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This doily from my great aunt’s collection is a beautiful crocheted doily. I love all the picots! Having done some crochet some years ago, I’m pretty amazed that someone would persist with that many picots! That’s all I have to say about this one, but it is pretty! The second of the doilies from my great aunt is this needlelace doily. It is in excellent condition, so much so that I wonder if it is not actually very old. It measures 14cm (5.5 inches) in diameter, so it isn’t very large. The thread is quite thick, so the appearance it quite heavy, rather than delicate. It is probably a particular type of needlelace, but as I am not very au fait with these things, to me it is just needlelace! Regardless of its name, it is a type of buttonhole stitch, where there is a repetition of two tight buttonholes (creating the solid section), then a longer buttonhole (which creates the open section). In the next row, the two tight buttonholes are worked onto the loop of the long buttonhole. This doily was unlike anything I’d ever seen before. It is beautifully worked, obviously by a skilled needleworker. If anyone can identify the style of lace (if is has a proper name) or the buttonhole filling stitch, I’d be really interested to hear! Some time back I told you of the day we spent with my great aunt going through her things in an effort to help her downsize. She was very happy for us to take anything that we wanted, as she’d rather things go to family who will treasure them, than just be dumped. I got quite a few doilies that day, and while I’m away on my cruise, I’ll share some of them with you. (These posts are written in advance.) The first one I wanted to show you was the one that really caught my eye. It is a filet lace doily. The way it is made is that firstly, the base of knotted filet is created, and then the embroidery worked onto it. I had seen this embroidery before in my copy of Therese de Dillmont’s “The Completely Encyclopedia of Needlework”, but I had never seen any in real life. I was really pleased to find this doily in amongst my great aunt’s things. While she has not been a needlewoman herself, she said that many of the doilies came from her mother (probably given to her mother as gifts), and some would have been made by my great great aunts. A lovely piece of history to take care of. If you’re interested in trying some filet lace, Therese de Dillmont’s “The Completely Encyclopedia of Needlework” has instructions you could use. My copy of the book is a reproduction copy, but because the book is so old and therefore out of copyright, you could possibly find it digitally on the internet. An iconic Sydney landmark for you all. 🙂
Bye! Here’s the view from the ship as we wait to sail.
I am unlikely to have any internet access while away, so I’ve set up a few posts to automatically post while I am away. Lots of pretty needlework to look at. When I get back hopefully I’ll be able to regale you with all sorts of wonderful stories. Bye! No, I haven’t fallen off the face of the earth! I’ve been busily working away writing instructions for kits and putting all the elements together to make the kits for the cruise. Making sure I have *everything* is really important, because there won’t be any needlework shops I can just pop down to when I’m on a ship! And then there’s not just the class stuff that I need, but my personal travel requirements. I think it would be good to have some clothes packed for me to wear, for example! In my busyness, I am not sure if I will get to preparing any blog posts before I go, for automatic posting while I am away. There may be a bit of dead silence from me for a period. I apologise if that happens! I leave on Sunday, and plan to have an excellent time. Of the 10 days, I’ll be teaching for four, and the rest is my time to do what I like with! 🙂 In short, I will be out of the office from 10th-19th February. I will not be able to attend to any orders or enquiries during that time. I apologise for the inconvenience, and will attend to them on my return. Thanks for your patience. Much of last week was spent editing a friend’s non-fiction book. It was an enjoyable experience, and apart from just enjoying the editing, the book itself was a good read. I hope it does very well when it is published. I’ve never formally done that sort of work before. While I have edited my own books – for me it is a continual process as the book is written – I haven’t done it for someone else before. I did the lowest level of English for my final years of school because I just wasn’t interested in dissecting novels and poems. My twin sister and I were both *strongly* encouraged to do a higher level of English, but we both chose to do the lower level and focus on other things. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love reading and *always* have, but I didn’t want to formally study English. I therefore find it amusing that someone like me has ended up doing so much with words! Anyway, I posted the manuscript back to the author yesterday. Hopefully she will receive it today and find my suggested changes to be helpful. She had asked me to do a structural edit only, and was planning to give the book to someone else to do a copy edit. Because of my inexperience with these things though, I found that I couldn’t separate out the two jobs, and ended up doing both. Oh well! If I had hated it, maybe this would be a problem, however, I really enjoyed it so I am not worried! This week I will be getting all the kits ready for my classes on the cruise next week. It will be a lot of process work. Not my favourite thing to do, but a very necessary job! My girls started back at school last week. The Reader is thrilled to be back with her friends. She’s really happy with her classes and teachers. I think it might be another wonderful year for her again, hopefully to rival last year! She’s no longer the youngest person at the school, though possibly she’s still the shortest. 🙂 At The Gymnast’s school they go back into the same classes as last year for the first few days or week. Hopefully she will be put into her new class today, finally finding out who her teacher will be this year, and which of her friends are in her class this year. I was really hoping this would all be settled before I went on the cruise, and thankfully, it looks like it will be. There’s lots that’s been happening here at Vetty Creations – just not much that’s interesting to write about! I’ve done no embroidery in the past week, though I have the beginnings of an embroidery sitting in a hoop near me as I type, just begging me to work on it. I think it will come with me on the cruise. It seems like just the sort of thing that I could enjoy working on in the evenings. What fun! Teaching Kids to be Business Savvy, Sydney Morning Herald As someone who has created my own business, I found the above article very interesting. I never planned to start my own business when I left school. I imagined I’d be working for someone else, and for a time, I was. However, when I was at uni studying graphic design, one of the subjects I hated the most (only because it made me THINK!) was creative problem solving. That subject is the one I have gotten the most out of in the long term. Teaching children to think creatively is a valuable, valuable thing. So much about school is simply learning to conform, so this would really be counter-cultural for many school environments. If we teach kids to think creatively to solve problems, then it will make our world a better place in the long term. If we teach them to conform, there is little chance of that happening, except for those who are truly “out of the box” thinkers. I think we need to give kids (and ourselves!) permission to ask questions such as, “what if…?” and, “what would happen if…?” and then to explore the answers.
Occasionally I ask a “what if?” question on my personal Facebook page (for friends only). There was one along the lines of, “what if there were no more aeroplanes and no more plane travel?” Another one was, “what would happen if we, the people, halved (or even more) our spending?” The response I got was quite interesting. Some of the responses were quite vitriolic (and these people are my friends – not just FB friends!) and others just pointed out the bad consequences of it. I think very few actually engaged with the idea of what good could come from such a thing happening. On the whole, I don’t think people like change! However, I really think we have to be free to ask “what if?” questions. Imagine yourself sitting with your embroidery. You’re stuck and not sure what you should do next. Ask yourself a “what if?” question and allow yourself to explore ALL the possible answers. It may just be that one that you’d never thought of before is so far better than anything you’d ever previously considered. I am very grateful for my education in creative problem solving. Without it, I doubt that I would be doing what I do. Uni really taught me to push harder, and look for better solutions. It taught me that while doing the same old same old is easier, working hard to find a new solution can be better. I wouldn’t be able to write the books I do without thinking this way. I never would have the aim to make my books the best books I can make them. While I hated that subject in Creative Problem Solving at uni, I’m so very grateful that I had to do it! Thinking longer term than the cruise I’ll be going on in a few weeks, we like to travel light. There’s no need for me to travel light on the cruise, though of course I won’t be taking ridiculous amounts of stuff! I WAS going to say “…I won’t be going overboard” but that would be rather inappropriate seeing I’m talking about a cruise… 😉 When we travel internationally for our holidays we like to travel with hand luggage only. We have done it before for several week holidays in Europe, admittedly during summer, and it works very well. We carefully choose lightweight clothing that washes easily and dries quickly. This means we don’t have to take very much. In booking our flights for this next trip, I have checked the hand luggage limits of all the airlines we’re going to use. Some of the airlines we’ll be using allow a maximum weight of only 5kg (about 11 lb)! Ooohhh, that’s not much! Desperate times call for desperate measures. In the past, we’ve taken lightweight wheelie bags. When you have a bag with wheels and the armature required to support wheeling a bag, it adds quite a lot of weight. For my domestic flights, some years ago I made a backpack to fit the size requirements of hand luggage on Australia’s airlines. It is lightweight, strong and has worked well for me. I haven’t felt that not having a wheelie bag has been a problem when I use it. It isn’t as large as I would need or could have for international travel though. In the past my husband has not wanted to use a bag without wheels. However, this trip he has asked me to make him a backpack. So while I’m at it, I’ll make an international size one for each of us. We’ll immediately lose about 2.5kg of weight by not taking bags with wheels. As the hand luggage weight limit that we’re used to is 7kg, taking 2.5kg off that already brings us under the 5kg limit. Sweet! So what fabric can you use for such purposes? The fabric I used for my domestic bag is just some stuff that I bought at my local fabric shop. It is somewhat water-resistant, and strong. But I’m not going to use it for these new bags. For the new ones, I’m planning to use dyneema for the girls’ bags, and ballistic nylon for our bags. Dyneema is extremely lightweight, has a waterproof coating, and is VERY strong. I’ve ordered some from a hiking website in the US. Because it is so lightweight, it will mean the girls have to carry even less bag weight. And as they’re not adults, we don’t want to weigh them down too much! The downside of dyneema is that it is floppy and the bag will have no structure. But given that the girls won’t actually have a heap of stuff to carry, we figure it should work ok. I estimate that the weight of the girls’ bags will be about 400 grams (about 14 oz). Ballistic nylon, which we’re using for our bags, is an extremely strong, water-resistant (when coated, as ours will be), durable fabric that I believe was first developed for bullet-proof vests. It is heavier than the dyneema, but we’re going to use it for our bags in case we ever need to check one in. A dyneema bag would not hold up to the rigours of being thrown around by baggage handlers and chucked in a plane hold. A ballistic nylon bag will. And, happily, it will hold its shape much better than the dyneema will. I’ve ordered the ballistic nylon from another supplier in the US, one that does outdoor supplies. I estimate the weight of our bags will be about 800 grams (28 oz or 1 3/4 lb). Hopefully once I’ve come home from my cruise, the fabrics will be waiting here for me to make our new bags. While these fabrics are expensive, because they are such highly specialised fabrics, making the bags will be much cheaper than purchasing something that fits our requirements! We can definitely make a 5kg luggage limit work – for me, this is just another problem solving exercise, and one that can be done! In about 2 weeks’ time, I’ll be off on the cruise on which I will be teaching needlework. I’ll be away from 10th – 19th of February. During this time, I will not be able to attend to any orders for Vetty Creations products. (Just a bit hard to do that from somewhere in the South Pacific…!) I apologise for the inconvenience this may cause, but there isn’t really much I can do about it. Any orders that come in via post, phone or website while I am gone will be attended to on my return. For me to be away from the family for two weeks it is going to be a Herculean task for my mother and mother-in-law to keep my girls’ lives functioning as normal. Because my husband will still be working full time, he can’t be at work and getting the girls to their activities at the same time. I am very grateful to my mums for doing this for me. I’m going to have to write out a schedule of all the after school activities so that all are covered, and all children get to where they are supposed to be! At least The Gymnast only ever goes to the one place, so that’s quite easy, really! The Reader does all sorts of activities as her interests are quite wide. At least with it being so close to the beginning of the school year, not all their activities will have started up just yet, so that will make things a little easier. I think I might start making larger meals and putting portions in the freezer for them to use while I am away. That will make it much easier for my husband when he comes home from work each night. School goes back this week, so by Friday, I’ll be home alone again. 🙂 I’ve got lots to organise before I go on the cruise. Apart from getting the kits and instructions ready for my classes, I also have another couple of jobs that need to be complete before I go. I think I might start a to do list! And also, we’re now really planning my next study trip to Europe. Planning a holiday is always so much fun! And no, I’m not telling you where we are going. That’s still a secret. 😉 |
White Threads is the blog of Yvette Stanton, the author, designer, publisher behind Vetty Creations' quality needlework books and embroidery products.
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