Post 17Kendal Museum

I woke a few times in the night last night and wondered what was happening outside my window. It sounded like a fan operating. When I opened the curtains in the morning, the river was running at great speed. The noise was the water swooshing under the bridge.

Unfortunately I can't really capture the speed or the sound in a photograph.





As forecast, it was raining. By 10 am the rain had subsided to showers. The sun did not break through, but I was able to don my puffy jacket and venture out to the Museum.


On the way I passed the Castle Dairy, This is a remarkable looking building - the front part dating from the 14th century.

Unfortunately, it is only open to the public from Easter to October.











It has amazing chimneys










and some teeny-tiny windows (notice the one on the right - next to the drain pipe) .














Not far from the Dairy is the Museum

There are three parts to the Museum. The main ground floor houses the Lakeland and Westmoreland History collection - a kind of very large cabinet of curiosities. Down a corridor is a large room housing the World Wildlife Collection, and upstairs is the Lake District Natural History Collection.

fan with lace inset

chatelain

I began on the ground floor - homing in on a glass case of textile bits. There are lace gloves, fans, doilies,
 a chatelaine and some Victorian embroidered bags.

Most things with a provenance were either Victorian or Edwardian.



I quickly realised that this was a museum to which local people had donated a lot over many years.


There was a cabinet displaying memorabilia from the Quaker School, which closed in 1932,  Let no child complain about their current school uniform!


Taxidermists have been busy in Kendal over the years. There were more than a few stuffed animals -

of all sizes and origins.

I could find no label for the bear, but as a descendant of

Bearcrafts - the keepers of the bears in the forests of Lancashire, I wondered if it were from there.






Humans did not escape. There is a mummified hand - most notable, I thought, for the information provided - which is about the linen used to shroud it!
I am attempting to cluster these in some logical grouping that was not always evident. This bison head, for example, is set over a 19th Century iron cell door from Kendal Gaol.


A bust of

Abraham Lincoln, made from pulped bank notes, sits in front of a local primer and beside some porcelain cups.











A wooden  box holds the minutes of the Fastossity Society. I have been unable to find any information about the Society and am left wondering if it had anything to do with the little teaset that sits on top of it in the display. Since it met at the Football Inn, an association seems unlikely.







There is an extraordinary collection of bronze age implements















and a huge "brain coral"


along with the drums and drumsticks of the Westmoreland and Cumberland Yeomanry.





Tucked away, under a cabinet is a "travelling/
portable harmonium.











I rather liked the collection of truncheons.
After I had worked my way around these, and many more, items of local interest, it was with some curiosity I moved into the World Wildlife room.

I was not prepared for the scale of what I saw as I stepped into the room -





and the room has considerable depth.







The collection of animals and birds covers all continents.





Africa is, I think, 

best represented in terms of numbers.

















but the collection is huge and broadly representative.





The Australian animals include a wallaby, possum and platypus. The Australian birds are all from NSW.

The collection of birds eggs is artistically arranged.



The museum appears to be well used by local schools. I did not go upstairs ( the stairs being rather steep and my brain being saturated) but there were groups of students coming and going and sounds of music drifting down. There are so many stories here - of a community interested in science, the world beyond its own boundaries. I'd like more of that narrative. Hopefully the students visiting and studying the history of their communities will construct it.

After a brief visit back to my hotel, I ventured out again to pay another short visit to the Quaker Museum and have lunch in their cafe. As I was eating my tomato and lentil soup I watched two women talking while one of them stitched. As I left I stopped to ask about her embroidery. It was a kit she had bought in the 1970s. Both women were members of a Quaker stitching group that had met this morning and were staying on for a 'Sit and Stitch' group that afternoon. She explained that the kit was her PHD (Project Half Done) and she was making good progress. We talked for quite a while about embroidery. They knew Liz. The stitcher  had also lived in New Zealand for a year and briefly visited Australia.

If I had had my stitching with me I'd have joined them! It was a counter-balance to the museum.



Back at the hotel I took advantage of a few rays of sunshine to do a bit more on my Hill Top project.

This is a better photo of the lavender and rhubarb, taken in the sunlight.














I worked on the geraniums and then gave myself the fun of needle felting the bushes on each side of the house.

My eyes gave out but since dinner I have added some French knots and detached chain. I decided my needle felted items are bushes and small trees. I don't think I want to add sequins at this stage - maybe not at all. I'll wait and see once I've added
the delphinium and primula leaves.


Tomorrow I am meeting a couple I met in Adelaide last year - cousins of my friend Pat Manser. Weather still cold and wet - another adventure!

Post 16 tapestry and third cousin

I still have the voices of the Retreat in my head. I keep getting a shock when I hear an accent that corresponds. Jean speaks to me in the lift - telling me that the doors are closing, or I have reached my floor. At dinner last night I was sure Phillipa and Sandra were having a conversation on the table behind me, but alas, it was not so. Richard was ordering at the bar, but when I looked, he had transformed.  I rather hope these voices don’t leave me.

Fine weather - even a little of it makes such a difference! This is what greeted me when I opened my curtains this morning.


I was, therefore, waiting when the Quaker Tapestry doors opened at 10am.

I took a lot of photos. There are no signs or instruction not to do so. These images are for personal study purposes only. Please only use accordingly.

I wanted to focus, this time, on the stitching rather than the stories. I couldn’t ignore the narrative entirely, however. It is powerful and engaging. I find myself wondering why I am not a Quaker.

I love the way some  images are created with a few very simple stitches. It is especially true of the crowds.

I don’t think I noticed before how much couching is used - often quite long threads couched down in different ways.

There is also that skill - conveyed by Nicola in her class last week - of creating expression with a few carefully placed stitches.



Even the work by children says a lot with economy.










I had a good look at the text and the movement of Quaker stitch between small and large font.

I noticed that chain stitch is not a favoured stitch, but is used sparingly - as here on the socks (or leggings).




I love the different effect with different use of the same stitch.



Blending colour is another evident skill.

In other cases the background fabric is used to full advantage with only outlines needed to convey texture


or,  again, by clever variation of stitch and colour.








In this cluster of figures, the speaker's best suit is couched in a more complex manner than the suits of his audience.













Very rarely, a little decoration is used.

I love the way this crowd scene is sketched in to create movement and flow.


It's quite a different technique used in the flow of water.

Here figures are given identity using only an outline. while, below, the figure is anything  but simple..





These Naive figures capture essence.

This New Zealand panel shows another way to stitch sheep!


I got into conversation with the woman on duty this morning. She was stitching a Ruskin lace sampler - explaining that she is not good enough an embroiderer to work on the panels, so she just sticks to Ruskin! Her work was lovely.



I came back to the hotel where I had arranged to have lunch with Brian and Pauline Duffield. We had never met but Brian and I have corresponded through our family trees on Ancestry.com. We are third cousins. Our great, great grandfathers, Thomas William Attlesey Duffield and Jasper James Duffield were brothers.They were carpenters, as was their father, who moved from Norfold to London - presumably for better work opportunities. Thomas William Attlesey Duffield then moved north to Jarrow to work as a craftsman in the shipyards. His brother Jasper travelled north to act as the best man at his wedding.

We had such a good time - and discovered shared interest and experience. Both Brian and I trained as English/History teachers. Both of us majored in both English Literature and English Language, studying Old and Middle English. Brian taught and headed up English Departments in Cumbria for many years.  He took children on excursions to the Wordsworth Museum where he got them writing poetry.  We didn't stop talking - about our family history challenges, Wordsworth, Cumbria,  family history stories...

We are both short of Duffield family photos. I shall be consulting my cousins to see if anyone has any photos at all of our grandmother Ada;s family.

I had organised with the restaurant that lunch was to go on my account, so there would be no argument. So firm, however, were Brian and Pauline that this was to be their treat, that I uncharacteristically yielded. I had to undo the arrangements I had made - but it was worth it to cement this friendship. It warms the cockles of my heart, as my mother would have said. I am grateful.

After Brian and Pauline had left, I went for a walk around the area behind the hotel, and found a couple of interesting shops, particularly one selling handmade wooden furniture and items.





I also located the  Museum I am hoping to visit tomorrow. The forecast is for returning rain, so I hope I can manage it. I am equipped for cold and showers, but not well equipped for drenching rain.


I then returned and did a bit more stitching while the light lasted. I finished the rhubarb leaves, rhubarb and lavender. My buttonhole stitches are more sparce on the perle edges. Might alter.


I had trouble with the bullion knots in the lavender - only because it was difficult to perform the needle 'scoop' necessary with the layers of stitching and the tightness of the hoop ("never scoop in a hoop" was more like "can't scoop in a hoop"). I got there in the end, however.

It has been a pretty amazing day, if I manage nothing else in Kendal it will have been worth spending time here once again.