studio

Sometimes the best way to get started is to get started. Get out the scissors and cut. Without forgetting that my mother, aunt or grandmother thoughtfully selected (and hand washed) these beautiful handkerchiefs, I remember that they have been sitting in a drawer for decades and decades (and that there are still plenty more!) They […]

When were patterns 35 cents? No clue. This one was $4 at a vintage pop-up, and since I have granddaughters who might wear size 6 for a while, I couldn’t resist the diversion. I must say, it’s a breathe of fresh air to use old patterns that don’t have to be scaled up, printed, and

Is this new work the cause or the effect of being at a loss for words in a world where words harm so many? No matter. The result is a thing of beauty. The Northumberland Stitchery Guild hosted a workshop on Chiaramonte Whitework taught by Barbara Kershaw, who was not only wonderfully patient but who

I dissected a computer keyboard and discovered its beating heart is a flimsy sheet of plastic. My made-in-Canada Smith Corona typewriter, as old as I am, still working, stands solidly by.

When a record album was in fact an album full of records, when records were shellac, when my mother was a teenager, when she was “Jody” – she made this old-fashioned playlist. What does it say about my mother’s preferences and choices and how her circumstances informed them? My latest long-playing writing project is to

Lay aside the guilt. Sometimes words are not up to the work of expressing what is. Sometimes what is comes from that pre-language place. That pre-language place is where we came from and where we will go when we die. Let’s not think of it as a failing.

where do the poems go when life barrels instead of meandering towards Bang Whimper I sigh uninspired and indifferent (indifference – that ancient armour) hiding from life behind nothing at all where are the poems? in the ice edged puddles in the ice splintered trees

…I would choose just this light, colour palette, composition, and texture (all while humming Norah Jones’ Painter Song.) Instead my camera made what my eye found in Cobourg Harbour, the silent rivalry between the March sun and the long winter’s ice.