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

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!