Divider Pins and Pincushions.

My divider pins outgrew their original pincushion so I made a big red velvet one to fit this rather splendid painted wood bowl.

Divider pins are used to hold back, separate and generally act as anchors on lace making pillows.  I made many of these from beads glued to needles and many wooden ones when I was learning to wood turn.   The rest arrived in mixed bundles of experienced bobbins and an occasional gift.

Today I discovered one was also a needlecase!  I have had it for a while and when I pulled it from the old pin cushion, the top came off, revealing it's secret.

Rose Ground with Seed Beads

A while ago I answered an advert for some seed beads, the photo showed several neat little tubs of assorted beads and I went off to collect them.  I expected those little plastic tubs about 3 to 4 inches across, there would be more than enough for me to play about with.

The lady opened her door to me, looking relieved to see me.  Without wasting any time, she passed a couple of big plastic storage boxes to me, they were heavy!  I questioned that these were the beads I had come for, and not someone else's purchases and she opened the door to show a stack of more craft boxes and bags taking up valuable room in her small hallway.

We brought the car nearer and opened up the boot, so much for the bag I had fetched for the little boxes, I had completely got the sizes wrong.

When she finished passing all the boxes, she asked if I wanted some lace and trim stuff too.  

'Why not?" I said, and filled the other half of the boot with bags and bags full of all sorts of trim, lace, rikrak and appliques.  

"Embroidery threads any use to you?" she asked, and before I could answer, another stuffed bag was passed out of the doorway.

I gave her more than she had asked for but suspect she was more thankful for the space she had recovered than the money.  The door was quickly closed, as if she was fearful that I was going to give it all back!

My husband was bemused to say the least, wondering what on earth I needed with so much stuff. I assured him that I had no idea there was going to be so much.

The haul weighed in at 1.2kg of embroidery thread, of which I took what I wanted and passed the rest on.  The lace etc. weighed in at over 7kg, again, I took what I wanted and passed most on to others.   

The seed beads weighed in at over 18kg!  This kept me busy for a while, sorting and rebagging into more useful, smaller sized amounts.  A school took all the bigger glittery, cute, and child friendly beads and pendants, leaving me to squeeze as many as I could into my craft space.  

I advertised the boxes of mixed up seed beads, (noone has that amount of time on their hands to sort that many out) and found it hilarious that the lady who collected them was as surprised as I had been at the size and weight of what she had also thought were smaller boxes. 

I figured out that this had all come from someone who must have held classes in beaded jewellery, and her neighbour had kindly offered to help rehome it all, not realising how much there was of it. 

 

I am making as much use of it as I can, but a teeny packet of seed beads goes an awful long way (especially when you spill one on the floor!).  

Adding the seed beads in different ways to bobbin lace is fun, I may try to add some into my embroidery and my quilting, basically anything I can use them on will be beaded!

I nearly forgot, there were sequins too...

Video for adding the beads to Rose Ground in Bobbin Lace. 

https://youtu.be/PaQ0SLi8YUI

Seed Beads in Rose Ground

 

Logarithmic Bow - Update 2024

This version is the same pricking with more info.  I have also made a third version to suit  'US Letter' size paper which is shorter than our A4 size and this meant the ends were missing from the pricking.  

There are video tutorials on my YouTube channel for this pattern.

https://www.youtube.com/@LesleysLace/videos

A4 print size

US Letter size print version

Pink Kisses Butterfly

It was March 2020, I received a call from the hospital.  A cancellation had opened up a slot and I could have my new hip months earlier than expected!  Delighted and dreading this event, I appreciated the very short notice as it gave me little chance to get too worked up about such a big operation.  

I was only just taking my new hip's first steps, trying to trust this 'alien' tech to support me along the hospital corridor, that the country, and most of the world went into the first pandemic lockdown and everything changed from that day.  

I embraced lace making videos during my journey back to mobility, making the most of being confined to just our home and small garden.  Physiotherapy, social life and life in general was managed over the phone, or on a little square screen.  The nurses and medical staff were outstanding, my Mum was a treasure and Himself will always be my hero for the support I received.

For all the people who helped me, and for all the people who were stuck inside, I released my Pink Kisses butterfly.  This was an early attempt in creating my own patterns, and also to learn how to make leaf tallies.  

I learned that the Gutermann variegated threads, change colour quickly and this produces a stripy effect in the tallies, this effect varies from maker to maker.  The Gutermann sparkle Sulky thread used for the passives gave a little bit of fun, and I learned to not try to tension this particular thread because it has a slightly elastic property which can slightly ruckle a pattern when released from the pins. 

There are few instructions with this pattern, I was learning as I went along and had no plans to release patterns this early in my Bobbin Lace making journey.  I have a note that says I used 60 pairs of bobbins, but that was before I knew about making sewings so I added all the pairs for all four wings as I worked down the body, leaving a huge pile of bobbins waiting on the opposite side to the first two wings!

If I were to make this again, I would make quite a few changes with what I have learned since.  Digging this pattern out of the files has also been a little trip down memory lane for me, the strange, scary world we had to live in, the new challenges, and for me,  relief from the pain of a worn out hip softened the blow of isolation.

Have fun with Pink Kisses, coming out of its isolation at last!

...and now for something completely different!

Great fun was had this morning playing in the sunshine, finally dealing with a pile of papers which needed to be safely disposed of.  

This pile had been growing since we stopped using the woodburner after many years. A trusty eater of confidential information, broken furniture and a few trees, the woodburner had given us good service and now is relegated to serving as safe storage for batteries.

Also starting a new life is an old hand blender, which was never quite fast enough to make things frothy but was not beyond it's useful years (a qualification which is deemed more valuable now we are racing headlong through the decades at an ever increasing rate).  It has languished at the infamous back hole that is the 'back of the drawer' where potentially useful, but not used, items live. 

Long after being replaced by a shinier, newer model, this old blender is pressed into service once in a blue moon to produce an annual mash up more akin to a children's playgroup than a pensioner's pastime.

Tearing the papers into little bits as we go along saves a long arduous task when it comes to finally processing the papers.  Soaking overnight in a water and a dash of washing up liquid helps to soften the mass and the wzzz wzzz chug of the blender soon reduces the pile of intimate details to a pale grey sludge.  

A microfibre cloth spread out on a bit of gravelled garden is ideal for processing the goodly dollops of sludge. The cloth is twisted and then the water squashed out of it with a block of wood (which escaped the final burnings of the woodburner to enjoy it's singlularly useful second, or maybe third life as a de-wetter for sludge).

The cloth peels back to reveal huge chewing gum like lumps which are left in the sunshine to dry.  Ideal for some form of model crafting if we really wanted to go down that route, but they get crumbled up when dry and disposed of.  

Tub '0' Sludge

Paper stones