THE TREETOPS STUDIOS - SAANICHTON

NEWS FROM THE TREETOPS STUDIOS, 2004

31 December, 2004

The Show Season, 2004    It was another of those really busy pre-Christmas show seasons this year. But we must be getting better organized. All the deliveries were done by the 18th. The last re-stocking request, over a Friday-Saturday night, was turned around in less than 24 hours. Not something a regular distributor could accomplish. Ponchos, of course. Twenty shawls and ponchos went out in the six weeks of Christmas rush.

The picture on the left above shows part of the ponchos and shawls display at one of the shows this season. (Skip over to The Gallery to see The Treetops Studios' current lines.) The showboards on the left and right of the image display a selection of the crocheted table accessories and children's knits that Elaine's mother and Studio Associate, Yvonne Rouleau, produces for us. This year we even sold 'mitties on strings'. And we have been experimenting. The image on the right above is a scarf and tam set made from this year's most popular poncho yarn.    Top

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

Santa came early to our home this year. Over the past ten years we have both been supporters of the Saanich Peninsula Hospital’s Auxiliary. Elaine convened their annual Bazaar one year and she still buys the raffle tickets. This year she won! The prize was this wooden Rocking Harley. Now, you will understand that we don’t have much use for it ourselves. But, there is a brand-new grandson who will be two or three soon. And isn’t the cost of shipping such a large item a good excuse for driving back east to visit in 2006 or 2007?    Top

We know that it is traditional to personify the Old Year and the New Year. So, from our Studio to you, here is the Old Year as an Old Guy in a Santa suit - John at this year's Christmas Sing-Along at the Saanich Peninsula Hospital. The New Year is Jason John of course, posing as himself - and cute.

Well, there we have it for another year folks. We hope you all had a Merry Christmas and the very best wishes from all of us to all of you in the New Year. Take care of the those you love and help someone who needs you.    Top

26 November, 2004

The Ponchos of 2004    Could you have missed the sudden morphing of the poncho from cult status to fashion craze in 2004? Along the way ponchos became brighter, lighter, smaller and often asymmetrical. Like the shawl, the poncho fits naturally into the 'layers' wardrobe on the West Coast. By the time Elaine went down to San Diego for the knitting design conference, the poncho was part of the scenery in southern California.

Elaine has always done shawls: large and small, classic and funky. (Skip over to The Gallery to see a selection from The Treetops Studios' existing lines.) Our first ponchos of the 2004 season were up market variations

on a shawl pattern. Jade Cloud, shown on the left above, is a very light weight lace in a fine brushed wool/mohair blend. Then, a summer order from Paradise Cove swim wear in Victoria for a line of light weight but more robust beachwear ponchos turned us towards synthetic/cotton blends in the Waves series shown on the right above. The follow up order for a heavier weight autumn line has kept us on the go since then with ponchos in synthetic yarns and synthetic/mohair/alpaca blends such as the one on the left below.

Overall, the 2004 poncho is smaller than the traditional poncho and, since it is an active wear item, it is typically lighter and looser. It is also more challenging to design than a shawl or traditional poncho as it is easy to get the drape or the proportions wrong - especially if the client wants the option to wear it either symmetrically or asymmetrically. But the effort, many drawings done over many coffee/cocoa breaks, has fed back into our basic Studio Look. The short, light, cotton knit weave above right is one of several re-adaptations of a poncho design into our capes lines. To see more of our Ponchos of 2004 please skip over to The Gallery.    Top

15 November, 2004

Introducing Jason John    Well, it's time to clear up the mystery. At the end of September we drove back to Ottawa to visit with Elaine's family, celebrate her sister Jacqueline's 50th birthday and spend Thanksgiving Day with their parents. Then it was off to Bowmanville to wait on the appearance of our newest grandchild. On 29 October, Jason John Ball weighed in at 6 pounds, 15 ounces. Everyone is doing very well, especially Gran'ma.

The Final Four    To mark the end of his five years of training with Andy Lou, John decided to present paintings, with calligraphy, in four different Chinese styles. He made the final touches just before we left to go back east. Although neither Andy nor John have played for the Duke Blue Devils, the project came to be known as 'The Final Four'.

In a far too brief "Thank you." for Andy's efforts to give John a sense of the poetry and humour in Chinese literature, the calligraphy on each painting includes the characters for an ironic series title; "Five Years, Only Four Paintings". The four paintings represent the Chinese classic 'Four Gentlemen' over the four seasons here on Vancouver Island. From the upper left: Bamboo in winter, Plum Blossom in spring, Grass Orchid in summer and Chrysanthemum in autumn. Top

Rainbows and Silk Threads    The drive itself was along, mostly, well travelled roads for us. We drove tidewater to tidewater again: our usual east through Canada and back through the US, visiting friends and relatives as we went. One highlight was a long detour to Plessisville, PQ to set up a studio relationship with the yarn supplier Maurice Brassard. There were no disasters on the road but two hours on the southside Chicago bypass in the rain is a lot like two hours orbiting O'Hare in the rain. The prairies and the plains are clearly having their ups and downs. We have never seen so much crop damage: mile after mile of hailed out, blown down and flooded fields on the Canadian side. Conversely, with the price of crude way up there were so many crews re-starting dormant oil wells in southern Wyoming that it was hard to find rooms. A high Canadian dollar took the edge off that.

John travelled hopefully, with his sketchbag and film cameras close at hand. The low, slanting, light of autumn on the prairies and, of course, the fall colours in the eastern forests can make several hours of late afternoon rain worth the wait. It was not to be. It rained and blew almost every day. But, there were two evenings in Bowmanville when the storms lifted just before sunset. On both days we were treated to a full, two-ended, double-arched rainbow. The right hand end of the rainbow shown above seemed to rest in the meadow just behind Angie and Reg's home. Who says there are no pots of gold? Jason John was safely delivered two days later. Top

And we suggested two pots of gold didn't we. During our stop in Edmonton we stayed with one of John's cousins. Her mother, John's father's oldest sister, was a very good needlewoman. In the course of things, many of her works and some of her stash came to John's mother. It is difficult to tell the two sisters-in-laws' work apart, so John and his cousin Mary spent some of their time together clearing up attributions.

In the course of the conversation Mary asked how John's tapestry work was progressing. John replied; 'Very slowly.' but added that he had been thinking about working up the fine details with embroidered embellishments in silk or polished cotton. "Oh. Then I have something for you. I won't ever use it." An old English biscuit tin appeared. "This was my mother's embroidery box. And before that it was our grandmother's." Out of the box came about 140 skeins of stranded silk embroidery floss, wound on odd bits of card. The invoices, old letters and calling cards packed in the tin indicate that, before coming to Canada, John's paternal grandmother, Mary Annette Hewison, was brought up near Bath and liked Pearsall floss. Can the legend be broadened to include a tin of floss at the end of the rainbow?

Given the education and recreational pursuits of the daughters of middle class provincial families in Great Britain during the last quarter of the nineteenth century, it is not a complete coincidence that John's Anglo-Irish maternal grandmother, Alice Eleanor Ussher, was also a good needlewoman. She is known to have embroidered regimental colours in the Ottawa area after coming to Canada. Needless to say, there is still a great deal of unattributed needlework at The Treetops Studios. Top

15 September, 2004

Oil Painting With Victor Arcega    Through the late spring the Victoria College of Art offered a ten evening painting program with Victor Arcega, a well known local painter and a respected teacher, critic and jury member. Elaine made John a present of the classes. As the materials list required, John turned up for the first session with black and white acrylic paints. Several of Victor's regular students came with water-mixable oils and one with oil pastels. "Now, you have to know that..." John uses acrylics for utility painting, signage and some decorative work. His mother painted in conventional oils. Her equipment and colours are still in the Studio. His brother, Michael, paints in water-mixables and John had been thinking about broadening his media. So, after a trip round the suppliers in Victoria, a big order off to Curry's in Toronto and a few days' practice, John turned up for the second session re-equipped.

It took more than just a few weeks to get the hang of oils. And of live models. Several canvas boards got scraped back at the end of the session. But with Elaine away back east there could be 20 to 30 hours studio work a week. By the end of the course the images were at least recognizable. The painting on the left above drew charitable comments like, "Nice turban." and a less charitable, "Nice ear!" The image on the right is from an autumn late afternoon photography session in Suzhou, China. It begs for a more abstract treatment. Watch this space - after several hundred more hours of studio time. Top

Artisans 2004    Each year the Community Arts Council of the Saanich Peninsula sponsors this mid-summer showroom at the Mary Winspear Cultural Centre @ Sanscha, Sidney, B.C. This year The Treetops Studios put in 63 items during the two weeks. The poncho rage has reached Vancouver Island. The long poncho on the left below is 'Jade Cloud' and one of our favourites, just a few ounces of wool and mohair. A black version with a fine sapphire glitter thread sold before we got back to take the photographs.

The display on the right shows a selection of Elaine and her mother, Yvonne Rouleau's, household accessories. The earth tone items are part of set of table runners. The laced blue and white bag is actually the pillow of an experimental knit design we call 'Sleepover'. The bag is attached to the edge of a large, warm, knitted blanket. In the early evening, the blanket and a young lady's pj's, etc. fold up into the bag to make a floor cushion. Later, her day clothes go into the bag to make a pillow and the blanket folds out around her - on top of an air mattress or inside a sleeping bag. Top

The Saanich Fair 2004    The North and South Saanich Agricultural Society's Labour Day weekend fair is one of the oldest 'great events' on Vancouver Island. This year's theme, 'This Fair is for Ewe!' - the pun intended - highlighted the Island's sheep and wool. And it went right along with what we do at The Treetops Studios. Elaine and our Studio Associates, Heather Corbitt and Yvonne Rouleau, won nearly 20 ribbons in the knit, crochet, quilted and sewn items categories.

The display on the left above (except for the very fine blue doll dress) shows some of the items Elaine presented. Elaine also organized a weekend of demonstrations by the Knit Knuts, the south Island machine knitters guild. The display on the right featured the club's work with its favourite charities; preemie bonnets for local hospitals and the trauma dolls the paramedics with the British Columbia Ambulance Service keep handy for their youngest in need.

And on that subject, our daughter's first is now five weeks from her due date, getting into the safe zone. Still no word on gender. So Elaine and Elaine's mother are preparing receiving sets in whites or greens or yellows for an expected "Grandfeet".Top

30 June, 2004

Air Miles Gran'ma    May is the best time for Elaine to visit friends and relatives 'back home' in Ontario. Her stock for the coming fall is partly rebuilt, there is a lull in the shows on the Island and the weather is great. This year it's a special occasion. Our daughter, Angélique, has just announced that come mid-October she will be expecting her first. So, with a wave of the Air Miles card it was off to Ottawa and Toronto. And, of course, it just happened that Charlene Shafer was giving a seminar in Ottawa.

Charlene is sitting at the right in the grouping above left. The dark green jersey with the big smile in the middle of the group is Elaine's sister Jacqueline. On the right, Elaine is showing and telling the simple vest project done at the Quadra Island Retreat earlier in the spring. As for the baby, no hints on the pink-blue dilemma. S/He always seems to have feet in the way of the ultrasound imager. So, we're expecting a 'Grandfeet' in the fall. Top

2004 Designer Retreat at Rancho Santa Fe    Then in the first week in June Elaine and April Mills flew down to San Diego to attend the '2004 Designer Retreat' hosted by Susan Lazear of the Cochenille Design Studio in Encinitas, California.

Elaine and April went down with the aim of having a good time getting out of the design box. Dorothy Akiyama's presentation "Creative Effects .... Combining Textile Arts with Knits" was the highlight for them. For this occasion, Dorothy's usual big bags of samples were packed with knit fabric pieces to be painted, stamped and stenciled in decorative or abstract patterns. She is holding up one of Elaine's projects on the left above. A close-up of the piece is on the right. Top

The picture on the left above must be early in the presentation. The protective gloves are far too clean. Does it remind you of two five-year-olds just before they were allowed to help with the cake batter for the first time? The venue was excellent, The Inn at Rancho Santa Fe, the travel not too arduous, and if the weather was warm for us 'raincoasters' the pool was close at hand. Top

The Spring Studio Tour    Elaine got back just in time for our first ever open studio event. Normally, we are open By Appointment Only. We have joined friends' studios for the tours for several years but this time we decided to combine a tour with an open house for our neighbours. The studio tours take place in the spring and fall and are sponsored by the Community Arts Council of the Saanich Peninsula. We have been part of the organizing committee for the past few years so participation gave us a chance to meet with visitors who were; "Just looking." rather than clients with a specific interest. There was tapestry in progress on the vertical loom and the Brother 'Bulky' knitting machine was cast on and ready. The most memorable visitor came in with a plate from her stoneware dinner service looking for specially designed table runners and placemats to complement the setting. While Elaine ran off small swatches of possible fabrics John opened up the watercolours and painted up some possible colour schemes.

It also gave us a chance to show off some of John's work. The three bowls on the left above, in western maple, red alder and Gary oak, can be set together like a pie cut in three pieces. Together, or separately, they are intended to suggest the three-legged bronze pots of classic Chinese art. The fruit tray on the right is carved from a 13 pound maple burl. Both pieces have been shown at Vancouver Island Woodworkers Guild shows. Both are from a series of food safe bowls, finished in walnut and almond oils for daily use as table centrepieces. The needlework floral on the left is a Studio heritage piece, done by John's mother. Top

30 April, 2004

Springtime    It has been a great spring so far. The daffodils at the end of March were the best since we took over the studio ten years ago.

A Shadowbox    When he is not painting, studying design, promoting the arts & crafts in the Victoria area, or working on this website, John accepts commissions. The first one this year was a request for a display mounting. Some years ago, the clients' son had attended the Admiral Farragut Academy, a naval high school in St. Petersburg, Florida. The parents had preserved much of the regalia, accoutrements and badges from his uniforms, including the lower portions of the sleeves of his dress tunic. Family photographs and visits to websites produced an authentic colour scheme. Several hours of playing with layouts led to a decision to arrange the masses and colours to suggest the young gentleman properly 'turned out' for sport or parade. (A digital camera and large screen images are a great help in comparing possible layouts.) Finally, since the agreed display, at the right, was quite large and deep, Opus created a strong frame for the shadowbox. Top

Knit Tapestry & The 51st Saanich Peninsula Arts and Crafts Society Show    The community of craftspersons and visual artists on the Saanich Peninsula is one of the largest in the country. This spring's SPAC Show in the Mary Winspear Centre at Sanscha Hall in Sidney kicked off the season and the show's second half century for the Society. John designed the main layout for hanging the 360-odd paintings and placing several hundred items on floor and table displays. It has been five years since John helped curate a show. Now he has been invited to return to Sanscha Hall to design the layout for the Sidney Fine Arts Show in the fall. Watch this space. For the second year, Elaine demonstrated machine knitting at the SPAC Show for the Knit Knuts, the south Island machine knitters guild. Top

The Treetops Studios' entry for the 51st SPAC Show was the knit tapestry 'Waiting For Spring'. John did the drawings and a computer rendering to a 16 colour tapestry cartoon. Then he remapped that into DesignaKnit as a knit weave pattern. Elaine did the hard work. The Brother 970 knitting machine will take the row or warp counts from the computer link but Elaine had to do the stitch or weft counts manually. The picture on the left below does not do justice to the task. At several places there were over two dozen weft colours in play, including a half dozen shades of red. Top

It was an experiment and we learned quite a few things. Ordinary computer monitors do not have the resolution to replace the manual cartoon that John would use on a conventional tapestry frame. Neither the production of a full-sized cartoon nor remapping the computer display into random colours, to make the colour changes easier to see, really solved the problem. Finally, the underlying knitting process accepts colour changes in the overlaid yarns in different ways depending on the row count. That gave us unexpected textural effects that Elaine had to work into the raised edges that show up on the image of the completed work on the right above. The process definitely does not produce a fabric that we can use in women's outerwear and it has no advantages over woven tapestry for image production. However, John has the next studio designed image, 'Falling Leaves', on the drawing board already - as a woven tapestry. Top

28 March, 2004

Slow and Snow in Saanichton    A much delayed Happy New Year to you all. Yes, we do get snow in Saanichton. The live Christmas tree on our front lawn that closed out our News last year looked a bit different a few days after John's brother and his wife ended their holiday visit and returned to Edmonton. (If you want to go back, Studio News, 2003 is in the Archive.) A heavy overnight snowfall had covered everything. But then, after several days of freezing mist and winter showers, spring arrived in Saanichton.

Sadly, this is the last time we will show you that tree. Carpenter ants attacked it last summer. It has been uprooted and will be replaced by a Ceanothus once the soil warms up. In a few years the shrub will be tall enough to shape into our new Christmas tree, and the bees love the sky blue flowers. Top

Fortunately, snow and freezing weather are a rarity in Saanichton. There is lots of rain of course. But as January yields to February the intervals between storms lengthen, the winds abate and the sunny days become more frequent. By March we're back in the gardens. The soil isn't warm enough for annuals and vegetable seeding yet. 'The Twenty-Fourth of May' is observed by gardeners here much as it is in the rest of Canada. But the bulbs and shrubs and trees have already declared 'Spring'.

So ..., once the holiday season is tidied away, what do we do for the next six to eight weeks? It's down into the studio for us. The tag ends from the autumn shows and Christmas production get put away and the machines get their annual maintenance. Then it's 'Studio Time'. The lights are colour corrected to drive away the gloomy weather. The heat pump keeps us warm. And on sunny afternoons the windows are opened wide to let in the freshness of the Island spring. There are neighbours and visitors, breaks for coffee, tea and cocoa and lots of time for working through the ideas that came to us during the busy season. Top

SewExpo2004   It is also the season for our 'Get Away's'. The first one this year was to the Sewing & Stitchery Expo 2004, 26-29 February, in Puyallop, Washington. Four days of seminars and presentations, several hundred merchants and 30,000 fabric people! Elaine attended 25 production sessions and John 15 business and design sessions. The Studio prize for the most informative session goes to Koji Wada and Debby Danford from Kasuri Dyeworks: hands on, lots of samples, an important topic - the demise of traditional textile production in Japan - a good vendor's booth and John won the door prize for the session. The vendor's deals were good. Elaine restocked her thread drawers and the Kasuri door prize was applied to a part roll of Japanese silk brocade. Away from the show, John completed his suite of kolinsky brushes at Utrecht in Portland and bought far too many samples of the new earth tones at Daniel Smith in Seattle.

Check the SewExpo 2005 site after the New Year to see what will be on offer next year. Top

"Quilts: Old and New" Show    Before we went off to SewExpo Elaine curated a quilting show, at the Sidney Museum in The Old Post Office, for the Community Arts Council of the Saanich Peninsula.

It ran through the latter part of February and into early March and was her curatorial debut. The show theme was the influence of traditional quilting on contemporary work. With a lot of help from local quilters and a little digging in her family's stock, Elaine was able to display heritage quilts from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and several modern presentations of the same patterns.

In the photograph at the left the colours in the older sewn quilt may have faded but the inspiration for the modern quilt beside it is bright enough. Top

The quilt in the showcase below is one Elaine learned on fifty years ago. Done as a family project in a style unchanged over more than a century, it represents one type of quilt that has not been caught up in the current revival.

It is a strictly utilitarian layering of broadcloths, knotted through or rough sewn in plain stout cord rather than 'quilted' in the narrowed contemporary sense of the word. Nevertheless, whenever a needle meets fabric there will be decoration. The marking chalks lying on the quilt are tied onto different lengths of cord and drew out sets of concentric arcs to guide the knots into a shell pattern. Top

Quadra Island Retreat 2004   The second annual Quadra Island Retreat, 18-22 March, drew 29 machine knitters on to the short ferry ride from Campbell River.

This year the retreat focused on the bandings, pockets and other embellishments for a woman's vest. Elaine's demonstration piece was a white vest with white and black bands in a classical motif. April Mills came in from Seattle to hitch a ride with Elaine up to the Retreat and then to visit the Studio on the way back. And, as always, the group enjoyed three days of uninterrupted knitting in good company. Top

Contact Us

Elaine Dendy e-laine@shaw.ca
John Oliver Dendy dendy@islandnet.com
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Revised 9 June, 2007