First things first. We are in Egypt! Yup, you read that right. More specifically, at this very moment, we’re floating on the Nile, taking in the sights as we make our way toward Luxor. Everything about Egypt is inspiring, the history, the beauty, the art, the textiles, the carpets, the people… amazing. I’ll give you a pictorial summary of our first few days, but I have to tell you a quick story, so you get the backdrop for this trip.
When Richard and I got married, we pissed off a lot of friends and family when we announced we were planning on getting married on Christmas day. Talk about young and foolish. But friends and family balked at that idea, so we scrapped it and settled for the winter equinox, which was December 22nd that year. We then planned our honeymoon. We decided we would spend xmas eve and xmas day in Jerusalem at the King David hotel, New Year’s Eve was going to be in Giza, overlooking the pyramids, then a cruise along the Nile, ending in a quick flight to Jordan to take in the sights of Petra. Did I mention our son was 9 months old when we got married? Never ones to go with convention, we did things our way and then often would remark to each other later that “our” way wasn’t necessarily the best way and there was a reason people get married, take a honeymoon and THEN have children. But I was in my later 30’s by the time we decided to have children, and planning a wedding took a back seat. So there you have it. Anyway, the intifada broke out about three months before our wedding and as we were traveling with a small child we were advised to scrap our plans. (We had reserved everything, right down to the guides.) So we did. We canceled everything and ended up going to Mexico where all three of us got really, really, really sick. So sick. You have no idea how sick. We referred to it as “the honeymoon from hell.” Except that I have great memories from that trip even so. But we always wanted to try and recreate our planned honeymoon. Years ago I was fortunate enough to be sent to Jerusalem to cover a conference, and Richard tagged along, so we were able to do that part, but we never did get to Egypt or Jordan, until now, more than two decades later.
Okay, now that you have the backstory, let’s get on with Egypt!
On the Nile in Edfu
Our Cabin (and the artistry of the staff) as we float along the Nile. Those are bottle caps for eyes, by the way.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. I can’t write about Egypt and not show you a photograph of the pyramids. So here you go.
The pyramids of Giza
And the camel ride that cannot be refused.
“Valentino, not the designer.”
Camels, or I should say, this camel was very sweet and friendly. For some reason I had the idea that camels were ornery, like llamas, but I was mistaken.
And then there’s the sphinx.
The Sphinx
Outside the Egyptian Museum where 2/3 of the collection has already been moved to the new museum still being built. And yet, it was still overwhelming!
Look at this cloth!
Embroidered Cloth
And this one, which is perhaps my favorite.
Indigo Cloth
The internet is spotty out here on the Nile, so I’m just going to end with a few more photographs. More to come when I get the chance.
Abu Simbel
Ancient Graffiti
This last was one of my favorites. I fell in love with the “graffiti” that peppers the temples. This one is from around 300 BC. Think about that. It gave me all sorts of ideas for my next workshop, which I’ve already roped my friend, Pat Pauly into making linen fabric kits for. More on that in a few weeks!
Yesterday I released a new Youtube Video with the same title.
Go check it out!
There are a few other key factors to interpretive hand stitching, improvisational hand stitching, expressionist hand stitching or whatever else you might want to call it. I think all of these are good descriptors of my process when taking a piece of linen and starting to stitch on it.
The first few stitches
However at a certain point, composition plays a key role in how the piece evolves. It’s not enough to just stitch and hope for the best. Without a good composition it can look like a bunch of disparate parts, each might be lovely taken on their own, but they aren’t necessarily interacting well with one another.
More stitching added…
Another common issue is that one part can take over, drowning out everything else; this brings its own set of challenges. Or perhaps the whole thing is stagnant. There’s not a great deal of movement, so it’s important to know when these things are happening and why. Without knowing why, it is nearly impossible to remedy.
Once the large X was removed the two half moons in the upper right and again in the lower left began to dominate
The trick then is to resolve the “divas” and figure out how to turn the volume down or remove them. In this case, I had to remove it. Between the shape and color it was too much. Except that when it was removed, I was faced with a new challenge.
Piece without the darker shapes
So that’s where I am right now. I’m sitting with the challenge of having removed three domineering shapes. Taken on their own, they were fine, but when seen as a whole they were dominating. Except now the piece isn’t grounded. It’s lost some of its vigor. Partly that’s due to the removal of the color, which lended a great deal to the overall piece. So now I have to figure out how to pull it together, give it some excitement. And this is how it goes. There’s a kind of ebb and flow that inevitably happens when working on a piece like this. Take away some aspect and suddenly there’s a new set of challenges.
The key is to not give in to discouragement. To keep going no matter what. To keep trying new things. Thinking out of the box, pushing the boundaries of what I know how to do, trying something I’ve not tried before, test out other colors or reintroduce a color I’ve removed and see how that shifts the conversation.
This is the process that is interpretive hand stitching. Where one idea leads to another and another and another and on it goes.
So here’s the thing… I feel a whole lot better when I show up even when I feel awful, even when I feel things are rough and I’m tired, even when I don’t want to. I’ve also learned that showing up anyway is the single best remedy for not continuing to feel that way. Except that it’s also really hard to do. That’s the thing. It’s really, really hard and sometimes… sometimes it feels impossible. I know it technically isn’t, but it sure feels that way.
Marcus Aurelius wrote about pain a great deal. And in his writings about it he consistently focusses on choice and responding, rather than reacting. I’m a huge fan of Marcus Aurelius, not just because he was wise, but because this guy was one of the most powerful men in the world and yet he continued to do his best to remain humble, to avoid arrogance, to nurture self awareness and to treat others with respect and kindness.
So yeah, showing up anyway. Easier said than done, so I have found ways to do so that aren’t quite so laden, that make it a tiny bit easier. I call it setting myself up to succeed.
Here’s what I do:
Thread up a whole bunch of needles with different types and weights of thread. I use both Chenille needles and Milliners Needles.
Grab a needle, any needle, it doesn’t matter which one, and begin stitching. I have a couple of mindless go-to stitches that don’t require any thought. They are the meditative stitches like french knots, bullion knots, colonial knots, seed stitch, chain stitch, fly stitch, straight stitch and then I riff on them, which means I start exploring every aspect of that stitch. How many wraps can I make on a french knot before the whole thing begins to fall apart? (It turns out a lot more than you might think!). What ways can I stitch a straight stitch to create different patterns?
Exploration
Investigation
And before you know it, I’m playing!
Stitching, more than anything, changes everything, even grief, even pain.
If you’re curious to know how I did this, I made a video about it and you can watch it here:
In 2015 or was it 2016(?) things were in flux. I was re-evaluating what I was doing, where I was headed, what I wanted… There were a number of things going on that led to this, but it was one of those moments that didn’t seem particularly extraordinary or even interesting, but in hindsight I see that it was a pivotal moment. A moment when I re-found hand stitching.
My mother taught me to embroider with crewel and a hoop at an early age. This is the Christmas creche we made together. It was while making one of those sheep that I came to truly appreciate the diversity and beauty of the simple French Knot done hundreds of times.
Christmas Creche embroidered with my mother
Since then I have gone down many paths, but the hand stitching path is perhaps the most surprising, to me. While at Parsons School of Design I would do anything I could to avoid hand stitching. And then I discovered draping and for a time it was my new love. Draping is a whole art in and of itself. Cutting fabric on the bias and then draping it onto a form and manipulating it so the fabric falls in specific ways was something I loved, but it was also time consuming and I was young and impatient and so my love for draping was set aside.
Funnily enough when I moved to Los Angeles straight out of high school and before I went to Parsons my first job was in a tailor’s shop in Beverly Hills. My favorite thing to do was to sit in the back room with the master tailor, an Armenian man who tried to teach me the fine art of tailoring. Hand stitching hemlines and buttonholes was something I never quite mastered during my time there, but I loved it never-the-less.
Hand stitching can be slow and arduous and very, very time consuming, and it can also be meditative, serene, calming and restorative, depending on one’s perspective. These days I find hand stitching to be all of the latter and none of the former.
A detail of my most recent work hand stitching on Pat Pauly hand dyed linen using Stef Francis threads, Painter’s Threads, House Of Embroidery Threads, Mulberry Bark from Stef Francis, Sari Cording from Stef Francis and wool roving.
When I began hand stitching again I followed other people’s patterns and instructions and while that was interesting and I learned a great deal, it wasn’t completely fulfilling. I have always gone off script and the farther I go, the happier I am. So when I began doing what I call “Improvisational Stitching” I knew I’d fallen into something important. Not only was I creating original pieces that didn’t look like other things I was seeing out in the hand stitching world, but it was an expression of my moods, my thoughts, the things that were going on in my life. Hand stitching is the way I express myself.
A few things I’ve learned through hand stitching, which can be applied to the piece I’m working on, but also to life:
Any emotion is fair game and can be expressed through stitching.
Any emotion is okay and when expressed through stitching creates a vibrant, interesting piece.
Impatience is a frame of mind and a choice.
When I don’t know what to do, stand back, take a photo and get a new perspective on the situation.
Compare and despair.
Everything has its own timeline.
Divas can be fun, but they also can silence everyone else.
Diversity makes anything and everything better.
Rules are helpful, until they’re not, in which case, break them or ignore them.
“We are what we repeatedly do, therefore, excellence is not an act but a habit.”
Aristotle
I always think about repetition when I’m stitching. Stitching a few french knots? How about a few hundred? And what about some bullion circles? A whole cluster of them is even better!
In nature repetition is a constant and often what is most striking is in the sheer repetition.
The tail of a chameleon
Or look at one of my cacti…
While in Africa I was amazed at the patterns and repetition in the Zebra
Patterns on the giraffe
If I love a particular stitch, I’ll stitch a few hundred and over time I will have mastered it. It’s like anything. If I want to be a kind person, then I need to practice being kind. Even when I don’t feel like it. Even when I’m in a hurry. Even when it means taking a breath, stepping back from the situation, and remembering that I’ve never regretted being kind. Never.
This blog is a reminder of my mother. She was my biggest supporter and commented over the years more than anyone else. It was through this blog that I often kept in touch with her and towards the end it was the one full proof way I knew I could reach her, especially when my emails would go unanswered and my phone calls went to voicemail. I knew she would read whatever I was posting. Over the last few years when she could no longer speak, she would send me things that she knew I’d post here, much to everyone’s delight, because the things she sent were such fun.
Like this video:
And then there was this one that I loved:
Mostly I’m missing my mom and while I know this will ease over time, it’s still causing me to wake up many days feeling listless and kind of “blah”. I know from other periods in my life when I’ve felt down and a loss of energy that doing the things that I don’t feel like doing are the things that often make me feel better. It’s funny how that works. It’s counterintuitive, but if I can remind myself to do those things anyway, I’m halfway there.
It reminds me of when I was the Director of the Aspen Writer’s Conference and had organized to have Michael Crichton speak to kick off the conference. During his talk he was spoke of a work ethic. He was speaking of what artists, specifically writers, but it applied to anyone in the arts, often do. He said, imagine if you were an airplane pilot working for a major airline and got up in the morning and thought – you know I don’t really feel like flying today, I think I’ll sleep a few more hours. – You’d expect to be fired immediately or at the very least given a stern warning and if you tried that again, you’d be out of a job. He then went on to ask, why do artists treat their work any less seriously? If you’re a writer get up and write. If you’re a painter, paint and so on. The point was, our feelings don’t really matter when it comes to getting the work done. If we think of ourselves as an artist then put in the hours and create the art, regardless of the feelings.
With that in mind I keep showing up for the work, regardless of how I’m feeling, because I create. That’s what I do. That’s what I’ve always done. Today is no different than any other in that way. Yesterday I taped a video on this idea, and some of the things I do when I’m feeling low energy, which almost always comes hand in hand with doubt.
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