Exhibition - New Zealand Hospital Community Tapestry - Mount Felix

I walked down to the Riverside Barn Arts Centre to work on the tapestry (embroidery) in the gallery, where it is on display. There was lots going on - a few people coming in to see the exhibition and quite a few stitchers working on panels. Linda showed me how to do a nice, flat stem stitch and I got on with our third panel (the Plunket family) and Linda got on with our second (the last one showing the barn and some leaves with the names of the stitchers). Here are some pictures from the exhibition.

This is the exhibition with lots of information and photographs.
 

The designer came down from Scotland to look at our progress.

Linda and Helen working in the gallery

Rydens School is working on this panel showing a "lemon Squeezer"- shaped hat with a Kiwi dreaming of Cooktown.
 

Our finished panel: Gallipoli

Detail from our finished panel (I did this bit)

A really lovely design showing Christmas at the hospital
 

Nurses with the Old Manor House - some were billeted there

One Kiwi soldier married a local girl - Miss Rosewell of Rosewell's boatyard - they met over an ivy-clad wall.

The King and Queen came to visit Mount Felix hospital (an expert sewer did this - it's amazing).

I was working on this one today - it shows the Plunket family and their servants - Michele did this. I don't know what the flowers are.

Linda is working on this one - trying hard to make the clinkers and tiles look interesting

A community tapestry is a great idea - I feel part of a community - a Walton community rather than a Weybridge one, but never mind.

Here is a link to a site with the history of the hospital

Community tapestry - Mount Felix Military hospital

When I was a girl and I lived in Walton, by the river, there was a derelict site at the end of the road called Mount Felix, where there had been a Big House - which had been used as a military hospital during "the War". In fact, the hospital had housed so many injured New Zealanders that it had had to be extended into "huts" along a row which became called New Zealand Avenue and which is now a main road in Walton-on-Thames. (The adults meant the war which they couldn't remember - although Grannie and Grandad could - the Great War.) The building was Italianate in style with a square tower which was quite a landmark, but eventually it was razed to the ground and we used the stony ground, with its patches of concrete (probably originally the driveway) to play football, and we also used to slide down amongst the trees on the muddy bank to the pond. There was plenty of room for a few groups of children to play there.

This is the "land" side of Mount Felix, with its tower.

This is the river side with its pond (now a marina).

One of the other groups of children came from Ridgeway (a road on the bridge side of Mount Felix), and I met one of them at a meeting of the stitchers who are making the community tapestry to mark the centenary of World War 1. We are now women firmly into middle age and yet she shared my childhood!

 I have to say that it's not really a tapestry - it's an embroidery. I came together with three other women who have done some embroidery but not much - to form a group, and now we call ourselves "Stitched Up" because we never knew each other before this project. But now we meet every two weeks.

The history is probably not that interesting unless you are a local or otherwise interested in World War 1, but if you are please find a link to the website

We have just finished our first panel! Here it is!






Our panel is number 11 (or 14) and it shows trench warfare in Gallipoli.
I did a lot of flies and stray bullets. We had a lot of dull sand and
sandbags to do, but we tried to make it as bright as we could.

 

The Frost and the Fire by Ruth Park

I'm so pleased that you can still get hold of this book. The story is set in the New Zealand goldrush of the 1860s, where veterans of the Californian goldrush mix with the Irish and the Scots, and away off on their own part of the goldfield, the Chinese. It's the wild West, but removed to the South, the landscape is mountainous, rocky and deep-gorged, and the climate is intensely hot in the summer and intensely cold in the winter.

Just as the weather can be extreme, so can the characters: the crowds can get stirred into a mob, the Scots who seem so well rooted even in the thin soil of the mountains may have secret uncontrollable longings, and the Irish are sometimes carried away by their passions into complete madness. This is a story in which people have souls, and suffer the pains of love and loss in epic clarity. When you read a modern story it's entertaining enough but there's no feeling that the story matters as our lives are pretty much like those of battery hens. But here people act out of freedom, greed, emotional need, neighbourliness, adventurousness, and as their consciences square with the tenets of their deepest beliefs. There is scope to be noble.

The story is about Currency MacQueen, the washerwoman's girl, and is told by another girl of her own age: Tatty, the midwife's daughter, and it features prospectors and diggers, fools and wise men, priests and dance-hall girls and a waif of a violinist. Tatty is not the star of her own story, and has to suffer this bravely, and all the characters, with their strengths and weaknesses, are dealt with sympathetically.

In my version (you can get an edited version) there was a paragraph of racism which made me recoil in horror, but I didn't want it eradicated because I know it represented racism as it was, callous and casual, and thank God it is no longer like that.

I don't normally read romantic fiction but this was wonderful escapism. I feel better for having been embroiled in it - so emotional, so large and grand, as the world should be. I wrote before about the vast emotional scope that humans are capable of, and how pitiful it is to be a dumbed-down version. I feel myself to be like this, moved only minimally by sport and shopping, and all our "adventures" involve safety harnesses and little effort.