ahipara girl

Cloth
Hand
Stitched
Altered
Cut
Mend
Earth-coloured
Loved
Stroked
Women's cloth
Refuge
Covers
Shelters
Warms
Comforts
Cloth
Currency
Mark making
Signpost
Gift
For them
Cloth

Doris Du Pont and John Pule
(Frock by her, designs by him, photographed sideways by me.)
Pacifica Collection, Te Papa o Tongarewa Museum, Wellington City

I am obsessed somewhat with cloth. Not just any cloth. I don't like those fabric shops at all. Sometimes I'm sucked in. But when I get home, I think "what the hell was I thinking?!". Sorry fabricaholics. But cloth that tells a story .... well, that's something else.

Barkcloth from the Pacific Islands, handworked, beaten from nothing into something. Colour extracted from other plants. Cloth then overdyed, marks made by primitive means. Symbols instantly recognised by locals, mystic to aliens. Currency when women had none. Power in man-governed societies.

India's cloth - dyed, stitched, marked. Better than drugs but has the same effect. Euphoria.

I want to make cloth that speaks. For now I make gobbledy-goop but one day, I will have conversation swirling on desirous cloths too. Cloths that I covet.

One day I will have my own distinctive 'thing' because let's face it, we all want our own 'thing' don't we? That point of difference (I'm feelin' ya Kylie-babe). For now I am thankful to be on my journey. I got the 'flow' happening. Haha, 'flow', that's loaded isn't it. I'm talking creatively people. After a rather dry spell in that 'inner place', somethings' astir. I can't stop 'moodling' about cloth. Keri Smith's book "How to be an explorer of the World - Portable Life Museum" tempts me over there on the coffee-less table.

Rich has kindly tipped my crafting corner out for me at my request to motivate me to create a more conducive creative space. It covers two couches, considerable floor space and doesn't tempt me in the least to sort it out. How the heck did I get so much stuff in to such a small space. I once had a studio space and two sons. Now I have three sons and no studio space. I have so many dilemnas all at once. None of them urgent, but nonetheless (i always trip over words that are stuck together like that - like 'useless, diehard, hammerhead, sometimes', it's lucky I don't use them often), in-deed, nonetheless I .... forgot what I was gonna say, oh yes, the jumbled up room I am sitting in and ignoring.

And yet here I am on my computer talking to you. Checking my Facebook page. And writing, cause I love to write too. I love words. Words are my friends. They work for me and sometimes against me, but I love feeling words swirl and buzz around me.

Tomorrow is crafting day at my house. Last night was crafting at the local cafe on the beach with a bunch of friends, new and old. All I do is think about playing. It is playing. Sometimes it's artful and other times it's just plain old making. And I love both as long as there is that element of play. Purposeful and purposeless. It's all about having fun and is very satisfying.

I've knitted up a bunch of hats. I'm ready to move on to crochet cause I want a big round-top fluffy hat for me. And I'm aching to stitch a new dress from old cloth. And some old pants remade new. And some more artful spaces around the house. And time with creative souls (Imbi lands next week, Cleo and crafty clever peoples tomorrow, and surfing my fave blog haunts, and myself always). And time with spiritual buddies. And hugs with babies, mine and collected ones. And a ponderous walk along the beach, eye's-down of course! And probably vacuum the floor just for shock factor. And clean the toilet. Ok, let's not get carried away.

I have a new visual diary (sans India again) and somewhere buried in the garage is my little watercolour paints sets from days when I thought I would learn to paint at art school. ha! So now I will play. Purely for me. To see what can be born. And destroyed. And born again.

I opened the curtains this morning to see big sky in my lounge and suddenly realised just how beautiful the sky is, and how it's always there, and it's so big, and always moving and changing (ok so shut up scientific brains out there, i realise it isn't actually 'there', grrrr), and it's like a serious locating device in my life that I seek wherever I am. Like the ground, 'grounds' me, I also read the sky for things. And the seaside calms me.

I dare you tomorrow to stop and really look at the sky. Isn't it beautiful. Like a big beautiful coloured blanket God spread around the world. O my. That's right. It's right there. Someone once told me to stop, lie on the ground and look at the sky. So I do. Regularly. Cause there's something healing about it all. Lying on the ground, being still, feeling the breeze on one's face, and just gazing at big beautiful sky. It's free, it's accessible, it's there. I MAKE my kids do it. Doing nothing well is an artform in itself.

I was trying to imagine what the world would be like with no sky. Imagine if you opened the curtains tomorrow and the sky was gone. I think I would die. I was blown away at how much I take the sky for granted. Shame I have neighbours, otherwise I would rid myself of curtains so i could see outside all the time.

He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,

Enwrought with golden and silver light,

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

Of night and light and the half-light,

I would spread the cloths under your feet:

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

- William Butler Yeats