Sometimes a Great Notion...

Surveying the rows and rows of carefully bagged silks, cottons, wools and twines at the Good Sammy in Fremantle, the title "Sometimes a Great Notion" came to mind.  It's the title of my favourite Ken Kesey novel, a book about a logging family with the motto "Never Give an Inch". The passage about a logger getting pinned down in a rising river is horrifyingly powerful, and reading it was an experience that has stayed with me for years.

After one visit to the Sammy, I found just enough cotton to embroider this doll.  It's caveman quality work, but so tactile and comforting.  Compelled to go back for a second hit, I came across this shortbread tin.  I'm more of a hoarder than a collector, but this is my second tartan tin in a month.  I sense a collection coming on.

This doll, the threads and the tin also echo a secret family story that was unfolding over our visit in Perth - blood ties, a young man with a bag pipe and a kilt in Derby in the early 1940's, a baby.

The Good Sammy craft section contained a host of unfinished craft projects, but I resisted the urge and added a macrame chandelier to the list of lost things that haunt.