Ripe age for fruit of the loom
BY ANGELA CROMPTON
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Retirement officially starts at 65 in New Zealand but Sunshine Bay resident Peg Moorhouse had barely started her weaving career then.
Last month the 92-year-old woman won a national weaving award at a Silks Road exhibition in Queenstown.
Next month more of her works will be shown at the Coca Gallery in Christchurch. Craft lovers who can't make it to Coca can click on our link to a gallery page on Mrs Moorhouse's website to get an idea of her skills.
"I bought my computer for my 90th birthday," Mrs Moorhouse laughs. "And it's been wonderful!"
She was going to attend a computer course to learn her way around the different programs but grandchildren came to the rescue.
"Grandchildren know more than most people these days," she says.
Mrs Moorhouse's family includes great-grandchildren, too, but she retains much of her independence and keeps herself busy on the loom most days at her home in Sunshine Bay. The large room she works in overlooks Queen Charlotte Sound and a narrow pathway leads from the garden to the sea. The changing colours and moods of the Marlborough Sounds have inspired the former Cantabrian since she and her late husband Len moved to the shoreside property in 1963.
It was the 1960s when Mrs Moorhouse started spinning and that led to her interest in weaving. Few people knew how to do it and Mrs Moorhouse remembers the long, shingle-road journeys up the Awatere Valley for initial lessons with weaver Elsie Ryan.
Early works were rugs and blankets woven from spun wool and other natural fleeces. Then in 1992 she went to Sweden with a Picton weavers' group and learned damask techniques at the Saterglantan College of Handicrafts. While in Sweden she saw an Oxaback 41 shaft draw system damask loom and promptly bought it.
"I walked into a room and a loom was sitting there, all on its own and I knew it was for me!"
It arrived in New Zealand in seven big boxes but with no instructions on how to put the pieces together. A "clever friend" and another assistant helped Mrs Moorhouse assemble it and she created a few pieces with the new tool.
Then a weaver she had met in Sweden visited, looked at the loom and made lots of adjustments to make it work properly. Damask table runners, napkins and wall hangings since made by Mrs Moorhouse have won many awards.
It takes about a week to set up the loom for a new work, but once everything is ready to go the weaving can be done quickly. Mrs Moorhouse follows patterns she has drawn on graph paper.
In 1987 she won second place in the first World of WearableArt Awards held in Nelson. A rooster piece was woven for the 10th WearableArt Awards – "You have to have something to crow about" – and she accepted an invitation to model the garment.
"I went out on the catwalk at 81!"
At 92, Mrs Moorhouse sets herself a slightly slower work pace but ideas for new works and designs keep filling her mind. The best part of winning the Silks Road exhibition, she confides, was receiving a $400 voucher to spend on new yarns.
- The Marlborough Express
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