Tapestry, Birds, the Book of Kells, the Eagle Nebulae and Friendship

Still spending time doing and designing tapestry. The wee bird one, (a stonechat), is finished, framed and hangs on someone's wall. Maybe as a reminder of life's colours, threads and patterns, and the strange miracle of how 15,000 tiny stitches eventually form a picture, and how the weaving and mixing of stranded cotton has its counterpart in those relationshiops of life that we call friendship. Three quotations perhaps explain how designing and working tapestry freehand is a way of celebrating beauty, acknowledging blessings often unlooked for, and affirming those friendships which provide the canvas and pattern of our own living. Following no set pattern, open to improvisation amongst endless options with freedom to choose, yet a sense of the whole, an instinct for what works and what doesn't, so that the freedom is within an existing commitment – like friendship. 

You may hang your walls with tapestry instead of whitewash or paper; or you may cover them with mosaic, or have them frescoed by a great painter: all of this is not luxury, if it be done for beauty's sake, and not for show: it does not break our golden rule: Have nothing in your house which you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful."

William Morris in 'The Beauty of Life' lecture 1880

Destiny itself is like a wonderful wide tapestry in which every thread is guided by an unspeakably tender hand, placed beside another thread and held and carried by a hundred others.” Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet.

“We don’t accomplish anything in this world alone, and whatever happens is the result of the whole tapestry of one’s life and all the weavings of individual threads from one to another that creates something.” Sandra Day O’ Connor.

Last night a friend first met 26 years ago dropped an email, prompted a phone conversation, and added a few more stitches to a rapidly filling canvas. And she was the one, along with her husband, whose quiet enthusiasm for all things needlepoint, from quilts to crochet, from tapestry to knitting, got me started.

Now beginning to think of some new projects – the Book of Kells, the Hubble images – imagine trying to do a tapestry of the Eagle Nebulae?!