Easter Butterflies

Last week Jimmy and I returned to Naples, Florida to spend Easter with my father.

Every day Jim and I trekked through the mangroves to visit the beach...



We were lucky that there was another Osprey pair this year with three fledglings in their nest.  I love to watch the Dad fish.  Last year, I wrote this post where the sea hawk caught a Florida pompano.  This year, he entertained again by catching this gar fish...



It didn't look like a very big meal...

But when you've got three hungry mouths to feed, you eat whatever you can catch...



The weather was calm and mild the entire time we were there which made for perfect beach-going.

There wasn't much of a wrack line this time...



Which was a huge blessing in disguise.

A full wrack line is like having too many choices on a buffet.  You tend to select the larger, more unusual dishes.   If there had been too much competition, I'm afraid we would have missed the treasures that actually were there.

Coquina shells. Donax Variabilis.
 

Small, edible saltwater clams that live below the sand in shallow water along East Coast beaches.

While I stooped to collect these tiny shells, an older German woman whom I had befriended that week approached with her cane.  She walked the beach every morning and we had struck up multiple conversations throughout the week about shells and birds and clams...basically, any and all wildlife that we saw in the mornings.

When she saw me down low, she said, "Oh, hello.  I see you've found something to collect."

"Coquina shells, " I said.  "Only little shells are here these days."

"Oh!" She exclaimed.  "They are so Be-YOU-tiful.  All those pretty colors.  I have a whole dish of them I keep out.  Just beautiful!  You have to be careful to clean them well though or they stink.  A little bit of the clam sticks to the shell and you have to get that out."

I waved to her as she went on her way, leaving this egret behind fishing in the surf.



I went back to collecting the tiny marvels and found they were most easily spotted in shallow water, as the lapping water lifted them up and they floated back down...



I wanted to find a way to share the pleasure of shell hunting, so I took a picture just for you.  Think of it as a virtual shell hunt.

There are eight coquina shells (3 doubles and 5 singles) in the picture below.  Can you find them all? (I'll reveal the answer in the bottom of the post.)

While I continued the delicate job of picking up wee bitsy clam shells, another woman approached and told me that she had grown up on Coquina Beach.  As children, she and her siblings had eaten the little clams as they played; their parents had made coquina broth from boiling the live mollusks in salted water.  I found a recipe here.  Who knew?

Jim and I weren't up to harvesting live clams, so we took our empty, bitty bivalves back home and followed the German woman's advice of washing the shells carefully...

Spending the time to pick out any remaining organic matter.  It was a tedious task as the shells ranged in size from 5mm to 18mm.

But it was exactly this slow, methodical care with each and every shell that caused me to fall in love...over and over again.

Together they were a kaleidoscope of Easter butterflies...



And individually, they were every shade of pastel with stripes and delightful combinations.



Like a box of antique buttons, each one held its own charm...

As I washed, dried and sorted my delicate swarm of shells, my father watched perplexed.  "What," he kept asking, "Are you going to do with all of those?"

"I don't know yet, Dad.  But aren't they amazing?"

"Hmmpff, " was all he said.

What I was going to do with them?  I didn't yet know.

But when Dad, Jim and I went to an Antique Mall the next day, look what I found...



This kitschy, old-fashioned souvenir bouquet of shell flowers.  It was love at first sight.

And look...

There are flowers made from all those tiny coquina shells.

And the hummingbird has a set of coquina wings...



Yesterday, I unpacked and sorted all the paired coquinas by color and placed them in a collection box...

A palette from the sea.

And I took all the single shells and placed them in a dish...just as my German friend had suggested.

And here they sit as I type this post to remind us that Summer is coming and the world is full of wonder and joy.

My new collection has led me down a path of researching shellwork which was all the rage in 18th century England.  I found this stunning example of shellwork from the reign of George III...

And then I remembered that my friend Mrs. Delany had created shellwork in addition to her 1,000 flower collages and amazing embroideries.  So I'm busy following that lead.

Looks like there's more shell embroideries in my future.  Found on the Beach might have to become a series.

Blowing kisses to you all and hoping that some unexpected delight washes up on your beach ;)

P.S.  Here's the solution to the virtual coquina search...



And here's a few other interesting shells that were also in the shot...

A Brief Breathing Space

When we woke up this morning, the ice of yesterday had melted away and a heavy snow had taken its place...

And the gift went way beyond the beauty that was outside our window....

Everything was canceled.

Thanks to Mother Nature, a breathing space opened up for us in what is otherwise a very busy season...

A sacred pause...

And all too soon, the snow grew heavy and melted away.

It was the best kind of cleanse.

Iced In

The Most Beautiful Book in the World

Thank you Ian Lawson.

Thank you for your words, your photography, and your most beautiful book, From the Land Comes the Cloth: A journey to the heart of the Hebrides.

Thank you for your ability to connect to a land, its people and its cloth and to create a work of art that connects me to them.

As you say in your book,

Colour reflects our moods and the seasons; it calms and excites the senses.  Different textures add depth and definition.  The light and shadow of the Outer Hebrides and its unique landscape of ancient stones, mountains, loch, machair, moorland, beach and ocean slowed me to a standstill.  As I began to photograph the landscape, the people and the tweed, I started to see patterns emerge.  A beat began and the rhythm of Harris Tweed flowed into my consciousness and into my pictures.

A piece of Harris Tweed is an art form.  Caught up in the warp and weft is a combination of inherited traditions, individual imagination, craftsmanship and skill.  This artistry and ingenuity in the weaver's work is a genuine appreciation of the land, told in wool...The glorious landscape and cloth are undeniably entwined.  

I am grateful for your heart that captured the true essence of the people of the Outer Hebrides.  I am grateful for your talent and patience as a photographer for capturing the light, the people, the land and the cloth in a way that I could not.

I am grateful for this book that moves me every time I sit down with its 430 pages of beauty.

Its weight grounds me to the earth again and reminds me how I felt for those seven hours I spent on the Isles of Harris and Lewis.  Through your work, I experience the interrelationships between sea, land, sky, plants and people and feel the rhythm of their conjoined heartbeat.



For those who cannot afford to travel to the Outer Hebrides of Scotland where your story is told, thank you for this film that you prepared for them to watch:


HEART OF THE HEBRIDES from Ian Lawson on Vimeo.

And for those who are not able to buy the book, thank you for the 108-page preview that you so generously share on your website.

I am still trying to figure out why Scotland has touched me so.  And your book is helping me think it through.  There is spirituality woven into its pages guiding me along.

Thank you Ian Lawson.  You have created a masterful work.  My counsel and companion until I can visit the Hebrides again.

[Note:  Through Ian's website, I have found he is releasing another book entitled Shepherdess: Seasons of my Life which follows the story of Alison O'Neill as she tends her hill farm in Cumbria.  Gerry Krueger, this video is for you.  It's 13 minutes of absolutely wonderful.]

An Clo Mór

The Big Cloth.

Harris Tweed.  The only cloth in the world protected by an Act of Parliament.

The Harris Tweed Act of 1993 ensured that only cloth that fully conforms to the following is entitled to bear the Orb trademark:

Harris Tweed means a tweed which has been hand woven by the islanders at their own homes in the Outer Hebrides, finished in the islands of Harris, Lewis, North Uist, Benbecula, South Uist and Barra and their several purtenances (The Outer Hebrides) and made from pure virgin wool, dyed and spun in the Outer Hebrides.

That means that Mary Ann was the winner of yesterday's post having recognized the trademark from the tweed fabric her parents sold in their business.  I had so much fun reading all of your responses.

Though many of you were correct that the symbol was a globus cruciger, this particular rendering was from the Harris Tweed trademark.



As for the funniest guess...I let Jack decide.  And we both loved Rebecca's response of a papal bowling ball.  I'll be emailing you both to send you a bit of tweed from the Hebrides.

Just a decade ago, the Harris Tweed industry was in decline.  Considered kind of a doddy, old-fashioned fabric worn by stodgy professors and the likes of Miss Marple, Harris Tweed's popularity was suffering and was failing to attract weavers from the younger generation.

A concerted effort was made six years ago, to re-position the tweed brand and revitalize the industry by marketing new, bold colors to the fashion trade and allowing young weavers/designers to design their own patterns.

The result has been phenomenal.  Harris Tweed is winning fashion awards, appearing in luxury boutiques and has been picked up by retailers such as J. Crew, Dr. Marten, Vans and Converse.

And the bright collections are being picked up by young techno-philes for everything from kindle covers to iphone cases.

There have even been Harris Tweed rides.  Not just in Edinburgh and Glasgow (we missed it by one week) but in New York City, London and Tokyo...

Credit: AFPRELAXNEWS

How do I know all this?  Well...when I asked Jack what he most wanted to accomplish when we visited Scotland, he said he wanted to see a circle of standing stones.

I came to discover that there are many standing stones in Scotland but one of the coolest was located on the Isle of Lewis.  And so, I began researching and planning how we might add this island to our trip and began reading all about the history, tradition and production of Harris Tweed.  I began reading the blogs of people who live and croft on the islands.  And I fell in love.

I fell in love with people who were so connected to the land, the animals in their care, and the work that they do.

Without giving too much away, our one day trip to the Isles of Harris and Lewis was, by far, our biggest highlight out of an entire trip of highlights.   It will take me a few posts to get through it all so I'll start here today with Harris Tweed.

We drove for almost two hours to reach the coastal town of Ullapool in Northwest Scotland...



From there we took a 2.5 hour ferry ride to Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis.



We arrived at 12:15pm and rented a car to take us to all the places we wanted to see in the seven hours before we had to get back on the ferry to go home.  I only wish we had had more time there.

I had planned about 20 minutes to zip into Harris Tweed Hebrides, the one place where I knew I could purchase some Harris Tweed.  After all, there was too much see and do to spend much time shopping.

Jim manned the camera while I hunted for cloth...

I've never seen anything quite like it.  

I had pre-shopped the selections online so I had a good idea what I wanted to purchase, a combination of traditional patterns...

As well as brights...

To explain a little why and how I fell in love, I encourage you to watch this video on the land, the weavers, and their cloth...

HARRIS TWEED HEBRIDES from caspar zafer on Vimeo.

What distinguishes Harris Tweed is the number of colors that are spun into each bobbin of yarn.  Wool is dyed before it is spun and then mixed in hundreds of combinations, using anywhere from two to eight colors.

What looks like a "brown" from far away...

Is a complex, rich composition of fibers that reflects the colors of the land from which it comes.

There's a great quote from a weaver at about 5:29 in the video.  He says:

Personally, I like the old school.  I like the darker more earthy colors that reflect...basically, reflect the land, the sea, the heather and just the rough Hebridean colors.  I think they're quite a good match for the Hebridean psyche.  From the beginning to end, the amount of time, effort...and loyalty as well...that's put into this...It's something you won't find in any manufactured cloth.

Amen.   In this culture of mass-produced, de-valued products, isn't it great to know that Harris Tweed endures?  It gives us hope for the world.

But before I go, just quickly click on this video and listen to the song sung by these women on the Isle of Lewis while they are waulking.

Waulking is the process of soaking and rhythmically thumping newly-woven tweed to shrink and soften it.  Recorded in 1970, it's worth watching a minute to two...

Waulking Song from The Wire Magazine on Vimeo.

For more information on the history of Harris Tweed, visit the Harris Tweed Authority's blog here.  To purchase Harris Tweed online, click here.  And to follow Harris Tweed on Facebook, click here.

Next time I'll share more about this land, this cloth and the most beautiful book I've ever seen.