Beginnings

Enrolling on the City and Guilds course was a major step not just the obvious stretch on small income, which was and is an ongoing consideration, but making that step midst the absolute mayhem that was certainly my life when I made the decision added to an already overloaded oft times dysfunctional brain but it felt needed, and I ignore such promptings at my peril I have discovered over the years.

I did the research, considered the options and my particular ‘complications’ and found that long distance learning seemed best option. Then I trawled through as many places as I could find offering textile courses, at first not really knowing what area I needed to explore. Got totally confused and demoralised in the search until I decided to stop, take breath and consider why this need was driving me on midst the obvious physical mess of a home needing attention and a daily life that had slipped more towards basic survival rather than living life as fully as it deserves.

Finding an old knitting pattern was the first drop of oil on a very rusty hinged door, the door had never been locked, bolted and key discarded it had just been forgotten like many other things in this life.

Here’s the front of the pattern –

It really made me smile when I saw the pattern as I remembered that my Mum had made me those ear muffs and knee caps, and at the time I thought they were THE height of sheikh, today, well I’d know they weren’t that but would still happily wear them:0) I was apt to go out to play in the snow wearing only shorts and woolly jumper plus wellies of course so I suspect Mum saw the knee caps as way to try and keep my legs warm, though I was always actually as warm as toast.

Looking at that pattern I suddenly remembered that the ear muffs and knee caps weren’t quite like the picture because I decided they had to be more mine so wanted to customise them. The knee caps were my first real attempt at designing my personalised wardrobe. They were also my first concerted attempt to use a needle beyond blanket stitched felt toys and the like.

As always I reached for pen and crayons first and knowing me probably spent a few happy hours scribbling and doodling my ideas down. I didn’t know then that this was actually a step in a process called design, just a child trying to make sense of the pictures and words in her head…and there it was, the first clue to what textile course I should look for. Of course knee cap design!

The child is still very much alive and well, operating much nearer to the surface than many of my peers it seems but she has a ‘small’ impairment now, the body that carry’s her has undergone severe changes in the computer department leaving whole chunks of data apparently wiped clean but actually buried so deep in the very molecules of the computer that no technician on Earth could manage to retrieve it. Then comes along an image, a sound, a word, a smell and the ‘lost’ momentarily bubbles to the surface.

The bubbles burst very quickly and more often than not I only hear the pop rather than take in the colour and flight pattern. Sometimes though I manage to catch a glimpse and have learned to write down what I think I am ‘seeing’ because that will be the only way I’ll ever access that bubble again.  No matter that the sound, word, image be presented to my brain again that bubble has floated on its way and like snowflakes another bubble might come to the surface but it never is a repeat.

So once again ‘the child’ reached for her pen and crayons and spent some time trying to not only hold the bubble but explore it. A few sheets later and I had a cross between a mind map and a design for a … who knows:0)

I remembered how much I loved adding embellishment to the knee caps, how my Mum had encouraged me to try out the ideas first on an old jumper she cut up in to square hemmed pieces for me – first inkling of recycling being part of creativity for me. I remembered the discovery that the words left right and knee could be written in many different ways and that colours changed their impact. I remembered being given my first real thimble, not plastic but shiny metal and being expected to add a pocket to the needle case I had made out of felt to hold it.

I can’t remember how old I was but think I might have been around six. That was the beginning of my delight in using both pen and paper plus needle and thread and anything else I felt needed to be added to the process to make my idea real.

Over the years my thinking process always included making notes, doodles and objects but when life was changed through ill health many things were lost or at least filed somewhere I don’t easily or ever access these days.

Some basic skills staid with me, I can still thread a needle, cast stitches on knitting needles and even use a crochet hook to make chain stitches, my love of all things fabric and fibre which includes paper was not lost. However, even those skills I retained have become convoluted exercises in memory so everything is approached with the knowledge that time really means nothing as it may take me two days to remember how to re-thread a sewing machine after only having done it a few days before and then I will forget to switch the plug socket on and think I have broken the machine.

As there is no one alive who I can ask if I have ever done such and such it is only when a bubble bursts to the surface do I get any inkling that I may have actually been the person who used to sew. embroider, knit, crochet, play with paint, glue and paper and how much I enjoyed all this. That I actually went to a couple of art schools as well as other seats of learning is only known because of pieces of paper which are just that and mean very little to me.

So discovering an old knitting pattern and its link to my past and possible future was really good. But then I needed to disseminate the information into reason for moving forward along a particular path.

Looking at my ‘thought sheets’ I realised how much embroidery appeared in the scheme of things so began to look for something that would offer me possibility to explore not only my own abilities and stretch the befuddled brain but would offer me means to understand and appreciate other peoples work far more. It might even offer me means to discover not only the delight I experienced all those years ago when I first used a needle and thread to transform something into ‘my own’ but to use the 47 years of memory held somewhere in the molecules of this body to interpret and explore to make moments into objects and objects in to moments.

I finally found a course that not only appealed but which appears to be structured for the enquiring mind, giving guidance and suggestion but offering space to breath and evolve ones own sense of subject and materials. It also offers this teaching through distance learning so means that I do not need to juggle travelling with the actual energy needed for attending to the content of the course.

So I finally enrolled with Distant Stitch on the City and Guilds Level 3 Embroidery course tutored by Siân Martin. Details HERE

Of course given my life I am now three months behind the others who will have enrolled and received module 1 but one cannot always argue with a body flying through the air and landing in non decorous heap and the aftermath of new reasons to wince:0( BUT begin I have at last. Part of the appeal of the course is that I can submit work electronically, digital photos, scans etc and written work.  That I can still submit work by post if I really need to or tutor is desperate:0) and that though there is a time constraint there is lee way for someone like me who may find they have to stop because the nose is pumping the red stuff or the floor has suddenly decided to greet me rather quickly.

I know I need to set aside a number of hours each week and ‘clock on’ every week for work, I also know that because of the vagaries of physically being a bit challenged by health or lack of it to be more precise that my ‘clocking on’ will often be for ten minutes rather than two hours. That though an idea is flowing and becoming worked out object I will have medication to take or u-bend to inspect:0( which will mean my idea of beginning and ending will not be like many others take on the concept.

This blog is going to be my record of progress, or not , during the three years or however long it takes, shorter of course I was thinking there, cough, through the six modules that lead to submitting the work to City and Guilds for moderation and assessment to gain a certificate. The paper is not my focus or my need but am happy to submit work if it keeps others in work:0)

I intend to post each Sunday with a photograph of an empty sheet of paper or some work sheets, experiments, work in progress stuff etc. The blank sheet of paper will be as important as any of the other things as it could be that I’m thinking or it could mean I am a little occupied with hauling myself off the floor again.

It will be interesting to me to see how things pan out and maybe it will be interesting to another person who is considering trying something like this who lives with ‘disability’ and wonders who else is daft enough to try, ha-ha.

My resolution, approach and focus is mine alone so really no conclusion can be drawn by anyone else save for the obvious that everyone has the capacity to give something a go and I’d say it’s never Why Me? but Why Not!

Why the title of the blog.

This ‘adventure’ is as much about the internal as the external and as with everything else in my life I can’t disengage or dissect it away from the whole so know for me process is far more important than production but also know that production needs to be one of the goals if I am really going to plot the strands and filaments. Exploring and discovering these in ‘the work’, which is both embroidery and my life can only really be about the process, but I know tutor and City and Guilds do require certain boxes to be ticked and I am fine with that, lets hope they are fine with me ticking the boxes with fluorescent pink:0).

Until next Sunday.