Needles and Brushes

When I first started painting I was still an avid needlewoman - sewing, knitting, crocheting and embroidering something or other all the time. So it was only natural that my pincushion came to be captured on paper in watercolors! It doesn't get much use these days but I still have a bag of knitting that I drag around everywhere, and I always stop to admire beautifully crafted and embroidered works of all kind. I also have closets full of materials, yarns and books on needle arts. Recently I purchased a book that combined my two interests: "In Praise of The Needlewoman, Embroiders, Knitters, Lacemakers and Weavers in Art" by Gail Carolyn Sirna. The book has in one place works of artists like Vermeer, Chardin, Velasquez, Monet, Mary Cassatt, Berthe Morisot, Renoir, Dali and others who have 'sought to capture the needlewoman's quiet concentration and artistic endeavor.'

Here is a touching poem by Hazel Hall :

All the tired women

Who sewed their lives away,

speak in my deft fingers

As I sew today.

Handy Helpers watercolors, 15x15"