Plan B

Day 301: Fiber artists frequently have to think on their feet when something fails to go according to plan. That was the situation in which I found myself when my order for 3/2 cotton arrived on Tuesday. Although I had specified that both cones were to be from the same dye lot, they were not, and they were sufficiently mismatched that I didn't feel I could disguise the fact in a piece I intended for competition. Naturally, I called my supplier and received assurance that they would rectify the problem. However, it will take 10-14 days for the new thread to arrive. That said, having put the 3/2 against my intended warp, I decided that in any event, it was too heavy for the look I wanted to achieve. I was quite pleased with the 8/2 as both warp and weft in the towels I just finished, so I checked my stockpile of weaving cones and found that I had enough "nautical blue" to complete the project. Plan B! Don't leave home without one!

Never An Idle Hand

Day 38: My maternal grandmother began teaching me to embroider when I was roughly three and a half years old. Yes, really, and it launched me on a journey into a world of needlearts far beyond even her vast range of skills. Somewhere tucked away, I still have a handkerchief with a few clumsy and inappropriately-placed red stitches to remind me of her patient tutoring. "Four over, two back," she would explain, counting the threads for a perfect stem stitch, and when I failed to produce the desired results, she did not criticize but rather encouraged me to continue with my work. She was also fond of saying that idle hands were the devil's playground, and saw to it that I never lacked for something to keep mine busy. As I recall, I was about five when I completed my first pillowcase, having by then mastered lazy daisies and French knots. Although my mother swore that Gma didn't know how to spin, I remember distinctly sitting at her broken wheel with wool picked out of the carders. She turned the wheel manually as I let the fibers twist between my fingers to form a coarse and lumpy thread. When I first sat down at a wheel as an adult, it was almost as if I could hear her telling me how to control the wool. My mother, looking on, remarked, "You always insisted that Gma taught you to spin. I never believed you until now." But Gma didn't weave, or at least not in the truest sense. We made looper-loom potholders together and played with sprang and finger-weaving, but there was no loom, not even an inkle loom in her possession. Weaving is one of my favourite occupations now, and with several different types of loom to keep me amused, my hands are never idle and complex patterns keep my mind agile and entertained.

A New Skill

Day 365: By the time I was 18, I had mastered enough of the most common fiber-arts that I was hired as the sole needlework consultant by a fabric-store chain on the east coast, but I was always looking to expand my knowledge base. Of course in those days, the internet was not a "thing," and books were the next best option to individual instruction. I did learn to tat from a co-worker, but two other potential skills intrigued me: bobbin lace and netting. I had no idea where to obtain the supplies for either. A few years later, I took a class in bobbin-lace making and found a supplier for bobbins and thread through the instructor. However, I was unable to find netting needles and gauges anywhere, and all thoughts of netting moved to the back shelf of my mind until recently when I stumbled across a video about it on YouTube, never mind that it covered fishing nets as opposed to lace. The principle is the same, but on a much different scale. I bought a cheap kit containing needles, shuttles and gauges and settled down to make my first swatch of net. I'm still quite clumsy at it and keep catching the thrown loop of the "Flying Dutchman" knot around my little finger more often than not, but the squares/diamonds of my net are uniform in size. For now, I'm working with #20 crochet cotton, but will move to finer threads once I'm entirely comfortable with the technique. Or maybe I'll go fishing.