From Bobbin Lace To Threadpainting. Obsessions.

I spent a whole year making bobbin lace every single day.

I taught myself to make bobbin lace and did it every single day for a year. Thank goodness for youtube, or it would have been impossible. Lace is a really hard craft to teach yourself! I even joined my local Lacemaker’ Guild, making a grand total of 11 lacemakers in my province. 🙂 For that whole year, I read, made, researched, and thought about bobbin lace with total obsession and then, with no warning, I was done. For now anyway. So I have all of the gear for lacemaking now, which is nice in case the bug bites again. I hope it does. That gear is expensive!

Oh, and I might as well apologize for any clumsiness in this post. It’s my first in a long time and I really don’t remember how all of this works. Like how do I put a break in this post again? And how do I spell check this? Sorry for any spelling errors, but everything looks different now…

Hand Knit Socks

And then I made socks for a year. And I mean nothing but socks. 18 pairs of increasingly complex socks. And then suddenly, I just wasn’t interested anymore. I do however have a sock drawer of pure awesomness and my family have excellent socks.

Socks and more socks!

Embroidery and Threadpainting

And for most of this last year I have been embroidering again. And this time I have been threadpainting! I have always been intimidated by the idea of threadpainting, it looks so difficult and artistic, and it is but it’s so satisfying! These are some of my current and recent projects.

Threadpainting aka. Needlepainting aka Silk Shading

Obsession!

Whenever I think of the word obsession (which I often do) I think about it to the tune of The Fiddler On The Roof’s song “Tradition!” And I bet you are too now.

You’re welcome. 😉

One of the gifts of being very slightly on the spectrum is the pleasure of obsession. I have always said that the difference between obsessions and compulsions are that obsessions are fun, where as compulsions are not.

I feel blessed to have enjoyed more then a decade of various passionate, all-encompassing string obsessions, and I hope they never leave me. They seem to come and go with no input from me, like blessings from the Muse of String. Wherever they come from, I welcome each one wholeheartedly.

I wish you all much passion and creativity in your lives,

Baba Stringthings aka Renata

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Making and Mending

“To sew is to pray. Men don’t understand this. They see the whole but they don’t see the stitches. We mend. We women turn things inside out and set things right. We salvage what we can of human garments and piece the rest into blankets. Sometimes our stitches stutter and slow. Only a woman’s eyes can tell. Other times, the tension in the stitches might be too tight because of tears, but only we know what emotion went into the making. Only women can hear the prayer.”

LOUISE ERDRICH

A couple of years ago I made a post describing a fine mending job that I did for my brother-in-law, repairing his tallis (prayer shawl). Little did I know that the post would lead to a small but significant flow of jobs mending precious, and sentimental, or just beloved textiles, for people here in Winnipeg.

Honestly, it’s been a surprise to me, how few people or businesses offer fine mending! I feel honoured to have had the opportunity to work on some really interesting and challenging textiles.

Crafting a Quarantined Life

This really has been a strange year, hasn’t it? As a truly dedicated introvert and a serious homebody I have gotten the feeling that the world has joined me in my lifestyle rather than I have changed very much. Still, even an introvert needs some company, and I really miss hugging my elder family members…

The one thing I can always count on is string. My city has been in a very serious and total lock-down for the last month and I have been knitting up a storm. I am still knitting socks and they have gotten fancy lately! The pair I am working on now is pair number 35 I think, so they should be less vanilla by now:-)

Recent Projects and On-The-Go Projects

Hi all!

I thought I’d do a bit of a round up of the projects I’m working on right now, and well as a bit of what I’ve just finished.

My proudest recent achievement is definitely learning how to knit socks. I spent months doing nothing else.

I’m doing a bit of simple embroidery too. This is actually a napkin that I found in Ikea’s ‘as is’ bin for $1.00. It has four lovely little motifs, I’ve done two so far, a teapot and two hares.

I finished embroidering a very cute little lady. The variegated floss is hand-dyed by Bathtub Studios and I found it on Etsy. It’s a real pleasure to use. Her ruffled underskirt is done in  Bayeux stitch and I am very happy with how it turned out!

My First Embroidery Project Was…

It’s not hard to remember my first project as it was only 5 years ago! A friend had given me an old, soft and beautiful English linen tea towel printed with William De Morgan’s peacock and fish. She knew that I love the Arts and Craft movement. Although I had never embroidered, something about the idea of glorifying and honouring the humble tea towel and the anonymous feminine work that it represents tickled my feminist fancy and I thought I would outline a few lines. Ha!

I had never stitched but as a weaver-in-training (loom and tapestry) I was very comfortable experimenting with thread and yarn so I bought some DMC floss and a pack of needles and thought I would just doodle a bit.

By the time I was done, around 250 hours later, it was heavy with thread. It turned out to be a vivid and naive piece that I am still very proud of. And I have been stitching ever since.

These days I really enjoy learning, adapting, and practising different traditional styles of needlework, but I think that embroidery is, at it’s base, the most intuitive and natural of all the yarn and thread crafts. That first piece showed me that picking up a needle and thread, even with no knowledge of proper stitches, is enough to create a work of beauty.

I wonder what your first project was?

‘Invisible Mending’, by C.K.Williams

Invisible Mending

Three women old as angels,
bent as ancient apple trees,
who, in a storefront window,
with magnifying glasses,
needles fine as hair, and shining
scissors, parted woof from warp
and pruned what would in
human tissue have been sick.

Abrasions, rents and frays,
slits and chars and acid
splashes, filaments that gave
way of their own accord
from the stress of spanning
tiny, trifling gaps, but which
in a wounded psyche
make a murderous maze.

Their hands as hard as horn,
their eyes as keen as steel,
the threads they worked with
must have seemed as thick
as ropes on ships, as cables
on a crane, but still their heads
would lower, their teeth bare
to nip away the raveled ends.

Only sometimes would they
lift their eyes to yours to show
how much lovelier than these twists
of silk and serge the garments
of the mind are, yet how much
more benign their implements
than mind’s procedures
of forgiveness and repair.

And in your loneliness you’d notice
how really very gently they’d take
the fabric to its last, with what
solicitude gather up worn edges
to be bound, with what severe
but kind detachment wield
their amputating shears:
forgiveness, and repair.

by C. K. Williams (1936–2015)

My Inner Crone, Babushka Renata. (Illustration from ‘Rechenka’s Eggs’, a wonderful book by Patricia Polacco)

Three Women Mending

Baba StringThings,

The Art Of Invisible Mending

I’ve been doing a fair bit of mending for friends and family lately, and I am very honoured that they have trusted me with some pretty important textiles! I finally got a chance to try some very fine invisible mending. I thought I would describe the process for you.

Wikipedia describes invisible mending as:

Invisible mending is a sophisticated weaving method consisting in rebuilding the fabric of a garment but also of upholstery after an accident: snag, burn, accidental blade or scissor cut, etc.

Both the warp and weft of the fabric could have been damaged. Invisible mending is the reconstruction of both the warp and weft using a long needle. The mender (most often a woman until the craft started to vanish), picks all the necessary weft warn in the hem, and the warp yearn in the extra fabric on the inside of longitudinal seams.

She will reconstruct the warp and weft to exactly match the original weave. After this is done and the garment has been pressed, the mended part will be undetectable on the outside of the fabric. However, on the reverse side, the restored area will be marked by the long hanging threads where the weaving was done. The hanging threads occur because invisible mending is done without tacking, as it could deform the fabric (unlike darning work).

While mending in general is included in the industrial production process, invisible mending is a service that is still provided by high end dry cleaners. In addition, the results of invisible mending are invisible on both sides of the fabric.

Up until the 70s, mending and invisible mending were common practice. Nowadays, they have become fine crafts associated with tapestry weaving.

Baba’s Story: Learning Needlecrafts

One of my favourite blogs, Crochet Concupiscence,  has a list of questions that people can use to self-interview. This blog is all about crochet, and I do a number of needlecrafts, primarily sewing, weaving, embroidery, spinning and crochet, so my questions/answers are a bit different. Still, it’s a good way to think seriously about how string became the organizing principal of my life. And since I am currently snowed in following a blizzard,  here is section one: learning to craft with fabric, thread and yarn…

 

Baba StringThings,

My Inner Crone, Babushka Renata. (Illustration from ‘Thundercake’, a wonderful book by Patricia Polacco)

My Inner Crone, Babushka Renata. (Illustration from ‘Rechenka’s Eggs’, a wonderful book by Patricia Polacco)

All About Learning The Textile Crafts

Q1. When did you learn needlework?

A1. I came very late to the textile crafts. I was already in my mid 40s before I began and I am  only 50 now. My grandmother had taught me a bit of crochet when I was 8 or so, but she had difficulty teaching a left-handed kid with learning disabilities that included directional confusion. It was frustrating for both of us.

In grade 7 I took a class called crafts (very unwillingly). The teacher was old-fashioned and refused to let me knit ‘backwards’ aka left-handed. The two of us struggled over a 12″ teddy-bear made of horrid blue variegated acrylic for the whole semester, with her smacking my left hand with a knitting needle every time she found me knitting left-handed. To this day I don’t like to knit!

My real start in needlework came via a general  commitment to living more simply, I wanted to learn to sew enough to make myself a simple wardrobe of long dresses and pinafores. Basically I was aiming for the life and wardrobe of the Crones pictured above. (One of those is me!) And now that’s pretty much my life!

Baba StringThing’s December 2016 Round-Up of All Things String.

Will this dreadful year ever end? Thank goodness for the Zen of String.

In Winnipeg, talking (aka complaining, bitching and/or ranting) about the weather is not small talk. It’s an all-important preoccupation. So please bear with me…

I am pretty sure I don’t need to tell you what a colossally anxious year-end 2016 has been. And added to that, my yearly resurgence of feeling crappy has made it even worse. It seems to be dark ALL of the time. Here’s today’s: Dec 26 – Daylight. 8:26 am – 4:33 pm 8 hours, 6 minutes.  But of that there was only 3 hours of sunlight because of cloud.

May Biewe, the Sami Goddess of the Sun, Spring, Fertility and Sanity, who restores the mental health of those who go insane because of the continual darkness of the long winter, bless us all with strength, light and sanity. I think we are going to need it! (My fervent wish for all of us)

I have trouble with my circadian clock anyway, but this month it has been spinning around wildly. The upside? Lots of quiet middle of the night crafting. Here’s a quick round up of December’s projects.

Crochet

Brenda’s Rectilinear Home-spun Scarf: This is a scarf I made for my mom out of my handspun yarn. She watched me use my new tiny lace-weight Turkish spindle to spin and ply the yarn…and then skein, soak, stretch, wind and crochet the yarn into a lovely little scarf for her. Completed 12/2016, Fibre is hand-dyed fair-trade merino from Manos Del Uruguay in the colourway ‘Wildflowers’.

Yarn being spun for Brenda Barrie’s Hand-Spun Crochet Merino Rectilinear Stole. Renata Bursten 12/2016.

Detail. Brenda Barrie’s Hand-Spun Crochet Merino Rectilinear Stole. Renata Bursten 12/2016.

Brenda Barrie’s Hand-Spun Crochet Merino Rectilinear Stole. Renata Bursten 12/2016.

Alpaca Coat Of Many Colours + Matching Scarf: Also, while my mom was here, I made a crochet alpaca coat of many colours and a matching scarf. There was no pattern, it is just an elaboration of a circle vest but I am very happy with it. It’s light but warm and I have been wearing it a lot. It took a bit more than three days to crochet and the beautiful multicoloured yarn that inspired the whole design came from a stitch’n’bitch buddy, Linda L. Thank you Linda! The scarf was made just to use up the last bits of yarn, but it turned out amazingly well. It uses arrow stitch, a cabling stitch I had never tried before, and it’s a new favourite.

Back. Crochet alpaca coat and matching scarf. Renata Bursten 12/2016.

Front. Crochet alpaca coat and matching scarf. Renata Bursten 12/2016.

Crochet alpaca arrow stitch scarf. Renata Bursten 12/2016.

Detail showing wide swing of the coat. Crochet alpaca coat and matching scarf. Renata Bursten 12/2016.

Baba StringThings’s Round-Up of All Things String.

Greetings my fellow String Sistren and Brethren, I have missed you all!

This has been a really busy few weeks for me. I have been working on finishing a commissioned crochet peacock feather blanket, my depression lace is looking better and better, and I have bought a brand new lace weight Turkish spindle and some beautiful fibre. I seem to be spinning all of the time now.

Teaching

My teaching has been chugging along nicely. I have many new crocheters, lots of new kumihimo braiders, and a few people interested in trying embroidery for the first time. Exciting!

Fibre Festival!

Also, there have been some wonderful string events here in Winnipeg. The Manitoba Fibre Festival was amazing as usual; it’s a real gathering of the tribe.