A homecoming for the patchwork quilt

I went to North Uist at the weekend with Claire Hewitt taking the school patchwork back to one of its original locations in Lochmaddy.  The local heritage society had helped gather interested people to come to Taigh Chearsabhaigh, an arts and heritage centre, and see the quilt, hear some of what we already knew about it and to see the names.  Powerful things those names, they recorded grannies and great aunts for a surprising number of the people in the room.  Just about everyone was related to someone on the quilt, including children from Lochmaddy primary school. It was very moving to hear about the lives of those women and even to see photographs of some of them. We heard about a lost way of life too from Angus 'Moy' MacDonald, who had lived on Heisker until 1942, sixty years after Isabella Christie taught there and started making her quilt.  Those islands are uninhabited now.  The quilt holds many stories of loss and abandonment, but the people in that room also showed how it records continuity too.  It was an inspiring day.  We are hoping that the heritage society, and others, will help us gather memories and memorabilia together for an exhibition sometime with the quilt at its centre.

We camped at Balranald while we were on North Uist and I took the chance to explore the machair and take a closer look at the wildlife.  The flowers were past their best but there were still plenty around for insects, including some wind-tattered butterflies.  This bumblebee was a bit more robust and not quite so battered looking.  It's a Great Yellow, Bombus distinguendus, a species like the corncrake that has found a refuge on the Outer Isles from the intensive agriculture in the rest of the country that has driven it extinct elsewhere. It's not just people who keep their roots in these islands, the wildlife does too.



Chasing butterflies

I was at Treswell last week and spent a couple of mornings chasing butterflies, trying to take photographs.  It's a bit of a zen pursuit.  I know I will get one eventually but it can take some time.  It's very meditative in its way.  This small skipper was relatively easy to catch compared to the gatekeepers and meadow brown that were also feeding on the knapweed amongst the long grass of the field that edges the wood.  The field is like a chunk bitten out of the wood (an asart I think, taken from the wood in medieval times, at least). It has a great view of the nearby Cottam power station, belching CO2 into the morning sky.  Notts Wildlife Trust are hoping to buy it and incorporate the field into the nature reserve. Judging from the butterflies it's already a valuable habitat.  Grassland that hasn't been fertilised, cut and reseeded into relatively sterile uniformity is increasingly rare, so I hope the Trust do manage to get it.

A full calendar

Fortingall Art finished yesterday, and I took my first opportunity to see it, having decided on a last minute holiday before it was all printed and hung. Unfortunately for my viewing experience but not for our sales, the whole calendar print with all twelve blocks had been sold and picked up.  This was great news for the Splinter Group and I did get to see, and photograph, an unframed print.  It's an impressive piece of work, rich in detail and some well considered design, well done us.  We're moving on with our wood engraving and it shows how the technique brings its own character to our diverse styles of mark making.  We're planning a trip to Aberdeen Art Gallery for our next meeting to take a look at their wood engraving collection and to see the Ravilious exhibition there. They also have lots of Clare Leighton, who did many richly textured engravings for her own books on the living world, so it should be an inspiring visit.