Mum's 90th Birthday

With the kids

Mum on her wedding day, 1946.

My mother turned 90 on October 13^th.  What a milestone!  I hope she has shared the gene for her good health and longevity with as many of us as possible!  We all flew up to spend the day in Gosford with her, and did lunch and birthday cake and stuff.  Much of what we did, of course, was talk…and Steve had sensibly organised to buy a new mini video camera (do they still call them video cameras, or are they DVD cameras now???). Anyway, we took heaps of footage of Mum talking about her life. For Irralee, Bryn, Merrin and Matt,  it provided many insights into the distant past that their grandmother inhabited; for Steve, it was a marvellous reminder of the bravery and struggles of our parents’ generation; for me, it was a trip down memory-lane as I relived the stories that have shaped my view of the world.

Mum grew up in London, youngest daughter of a butcher. Her tales of life in the butcher’s shop reveal a way of living long past: Her father, making his own black puddings, with his arms plunged to the elbows in a vat of warm ox blood; the preparation and cooking of ‘faggots’ and ‘pease pudding’ which were highly sought after on set days of the week; the big gas jets hidden under the wooden counter that were revealed at the end of the day to cook the dinners for the customers, who also brought their Sunday roasting pans, ready with the vegetables, to go in the big ovens. Amazing to think of homes without adequate cooking facilities!

And the war!  Mum’s tales of life in London during the Blitz are riveting. Her dressmaking apprenticeship set aside, she worked as an engineer making bombs for much of the war. Somewhere in there was a stint in which she was employed to sew snow-suits for the Russians. 

Mum told of life with the routine of nightly air-raid sirens as darkness fell, and the rush to the air-raid shelter in the garden where the family slept each night. One night my mother was a little late home from work, and entered the house to find the family ready and waiting to go down to the shelter. “Come on”, said my grandmother, “just leave your coat and let’s get down to the shelter, quick!”  My aunt Hilda was the last into the shelter, and as she attempted to pull the wooden door closed after her, it was ripped out of her hand by the force of a bomb blast making a direct hit on the family home. Everything gone. My mother has always regretted the loss of the family photos. Her father had died of TB before the war, and all she has to this day is one photograph of him as a young man. The part of this particular story that touched me most as a young child was the fate of the family dog, a Pekinese called Wendy Fou.  Wendy Fou always refused to go down to the shelter, preferring to hide under the legs of the kitchen stove whenever the bombs started to fall. Miraculously she survived the bomb hit: the stove was one of the few items left standing. Sadly, though, she did not survive emotionally. Thereafter, she trembled uncontrollably every night as soon as the sirens started. She could even hear the bombers approaching well before the sirens, so good was her hearing and so great was her fear. Of course, she had to be put down…

And the morning my mother encountered one of the first ‘buzz bombs’ in London: she was returning home after a night shift at the bomb factory – the only passenger on the early bus. Glancing out her window, she saw a fiery missile flying parallel with the bus. The conductor saw it too, and spent the next few minutes desperately trying to gain the driver’s attention in his cabin. Finally he succeeded, and the bus pulled over. Not far away, the buzz bomb wreaked its destruction.

There was also the tale of the hundreds of people who died at the end of my mother’s street, an area now called Bamford Hill. The basement of a block of shops was being used as an air-raid shelter, and while the shops had received a direct hit, the authorities believed the people to be quite safe due to the minimal damage to the upper stories, and so did not act immediately to rescue them. Sadly, the bomb had damaged the gas and water mains, and so the people succumbed to the gas and the rising water.  Local folklore told the tale of a well-known singer who was trapped there. With his child held high on his shoulders, he sang to calm the people until the water covered him and he could sing no more. The basement was later sealed up as a mausoleum; it was impossible to get the people out. The site is now a memorial gardens to the many hundreds who died there.

Through all the horrors, however, life went on. My mother’s humour remained intact, and we heard of the ‘parcel’ that my father sent her from Algiers where he was stationed as an air force radio operator.  All that my mother received from British Post was a piece of wooden box on which her name and address were written. It seemed that the ship had been sunk, and the addressed piece of wood salvaged from the wreckage. British Post always delivers!  Mum wrote to Dad to ask him what the parcel had been, and ages later received the information that it had been a box of lemons. During war time rationing, such a gift would have been greatly prized!

There were many other stories too: I saw Bryn’s eyes widen in amazement as Mum told of the house they lived in after their’s was bombed, and the uncle who haunted it. It seemed that he used to enter the bedroom each morning and sit in a wicker chair beside the bed for a while, before getting up and going out the door again! I always loved this story when I was a child, and Mum used to tell it with all the embellishments!  And my mother’s foray into the Jewish quarter to buy fabric for her wedding dress after the war ended…Rationing was still in force, and Mum did not have nearly enough coupons for fabric of any sort. Fortunately my grandmother was Jewish, although this was something she did not admit to during the war, for obvious reasons. My grandmother took Mum to the Jewish markets, and although Mum had no coupons, one look at my grandmother’s appearance was enough to have the market people offering Mum whatever she wished, no coupons required!

These are some of our family stories, the stories that define who we are, where we come from. But they are also stories to share, as they have much to teach us all about good times and bad.  Growing up in the post-war boom, I am fortunate to have no stories of hardship and struggle to pass on to future generations. May it remain so for our children too!

I hope that Mum enjoyed her 90^th birthday as much as we did!

Musings of a Natural Dyer

I am posting an article I wrote for the Victorian Feltmakers' Magazine ("Feltlines")  a couple of autumns ago. As I will be teaching a class in natural dyeing for the Victorian Feltmakers next weekend, I hope that this article will inspire my students in the run-up to our busy day of dyeing.



natural dyed scarves


The morning sun has already chased the last of the dew from the corners of my garden as I slip outside and reach for my Blundstones.  This March day promises to be warm and dry, and I have much to do outdoors before the heat intensifies. “Tiny”, my son’s Jack Russell, barks frenetically as I stuff some old supermarket bags into my pockets – she knows that when my farm boots go on, adventures are in the offing. She is joined by my daughter’s more staid West Highland Terrier as we cut through the vegetable garden, under the quince tree groaning with its furred and fragrant load, and into the open sheep paddock.  “Tiny” barks excitedly as she runs ahead and the sheep turn to give her baleful stares before retreating to a safer distance. From the roadside hedge I hear the unmistakeable cho-cho-wee of a grey shrike-thrush calling to its mate and my mind trickles back to the joy of watching them raise two broods over summer in a niche of our mud-brick-walled house. As we near the natural bushland on the perimeter of the property Tiny’s exuberance puts up a pair of pippets from the dry grass and they scramble and leap into the air in a whirring panic.  The dogs vanish through the sagging wire fence into the dense tree-cover beyond as, temporarily dazzled by the change in light, I gingerly cross the threshold into cool, flickering shadows.

The dogs are only a memory now; snuffling their way into far-off wombat holes and dancing in search of lizards and snakes, they are all but lost to me.  I skirt around a large pine tree and remember how deliciously its needles coloured a piece of my felt in gentle shades of olive and sand. Purposefully I duck under some black wattles which I remember gathering many years ago to produce a dark brown skein of knitting wool. They are prolific here in this young regrowth, jostling each other for shoulder-room but outstripped by the sturdier blackwoods which are badged with lichen.  I must dye again with this lichen: Lichen umbilicaria – when soaked in ammonia and water it releases a strong purple dye to produce shades ranging from pink and lavender to plum. I seldom work in these shades, but the colours are so riotous and unexpected that the thrill of looking in the dye-pot is all the reward needed.

Today, however, I head straight for the native cherry trees – alias Cherry Ballart (Exocarpus Cupressiformus).  Their fine, pendulous branchlets range from olive green to a luminous lime in their new growth, reminiscent of the beautiful green shades it bequeaths us in the dye-pot.  This is my target plant this morning, and I fill my two shopping bags to overflowing with the stripped needles, taking care to spread my collecting across a few different specimens. Reluctantly I retrace my steps towards the fence; further exploration would be fun, but the dye-pot calls.

As I push my bundles through the wire I hear the dogs return.  Panting and tongue-lolling they grin as they rejoin me for the dash back to the house.  Impatiently they stop at regular intervals until I catch up, then they surge ahead once more while I contemplate my dye-pot.  My felt, already pre-mordanted in alum (aluminium sulphate) is curing in a plastic bag.  I run through my sketchy plans for this piece of work – a panelled jacket, 3 panels of which will be resist-dyed in green using modern hardware items to create the impressions.  I smile to think of my horde of interesting metal washers, air-conditioning vents, clips and clamps.  The ancient Japanese shibori artists little knew how their art would be adapted! In homage to their work, however, I plan to dye the contrasting coat panels using traditional shibori techniques, hoping to achieve a marriage of the old and the new. As I enter the house garden, my mind slips off to a contemplation of the pomegranates ripening on the bush before me.  The rosy skins are beginning to split on the larger fruit, exposing jewelled beads of intense red.  They are almost ready to eat, and I have read that their skins produce a good, fast dye - this year I will boil up their skins to see what mystery colours they can produce!

Once inside I chop my cherry ballart into the dye pot, cover it with water and set it to simmer for 45 minutes or so. This allows me to pause for a cup of tea (also an excellent natural dye) and then it’s a quick scoop-out of the leaves and in with the felt. In about 40 minutes I have my first colour – a slightly lime tinted yellow. This will be a perfect background for my resist dyeing. After removing the felt, I apply my first resists – using as many of the washers and hardware thingy-bits (I don’t know what they are called – they just look useful!) as I can clamp onto the pieces. Then it’s back to the dye-pot, this time to simmer for 10 minutes with a teaspoon of copper sulphate added.  Untying the bundles is the best part – and I am pleased with the marks I have made and the bright lime of the second colour.  The next stage is to re-clamp the pieces with different hardware thingy-bits and put it all back in the pot with a teaspoon of iron sulphate for a final 10 minutes. Out of the pot…untie it…and wow! Third colour is a deep olive.  The pieces are just what I want!

For my contrasting panels I want a rich, chocolate brown – and walnut hulls produce the perfect colour.  Having no walnut trees of my own, I have arranged to collect some hulls from a friend’s tree, but as it is chestnut gathering time on her farm, I know a visit won’t just entail picking up walnut hulls!

The sun beats hotly on my shoulders as I walk down the hill to join my friend in the chestnut orchard. She has raked the nuts into piles and it is pleasant to sit under the broad, leafy trees and twist the fierce chestnut-porcupines apart.  We fill two large buckets with plump nuts while chatting, and then I am free to examine the walnut tree.  Alas, the season is later than I thought, and although there have been many nuts falling, rodents of various descriptions have plainly been coveting the soft hulls too.  Together with my friend I half-fill my trusty supermarket bag with what we can find under the tree (staining our hands black in the process!) and I prepare to leave.  English ivy cascades over the garden wall next to my car, and remembering my unfilled supermarket bag, I stop to gather a load of leaves.  These will be my dye experiment tomorrow!

Back home I transfer my black, earth-smelling hulls to a bucket, cover them with water and leave them to soak for three days or so. Their odour is of leaf-mould from a primeval forest floor, I muse…must be either an ancestral memory or an over-active imagination!  I have already dyed my felt with blue-gum leaves to produce a background colour of light tan.  The next few days will be spent in applying stitched and tied shibori resists to these pieces in the traditional Japanese manner before boiling up the walnut hulls and adding them to the water.  Sadly the quantity of hulls is only about half what I needed, so I will likely get a mid-brown rather than the richer brown I had envisaged – but that is the joys of natural dyeing – you never get exactly what you expect!

So, if life seems a little hectic and predictable to you, take a ‘leaf’ out of my book and experiment with natural dyes on your felt – you will be surprised.

P.S. The ivy leaves were a great success – they yielded gold, mid-olive and dark olive!



Detail of the finished felted jacket



Maggie

Maggie & Merrin, Jan. 2007

Merrin’s Maggie: September 1997-October 5^th, 2010.

Maggie:  the guru of ‘Good-O’ games, the fluffball of foolishness, the tailwag of tummy rubs, the mascot of Merrin.

We remember her first foray into motherhood: …..Merrin was away on school camp but the puppies would not wait. Maggie gave birth on Merrin’s bed, then ran to waken Bryn and spread the good news…. And the night one of her fat little pups drank so much milk he had a belly ache:  After trying for ages to settle him, Maggie came and appealed to us in desperation, the distraught new mum at 2.00 am!  Steve cuddled the puppy on his chest, as he used to do with our colicky babies, and with Maggie and the other pups beside him on the bed, we all went back to sleep.

We remember Maggie proudly enjoying the limelight at Merrin and Matt’s wedding: until the heat and the crowd became too much for a 10 year old dog.  I can still hear the shrieks of alarm from the hired help when she discovered “the dog in the food tent”.  In search of somewhere cool and quiet, Maggie had snuck in and curled up in a basket under the table – containing the bread rolls!  They must have made a frightfully lumpy mattress.  I explained that it wasn’t just any dog, it was Maggie, the bride’s dog, and so everything was OK.  Later, she was found asleep on Merrin’s wedding train at the bridal table.

We remember halcyon holidays camping and canoeing on the Wonangatta River. Maggie loved holidays even more than regular car outings, but best of all she loved the canoe rides. Balanced on the front of the boat, she was both figurehead and lookout. Unconcerned about the slippery surface of the plastic prow, she occasionally fell in, but was readily scooped out by her collar when Merrin came level with her dog-paddling dilemma.

We remember lazy walks along our creek: Merrin’s doting shadow, Maggie helped with the photography, the pesky ducks that needed chasing, or the wombat dens that needed a good barking. In later years she often waited to be lifted over logs, and sometimes just wore out and had to be carried back.

We remember 13 years of companionship and love, with never a cross bark or a nip – while some of us grew up and some of us grew old.  In the twinkling of an eye, our frolicsome fluffball became our dozing doorstop and all too soon we were uttering our stricken goodbyes and casting forget-me-nots into her grave.

Sleep peacefully in the sun, our Maggie. You are part of us all.