'slack kind of folk in housekeeping ways'

  Finished!

Rose with buds (Rag rug)

 

I love this exert from a letter written by a Nova Scotian rag rug maker in the 1920s:

 

"When I finish [a rug] I feel as relieved as if I had had a baby!!! When I am doing one I feel something akin to an artist because I look just as untidy as Rosa Bonheufs [sic] pictures, to say nothing of the state the house is in, and I ease my conscience by thinking 'We are an easy going slack kind of folk in house keeping ways but the fires of genius must burn.' "

Stella Surette, Pomeroy Ridge, N.B., 16 March 1924.
 (Nineteenth-century French artist, Rosa Bonheur (1822-1899), was famous for her animal paintings and eccentric lifestyle which included "manly" dress and a menagerie of exotic pets).

From:

"As the Locusts in Egypt Gathered Crops":

Hooked Mat Mania and Cross-Border Shopping in the Early Twentieth Century

Sharon M. MacDonald

Material Culture Review. Volume 54, Fall/Automne 2001

http://journals.hil.unb.ca/index.php/MCR/article/view/17903/22068#no16

My house has been in a pretty pickle too, while I've been finishing the rug. Can't say my that conscience needs any "easing" 'tho!