silk handkerchief . Held up to the light you can see the fish from the backing as well as the fish I’ve printed. Often friends receive gifts wrapped in a GiveWrap of their own fabric.On the left there you can just see a silhouette of me and my mother, taken from a photo. My mother didn’t like the precise business of sewing any more than I do, but she did have an old Singer machine and there are intimations of her showing me how to thread it whenever I use my much more modern version. In my current imagery I am on a journey with my mother – though she died in 1990. Here we are together, on our way somewhere with the fish. (Katherine can’t resist commenting here that this is my favourite of Polly’s GiveWraps, and it’s with me at the moment – may not be travelling for a while!)In this one you can see my mother as a child peeping out from the corner with her doll. The Japanese onlooker is the lamp that sat on my brother’s bedside table throughout our growing-up years. She is often looking on, a kind of witness, in my images.It’s astonishing how clear printing can be on old linen, often with the added beauty of the damask pattern showing through. This one is a drypoint, for those of you interested in the printing process. I still have stacks of family table-cloths and napkins to use – what a satisfying way to give them another lease of life.I love the process of putting imagery onto fabric that already has history and meaning – texture in the fullest sense – and then turning it into a beautiful gift complete with carefully chosen ribbon. I used to be impatient with wrapping presents but now I enjoy it – no more carting rolls of wrapping paper home, no more sellotape and wasteage! The only problem is that sometimes the gift has to be chosen to fit the GiveWrap – to be honest often the present is only an excuse for the GiveWrap…….. This one’s on a silk handkerchief that belonged to my father, and I gave it to my brother for Christmas. I can’t remember what was inside……

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Let’s end where we started. Recently Polly and I started making GiveWraps together again. Here are Polly’s green fish, set in watery and weedy fabrics.If you use Instagram, you can check out these and many many more GiveWraps that we – and lots of other people – have made. Search under the #GiveWrap hashtag, and be sure to add any GiveWraps you may make 🙂 . A big big thank you to Rebecca, Aisha and Emily (AKA the Needlework Collective) for setting us on this wonderful GiveWrap journey!

(If you too are inspired to make a GiveWrap, check out Rebecca’s original post for ideas and instructions.)