Friday, May 14, 2010

Travelling to Cape Breton to Tapestry weave

Have been quite busy these last couple of weeks.

Went to Cape Breton to teach a basic one day tapestry weaving workshop this weekend just past - except we are already in the middle of the next week, so really 'just past' it isn't! (and as I am finishing this up, well, tomorrow is the weekend )
Stopped in to see my friend Delia Burge on the way up to Cape Breton from the Valley and stayed over night so we could have some very good laughs and fibre talks.
A trip to the sheep barn to feed the darling sheep and the lambs who weren't yet big enough to go out on pasture with the bigger and stronger ones of the flock. Delia is a weaver and a spinner and a felter and a knitter - so you could call her both warped, twisted and I know for a fact that she can keep me in stitches!
She has a large tract of land and her old farm is right in the middle of it. Windmills decorate her view out the kitchen window and reminds me to be frugal and tread lightly on Mother Earth.
We had some interesting talks about renewable energy - about how we might be irritated by windmills in our back yards, but....... which is worse, that we at times hear the wings go around or that people in a third world country have to work in coal mines to 'harvest' the coal which then is shipped to Nova Scotia to keep us warm?
Which is the way we ought to lean - what is more important - really - is it that we want a serene view at all times, no matter where we turn and to be able to live like we always have lived or.....
is it time to think of  the carbon foot print being made when, in order to keep us with electricity, coal has to be shipped by boat (I believe) from South America to where we are - using immense amounts on fuel just on the transportation? Time to think of the work conditions of the folks who mined the coal so we could purchase it nice an cheaply?
This was part of Delia's argument at a big public meeting where the majority was against the windmills - and I hope I have quoted and understood her correctly. In any case I stand behind what I just wrote, so I guess Delia and I agreed.

Going green is perhaps not easy, but no-one ever said it had to be,  we do need to start as best we can.

There are so many layers to everything we do these days.

A few years ago when SEVEN had their first exhibit at Argyle Gallery in Halifax I wove two yoga meditation pillows. One was directly inspired by a visit to Delia's.

We had driven to Pictou from her house to enjoy a good meal at a waterfront restaurant. And it was a grand meal.

It also show cased the view across the water to the paper mill where steam and smoke was billowing out of the chimneys, surely leaving an impact on the environment. 






I went home and wove this pillow top - reminiscent of the red and green of the good ship Hector  in the Pictou Harbour, the ripples across the water and the greyness in the distance, with production activity going on.

I did not know that this story would come out today - but there it is, with a picture which I had to flip upside down to give a slightly better impression of what my original intent was.

I guess tomorrow will be a day when I talk about tapestry weaving, since obviously this didn't work out today.