Beads and Beading: In the Land of Counterpane

I was playing with beads recently; home, sick in bed.

I felt like the small boy in Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Land of Counterpane.

When I was sick and lay a-bed,

I had two pillows at my head,

And all my toys beside me lay,

To keep me happy all the day.

And sometimes for an hour or so

I watched my leaden soldiers go,

With different uniforms and drills,

Among the bed-clothes, through the hills;

And sometimes sent my ships in fleets

All up and down among the sheets;

Or brought my trees and houses out,

And planted cities all about.

I was the giant great and still

That sits upon the pillow-hill,

And sees before him, dale and plain,

The pleasant land of counterpane.

I have forgotten so many things in my lifetime; most of them completely trivial, some of them probably quite important … but this poem has stuck with me from the days when Little Golden Books reigned supreme.

They were not sophisticated beads; not special or even particularly beautiful, but those cheapie glass and plastic beads that my young-uns used to string into tawdry baubles on rainy Saturday afternoons.

It’s amazing what remains stashed away in my sewing room …

Over a series of sore-and-sorry days, tucked up with comfy pillows, a talking book and a sleepy puppy, I frittered away my convalescence stringing beads and working them into crochet creations.

Cheap and cheerful!
And super-easy to do. It would be a snap to teach crafty-minded kids to whip these up with their busy fingers.

Even as a relative grown-up I find it’s a maddeningly addictive pastime. It would be fun to collect lots of random interesting beads or found objects, shells or seeds even, and work them into stringy, beady bespoke trinkets.

I've been brave enough to wear both of these beady things to work. They seem to go with almost anything!

I still haven't made much of a dent in the big tin of glass beads and pearls. More fodder for those lazy-bed days that come around every so often.







LAZY DAY BEADED NECKLACE:

Ingredients:
Ball of coloured crochet cotton
Crochet hook (whatever gauge you like)
Assorted beads
Wool or tapestry needle.

Method:
Begin by threading your needle straight from the ball, and commence stringing beads. Once you have a good number of beads threaded (say, around 100 or so), make a slip knot about 15cm from the cut end of your thread.

Using the crochet hook, commence making a chain of single-crochet (SC) stitches, and work for about 10-15cm. Slide a bead up the thread until it meets the last crochet stitch that you made. Extend that chain stitch over the bead and draw the thread into the stitch so that the bead is locked in. Work another five SC, then slide the next bead up as before and continue in the same manner until you have the length that you want. Finish your string of beads with 10-15cm SC to match beginning of work.

(I hope that all makes sense!?)

I worked several rows of single crochet stitches into the ends of my necklace and added a jump ring and alligator closure. You could just join the two ends with a slip stitch and a knot if you would just like to keep it simple.

A Baby and a Bear

It feels like it's been weeks since I was here. Well, it is weeks actually. Newborn babies are notorious for just smacking into your life and sending your train careering off down the tracks to Complete Chaosity. Not that it's my baby technically, but it is my baby's baby and so that pretty much counts for the same thing, sans breastfeeding and so, so many sleepless nights. I've had my nanny-hat on a bit here and there, sharing the odd disrupted night rugged up on the sofa, rocking a bundle into slumber, offering moral support. Washing and shopping and processing sink-fulls of dirty dishes ... and sneaking a few minutes here and there to add stitches to my knitting.

x x x Isn't he adorable ... [Baby R on Instagram] x x x

But now that Baby R is a few weeks old and things are starting to settle into some semblance of routine, my mind is returning to those things I have laid aside (and those things that have been forming clouds in the back of my mind). Like playing with the sack-full of Dorset fleece patiently waiting in the Room-of Requirement. Okay, it's not really the Room of Requirement, but I humour myself with this euphemistic reference to our garage. It truly fits everything but the car ...

Fleecy Poll Dorset fleece, smelling of lanolin and sheepy sheep. 

Full of prickles and burrs, barley seeds and dirt.

 

With Watson's poodle wool thrown in for contrast

 Here I must thank the dog for donating some wool. Just a little bit. He didn't like me brushing his ears before going to the groomer (think cleaning the house before the cleaner arrives). He was a handful, and he unwillingly yielded a handful. This was some perverse justice at work, considering all the knitting he has eaten this year.

I was weary from work last night and too tired to think anything but woolly thoughts. My hand turned to carding a job-lot of washed-up fleece. I was listening to Girl With a Pearl Earring [Tracey Chevallier] while plying wisps of wool between the dog's slicker brushes (works a treat). I had not started this process with anything in mind other than the brushing of wool. I'm not quite sure how the bear happened. He started out as possibly a rabbit, but quickly morphed into a very jowly dog. As my audiobook classic concluded it's final chapter, I realised that he had in fact, emerged as a bear. A fat-faced, slightly lopsided bear ... with potential. :)

It's funny how a random process, a beginning made with no end in sight, yields one small and happy thing that is so hugely satisfying. I suppose (in a kind of a way) it's a bit like making a baby. :)

Now that I am a grandmother I have one more person in my life to love truly, madly, deeply (and one more reason to make fun stuff).

Happy making my friends,

Evie 
x x x

Sing a song of Singer

I have been thinking about the life this lovely old Singer must have led. She is a similar vintage to the treadle that belonged to my Grandmother, and though the design detail on the cabinet drawers is different, so many elements appear from memory to be just the same. She (this Singer, this Songbird) is currently residing in my downstairs lounge room, where I catch regular glimpses of her simple yet beautiful form.

Singer 15-30

This is a family heirloom, though not strictly originating from my own family, and therefore I am feeling much-honoured to have been gifted Dame Singer, Queen of the Needle for safekeeping hereafter. She has for so many years resided with Marg, mother of my darling friend Jo, and before that she belonged to great Aunty Mickie, and possibly to Jo's great-grandmother before that.

How well her accoutrements have been kept and preserved; the hand-crafted box with multiple and varied attachments, all still accounted for and intact. The instruction booklet, published in 1896, is, as you would expect, slightly dog-eared and folded within a drawer. There are also numerous vintage boxes and tins filled with bakelite buttons, cards of press-studs and old hooks and eyes.

 

 

It is almost a time-capsule; a little museum all on its own. Aged packets of needles and wooden spools of thread sit all a-jumble in drawers, with scissors and spanner and awl.

I am transported to childhood moments each time I look into the room; watching my Mama's feet plying the treadle, while long small fingers pick and sort the treasures within her black tin button box.

I remember the year that I turned five, receiving a bulky package of dolly dresses for Christmas. Fully eight sets of clothes, complete with petticoats and knickers, bonnets and slips. Each matching set trimmed with narrow lace, some with pin tucks or frills. Pink, yellow, white, blue; miniature florals or delicate filmy fabrics. Such a gift no impish five-year-old ever deserved! Twelve days after Christmas my Mama had a heart attack in her well-tended garden and her treadle moved no more. My strongest memories of her were forged amid the tangle of the sewing-room floor. She was ever-resourceful; a true make-do-and-mend woman. Intensely practical, highly creative and productive. She would whip up a stuffed rag-doll and fashion a cardboard-box cradle while you visited for the day. She would cut thick rounds of white tank-loaf bread and smother them with slabs of yellow butter, and turn you into the wilds of the back garden to dig in the dirt or to run along the stone-lined paths.

Mama's old machine was eventually disposed of, along with many other pedestrian household contents. I think I have missed it ever since. How very blessed I feel to have welcomed Aunty Mickie's old Singer into the heart of my home. I wonder how many children were clothed by the threshing of her treadle; how many seams she seamed, how many rips were mended. Her stitches would have been fine and even; something to behold.

I will have her looked at by a man who knows about the workings of these things, and will anticipate threading her up for stitching again. But for now I am content to rest my eyes upon her ebony skin and happily remember.

x x x

I am sure that the joy of creating was forged during my foundational years. Being fully immersed in imaginative play with scraps of fabric, making rubbishy dolls clothes from the hoard of remnants in the cupboard; playing with bits of lace and braid, ribbon and string. I loved cutting out with those incredibly fun pinking shears, making zig zags all along the edges. Cardboard boxes were made into cubby houses, paper was cut into shapes and stuck all over the place with glue. I was a texta-freak; they were so much more colourful and instantaneous compared to the boring old pencils with broken leads. It's the thing I most value about my childhood; materials supplied, permission granted, encouragement received. Go forth and make. How about you?

Evie

x x x