Something about me
About Me:
I learned to knit and crochet when I was young. My
mother was an excellent seamstress and did custom alterations out of our home. She also drew portraits and painted scenery. My dad, in his spare time, was also an artist who sketched pictures and carved. I remember a tree stump he carved and pencils that he would carve into chains (like a necklace, but it started as a pencil). I was the oldest child and probably pestering my mother all the time. She showed me how to sew on a button, how to do a blind stitch hem, how to knit, and bought me every kind of crafty kit she could afford; rug hooking, embroidery on pre-printed felt, paper dolls, my own little toy sewing machine, paint by number kits, anything to keep me busy. One of her friends stayed with us for a weekend and taught us both how to crochet. I might have been about 10 years old. I was very excited that my granny squares were more “square” than my mother’s were. She bought me a book of doily patterns. It had instructions and diagrams. I was young enough that I thought I
could do anything. I read the instructions and learned how to read the
symbols. The book had a key just like the maps we were learning to read in school. It was the beginning of my obsession. I crocheted my way through Junior High and High School. Picking knitting back up in High School when I decided I needed to make myself a sweater (crochet sweaters were not very cool at the time). When my sister, 15 yrs younger than me, became old enough to play with Barbie dolls, I knitted her some Barbie clothes. When I got married, my mother gave me a box of old pieces of lace, with the story that my grandfather spent time as a young child making lace because he was sickly when he was little. I had not yet learned to tat, so I went to the library and checked out every book I could find on tatting. I learned how to tat by combining the instructions and pictures from different books. I leaned bobbin lace the same way, but as a young bride with limited finances and small children, bobbin lace pinned to my couch cushions was not very practical and had to wait until the future. Knitting is my first love. But crochet and drawing/painting are a close second. I still pick up my
tatting on the occasion that I want a piece of lace for something
special. My goal is to find a way to combine them all into something
wonderful.