meanwhile...there's an election in our country

Please check out this video made by my dear friend Mille Clarkes. This was filmed in Charlotttetown at one of the recent rallies to motivate and inspire voters to participate in our democracy. There's been a lot of mobilization across Canada to get the vote out on Monday May 2nd's federal election. Everything DOES matter.

moving day

Tomorrow Damien and I go to pick up the UHaul truck. We'll pack it up tomorrow and Saturday and leave for PEI Sunday or sooner. We've been packing up our home and editing through our belongings, deciding what we need/want, and what we can part with. We're donating a lot of things to the Canadian Diabetes Association who will come by tomorrow and pick things up and take them away. We've also brought about 12 bags of recyclables to the curb. How do we accumulate so much stuff?? Sometimes I think we should both become artists whose practices are all digital to avoid the creation of more material objects in our lives....but I don't think it's in our nature. But I do vow that after this move, I will attempt a more minimalist approach to the accumulation of stuff.
What you see in this photo is what was my home studio and has become the receiving room for packed boxes. My little loom has had its "guts" removed and is ready for transport. I also was ruthless in my editing of yarns and fabrics, and finally got rid of four years worth of fibre scraps I had been saving for some yet to be imagined project. It felt liberating!

anatomy of a wholesale scarf order

- 32 scarves, handwoven from raw silk and cotton.
- 16 "land" scarves, 16 "sea" scarves.
- each scarf hand-dyed after weaving.
- 2400 inches (or 200 feet) of weaving before washing.
- 2240 inches (or 186.6 feet) of cloth after washing (7.6% shrinkage).
- 1920 fringes twisted.
- all scarves woven between March and April 2011.
- off to Devon House, St. John's NL for the Craft Council of NL Shop.

West Point, PEI: 1958 - 2000

Yesterday was the last class and final crit for Science into Art, a sculpture workshop I've been sitting in on at NSCAD. For my final piece, I presented West Point, PEI: 1958-2000, a work that involved handweaving aerial images of a piece of shoreline in western PEI and then overlaying the profiles of the changing coast using embroidery. I "coloured in" with embroidery the areas where shoreline used to exist but no longer does, and land that will be created in the future through the action of erosion and sediment re-distribution. Thierry Delva, the course instructor, suggested I research the history of cloth wall coverings - traditionally tapestries - to investigate the narratives and the depiction of time passing in these functional works of art.

And all semester, I intended to take some video of Halifax harbour, directly out the giant plate glass windows of the NSCAD sculpture studio. And yesterday, having finally remembered to bring my camera to our last class, I shot 1 minute of the water through the window. What you hear are the echo-y voices of students in the studios. The presence of the water is so strong at NSCAD's Port Campus.

on the other side of the continent

I have a handful of blogs that I check on a regular basis. One of them is Pirtti, a blog by fellow weaver Anne-Marie who found my blog sometime last year. I love her weaving, maybe because it has some similarities to my own: very fine and lovely rich colours. She purchased one of my wide Wave scarves from my Etsy shop way back when we first connected. She recently moved from NYC to San Francisco, and today when I was checking out her blog, to my surprise I found this lovely photo of her wearing her Marshall Arts scarf....thank you Anne-Marie! It is an amazing feeling knowing that my scarves have made their way to many corners of the world, far from my own home.

coming together

We now have a home to move to in Charlottetown! On Friday, after working my magic and being the first one to make a security deposit on a highly competitive bid for a 2 bedroom + den apartment, my mother went to look at it and confirmed it was good. We'd seen pictures online, but I wanted my mom to check it out and make sure we weren't making a mistake. The apartment is at the back of the house, away from the quiet street, we have two private entrances, a room with a bay window, our own deck, a shared backyard, and enough rooms for Damien and I to each have our own studio space. And we'll be paying less than our rent here in Halifax. Knowing where we're going to live a month from now has lifted a HUGE weight of stress off our shoulders, and lets us feel like everything will work itself out and life will come together as it should....phew!

In the meantime, that big order of 32 scarves for the Craft Council of Newfoundland and Labrador is coming together. I've got twelve more to make and I'm hoping to get them in the mail by the end of this week.

unknowns

This is a time of anxiety tempered with faith that it will all come together. Damien and I have less than a month until we make the big move back to PEI. We've been away for almost four years while Damien has been at school earning his BFA. He graduates this month. This is an exciting time, but it is also a roller coaster of emotions. We still have a lot of unknowns - where we'll live (no apartment yet in Charlottetown), jobs for both of us (a little financial security is attractive right now), and what the future will hold in general. We are excited and happy to be moving "home", closer to our families and many dear friends and the island that we love, but the opportunities are a little thinner on the ground in that smallest of provinces...but, if we're looking in the right places, there is plenty of potential for our lives to grow.

This photo is one I took last week when my mother and I went to look at a little house for sale in Charlottetown. For some reason, this image radiates hope and optimism for me right now...

heart and pocket revue

After a week away from Halifax, I arrived home today. I spent a few days last week on PEI where I had an interview with Parks Canada, spent great times with my parents, and looked for a place for Damien and I to live when we move back to Charlottetown at the end of the month. On Friday I went to Sackville to meet up with Joanna Close where we both participated in the Heart and Pocket Revue, a craft fair that was part of A Handmade Assembly. A little fair, held at the local Legion with about 18 artists. I wasn't expecting huge sales, but I was very pleasantly surprised by the super positive response I got from Sackvillians....a big thank you to everyone who came by and chatted or bought a scarf!! I had a lovely time.