A while ago I read an article in the Irish Times about a woman artist in Northern Ireland who was not recognized as an artist of merit until she was age 84.  Her early life as a painter remained a secret until her son uncovered hundreds of her paintings in an old barn.  The discovery of the works lead to her first one-woman show in 1985 when she was 86.  Eleven years later, shortly before her death in her 97th year,  a retrospective of her work was presented at the Ulster Museum.  Her son and a journalist/art collector have written a book in tribute to her – Kathleen Isabella Metcalfe Mackie by Eamonn Mallie and Paddy Mackie

Similarly I read recently about a Cubanborn artist, resident in the U.S., who has been painting all her life but  only sold her first painting at the age of 89.  According to an article in the New York Times, Carmen Herrera, at age 94, is the hot new thing on the art scene.

A while ago I did a blog about Louise Bourgeois, born in 1911, and still being very creative.

Reading about these people is very inspiring to me.  I hope I will still be painting and knitting and weaving for many years to come.  I love those activities – and it is a thrill when friends and others admire my work.  I don’t aspire to such fame as the people mentioned above but I hope I am still able to get satisfaction from such work if I am fortunate enough to reach the higher decades – and possibly to feel I had made some sort of a mark on the art and craft world. 

I have framed the watercolour painting I completed recently in my Art Group.  Up until recently I have only been doing sketching but in the past month I added a bit of line and watercolour to my sketch of my knitting stash.  Here is the result.    

Two or three years ago I posted this Happy Christmas message to the Online Guild of Weavers Spinners & Dyers.  Now I want to send the same message to all the readers of this blog.  I’m too rushed to figure out how I put that text on one of my photographs but I would like to extend the Happy Christmas wishes to all my readers, near and far.  Merry Christmas to you all.

  Just a quick note on my current knitting project, another blanket.  This is to show the yarns I am using and the progress to date.  In the first 5 inches I’ve used 3 of the irregular striped yarns, the brown alpaca yarn, and the blue and brown  Icelandic Einband.

    The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher or The Murder at Road Hill House by Kate Summerscale

What a good book this was.  If you want to follow the development and early days of detective story writing this is the book for you.  This book is about a murder case which happened in 1860 in England.  The case was most bizarre and was never solved to the 100% satisfaction of all concerned.  But I leave it to you to read the details.  I found it absolutely fascinating.

The Winter Solstice is now “yesterday’s news”.  There was disappointment at Newgrange on the official day of the Solstice, the morning of the 21st.  According to the article by Eileen Battersby in the Irish Times, there was general disappointment as eager watchers gathered and there was no sighting of the rising sun.  It was just cold and damp and misty.  People gradually put away their cameras and just exchanged greetings and comments.  Nevertheless, behind all that cloud and mist the sun was rising and nature’s cycle continues, the end of winter has begun.  And you can note the progress of the path of the sun by checking the times of sunrise and sunset each day and note the gradual lengthening of the days, in the Northern Hemisphere that is.

  not Newgrange on Dec. 21 – just a December morning view from the upstairs window of our house – the angle of the sun is so much further south than on a morning in June

  My stash – December 22 2009

It’s time to pack my stash – so I’m going to identify the various yarns before I forget.  I have been using these yarns to knit the panels/blankets.  Once I’ve taken the label off the yarn I tend to promptly forget the manufacturer, despite always saving the labels.  So this is an aide memoir.

Rows 1 and 2 – The 4 skeins of brown alpaca in the front of the picture is from an alpaca farm, Alpacas of Ireland,  in County Kildare.  The yarn was generously given to me by a friend in our Irish Guild of Weavers Spinners & Dyers.  This yarn is the base yarn for my current project, i.e. I will use one strand of brown alpaca throughout and the 2nd strand will be something else.       

Row 3 – The blue and green yarn on the left in Row 2 is 100g of Mirage, 50% wool, 50% premium acrylic, approx. 343 yards, 312 metres, King Cole Ltd.,purchased in The Wool Shop, Bangor Northern Ireland

The 2 balls of green yarn are Lodband Einband, Made in Iceland, Icelandic Textiles Ltd., 50 g, 225 m, pure new wool, purchased from The Yarn Room, Dun Laoghaire People’s Market and Ashford County Wicklow

  The Yarn Room in Ashford

The 3rd ball of green yarn is Lang Yarns, Jawoll, Superwash, 75% new wool, 18% nylon, 7% acrylic, 50 g, 210 m, Lang & Co., Switzerland, purchased from The Yarn Room

The ball of white yarn is Lodband Einband, the remainder of a 50 g ball, purchased from the Yarn Room

The 2 balls of purple yarn – I’m not sure how long I’ve had these or where they came from, they are wool.  I used to have a lot of this yarn but have gradually used it in projects, these 2 balls are all that remain.  I used some of the yarn in this blanket.      

Row 4  - The blue yarn is Einband.

The dark red yarn is all that remains of a skein used in my last project     

The light green yarn is Lang Yarns, Lawoll

Moving to the right, there are 2 balls of white Nature Spun yarn and 1 ball of Einband.

Finally, a ball of bright purple, Nature Spun

Row 5 -The blue yarn is Nature Spun Fingering Weight, 100% wool, 50 g, 310 yards, 283 m, gauge 7 sts. per inch, needle size 3, Brown Sheep Company, made in U.S.A., Mitchell, Nebraska, purchased from This is Knit, Powerscourt Town House, Dublin.  There is quite a bit of this blue in my first blanket.     

2 balls of bright red Nature Spun

1 red and grey ball of Admiral R Druck, Schoppel Wolle, Made in Germany, 75% Schurwolle, 25% Polyamid, 100 g , 420 m

1 ball of red and blue and green Superba Inca, 4 fadig, 785% superwash new wool, 25% polyamid, Rico Design

1 ball of red and blue and white yarn

1 ball of brown Lodband Einband

Row 6 – 1 ball of bright blue Nature Spun

2 balls of Admiral R Druck Schoppel Wolle, irregular stripes, green and brown and lt. bluebeing used in my current blanket        

1 ball of Admiral R Druck Schoppel Wolle, irregular stripes, white and brown and blue

2 balls of brown and white Opal, Made in Germany, Tutto Wolfgang Zwerger

1 ball of brown Lodband Einband

  More stash, being used in current project -1 ball of  Admiral R Druck and 2 balls of Lang Yarns

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlQNB6XxsxU   This YouTube video shows a ship passing through the Panama Canal.  I’m wondering if our container on the Rotterdam Express is looking like this right now.  Just think of all those cardboard boxes filled with family memorabilia and the spinning wheel and the rug wool, etc. etc. etc.

Knitting for a  change – rather a play on words.  I haven’t blogged about my knitting recently, hence the title, but read on and you’ll read about other changes.  My knitting of late has been baby blankets or panels or whatever else you want to call them – I’ve been using 2 strands of sock yarn – one strand of multicolour self-patterning and one strand of solid colour.  I have been choosing yarns from my stash.  The strand of multicolour has remained constant but I have the fun of changing the strand of the solid colour every few rows.  Here are some of the results.                  I am partial to the purple based one on the left.    But the green based one on the right is quite nice also.      These panels are on the same idea as the grandaughters skirts featured in an earlier blog. 

The past couple of weeks I have been taking a blue and yellow panel to my weekly Kilternan Market but I haven’t featured it for sale among my hats and scarves and socks.   The hats and scarves and socks have been selling well.  One particularly discerning customer spotted the blue and yellow panel which I had casually displayed  behind the table.  She asked to see it and asked how much I was charging for it.  I kind of fumbled around and decided on a price – she decided it would be perfect as a lap rug for her elderly dad.

                      Blue and yellow panel (lap rug), sold at Kilternan Market.  I am nearing the completion of another panel and had decided to knit something else, for a change.  Well, this sale boosted my spirits, as happens when one makes a sale, and now I think I will knit yet another panel.           I’ll choose the yarns from my ever shrinking stash.  I think the next panel will be “brown based”.  Watch this space. 

One of the rugs in the house we are renting is a rug I wove quite a few years ago and was selected by my friend to put in her cottage down in the West.  The rug has somehow migrated back to Dublin and is now in the hallway of this house.   

                One of my woven rugs – a striking resemblance to my current knitting!

The Winter Solstice is drawing near. 

  photo from this souce.

This year, according to my source, the winter will officially occur in Dublin at 15:47 , 5:47 p.m., tomorrow December 21.  Correspondingly, it will be 9:47 a.m. on the west coast of America, 8 hours behind us here in Dublin.  There is a really interesting website showing photos and explaining the winter solstice at Newgrange, a world famous prehistoric site in Ireland.  Around the time of the winter solstice the rising sun shines into the inner chamber for 5 or 6 mornings.  Some of the photos shown of the 2005 solstice were taken by Anne-Marie Moroney, a weaving friend of mine. 

Anne-Marie is also a photographer and author interested in archaeological and mystic phenomena.  Anne-Marie and a poet  friend, Susan Connelly, produced a book about some of the holy wells in Ireland.  She used not only her own photographs but also some of her textiles as illustrations.  I would like to tell you more, but that will have to wait for another day.  My copy of the book is currently in a container on the SS Rotterdam Express, approaching the Panama Canal, en route to Seattle.

I have a diary called Murakami Diary 2009.  Haruki Murakami is Japanese by birth and his books have been translated into many languages.  According to the Diary, the Winter Solstice in Japan is called Toji.  And looking up Toji I found the following:   

Japan:  Tou Ji or To Ji (literally means winter solstice)

A few weeks (about 15 days) starting around 22nd of December is called Toji [or Tou Ji : Winter Solstice].

When solar celestial longitude gets 270 degrees, the most south, the solar height becomes lowest in the year in Northern Hemisphere. Therefore, the daytime is shortest in the year and cold increase severity. In Japanese custom, we eat “Japanese Pumpkin” and Konnyaku (devil’s tongue) to pray for luck of money. Also, we take Yuzuburo (citron bath) to pray for health and fortune. From ancient times, there are many festivals held in all around the world to celebrate Toji (Winter Solstice), when sun approaches most in Northern Hemisphere. The festival of Christmas, which is originated in Europe is related to Toji this strongly.

Source:  http://www.b-zenjapan.com/nihon/12shiwasu.phtml

Winter solstice in Latin     sol=sun in      stice=stand still