Cork-er!

Now we are heading for Cork, but first a visit to Mountmellick to learn about their wonderful style of embroidery, with the bonus of a lesson from the experts.

Mountmellick embroidery came about after the Great Potato Famine, when times were very tough in the area. One of the locals taught the women her style of tone-on-tone embroidery so that they could try to earn enough money to feed their families.

Needless to say, with the style of embroidery still being so popular, the originators plans have rewarded them many times over. The Museum is filled with lovely examples of this work and charming stories about the folk who keep its story alive.

We had a 2hour lesson from some of the wonderful volunteers – I must report the our results varied significantly.

http://www.mountmellickdevelopment.com/museum-page52662.html

 

The added bonus was a visiting exhibition of Quaker Tapestries. A series of tapestries was commissioned from Quakers all over the world – New Zealand included. Each area was asked to submit a drawing, or cartoon of some thing that they taught depicted their area, plus a verse, saying or prayer.

The plans were sent back to each country along with a specially woven wool fabric for the background of each, wools for embroidery and charts that broke each work into three pieces. Words can not explain how magnificent these works of art are and we were unable to photograph them. Check out their website for an idea of these amazing works. They are normally on show in Kendal in the Lake District, so we were extremely lucky to be in the right place at the right time.

http://www.quaker-tapestry.co.uk/

 

 

After Mountmellick we headed south and to Cork. Along the way I shared some of my family history with a little information about John & Julia Lane, my father’s grandparents and how they emigrated from County Cork to Timaru in 1875. I can not begin to imagine how brave those two were. Just getting to Gravesend would have been momentous, let along all those weeks at sea. They sailed on the Waikato to Lyttleton and then on the Bruce - a steamer, to Timaru. The Bruce was sunk a few days later on its way to Dunedin.

It was great to finally arrive at our hotel in Cork just before dinner time and how convenient that the hotel is so very close to the shops!