Learning my handiwork.

You would think the last thing an eternal tomboy would be interested in learning would be needlework. It doesn’t exactly fit the profile. It’s pretty, dainty, feminine… ruffles. However, what I have come to discover over the years is that it’s not strictly that I enjoy creating things and using tools, but it’s the potentially intricate work that goes along with manipulating them. It is the process that I am drawn to, the verb itself, sometimes more so than the resulting noun.

My latest interest is the history of lace and it’s various methods and uses. In August of last year I was inspired to learn how to crochet lace. The catalyst for this new endeavor was a mixture of some family lace that my mother had stowed away in her closet as well as a seller on Etsy, MonicaJ who crochets rocks.

Yes. Rocks. Gorgeous weathered stones wrapped in hand crocheted lace, each one a unique piece. The practice may or may not stem from the tradition of covering buttons, but regardless, it’s beautiful intricate work and it, as well as my family lace, became my muse.

As a young child, I remember my Grandmother sitting me down in the dim light of her reading lamp and teaching me how to crochet. Over her lifetime she had crocheted who knows how many afghans, and all I managed to learn was a chain. Last August, I was determined to teach myself how to crochet. I purchased a few books and using random yarn from my stash, I slowly made my way through a portion of the book until I had a grasp on the various stitches and started my first lace piece that, for a number of reasons, went unfinished for nearly a year. Here it is.

It’s one square from a tablecloth pattern and the primary motif is the pineapple. I had only planned on making one square and in addition to running out of thread a number of times, I also discovered that the original thread that I had selected was no longer in production. In fact, the entire line had been discontinued. I finally found a replacement and finished the piece, but discovered that the color was off. Lesson learned.

Monkeys Banging On Keyboards

For years I've had this blog and not once have I attempted to "blog." Correction: I have attempted to make changes and fiddle with things on this interweb contraption multiple times and I always feel as if I have just been introduced to a world of magic. I could have wasted entire days tinkering with fonts, background colors, avatars, and borders, but I never had that kind of patience. The experiences usually only lasted a number of minutes before I was huddled, weeping, and rocking in a corner clutching my teddy bear.

I was told recently by a lacemaker that you don't need patience when you are working on something that you love. We have a working relationship at the moment, this newfangled device and I, but there is no love. This is telling of my desire to know, but perhaps my frustration with computer and internet technologies as communicative media. I've taken design courses many times. I've spent hundreds of hours in Photoshop and Illustrator and spent the past year dabbling in InDesign. I'm not computer illiterate. On the contrary, I would argue that I have an unusual balance of high tech and low tech knowledge. The one thing I never learned was this whole internet-website-html thingy.

I don't like being forced to make decisions when there are a million different options, and if I could only tell this blasted glowing robot what I wanted my blog to look like, then I feel that I would be satisfied. It's worse than Greek to me because in fact I have several Greek friends who are teaching me both useful and inappropriate words and phrases. So, at least I have that. This, on the other hand, is computer speak and although I have a genius for a brother who could probably dream in code and taught me the superficial ins and outs of the PC world, I still know squat about website design. So this, in parting, is the obligatory "I'm going to start earnestly attempting to work on this thing." I was once a monkey swinging in the trees, and now I'm banging on the keyboard. Let's see if I can make some sense of this, just don't expect Shakespeare. Here goes.