Booklets

I have been away for two days helping a friend with some legal things, and so have not got much done. I have been working on the Rug for Persephone but not as much as I would like, as my shoulders have been really sore. I couldn't work out why until it dawned on me my normal sewing tabel is lowered by at least 15 cms , and the table I am working on in the shed is normal height. And thanks Susan for thinking of my work and remembering Persephone.

The stitching is really changing the appearance of the quilt top , hoepfully I will get it finished tomorrow. I have also been working on making small books- they are 7 "x7" ( about 20 cm square) I have still to bind them but I want to print on some of the pages beofre I bind the books.

My friend Robina Summers has finally got her Wild Scarves website up- there are still some pages to come but some of her woven and digitally printed scarves with embroidery are up.

There is an interesting discussion going on on Sharon Bogon's In a Mintute Ago blog, just scroll down the page a little- be sure to check out all her hyperlinks especially to Elisabet's blog. Some of the books referred to I read for my masters in order to contextualise the work i was creating , and found the area intriguing but difficult, because gender does play a major role, and not only that I had problems with art history's canonisation of white male western art. For me there is something so profoundly wonderful about all textiles, something profoundly wonderful about all forms of art- the aesthetic of each is governed by its own process and cultural placement that the possibilities are endless. And when I was in Syria and Palestine, the men seemed as interested in textiles( the quilts that I took there) as women, yet in Israel , geographically in the same region, but much more westernised and being the home of many immigrants from the west, textiles and quilts obviously did not have the same appeal to men.There was a noticeable difference in the way the work was received.

I was fascinated that the history of lace had more business women than most other commercial pursuits until industrialision took over lace making.Martine Bruggeman a Belgian authority on the history of lace in her book "Kant ( not the philospoher but the dutch/flemish word for lace) in Europe", makes this point .Lace at one time was only the second biggest commercial pursuit of Europe making cities rich and famous and lace was coveted by kings and queens and other people of high rank. What is the placement of lace now?