ONE THAT GOT AWAY.

 I wrote this blog back in 2014 but for one reason or another it remained unpublished. Reading it again I was pleased to see it still had some relevance. The only change is the loss of a hobby shop in Stornoway and nowhere to buy a crochet hook.  

 I’ve always felt that in order to fully appreciate something one must have a go at making it even though making anything for the first time always takes longer there is at the end a better understanding of what goes into it’s production in time and effort which explains the price tag. I’m often asked how long it took me to paint a particular picture and I realise immediately that this is in order to calculate my hourly rate. Re-leathering my first pair of bellows took me 14 hours while the second pair having mastered the technique only took three but having discovered what was involved  I could understand then what I should expect to pay if I bough another pair in need of re-leathering. 

During my first term at Tregony Secondary School I made a small set of step ladders which are still in use half a century on and in my final year having acquired some useful woodworking skills I made a bureau complete with hidden dovetails and quarter sawn green Cyprus burr veneer fall front which if still in existence will be somewhere in Florida USA. The end result is that I know when I’m looking at a piece of quality made wooden furniture rather than some overpriced poorly made pressed fibre junk. The same should hold true for art but I have to admit to certain difficulties when presented with a price ticket of several thousands of pounds for a poor imitation of a simple red Rothko style canvas. Maybe we should label our work with the hours it took and leave the public to decide what that hourly rate should be.  

Last summer my indoor project, for one must always have something to do when it rains or when a damp still day on the Outer Hebrides brings the wee timorous beasties out in force and so I made from off cuts from the pattern books a platted Harris tweed rug, which with its soft thickness proved a delight to step out of bed onto each morning and I wondered if I couldn’t perhaps make in the same way a pair of slippers to slop around the house. 

 

Finding out what is involved in making something certainly holds true at the craft end of creativity and so this summer my (having no TV) project was a rag rug which even its name indicates can’t be worth much. While last in South West Australia I discover a mass of jute sacks in a derelict school house and helped myself to two that as far as I could see had never been used. I already had quite a good stock of old shirts and with a large bag of unsalable items from the local charity shop I started ripping. I discovered a small smooth pointed stick in a draw and bought the right sized crochet hook from the Stornoway hobby shop. Having drawn out my design a large prowling tiger I was off but very soon found that this was going to take forever. Perseverance is a fine attribute and while I have a zero tolerance for standing in line and queuing I have thankfully a goodly amount for more creative activities. Six weeks on and the tiger was complete and I was getting quicker at it but there was still all the background and border. I kept going for if you once put something like this down it becomes one of those sad unfinished projects lying at the back of the creativity cupboard. By the time I reached the border I wondered if I shouldn’t have had the entire thing stretched out on a frame as the weave became progressively tighter. Soldiering on stabbing the jute and hooking the rag I arrived at what I saw as a satisfactory conclusion. After and estimated 125 hours I was now the proud creator of a tiger rag rug that I certainly don’t need, proof if proof is needed that we all have the right to waste our allotted time however we see fit. Given that manual craft workers are perhaps amongst the lowest paid on the planet I was left wondering just what my hourly rate might be for a tiger rag rug.