Ruby Throat & Sacrificial Flowers

Inspired in part by Nakata's conversations with cats in Murakami's Kafka on the Shore, and a gardening tip a friend once gave me to do with growing pretty but meaningless flowers as a border to protect veg and edible plants, thereby sacrificing the flowers to slugs, mice and other pests that might otherwise consume my kale and red cabbage, I wrote this little ditty, Sacrificial Flowers. It was originally a Haiku (3 lines: 7-5-7 syllables per line) but the first line wouldn't fit inside the hoop so I had to cut it in half.  

I favour this new direction of embroidering poetry; the handwriting effect is more fragile and clandestine somehow, perhaps in that it can't be read from a distance so it draws you in, like a secret urging to be told.

I love buttons, so I had to incorporate them somehow. The orange reminds me of marigolds. I wanted to add scraps of fabric to make a sort of collage effect, and make it more interesting. Plus I prefer embroidering on printed fabric. Plain white is a bit too dull.

I copied Katie's doodle of a cat :) I'm otherwise rubbish at drawing.

O' Doubt O' Stars

I received my limited edition copy of O' Doubt O' Stars by Ruby Throat last week, and have been playing it to death whilst stitching. It arrived in lush black tissue paper, with black and white prints bound in black ribbon. 

Katiejane Garside

The prints are precious; inexplicably lovely and fragile. I love how quiet yet profound it is. How complicated the subject matter is, and yet the experiences are shared with fresh eyes and child-like wonder. Birds seem to exist in order to make sense of chaos. Of course, this is probably not how it goes at all, merely what I hear as I listen. I love Katiejane Garside's lyrics - crazed and yet extremely lucid; beautiful and bipolar. 

Recorded on a narrowboat upon the Thames, the river and the natural surroundings are evident throughout the album.

Here is a video of my favourite Ruby Throat song from their previous album, Out of a Black Cloud:

Nina x