inkling_print

I've set up an online shop inkling_print, click the link and have a peek 😀

Inkling - a slight knowledge or suspicion; a hint.

At inkling_print I offer print, drawing and painting (mostly) inspired by the wild plants and ancient landscape of Derbyshire. I'm intrigued by folk medicine, hedgerow herbalism, folk song, hedge laying and dry stone walling. Watchful and attentive to the signs that cover this land from the people who came before. 

folding takes some effort

Tamed the button sheet 😀

Folding takes some effort, the buttons clink together reminiscent of waves dragging shingle or pebbles back into the sea.

Not yet half covered, almost a year of on and off attention.

My studio space is wee so the sheet can take over. Tamed and tidy it can sit and watch me for a while. 

 

tablecloth

New work in development.

button sheet

Since September 2020 I've hand stitched buttons onto a single polyester sheet that was my mothers. Mum (Doreen Logan née Furmage) used yellow Lenor fabric softener and I've kept her sheets and pillowcases in a sealed bag to retain this scent. 

When I began to sew the scent was strong and powerfully evocative of climbing into the single bed in my old room at home. I feel protective of this scent, aware that over the months and years it will fade. At each sewing I sniff the sheet, judging 'loss', relieved the scent is still detectable - my mothers final act of washing bedding palpable.   

This fading and my emotional urge to 'stop time' evoked thoughts around the impossibility (and undesirability) of statis, the futility of this desire and the inevitability of loss and gain and loss and gain.   

As scent fades buttons increase, making the sheet heavy, unwieldy, difficult to handle. I've covered a third of the sheet in buttons and my arms shake when holding it for longer than a moment.

I'm enjoying the sheet becoming difficult and how frustrating it is to sew at times - thread getting lopped around buttons, knots, button spacing, placing the needle precisely to sew (unseen) from under the sheet through tiny button holes... Infuriating and satisfying and repetitive and time consuming.

photo of Doris

Joined Ancestry for a month and found Doris Hardy instantly and was astonished to look into her eyes. 

I will tidy her grave and plant insect friendly plants. I also plan on hand spinning flax tow by her graveside, in celebration of her spinster status and to hang out with Doris and see what thoughts and feelings emerge.  

Doris Hardy 1894-1967

doris

Spinster hunting/haunting in Wirksworth Cemetery. I'd like to find out more about Doris. Her memorial is added to the side of a tall obelisk type headstone with a stone urn on top. 

I'm always struck by wife/mother/grandmother and husband/father/grandfather text (understandably) on headstones... but what if someone is none of those things? I've seen sister/brother, daughter/son, aunt/uncle, niece/nephew and once (heart swelling and wonderfully), friend.

Pondering those without family behind or in front of them. Who will remember them and who decides the text on their headstones in a pronatalist world?

I'm intrigued by the labelling of Doris as spinster in 1967. Was she one of the generation of women who lost their potential partner in the First World War? Will do some digging.

Spinster

Wirksworth Cemetery, Derbyshire

Sister, Aunt, Friend

St Pancras and Islington Cemetery, East Finchley, London

thread stick - 3

Completed the third Thread Stick in mid February. It has two part used reels of black thread at the base with the rest wrapped in a huge reel of brown. The thread belonged to my aunt Jess and I've still got brown, grey and white threads in her sewing tin.