Knots, Feathers, and Contorted Portraits
Dear Sarah - Day 70 of our daily drawing exchange
Hi Nikki,
March 11, 2025
In the last ten minutes of class yesterday, I drew a feather five ways. It really wasn't a pointed-at-the-top feather, and it was broadly striped, brown and beige. I think the one done with the Sakura fine pen is the best, but considering they each took two minutes, I'm happy with them all.
Today is an at-home day--work interspersed with yoga, making new pillow covers for my couch, planning an embroidery project, and wondering if I like a 55-year-old macrame project enough to hang it up somewhere. Photos attached.
There's a story behind the macrame wall hanging, of course. When I was about 21, I was living with my then-boyfriend on a converted 32-foot gillnetter. As you can imagine, there was not much space for large creative projects (and I wasn't writing at that point in my life), so I got a book out of the library in Campbell River and taught myself macrame using white butcher's twine and green fishing twine. In essence, I made a sampler of macrame knots, and hung it from a piece of turned wood that I had found on a beach at Alert Bay on Cormorant Island near St Michael's Residential School. Many, many years later, when I saw Carey Newman's Witness Blanket witnessblanket.ca I wondered if the wood had come from something in the school. An organ, perhaps?
The white twine is now beige, the fishing twine is now brown. I remember those evenings on the boat, how quiet it was (no internet, often no electricity) the gentle rocking of the boat, the dog watching me from her perch in the wheelhouse, the repetitive motion--T-pin, knot, T-pin, knot--so meditative and calming. I don't remember how long it took--probably a whole winter. To display or (k)not to display?
XO S
Hi Sarah -
Macrame - what ever happened to macrame as a thing people did? My vote would be to display, but I’m very sentimental that way.
As for my drawing efforts today - I wound up scribbling little people sketches during an overly long zoom meeting this evening. My screen was filled with boxed-in-faces and I wasn’t able to fully concentrate on drawing, but filling several pages with these odd non-portraits was somewhat distracting/comforting. Doodling, I guess, but with more purpose than I might have done a few months ago.
Once again, I find myself at the end of an overly long/full day and thinking at this moment only of falling into bed.
Tomorrow, my friend -
Nikki