My name is Pam Robertson Rivet. I grew up in Alberta, Canada and did a lot of schooling there, though I have lived, worked, and played on the east and west coasts as well as places in the middle.
I write not necessarily because I love it (although I do), but because the words keep coming. I write creatively more when I am not working on technical writing projects, because I find it brutally hard to do both concurrently. There are just so many words that I can write in a week. I’ve written oodles of technical work: essays, papers, self-help manuals, training materials, articles, and more. On the creative side, there’s a novel and short story published, and several projects in the revising and editing or chuck it out the window phases. There are also outlines for several more, depending on the day and how I feel about them.
I’ve turned my hands to a lot of different creative endeavors, for lots of different reasons.
When I am not writing or working on my culinary habit, it’s all about textiles. There are so many fabulous fabrics and textures! And then there are buttons. I have a thing for vintage and recycled buttons that borders on obsession, and I have started to collect them from button boxes stashed and long forgotten.
My first forays into textile arts might have been enough to put anyone else off, but I am stubborn. Years ago there was a first sewing project that involved a sewing machine in a school lab where I made a skirt for my grade eight home economics project. The fabric was a beautiful brushed cotton that started out pale blue and graduated into an intense royal. But the darned thing never fit me properly. Many years later, when I had my children, my grandmother bought me a sewing machine. What a tremendous gift! I experimented with a range of kids clothing and experimented in some for myself, and at the same time actually learned to sew. One of the things that I loved about making children’s clothes was the way they went together so quickly, and how small the seams were when I had to unpick them (you can ask about that too if you like).
When I got to Nova Scotia several years ago, I met a fabulous group of women in a Stitch & Bitch group who had been meeting once a week for nearly 20 years. Not many of them were actually stitching, although there was a lot of conversation and eating taking place. I began to work on my own skills, and did some crochet and knitting. This led to experimenting heavily with wool and felting. I got such a kick out of knitting into one form, and then felting the fabric to see what else could happen to it – the changing shape, the blending of fibers and colours, and then an outlet for my button collection. I made felted evening bags, cell phone cases, glasses cases, and worked in a range of wools to see what worked well together, and played to my heart’s content. I have learned to knit faster, thank goodness, have sourced buttons from button tins and boxes across the country, and have a couple of favourite wool shops that get the most beautiful products, some of which are shorn off the animals in their own back yards. I incorporate silks, lace, tassels, and am also starting to play with some fabrics again.
Finding my creative outlets has really upped the joy factor in my life. Yes, it makes things crazy busy at times, and messy. I tend to vacillate between a very long idea list to several projects on the go at once, to writing and replenishing the bank account, and then I return to the textiles. I am heavily inspired by my family life, as well as the fascinating lives of those around me.
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