Back to The Rug

I actually spent most of the day still playing with my new TX but you don’t want to know about that, do you? Whatsa matter you — had enough high-tech mumbo-jumbo? OK, so I did do a little stitching on my hooked rug. I swear it almost takes as much time to do the binding as it did to hook the darn thing! I’ve finally finished the whipping with yarn around the outside and now I’m working on attaching the binding by hand over the hem. This last step gives a nice completed and neat edge underneath the rug. Since this rug is going on the wall with nail strips, it’s got to be good and strong, especially on the top edge. I had dyed the cotton twill tape with Procion MX dyes to (sort-of) match the green of the border. It was so long ago that I think it was before I decided to put the sky colour (blackish-brownish-bluish) on the very edge instead of the green. Not that it shows at all. Anyway here’s what my efforts looked like:

Notice my Japanese thimble. It’s plastic and leather and I like it much better than a metal one. The needle doesn’t slip as easily and my finger doesn’t get so hot and sweaty. I tightened this one up a little by running another thread through the holes where it’s tied and tied it tighter still. I have very small fingers! I don’t usually use a thimble unless I have to push hard on the needle. I don’t enjoy poking holes in the tip of my finger. I do find it takes a little while to get used to it every time. I keep wanting to use a different finger instead of the one with the thimble on it. It’s much more comfortable for this type of stitching than trying to do it barehanded however.

Steady Reader Susan (hi, hon’!) left a comment that she’s recently started to do bobbin lace. Of course my other Faithful Commenter, Melanie (hi, Nanamouse!) is a really wiz-bang lacemaker. Too bad you dears couldn’t get together on this, but you live too far away from each other! (You'll have to meet at my house some day.) It really is a lot of fun and I hope you’re enjoying lacemaking, Susan. It’s like weaving but with threads that can change places from warp to weft and back again, eh? They also don’t necessarily have to be perpendicular because you make the loom with the pins as you go along! I love to watch the different areas of cloth in the lace: plain weave (cloth stitch), triaxial/mad weave (half stitch), and leno weave (whole stitch) are merely the beginning. It gets more complicated from there, intriguing enough to keep dedicated people going forever it seems. I’ve enjoyed lacemaking myself in the past but I haven’t done any at all since I lost most of the feeling in my left forefinger 4 years ago. I just found it hard to pick up the bobbins, but I’m probably dexterous enough now that I’ve learned to live with my slight handicap. I was thinking for awhile there I’d have to learn to throw the bobbins palms-up European-style instead of plucking them gently English-style. Didn’t appeal to me much though. Maybe one of these days I’ll get back into it, though nothing too complicated — perhaps a little Torchon. Right now I’ve got enough things on my To-Do list to keep me very busy for several lifetimes.