The Gift of Harikuyo

This morning of Harikuyo, I awoke to a gray day.  Today is the day that I take the broken needles from the back page of my needlebook and lay them to rest.

My needlebook was waiting for me right where I had left it.

It gets used quite often so it can get pretty messy and disorganized over time.

I use that little pocket in the front to hold curved and super-tiny size 16 beading needles that would bend if placed in a page...

Just like last year, I placed my broken needles in a soft cottonball cloud...

Only two this year and both were beading needles.  One of them is burned, poor thing.  For the life of me I can't remember how...

I wrapped them in old pattern paper and placed them in the ground with a note of gratitude and a prayer for the future.

Fittingly, I buried them with the rose bushes this year because I could really use some help making Mrs. Rose's rose bower.

In particular...thorns...

Not sure yet how I'm going to make three-dimensional thorns for my roses so I'll take all the help I can get.

As I mentioned last time, I'm going to make a new needlebook.  Probably has something to do with that  Planning Fallacy problem I wrote about the other day.  I have a bad case of it.

What I did manage to do was pull together the books I have on Mrs. Delany.  She's my design inspiration for my needlebook.  And I settled on this image as the design I'd like to use for the cover.

No surprise that it's a rose.  I've got roses on the brain lately.

I wasn't stitching this morning.

Instead I awoke with a profound sense of gratefulness for all of you who have embraced the idea of honoring your needles.  There really are hundreds of you who have taken the course, bought labels, shared the tradition with groups of friends.  It's quite beautiful to think that by writing a blog, one idea could catch on.

Along those lines, I've been reading a book titled The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World by Lewis Hyde.  It's hard to describe the full scope of this book; a fact the author readily admits to in the Introduction.

Ultimately it describes a problem -- the disconnect between the practice of art and common forms of earning a living.  The first couple of chapters deal with the concept of gifts in myth, in fairy tale and in history.  He gives example after example of how gifts are powerful, that "lifelessness leaves the soul when a gift comes toward us". 

A work of art itself is a gift:  it contains the the vitality of the artist's gift within the work and makes that gift available to others.  "Works we come to treasure are those which transmit that vitality and revive the soul.  Such works circulate among us as reservoirs of available life".   

I love that phrase, reservoirs of available life.

He relays many instances of gift exchange both in fairy tale, myth and in native cultures.  And one idea has struck me the most.  In all the stories, the gift has to keep giving.  It has to keep moving.  If someone commodifies a gift by selling it...or takes it out of circulation to keep for themselves alone...then the gift ceases to be a gift.

Which leads me to today.  

I believe that the idea for this needlebook was given through me as a gift; and all of you who have supported that gift by buying the class, kits or labels...allowing me to cover my costs and do what I love.  But a part of each transaction remains a gift.  Something more has happened beyond the mere buying and selling of products  And that something more should move on in the world and continue to give.

In honor of each one of you who have adopted this needlebook, this soulful approach to your needles, I have made a donation to Friendship Bridge.  

Friendship Bridge's mission is to provide microcredit and educatioon to Guatemalan women so they can create their own solutions to proverty for themselves, their families and their communities.  Many of them do that through traditional needle and textile arts.  Check out their website here or follow them on Facebook here.

Take a moment to watch this and you'll see what I mean.

Thanks to you, we just might transmit some vitality and help to revive the livelihoods of a few women in Guatemala.

"Only when the increase of gifts moves with the gift may the accumulated wealth of our spirit continue to grow among us, so that each of us may enter, and be revived by, a vitality beyond his or her solitary powers."

I'm looking forward to sharing this day by visiting your blogs or seeing your pictures on instagram or Facebook.  If you'd like, add your name and link in the Mr. Linky widget below so we know where to find you:

Here's to another year where we get the chance to stitch and to break some more needles.

Aren't we lucky?

Delectable Jan

After we dropped Jack off in Boston, Jim and I drove the 2 hours West to Brattleboro, Vermont where we spent the weekend.

My trip to Delectable Mountain Cloth to visit Jan Norris inspired this video:

[Note:  I highly recommend clicking on the HD which will take you to vimeo where you can watch the video in high definition.  Otherwise it's a bit fuzzy at full screen.]

Delectable Jan from Susan Elliott on Vimeo.


You can find the Delectable Mountain website here.  You can reach Jan and the staff at Delectable Mountain by phone at (802) 257-4456 or by email at staff@delectablemountain.com  You can follow the shop news on Facebook here.

I've uploaded all the pictures that I used in the video to my Flickr account here.

After my visit, I felt such overwhelming gratitude to Jan that this was the only way I knew how to express it.

She does so much more than buy and sell cloth.

She puts all of herself into what she creates.

She really is everything.  I just love her.

Harikuyo 2014

Today, February 8, is the day of the Harikuyo Festival in Japan.  

The day when kimono makers, seamstresses, quilters and embroiderers go to a shrine with their used up needles to properly lay them to rest.   "Hari" means needle and "kuyo" means memorial service and for the last few years, I have been honoring this festival by holding my own personal harikuyo.

To my great delight, many of you have joined me.

This year I have only four broken needles in the felt on the last page of my needlebook...

But even though there are only four, it is the first year that a Japanese embroidery needle has landed in the burial group.  In fact, I don't ever think I have broken a Japanese needle since I started Japanese embroidery many, many years ago.

That means that the needle that is second from the left below has been in my Japanese needle felt for over 20 years...

That's a long time.  It's also kind of interesting that this is the year when I've put Japanese embroidery back on the front burner.  

In fact, in April I will be starting a piece called Queen of Flowers, its subject being the Chinese Tree Peony.  It also happens to be my favorite flower. 

In Japan, broken needles are placed in a block of tofu...something soft that relieves the needles from the harshness of their labors.  This year, I chose a soft and fluffy cotton ball.  

I wrote a note of gratitude and folded the needles into an old scrap of pattern paper...

And buried them amongst the tree peonies in my garden...

Wishing that the spirit of my needles will combine with that of the tree peonies and inspire and guide me through my embroidering of this flower later this year.

Even though it's still freezing, I can see that the tree peonies are beginning to bud.  Jim told me this morning that he sensed Spring was coming because he was already beginning to sneeze.

I didn't believe him then...

But now I do.

We spend this day not only honoring our needles for their service but also by being grateful for the skills that we've acquired over this past year.  The more hours we spend with a needle in our hands, the better stitchers we have become.

Likewise, so much of the time we spend with our needles is meditative.  We are thinking of our family and friends, we are suffering from grief or the loss of a loved one, we are joyful because of a wedding or a birth...all of these emotions that travel from us through the needle and into our embroideries are honored as well.  Pray that sadness and anxieties are laid to rest along with your needles and that any joy and happiness is retained with you.

So many of you have made Harikuyo needlebooks in the past few years.  I'd love to hear how they are working out or how you may have chosen to honor your broken needles this year.  Just leave a comment below and let us know.

For those of you who are new here, you might be asking "What is Harikuyo?"

Check out these prior posts on the Japanese tradition:

Preparing for Harikuyo...trip to Japanese shrine

My Original Book of Needles

Needlebooks Multiply in 2012

Harikuyo 2012

Harikuyo 2013

Spring is coming everyone.   Jim says so and I think his nose is even more reliable than Punxsutawney Phil.  

Gratitude

A gift that arrived in my inbox this morning from Robert Genn's Twice Weekly Newsletter...

And one that I re-gift to you this morning.

[Note: Twice a week, I receive Robert Genn's Newsletter...self-decribed as "Robert's world-wide gift that artists love to get"...it's free. And yes, it is a gift. I've learned so much from his wisdom. You can sign up to receive it here. And don't miss the rest of his website, The Painter's Keys. I particularly enjoy his Painterly Post...a daily aggregation of events, publications and web posts that artists and creative people might find useful.]

My Inspiration

Can a single piece of needlework change your life? Or set you on a different path?

Today, I pay homage to a piece of needlework and to a woman who altered my needlework path forever.

When I began Crazy Quilting around the year 2000 or so, the biggest inspiration on the scene for me at that time was Judith Baker Montano. I loved all her books, couldn't get enough of them...but it was this book...Floral Stitches...which spoke to my soul.

I kept it by my bed. I studied all of the components she used in her work. I loved the way she "saved" glorious old vintage bits of wonderful textiles and transformed them into new art -- to be preserved and enjoyed anew. It was the most beautiful way I had seen of giving new life to someone else's handiwork -- and it gripped me and has never let me go.

I've never taken a class with Ms. Montano nor have I ever met her in person. I have, however, written to her, spoken to her over the phone and purchased this piece of her needlework "Study in Pastels" ...


When I left that corporate job that I told you about last post, I had made a little money. After discussing it with my husband, we decided to purchase our first piece of textile art. It's not very common or popular to purchase textile art -- and I think Ms. Montano was a bit astonished and, yes, even overjoyed that someone actually wanted to pay her money for her art. I worried over the decision... it seemed so frivolous...but my need for retail therapy was high and when my husband knew how much it meant to me, he encouraged me to write the check.

I have not regretted it one day.


To me, it wasn't just any piece of art. It was the piece that was showcased in photos all throughout her Floral Stitches book. It was the piece that had been changing my life as I embraced the art of crazy quilting.

And it's a piece that means as much to me as any Picasso, or Rembrandt or yes, even, Mary Cassat.


I am honored to have it in my home and count it among our family treasure.

Here is what Judith says about the piece in her own words:


No other piece, or person or book has inspired me as much. Except for this one...which I've written about in a previous post.

So, how about you?

Can a single piece of needlework change your life? Or set you on a different path?


And Judith, should you happen upon this post, and be delighted to "meet" your old piece again...know that it is loved and treasured and continues to sing to my soul...and now, just maybe, to the souls of others.

My hat is off, my head is bowed, in deep gratitude...thank you.