“If you’re going down, go down with the band playing”

A Guide to Scarecrow Wisdom – Rule 1  by Rowli Pugh

I am currently recovering from my EPIC weekend.  It started on Thursday at Aberystwyth having a ‘business’ meeting with the lovely Lorraine of Greenweeds Web Design.  This began with lunch, moved on to Constitution Hill to admire the view across Cardigan Bay, paused with an oversized ice cream and ended on the Pier where we finally gave up on business chat having been totally distracted by the antics of a pod of dolphins.  Lorraine is constantly trying to persuade me to engage more with social media (unlikely) and is responsible for the way my website looks and behaves.  A website can actually be very useful to artists and other creatives, says Lorraine.  Finally, I have come to agree with her.  Following on from the Arts Council of Wales funded project The Keepers which tracked the development of Textile Art from inspiration to completion through this blog, I use the website as a kind of journal or scrapbook.  All my favourite (and useful) images, sketches and bits/bobs are kept here in cyberspace.

Back to the weekend: Friday saw the selected designers of the International  Cambrian Mountains Wool Design Challenge gathering at the Park & Ride in Aberystwyth for a bus journey to Nanteos Mansion Hotel.  And what a range of beautiful things we had made: from clothing to soft furnishings; toys to jewellery – all brilliantly staged by the incredible organisers to show off both the wool and the talent of the designers to the best.   We got to spend a couple of hours together whilst we were waiting for the guest of honour.  I’m not sure what the collective term is for a group of Textile Artists & Makers – a network? – but there were a lot of us and we talked non-stop.  It was lovely to meet HRH The Prince of Wales (surprisingly knowledgeable about wool) and the Aberystwyth experience got my epic weekend off to the best of starts!

Thanks to the help of Ruth Packham and Rebecca Connolly I caught the early bus back to Carmarthen for the train to Cardiff, was picked up at the station by mate Sarah, got home, changed and was whisked to a hotel in Heathrow Airport by other pals, Pat the Shed and her hubby, St John the Provider.  At 5.40am on Saturday morning I was on the Oxford Tube bus eventually be deposited at the grandly named Lewknor Turn Coach Interchange – though this is actually a layby, and a very ordinary one at that.  From there it was only a short journey to the start of phase 2 of my epic weekend.  No more the posh frocked, hob-nobbing with royalty, artist; from now on, I was one of 2100 lycra clad participants in the Race to the Stones.

By the end of Saturday, after 50k on Shanks’ Pony, I was at Base Camp, aching, blistered but so pleased with myself and so looking forward to the next day when I was going to achieve a life-long ambition – to visit the Stone Circle at Avebury.  If you’ve never been there, it’s worth the visit.   One of the reasons I wanted to go there is because I find the history of the British Isles a rich source of inspiration for the kind of art I do.  If you want to do something creative – whether it’s painting, writing, music or anything else – it is worth getting out and about so that you can experience what it is that inspires you.

Nothing I had ever seen on television did the Avebury Stones justice.  9am and I was in position on the top of a bank, sketch book at the ready.  I don’t pretend to be a good artist but I find sketching so much more satisfying that taking photographs.

By Sunday teatime my epic weekend was over – apart from the blisters and the aches.  It was amazing from start to finish. On Monday I was back to work (trying to keep the NHS afloat, weeding an overgrown garden and dealing with a surfeit of garlic).  All of which goes to illustrate the wisdom of Rowli Pugh’s  Rule 1 for Scarecrows – if you are going down, go down with the band playing – in other words, if you are doing something special, give it 100% and do it with a smile on your face.  That way, you’ll remember it for ever.

A rhag ofn i chi feddwl fy mod i wedi anghofio bod rhai ohonoch chi’n dysgu’r Gymraeg – dydw i ddim!  Roedd yr holl benwythnos yn fendigedig.  Rydw i’n dwlu ar Aberystwyth yn enwedig yr hufen iâ.  Roedd Tywysog Siarl yn hyfryd.  Gobeithiaf y byddaf fi’n cwrdd â fe eto yn y dyfodol.  Y flwyddyn nesaf, rydw i’n mynd i redeg yn y Ras i’r Brenin am hwyl – dim ond 52 milltir.  Gwych!  Ond byddai’n well ‘da fi benwythnosau gwahanol!

“Brain,” says the scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz, as if having one would make everything alright.  But I know very brainy people who will never be as happy as a scarecrow because they think too much and mostly about the wrong things.  Rowli Pugh

In Welsh, a scarecrow is a Bwgan Brain – which means a Crow Bogie not a Brain Bogie.  I’ve been making Scarecrows for our garden for ages.  At first they were anonymous, vaguely human shapes stuck on sticks but a few years ago, I made one called Trevor who, for some reason, attracted a lot of public attention.  Trevor was joined by his wife Lucille.  She was not refined.  How many blonde female scarecrows have you seen wearing leopardskin print leggings and low cut flouncy blouses.  Eventually,  Trevor and Lucille produced off spring and their antics led to press coverage, radio interviews and a spot on a television programme.  You can get an idea of what I’m talking about here.

It turns out that scarecrows move home in the middle of the night so you can wake up one day with completely new neighbours.  Eventually Trevor and Lucille left and were replaced by Rowli and Cati Pugh.  Nice people but they never quite reached the heights of popularity attained by Trevor & Co.

We’ve been managing without scarecrows for a couple of years now but opening our garden for the NGS Gardens Open for Charity Scheme was the perfect excuse to make another scarecrow.  If you’ve never made a scarecrow, here’s the way I do it but if you browse through sites like this you can get more ideas.

Start off with a long stick for the head and body.  You will need to bury at least a foot of the stick in the ground.  I made the head for mine out of a linen bag, painted with permanent felt pens and stuffed with sheep’s wool although the inside of an old cushion will do as well.

Put a short cross bar on for the shoulders.  Either tie it or nail it in place.  Assemble the clothes your scarecrow is going to wear.  Meanwhile put an old cushion pad in a plastic bag and tape onto the stick as the body.  Make the limbs out of rolled up bubble wrap and tape them into position too.

Dress the scarecrow.  Corky is very traditional but as Lucille proved all those years ago, scarecrows can be glamorous too.

Finally plant your scarecrow in the garden or field.  Corky has a blackboard that he uses to write messages or to teach them Welsh.

Mae Bwgan Brain yn syml.  Mae e’n siarad Cymraeg yn araf ac yn glir.  Mae e’n boblogaidd iawn gyda phobl sy eisiau dysgu Cymraeg.

“It seems to me that smiling is always a better  thing to do than frowning.  There’s enough things in life to make people frown so I prefer to make people smile.  Felly, pan fydd pobl yn gwenu ataf fi, byddaf i’n gwenu atynt nhw. Mae pawb yn hapus.”

Corky.

Don’t think you are on the right track just because it’s a well beaten path

It’s not the first time I’ve started my blog with a Permaculture Principle.  There are twelve in all and I find some of them more relevant and useful than others.  This one aims to teach people to ‘use edges and value the marginal’ and like most Permaculture Principles, you can apply the ethos to all aspects of your life, not just the garden.  I know this because last month I gave a talk to a local gardening club.  No-one there admitted to knowing anything about Permaculture but when I mentioned the principle above, everyone in the audience nodded in silent agreement.

I confess I often find myself on a well beaten path but doubt that I ‘m on the right track.  I struggle to explain myself to friends, relatives or complete strangers when all I can say is ‘it doesn’t feel right’.  The clue to what is going on is in the word ‘feel’.  It indicates that I express myself in a tactile world so when I find myself in a quandary, the best way for me to work things out is start stitching or creating a design for some textile art.   Of course not everything I make is the result of some inner doubt; some things I do because I’ve come across a story which inspires me.  This, for example, is my reaction to an old Welsh legend surrounding a standing stone called  The Lonely Shepherd.

I made the hanging about 4 years ago but as I got a bit more skilled at needlefelting, I stopped being proud of it.  The wool hadn’t been worked into the backing fabric enough and I didn’t even like the colours much.  When I was sorting through my work for exhibition at Wonderwool last month, I was a bit distracted because I wanted to create a new range of craft that wasn’t the same sort of thing that I’d done before.  My problem was that I knew what I didn’t want to do rather than what I did want to do.  This was all bubbling about in my mind as I pulled out The Lonely Shepherd and realised that, as a wallhanging and as an expression of my own creativity, it had outlived its usefulness.  I ripped out the offending needlefelted wool, poured a jar of acrylic paint over the backing fabric, turned the piece through 90 degrees and reworked a lot of the embroidery stitches with additions of needleweaving and scrumbling.

I loved the result and, it turns out, so did loads of people at Wonderwool, many of whom had seen it in previous years but didn’t recognise it, reincarnated.  What I also loved was that the repurposing of something which was no longer  relevant – as opposed to throwing it away or leaving it, unused and unloved, in the bottom of a cupboard – summed up the underlying principle of what my new craft range would be.  I still can’t explain what it is I’m after, but I can see it and I know it.  And if I can see it and know it, then do I really need to label it?  After all, a rose by any other name is still a rose.

Friends are people who walk in when the rest of the world walks out

When I did my first Wonderwool Show I had no idea what to expect so I was completely unprepared for the reality.  It’s a festival of wool and sustainable Textiles and Fibres held in Mid Wales on the last weekend of April – that’s what I knew.  No-one mentioned the thousands of (mostly) women who used it as the perfect opportunity to stock up on raw materials, meet up with some of the best Textile and Fibre practitioners in Britain and catch up with old friends while making new ones at the same time.  But until they come in, the immense halls in the Royal Welsh Showground are COLD!  In 2007, there was I, bare legged, wearing sandals, in a summer skirt and blouse – freezing.  Across the aisle from me was the warmly muffled up Lorraine of Greenweeds, dispensing words of wisdom, humour, experience and cups of hot coffee.  I have learnt a lot since my early days of Wonderwool so whether you are going this year, have been before, hope to go in the future or may never get there but want a glimpse of one of the most enjoyable weekends of the year, this is what I’ll be doing on the last weekend in April 2015.

Scrumbling is a fun way to play with texture.  You can scrumble with knitting, crochet and weaving and I’m teaching workshops on both days called Scrumble Scramble.    In just one hour, with chopsticks and an egg timer, we’re going to produce some mini wallhangings.  Should be fun.

Many of the standholders at Wonderwool sell everything from fleece to finished article.  Just because you can afford the stand is no guarantee that you’ll be allowed in so it’s great to know that the people who are working there are really passionate about what they do and what they use rather than only thinking about making a profit.  Some stands are based around specific events being held.  As well as the amazing Wool and Willow Festival , the http://cambrianmountainswool.org/ design challenge will be hosting an exhibiton of submissions including my entries:

and

Other standholders (I’m in this group) are there mainly to exhibit and educate.  I will talk a glass eye to sleep if you get me on the subject of Textile Art.  This year I have created a series of works under the title ‘Etifeddiaeth’ which means legacy or inheritance.  I have used techniques like wet felting, needlefelting, creative embroidery, free form knitting and needleweaving.  If you are going to Wonderwool and get to my stand, R5, I can (and will) talk about any of these for hours on end.  If you’re not going to Wonderwool, here are two of the new pieces I’m showing this year.

INFORMATION FOR SCRUMBLE SCRAMBLERS!

This is for everyone who took part in the Scrumble Scramble Free Form Knitting Workshops over the weekend.  Firstly, I hope you enjoyed yourselves and secondly, I apologise for the non-ticking egg timer!  The whole point of the pattern we were using was to show you that Free Form Knitting comes from inside your own head.  We cast on 14 stitches and worked a few rows in K2, P2 rib simply to give our hangings a stable header.  After that, as you may have noticed, there was very little that we were all doing at the same time or in the same way.  Have a safety pin ready to move stitches on and off, add and change yarns, stitches, needles and direction of work at your whim rather than by following a pattern.  I thought you were all brilliant and I know how far out of your comfort zone you were.  Pats on the back all round!

“And thick  and fast they came at last, And more,  and more, and more.”

Lewis Carroll

Life is a bit like buses: nothing much happens for ages and ages then everything seems to happen at once.  A few months ago I entered a design competition being organised by Cambrian Mountains Wool and as is the way of these things, I didn’t expect a positive outcome so I promptly forgot all about it.  There was a domestic (or should I say goat?) crisis: the new pumpkin patch had to be dug over and summer seeds needed to be ordered and sown;  training for my first ultra marathon started and I was doing a proper job (swydd go iawn) to earn money because some people don’t like bartering.

All of these things conspired to get in the way of me being a Textile Artist.  Looming on the horizon was the closing date for entries for Y Lle Celf in the National Eisteddfod of Wales followed by a call for submissions for an interesting exhibition called The Memory of Textile.  Meanwhile, I should be preparing for Wonderwool where I’m scheduled to do two workshops on free form knitting although, truth be told, I wasn’t expecting anyone to turn up.

Busy?  No.  Because if I was busy, I wouldn’t have paid any attention to a call for submissions of art work by the Women’s Arts Association to mark International Women’s Day.  That’s the trouble with being a woman though – firstly (like most other females) I don’t think of myself as a woman but as superwoman and secondly, I really like a bit of feminist imagery and I had a design sketch that was just perfect for the exhibition at  Arts Central, Barry.

My plan was to spend Monday morning getting the picture framed and putting the mirror plates on the back before attaching two labels.  Then I would sedately make my way to the station and catch a train to Barry.  Ha!  Some hope!  Most unreasonably, our first visitor (Chris) arrived at 7.27am, left 7.43am, followed by Sara (arrived 8.34am, left 10.17am) and Pauline (arrived 8.46am, left 10.09am).  Now, instead of all morning, I had 43 minutes to make the picture presentable.  Could I find a screwdriver, mirror plates and labels?  No chance.  Eventually, I grabbed what I could and spent the train journey attaching wire and handwriting sticky bits of paper.

Tuesday was the day I intended to finish my entry for Y Lle Celf.  Dear me.  Etifeddiaeth consists of 5 different pieces of Textile Art, all of which had to be taken out of their frames to be photographed.  These then had to be burned to CD (always traumatic unless you’re a geek and I’m not).  Let’s not forget the CV and the Artist’s Statement as well as the application form itself to be filled in.  Any wonder then that when my phone pinged to say I had not one but two emails, the last things I expected was a ‘Congratulations/ Llongyfarchiadau‘ from Cambrian Mountains Wool to say my entry for the design challenge had been accepted and a message from Jane at Wonderwool to say that one of my workshops was overbooked and was that alright.  Now don’t get me wrong, I am very gratified at these successful outcomes but, my goodness, I could do with a little break.

The Anglo Saxons called February ‘Sol Monath’; here in Wales it’s known as Y Mis Bach (The little month).  It starts with the Christian festival of Candlemas and the Celtic celebration of Imbolc.  Both have light at their heart – whether a spiritual light or the physical lengthening of the days – and both signal that winter is almost at an end and Spring is on the horizon.  It is, for me as an artist, the time of year when I do most planning; I read poetry and quotations, sketch from life and from imagination and stock up on all the bits and pieces that I need to keep my haberdashery stockpile looking healthy.  More than that, it is the time of year when I cast a glance over what is working for me creatively and what is not.

Armed with this new found inner knowledge, I have started to prepare the first of this year’s works of Textile Arts.  My pals down at Bryngarw Country Park wanted an indoor sketch of The Keepers to explain the central theme of ‘Beneath this land a story sleeps’ and how The Keepers have a life within the Park which we may not see or be party to because of our rushed and bustling lives.  I have done a quick sketch which will form the basis of a wallhanging in needlefelt and creative embroidery.

Hopefully this will be part of a joint exhibition Maggie and I will be having in May (From the Wood 2 [too]).  You can find more details here.  Next on my list is to enter the Open Art Exhibition at the National Eisteddfod of Wales.  I am not doing this because I think that I will be successful but for three other and quite distinct reasons.  Firstly I believe that without people entering competitions  art becomes an elitist and ultimately barren backwater; secondly, the National Eisteddfod is not in existence to show Wales as a densely castled theme park with quaint folk speaking an archaic language.  It is trying to encourage, sustain and flaunt a vibrant culture and linguistic tradition in the face of globalisation.   It can’t do that if only a couple of people enter the competitions.  (Ac os ‘dych chi’n dysgu Cymraeg, mae rhif y gwlith o gystadlaethau yn Maes D sydd yn addas i chi.  Ceir rhagor o fanylion yma) 

Thirdly, just before I get down from my hobby horse and put him in the stable for the night, I am firmly of the opinion that it will help me develop as a Textile Artist.  Like a lot of competitions, the National Eisteddfod require you to present an artistic CV and a supporting document for the piece of art.  This means it’s not just about painting a picture or throwing a pot or (in my case) stitching over some fabric.  It means you have to think about what you are doing and why you are doing it.  It means that art has purpose.  I tell anyone who stands still long enough to listen that good art – in whatever form – should do three things: it should evoke an emotional response, it should provoke thought or opinion and it should be the result of skill or good technique.  I cannot say whether my entry to the Eisteddfod will meet any of those criteria but it won’t stop me trying.  Besides which, the Eisteddfod 2015 is being held in Meifod, the home of my current sources of inspiration Cynddylan and Heledd (Mae’r ‘stafell Cynddylan yn dywyll heno) . 

Ysbrydoliaeth is the word in Welsh for ‘inspiration’ and it’s a feminine noun so if you look at the quotation at the top of the page, it might make more sense when I tell you that the whole verse of this Irish song is

She’s my pulse, she’s my secret, she’s the scented flower of the apple, she’s summer in the cold time between Christmas and Easter.

Happy Stitching!

“Good order is the foundation of all things”

Edmund Burke

“No, it’s not”

Maria Lalic

Every year I make the same resolution – to be more organised.  Every year I think if only I had the perfect diary, Filofax, calendar, whiteboard, blackboard, something – ANYTHING – then I would succeed in my resolution.

This January, for the first time, I am trying to see if sticky notes will help where everything else has failed.  I am not optimistic because already they have disarranged themselves out of the nice orderly lines I put them in on the board and have started clustering haphazardly together.  I notice particularly that they have adopted a list to starboard ie they are now diagonal instead of straight.  This is not unusual in my house.  I use a spirit level to put up shelves etc, but there isn’t a horizontal surface anywhere.  I think this is due less to incompetence and more to the creative bit in my brain not liking straight lines.

I love organic shapes

and natural textures

These are things which excite me as an artist and make me want to get the paints, fabric and thread out.   So here’s the question: do I pay more or less attention to the creative bit of my brain?  There are people who have found incredible and creative ways to interpret straight lines.  I looked at the very beautiful work of Textile Artist Yvonne Brown recently.  You can see her art here.  It is amazing how fairly formal patterns can be given such a depth of texture.   Last week I came across the Stonehenge designs of  Linda Ludovico and it is remarkable to see a different take on the simple ‘straight’ line.

I wish I could say I feel inadequate when I see the work of these two but I don’t because comparing Textile Artists is like comparing apples and oranges.  It is a joy to work with a medium where there are no boundaries and no rules.  None of us do things right and none of us do things wrong.  We just do.  So maybe my resolution for the year shouldn’t be to more organised but to be more accepting.   Now excuse me while I go and rearrange my sticky notes …

PS  This is what Mother Nature does to straight lines.

It has a been a busy summer and an even busier start to autumn but now, with the harvest gathered in, the log stores full and the pantry shelves groaning under the weight of jars of honey, jam and chutneys, I feel justified in slowing down a bit and enjoying the season.

Counting your blessings underpins much of my life’s philosophy.  No matter how bad things seemed, my mother urged us to remember that there was always someone worse off.  When we opened our garden for charity this year, we wanted to share our philosophy of counting blessings (mine) and living in the moment (his).  The plan was to create a wallhanging and I had seen just the thing I wanted on one of my favourite websites which is called The Homespun Loft.  I was too late and it had sold out.  I headed over to Etsy and searched for Autumn Wallhanging Panels and Fall Wallhanging Panels.

Even though it wasn’t what I was looking for, I ordered this one from Blackbird Fabrics because I loved the colours, the artwork and the atmosphere.

Finally I found the one I wanted.    It came from Country Charm Fabrics.

It’s not the sort of textile art I usually produce but every so often it’s worth stepping away from the routine and enjoy a little something different.  Absence, as they say, makes the heart grow fonder.  I enjoyed my little foray into the world of patchwork and quilting but I’m enjoying the prospect of getting back to working with wool and appreciating each moment for what it is.

Permaculture is “a philosophy of working with rather than against nature; of protracted and thoughtful observation rather than protracted and thoughtless labour”

Bill Mollinson

Continue reading Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder →

“Mae mwy nag un ffordd i gael Wil i’w wely.”

So you’ve finished your piece of creative work .  Now what do you do with it?  Put it in the back of the cupboard or on a shelf to gather dust?  No, if you’ve created a piece of art – in whatever medium – you will want to put it on public display.  It might be that you stick to the fridge door with a magnet or have it professionally framed and hung on a wall in the house.  There again, you might want to show your work  to a wider audience so you need to find a place to exhibit it.  Think outside the box like the creator of Llandoddies did.

Continue reading Places, please! →