This past weekend I attended the Yarn Market which was part of a big knitting event, Knit Fit, here in Ballard Seattle. The Yarn Market part of Knit Fit was held in the big gymnasium at the Ballard Community Center. A big gymnasium packed with yarn shops displaying their wares. Heaven for knitting and crochet enthusiasts!
my lovely purchase at the Yarn Market
This photo is for one of my sons who likes to take me to yarn stores.
I haven’t played my recorders for a couple of years or so. I was just busy with other activities and the time and place where the monthly recorder meetings were held were no longer convenient. But recently I tried playing the recorder again and found that arthritis in my hands made it difficult to play. Alas. Up until now the things associated with aging haven’t really bothered me. But now, trying to play the recorder is painful and it is bothering me to find that I just can’t spread my fingers with enough agility to make playing the recorder possible. I really wanted to attend and play in an up coming one day jazz workshop.
In younger days with the bass recorder. 7 or 8 years ago? in my early 70’s
I have a friend of similar vintage whose mother had very bad arthritis in her hands. My friend is taking piano lessons to hopefully ward off similar problems.
Come to think of it, my own mother also had bad arthritis in her hands in later years. She was an avid knitter, as am I. When she moved to Hawaii, knitting was no longer so important in her life. So I don’t know if she could have continued to knit if she had wanted to. Knitting is still important to but I could substitute other fiber activities just as satisfying. After all, my abandonment of weaving has been partially age related and I don’t really miss it – I can still maintain my interest without physically crawling under that big Glimakra loom.
Remember all those squares I’ve been knitting? Well now as I watch the exciting Tour de France and the equally if not more exciting tennis matches at Wimbledon, I am joining the squares to make a cosy blanket/lap robe.
p.s. further progress 
Now for a border
Letter box 
Ready for jiu jitsu 
Work in progress
Tree stump
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Neglected knitting – striking pink but what should I do with it?
I’ve been doing a bit of crochet recently – good old fashioned Granny Square Blankets.
I found an old photo album from my early days of rug making back in the 1970’s. I might modify that sentence to say serious rug making. 30 years previously I had made several latchet hooked and braided rugs – I was serious enough about those at the time but they were done more as a teen-age hobby. My serious rug making took off in the mid-1970’s when I purchased an upright loom. It was a Squirrel loom which I imported to Fiji from New Zealand. I was part of a burgeoning arts and crafts movement among the ex-pats. The Fiji Arts Club had been going for years and years but its members concentrated on painting and drama. I dabbled in painting and went along for the Tuesday morning outdoor painting sessions. I did not receive much encouragement there but met a number of people with similar interests along the crafts lines. There we were, each either accomplished in their particular craft, such as candle making, or pottery, or weaving, or wanting to become so.
So a new group was in the making and became the Fiji Crafts Association. Our first exhibition was very exciting. At that point I only had a table loom but was happy to be a part of the developing bigger picture. And I was stimulated to get a floor loom so that I could move on to weaving rugs. Simultaneously, the Fiji Arts Club decided to have a small crafts section as part of its semi-annual exhibition. And that was where I sold my first rugs. Encouraged by my success, Ian turned his hand to acrylic painting, a latent talent to say the least, and his paintings sold even faster than my rugs. Heady days!
To stimulate this interest in painting and weaving we seemed to be surrounded by all sorts of inspiration. Not the least of which was this piece of bark sculpture, which we found in the forest somewhere in Fiji. We labelled it Mbala mbala, took it back with us to Dublin, and had it sitting in our garden there for years.
the three little boys are of course James, Andrew, and David
Sort of in line with this tree bark sculpture, I found an image of Sepik art and translated that into a stitched rug.
My stitched rug based on an image from Sepik art.
Emily Carr painting
So the three above images are in my mind as I work on my latest rug. The exact direction I am going in is not quite certain – it’s all evolving. Some people like to work with strict cartoon and adhere to it religiously – I prefer to let my designs evolve as I go along.
the rug to date
the orange and red that I started out with came from this orginal image in the little Norwegian rya booklet
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latest crochet blanket
Katerina
to be planted
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3rd crochet blanket in current series
a work in progress – a change from knitted scarves
Janet's thread 