{p, h, f, r,} Hooked Rugs and Home Life

~ Capturing the context of contentment in everyday life ~

Joining in with Like Mother, Like Daughter

{pretty, happy, funny, real} 

at the Museum of the Hooked Rug and Home Life 

in the Acadian village of Cheticamp, Nova Scotia, Canada

It may not sound like a thrilling place to be, but on our recent 10th anniversary trip to Cape Breton Island, my husband and I stopped here on the recommendation of a friend. This museum shows a glimpse of life for the Acadians in the area about a hundred years ago. It also showcases many antique hooked rugs, an art made famous by the women of the Cheticamp area. The museum also houses the hooked rug gallery of Elizabeth Lefort, a famous rug hooker, whose work has been given to royalty, presidents, prime ministers, and even popes. 

What follows are some of the photos from this museum, and my reflections on this not-so-very-far-removed lifestyle. 

First off, Cape Breton Island is a beautiful place, and I would highly recommend the journey! We kept to the Cabot Trail for our short getaway, and explored only a fraction of the spectacular natural wonders, fascinating history, and rich Acadian/Celtic culture.

Fall colours

Breathtaking blues

At the top of the 9.2 km Skyline Trail!

The Cabot Trail at sunset

.
.
The Museum

I have a strange relationship to the lifestyle of the families of the past - part admiration, part envy, part . . .  shame?

I admire their ability to carve lives and homes out of practically nothing - farming, fishing, mining, and doing whatever it took to survive and eventually become prosperous. I admire how hard they must have worked, how resourceful they were, and how they still made time and space for beauty in their homelife and crafts.

This is the same type and size of churn we have in our house as an antique "decoration"

I envy the "simplicity" of the times, even though it brought its own limitations. I envy the community,  the tightly-woven networks that held people together for better or worse. I envy the lack of "stuff." I envy the skills that were passed down from woman to woman, the "collective memory" as it were. I even envy their lack of choice, though I'm sure many a feminist or modernist would berate such a notion. Their circles were small. In many ways, life was set for them. There wasn't an endless parade of "you can be whatever you want to be," which I have often found counterproductive to simply getting on with the task at hand, or choosing a path and being content with it. There really was no possible way to live outside of one's means, and though I'm sure the catalogues of the day must have provoked some wishing for more, a lifestyle just beyond their reach was not bombasting them at every turn.

 And I can't help but feel somewhat ashamed. At what, compared to them, seems like my own laziness, selfishness, or complete incompetence. Much as I have always been nostalgic for these simpler times, could I have survived them? I can barely survive my own world of modern conveniences some days. But then I wonder, is there something wrong with me, or is it a symptom of something gone wrong with our modern world?

Note the antique hooked rugs in two styles - one floral pattern, carefully planned, and the other a more random pattern which utilized any scraps of wool, whatever colour or length was left over. 

I do leave these glimpses of an earlier life feeling inspired though. Inspired to bring something of this beauty, simplicity, and pride of home into my own life. Inspired to work hard, to devote myself to the life we're building as a family, and to find contentment and joy in common things.

Rug Making

The variety of hooked rugs on display, both antique and more recently crafted, were truly beautiful and fascinating.

We were given a demonstration of how the rugs are made. Canvas is stretched on a frame to open the holes of the fabric. A pattern is then drawn on by hand. The hooked needle (still made locally from a nail hammered into a wooden base, then bent into shape) pulls the wool up from underneath, in little loops of equal height. There is no knotting or tying of the wool; it is simply cut off when a new colour is needed. The loops are hooked so close together, that when the canvas is taken off the frame, they shrink into a tightly woven material. The pattern is cut out of the canvas, with enough of a border to fold and sew under. The rug is then ironed on both sides to further shrink the wool and keep it all together.

Still made with a plain old nail

In this area, the hooks are still handmade, the wool dyed locally, and the rugs made by hand by the women of the community.

"La Sagouine"

A variation on the "Tree on Life" design

A portrait of Queen Elizabeth II by Elizabeth LaFort

Elizabeth LeFort also created a collection of stunning religious rugs. I was amazed at the size of some of them!

A young Jesus

The resurrection

The crucifixion 

"Our Lady of Perpetual Help"

"The Nativity"

I love this detail of The Nativity

A tribute to Canada for the Canadian Centennial in 1967.
416 colours. 8 months in the making. 7 miles of yarn were used and 1,750,000 stitches were hooked. 

To commemorate our tenth anniversary, we brought home this humble hooked rug. It is a "Tree of Life" design, made with leftover scraps of wool so that no two designs are the same. I think it is a beautiful symbol of the life of marriage. (I didn't think to take a picture of it till evening, in not-so-great lighting.)

A beautiful way to bring the traditions of the past to life in our home.


~lg

{pretty, happy, funny, real} on October 1

~ Capturing the context of contentment in every day life ~

Joining in with Like Mother, Like Daughter

I'm trying to get things up and running on the blog again. Maybe as we get more into the swing of routine, I'll get back into the swing of blogging!

{pretty}

We've begun our homeschooling journey! One of the aspects the kids and I both love is nature study. On Wednesdays we've been walking down the red dirt road to the pond and bringing our books with us.

Some days we go out into the backyard and find lots to observe there, too.

This "little" creature shared the chair with me. Thankfully the kids are in insect fascination mode these days!

{happy}

Today is October 1st - our 10th wedding anniversary! Happy day to us!

This picture was taken recently at our annual church corn boil and hayride.

And here is a happy girl, starting step dancing lessons. And I'm happy I only have to drive 5 minutes to lessons!

And happy wouldn't be complete without a little bit of ice cream. . . world famous ice cream at that!

{funny}

We've had a few light frosts, but some of the garden is still going strong. I saved the tomato plants by covering them with a big tarp. Some of the leaves are dying, but the plants are still surviving. I'm hoping to ripen more of the fruit on the vine before I bring what's left in to finish ripening in the basement.

I call this, "The Forest of Swiss Chard." It's mythical, really.

Turns out, we only have so much of an appetite for swiss chard! And it grows so well! The colors are beautiful, no?

{real}

We had an ideal view of the lunar eclipse on Sunday night! The kids were tired after a sleepover the night before and busy day with church, but we let them stay up a little bit and sit on the porch with us. We had an impromptu lesson on lunar eclipses with our globe, a paper plate, and a flashlight. This was Arden's unprompted "narration" of the lesson!

Then we headed out on the front porch to admire the "super harvest moon." The kids insisted on climbing out the window. . . .

The eclipse itself didn't start until after 10 pm our time. The kids were both falling asleep out on the porch. We took Jack to bed. Arden wanted to stay up, so we let her settle into a chair in the dining room and promised to wake her up when the moon was red.

The trouble was, she wouldn't be woken! The poor thing was so tired. We brought her out on the porch, and tried to wake her, to no avail. She was heartbroken in the morning. :( It was a difficult start to the week. I wrote about it here.

At about 11:30 the moon was eclipsed. This is a picture taken around that time, and though it doesn't look completely red here, it was to the human eye. (We don't really have the lens for good moon pictures!)

Happy October to everyone!


~lg

The Big Yellow Bus, and Why My Child Wasn't On It

I looked out the window and saw the kids lined up at the bus stop in front of our house. It was 7:50 AM, and my kindergarten-age daughter was not getting on the happy yellow school bus with the other children. I had a moment of panic.

Are we doing the right thing? Are we somehow depriving our daughter of her childhood birthright to ride that bus? Are we just another weird homeschooling family?! (Please don't answer that!)

She was blissfully unaware of my pre-coffee angst, sleeping peacefully upstairs after a later than usual evening of romping outside on the last official day of summer.  She had a new outfit in the closet, all picked out for her first day of "school." We had new pencils and crayons, crisp blank notebooks, and baskets and shelves filled with books of every kind. I had written "Welcome to Kindergarten!" on our blackboard easel, ready to greet her when she came downstairs. Everything was prepared. (Though I can't say the rest of the house was spotless. Do teachers stay up late the night before school scrubbing their kitchens? I wondered. Probably not.)

It had been months, really years of preparation. The seed of the idea of home education, grown out of my own varied educational experience, nurtured by blog posts, articles and books, encouraged by friends, and later hashed out with my husband in dozens of conversations, had come to fruition. We were not anti-school, by any means. But there was something about the home education option I just couldn't lay aside. I knew I would kick myself later if we hadn't given it a go, if I hadn't put all those bubbling thoughts and ideas and aspirations to the test.

So we decided to do it.

We are doing it. Right now. Today. While the rest of the world seems to be getting on yellow buses.

We are doing it because we think it fits us as a family. The education of one's children is a supremely important and personal choice. What fits for one family may not fit for another. But we are trying on this homeschooling thing, and to me it seems like a good fit, at least for now.

Yes, we might just be crazy. Yes, there are days I will know I am crazy.

But when I think of what my daughter might gain, and not what she'll miss out on, the panic subsides. (The coffee helps too.)

So why are we doing this? I go over some of the reasons in my head.

Family Life
I want our family to grow and learn together, carving what we value out of life, working for and enjoying it together. I want to build our own family culture that I hope will give my children a strong sense of identity and security.

I want our children to be friends with each other, playing and discovering (and yes, fighting) together. I want to give them opportunities to love and lean on each other.

I want the strongest voices in my children's ears to be ones of unconditional love, encouragement, and purpose.


Flexibility and Freedom
I remember my own homeschool days when Dad was in charge of recess time, and we knew we would have at least an hour in the woods before he remembered to call us back in!

I believe the early years are best spent exploring the wide world in a multitude of ways, interacting with all sorts of people, getting your hands dirty and your jeans ripped, with time to play and explore and sniff the dandelions along the way.

I want our children to know many unhurried hours, to drop everything to investigate a particularly large spider, to have time to get bored, to read "just one more chapter," and to discover what it is they really love.

I want the freedom to adjust our routines and methods according to our children's individual needs. I want to give our children the time and space necessary for creativity.

I want our children to have a sense of wonder.


Faith Building 
I want our children to know, love, and serve God wholeheartedly. I know this is not why many families homeschool, but I believe that home education can help give our children a consistent beginning in their life of faith.

I want to build a greenhouse. The best image I've come across to explain what we hope to achieve is that of a greenhouse. One day, we want our children to be able to stand firm and weather whatever life throws at them, with roots deep in the soil of God's truth, beauty, love, and purposes. But you don't throw a new seedling out in the middle of a storm, or when there is risk of frost. Aren't you sheltering your kids from reality? some may ask. To which I respond, early life needs shelter. I have no intention of keeping my children in a bubble all their years. But when they are young, I believe it is wise to maintain a greenhouse experience for these tender lives. In a greenhouse, young plants become rooted, receive necessary nourishment and shelter, and are gradually introduced to the elements so that when the time comes, they will be ready to grow and flourish in the great outdoors.

[Can all of these ideals be fostered without homeschooling? Absolutely. But for us, we feel this is the best way to achieve this for our family, at this season of our lives.]

I take a deep breath. Drain the coffee from the mug. I hear excited five year old feet upstairs. I smile. It's going to be a good day.

~lg

"The Wind in the Willows" and Wonder

I am only now, at almost thirty-three years of age, cracking open The Wind in the Willows for the first time. Three pages in, and I am struck by this perfect description of a river in spring, and the joy of one tiny creature along its banks.

"He thought his happiness was complete when, as he meandered aimlessly along, suddenly he stood by the edge of a full-fed river. Never in his life had he seen a river before - this sleek, sinuous, full-bodied animal, chasing and chuckling, gripping things with a gurgle and leaving them with a laugh, to fling itself on fresh playmates that shook themselves free, and were caught and held again. All was a-shake and a-shiver - glints and gleams and sparkles, rustle and swirl, chatter and bubble. The Mole was bewitched, entranced, fascinated. By the side of the river he trotted as one trots, when very small, by the side of a man who holds one spellbound by exciting stories; and when tired at last, he sat on the bank, while the river still chattered on to him, a babbling procession of the best stories in the world, sent from the heart of the earth to be told at last to the insatiable sea."

There's more life in that one paragraph of a so-called children's story than in many whole books I've read. Already the spirit of the book is one of wonder. Wonder. The half-forgotten, curious naivety of bare legs in green grass, of uncomplicated delight in some new and little discovery, that fragile reality the world seems bent on snuffing out. I want to catch it where I can, hold it out to my children as the finest of fairy feasts, preserve and protect it.

Here is an ally. Here is a kindred spirit.


~lg

{pretty, happy, funny, REAL} Snowstorm!

~ Capturing the context of contentment in everyday life ~

Brought to you by Like Mother, Like Daughter

Ok, so this post is all REAL, with some pretty, happy, and funny thrown in there too!

I'm talking a REAL SNOWSTORM. It blew threw Eastern Canada on Sunday and Monday, but hit PEI the hardest, where we had a whopping 86.8 cm (34 inches) of snow and 120 km/hr (75 mph) winds!! The snow began Sunday morning, and the island was basically shut down. I'm writing this on Ash Wednesday, and some roads on the island still haven't had even one track ploughed through. Schools are still cancelled for Thursday. Some of the pictures are pretty crazy!

Here is what the storm looked like at our place. A lot of it just blew on past us! I hope you like pictures of snow. :) Me, I like a good storm, as long as everyone is safe and snug.

Here's what we woke up to on Monday morning, 24 hours in:

Happy Islander Day!

Still snowing and blowing, and bushels of fun

The car and the steering wheel of the tractor!

Front porch drift

Yes, that's a woodpile buried beside the shed

Monday afternoon as the winds died down. One track ploughed through our road, and we were one of the lucky ones, being on a fairly main rural road. We had two lanes by Tuesday afternoon. Our road was not all that bad, compared to some roads I've seen pictures of, with cuts through of 16 feet! The smaller roads around us didn't even get one track till Wednesday. 

Our means of snow removal :)

Here's where the northeast winds just whipped around the side of the house. The packed snow there is maybe a foot deep.

By Monday evening we figured it was worth going out to do some shoveling. The kids thought it was pretty cool to be able to reach the top of our lamppost.

Starting the channel.

Walking on (frozen) water

I stayed out to finish the path to the car.

The path dug through the drift, with probably a foot of hard packed snow underneath.

The car is in sight!

There was something very peaceful about being out in the calm and dark after the storm, just me and the shovel in the glowing light of the house and the lamp in the yard. Winter nights like this remind me of a childhood winter spent in Saskatchewan, walking through much the same sort of drifts, reading John White's Archives of Anthropos series in the dark evenings, sensing something very real and deep just beyond the throw of the light's reach. The pull of the distant, starry heavens just about equal to the pull of the house's cheery warmth, and me suspended between. The still. The silence. The wonder.

Tuesday we went out to play!

There were fox tracks through the back and front yards.

The building to the right is our chicken shed. The door to it was completely buried! Just keep moving, foxes...

As of Wednesday night, our driveway has been blown out by our farmer neighbour and his big tractor, the car is free, and the road to town is clear, though I hear it is pretty difficult still to get around in some places in Charlottetown. Other rural neighbours are still rather dramatically snowed in. The island was basically shut down Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, but we are digging out, and I'm sure this storm will not be forgotten! 

Meanwhile, inside...

Don't worry, it's only very mild cabin fever. :)

~lg