Textile Wall Hanging

“Nothing Between Me and the Sea”

Just a few days into my stay in the treehouse, the old worn sofa was to be replaced.

The sofa had been draped in a throw to cover its age, so when the throw was removed I saw the fabric – Yikes! I could not let that wonderful vintage fabric be thrown in the skip! 

I asked if I could have the fabric – and as an aside said – “but this sofa is so comfortable is it really going to be thrown away!”

A bit cheeky of me – sometimes the recycler/environmentalist/hoarder in me just will not be silenced!

Elizabeth said I could have the fabric and I was as happy as a pig in straw for the next few days, tearing, cutting, washing, drying and sorting the sofa cover.

The design was intriguing – a strange mix of sea and land flora and fauna: butterflies, birds, coral, shells and all sorts of strange plants. I started to play ….

….. making small fabric collages, stitching each piece on a background with a simple running stitch. At home I would have used my machine, but there was something very soothing about sitting curled up on the new sofa looking out at the sunrise or sunset and slowly stitching.

The weather was beautiful and most days were sunny.  I was often on the beaches between sunrise and sunset, collecting shells and beach cleaning. The photo below was taken on Christmas Day

After bracing walks on the beaches or coast paths, what better than to go back to the cosiness of the treehouse for some gentle stitching.

The idea of a wall hanging was simmering away and I wanted to incorporate one of my own quotes

“whatever the question, creativity is the answer”

After the sofa-moving, Elizabeth and I had a lovely chat and I heard the story of how she and her husband had found this place to live, over 25 years ago. The story had an air of magic about it.  It became clear to me that this hanging was for Elizabeth and needed to be finished for Christmas Day.

Some twigs cut from the ash tree were perfect to hang the piece from,

with tassels of torn strips of fabric and shells from the beach sewn to the bottom edge.

Whilst Elizabeth was looking for a house all those years ago, she had a dream about a house with nothing between her and the sea and ……… well the rest is her story to tell, but there is nothing but fields between the treehouse and the sea and the phrase stuck in my mind, and it needed to be on that hanging.

Rather than start a new hanging I covered my words with another piece of fabric, so that Elizabeth could have both

On Christmas Day circumstances conspired to mean that Elizabeth and I came together for a cuppa in front of her fire, I gave her the hanging, we had such a lovely long and gentle chat sharing life stories, and a friendship was born. The stay in the treehouse took on an even more rich and magical quality.

And hurray! my comment about the sofa meant that Elizabeth realised that all it needed was a new cover and that it really was comfortable – now it sits happily in her house for all to enjoy.

 

Mini Pilgrimage

Newgale Beach is just 6 miles from the treehouse. When the tide is out you can walk for 2 – 3 miles from one end to the other – that flat clear space calms my chattering mind and restores a sense of balance.

(Click on any of the photos to see them larger.)

The first walk is always special, reconnecting with the place. I remember all those happy family times. Each little landmark holds a memory from a different year.

My senses are heightened and I see beauty in every pebble

every wave and ripple

every grain of sand

There is a rock  …. the one with the yellow arrow

with a huge rock-pool in it, in which my Grandad and I once found an eel. It inspired this poem: Journey Into Now

I make a mini-pilgrimage to it each time I visit Pembrokeshire. As I touch it and climb up to look into the pool I feel closest to my grandfather. He was a rock and a safe haven for me through a stormy childhood.

We are making new memories there  – a photo taken in August 2015 of Miss E and Master R exploring the rock pools in and around that rock.

The pool indicated by the Blue Arrow features in this post . My daughter discovered it, Miss E swam in it and we all threw in a pebble and made a wish – we call it our Wishing Pool.

I threw in a pebble this time and made a wish for my Mum.

Here is my favourite photo from that first walk, I have just ordered it to be printed on a large  30″ x 20″ canvas.

I feel like the figure represents me – it was a man with a child in a carrier on his back, walking with a dog. I don’t have a dog but when I walk I am never alone.

~

On the way back to the treehouse I called into Number 35, a great little cafe/restaurant in Solva, for a scrumptious lunch of smoked salmon salad with garlic bread.

Yummmmm!

 

Ripples

 

Spirit

Spirit of the sea, my spiritual home, the place where I am most in touch with the spirit of my grandfather. Click on the photo to see it larger.

I am on retreat at the moment, recharging my spiritual, emotional and creative batteries. I have very limited access to the internet and feel slightly disconnected to cyberspace, but I did not want to miss our last prompt.

Thank you so much to all who have joined in throughout the year, it has been so good to make new blog connections – hope to see you in the comments in 2017.

Cathy and I think we have created an interesting mix for our next list – hope you agree!!!

Each subject goes live on Tuesdays, please leave a link to your interpretation in the comments.

I do hope you all had a joyful time over the last couple of weeks and wish you all the very best for 2017.

❤

Photo Round-Up: ABOVE

Newgale beach, with the sky above reflected in the spread of stream water below.

The beach of all my childhood summer holidays with my Mum, Grandad and siblings – lucky, lucky me!

Jane at Rainbow Junkie …………………………yum!

Cathy at Nanacathy …………………………….is it a bird, is it a plane?

💜 me at Wild Daffodil …………………………….bright green

💜 Denis at Haiku Hound ……………………….. fishing

Christina A Look at the Little Things ………Puerto Rico

The  💜 denotes a post that is also joining in with Ronovan’s Haiku Challenge – it’s fun to combine the two.

Please let me know if I have missed anyone.

Thank you everyone for your entries.

Four fab photo fiends created the 52 Week Photo Challenge, we are:

• Cathy from Nanacathydotcom
• Jane from Rainbowjunkiecorner
• Melissa from The Aran Artisan
• Sandra from Wild Daffodil

 

This week’s prompt is

BUTTON

Photo Challenge Round-Up: DEEP

Nearby the pool I posted for ‘DEEP’ is another deep rock pool which I found as a child when I was with my Grandfather. It seemed to go down and down forever then and had an eel swimming in it. That memory was enhanced about 20 years ago when I was on a course with Leo Rutherford who founded Eagle’s Wing. During one of meditations to the sound of the drum, I was taken on a magical journey into this pool which inspired my poem

Journey Into Now

~

Our DEEP entries this week are

Jane at RainbowJunkie ……………………. Ooops!

Cathy at Nanacathy ………………………..No Bottom!

Me at WildDaffodil …………………………Plop!

Denis at Haiku Hound …………………….Those eyes!

Christina at ALookattheLittleThings……Indigo!

Dorris at DigwithDorris …………………..Magenta and Blue!

Debbie at Curiosity Takes Me ……………Gorge and so much more!

Please welcome Allyse who is joining us for the first time this week

Allyse on Flickr

Have I missed anyone? I hope not, but if I have please leave a link in the comments and I will add you to the list.

To find out more about the Photo Challenge and see all the subjects set out for you in advance, click here.

Thank you to everyone who went DEEP this week.

Next week’s prompt

ABOVE

Deep

This photo was taken yesterday on my favourite beach, Newgale, Pembrokeshire. I had gone to visit the deep rock pool that my daughter discovered last August. It was deep enough for Miss E, then 8, to immerse herself in. Last year we all threw a pebble in and made a wish. Yesterday I threw the white pebble in to reconnect us all with each other and the place – deep connections.

The other stripy pebble is going to be used for another little ceremony which I hope to share with you later in the week.

A few more photos of Newgale …

The beach is vast and wide when the tide is out, a perfect place for a long walk to fulfil one of my 16 for 16 Challenges

And joining in with our Photo Challenge, please join us with your DEEP photos by leaving a  link in the comments.

Next week’s prompt is

ABOVE

 

Holiday Snaps: Sand

We have just returned from a wonderfully magical week in Pembrokeshire, S.W.Wales.

I went with my daughter and her 3 children, Miss E, 8, Master R, 5, and Little Miss M, 3. The weather, for the first time EVER ( I have been going there for years!), was brilliant for the whole week! Only raining at night, and although sometimes windy, it was never so cold that we needed jumpers – that in itself was a minor miracle.

So we spent almost all of every day on the gorgeous beaches, building sand castles ….

just digging …..

making pictures

and huge sand dragons

and boats, and quad bikes, and even a sand sofa ……..

and doing cartwheels for the sheer joy of it

with very little time for crochet, but it still always went with me of course

and then there was the swimming and the rock pools to explore………

 

Beach inspired poem

JOURNEY INTO NOW

On the beach of childhood

Standing high on pebble banks

To watch the unseen wind

Whip waves to froth

 

And blow the gulls of aspiration

Off their course

Like Autumn leaves

Across the bay

 

Grandad joins me and we walk

On firm and ochre sand

Which stretching wider as the tide retreats

Unveils its treasure

 Butterfly shells, striped white-pale violet

And twisted cones of pointed brown

For drawing pictures in the sand

We walk for miles, content to make no progress

Ghosts of happy shrieks from childhood past

A glimpse of shrimps, in rock pools under towering cliffs

And crabs in dim salt-weed-smell-caves

That echo of the bygone days

When hope lurked somewhere not too far away

If one could only find the magic lamp, the key,

The one enchanted shell, the lucky holey, holy pebble

Or real me

 

There is a rock when tide is out, to find on special days

When spells are in the air

And Grandad and I,

We found a Guardian living there…. an eel

Inside the rock, a deep dark water cavern

Reaching deeper into dreams

Where kindly wizards with wavy, whispy, wiggled, white and wafty hair

Can take you with a drum-beat

 

A truly huge and gliding eel

Twisting in a playful dance

To ask you in ……. and down I went

Like Alice into Wonderland

 

Slow-motioned mosses pass with ferns

And glinting pairs of winking eyes

Into a crystal cave below

With soft light glow

 

Past amethyst and tourmaline

And stalactite of quartz

Round zircon and the spodumene

And move towards the source

 

Enter an enchanted land

In shafts of rainbow light, and here to sit on cinnabar

Await the animal of power

….and will it come …..

 

A harlequin of fishes swim at my feet, so fast to make a blur

To mirror parrots round my head

And all the animals of flight

The iridescence of their wings make more and more the rainbow light

 

Through spinning fairground-ride of colour

Comes a horse of purest white

With diamonds on its brow

To guide the way with light

 

The jewels upon its back

Send healing rays

To those who see it zinging there

……….. and even some who don’t

 

Prancing full of energy of pure intent

And whispy, waving wizard with white and wayward

Tumbleweed of hair

Waves wands of wind to blow the Windhorse in

My broken heart was black against the light

Unready for this visit, and this might

Of right and good

Bucking, kicking Windhorse sets souls free of scars

 

Sent out on paths of satin to the stars

And shows how even small charred hearts can grow

And glow

And go into the world to find all colours of the spectrum

 

Merging to make white

To fly a kite of joy

Across these windswept sands of time

Stamp out the pain

 

Stamp in a reign of heaven’s glee

And dance a dance of innocence and youth

To free Real Me of being tossed and scattered

By the might and muscle of the sea

 

Gentle drum to beat retreat

From rainbow-land where heaven grew within

Up-tumble to the cavern of the eel

To meet my waiting Grandad, there to ease the journey onward

 

Into now

And give my heart its zest

Its beat

Its How

 

 

written by Sandra Dorey in 1995 and re-tweaked in 2016

© Sandra Dorey