Understandably, my head's been a little distracted these past few days, and jumping from one thought to another, I found myself digging out my lace bobbins yesterday, and going through old photos.

On occasion I've mentioned that I've made lace, and it's always been my intention to sit down and talk about it, or more specifically, talk about the bobbins.

hand-painted commemorative bobbins from my collection

Getting them all out and looking through them yesterday was wonderful. I've counted them all, and I've 152 spangled (i.e. with their beads and ready to use) and a further 22 ish waiting for spangling. That might sound like a lot, but if you want to make any lace with any detail then it really isn't many at all.

Lace bobbins are rather special objects in and of themselves. Mine are all hand-made, and the art of wood turning real comes into itself with these fine, detailed tools. I have so many usual pieces (of course!) but I don't think I got them out yesterday to look at those, I got them out to look at the commemorative bobbins.

Commemorative bobbins are a big part of the bobbin collection. There's way too much history to them and I'll recommend the book 'The Romance of the Lace Pillow' by Thomas Wright for anyone wanting to look further into it. Bobbins would be hand carved or hand painted, or their spangles would have special beads to denote anniversaries or other occasions. They're not only beautiful pieces of craftsmanship, they're also personal tokens, imbeud with memories.

In my collection I've a number of bobbins I'd had hand-painted by Sallie Reason, an artist who sadly passed away a few years ago. I briefly met her once, at a Lace Makers fair at the NEC, but we communicated by letter a lot, as she painted my many requests. Her work was beautiful, and the detail at such fine scale was amazing. I've never known who to get in touch with since she passed away, and I've a mental list of all the memories I'd like painted should I ever find another artist.

The gloss finish made these very hard to photograph, but I hope you can see some of the details!

"thank you for being there", "forever in my thoughts"

These were the bobbins I wanted to touch when I went looking through them all.

I had these two bobbins commissioned when I lost my cat Twiggy in 2001. She wasn't my first cat, but she was the cat that I've shared more of my life with than any other. She saw me through some of the very worst periods of my life, too.

After going through all my bobbins, I went through all my old photographs. Like any black cat, Twiggy was notoriously hard to photograph.

She came from a rescue centre in Hadleigh, Southend. As every other cat came to the front of their pen to meow for attention, she sat at the back of hers, watching. I didn't see her at first, my then boyfriend did, but I didn't need any persuading that I'd found my cat as soon as I saw her.

She was docile in nature, lap and cuddle friendly, and she went pretty much everywhere with me. She lived with me in at least 5 different homes, and was always by my side as I lived through studying, travelling, and survived emotional abuse, domestic violence and an attempted rape. She saw me go from leaving home to becoming a teacher. And just as I was coming out the other side of it all, I lost her to lymphatic cancer.

I'd never felt so alone. But I knew she must have been ill for some time without my knowing, and had stayed with me as long as she could, until I was better able to cope on my own.

I cried myself to sleep the other night, thinking about her. I wanted to feel the warmth of fond memories but found myself heartbroken as my memories were not as clear as I'd hoped. This is what having a nervous breakdown or two does for you. My memory has never been all that great since the first major breakdown and the sadness at having lost the good memories as well as the bad is almost too much. So I went looking for the memories, and this is where I am now. They're not all with me yet, and I don't know how much I will be able to recover, but it'll be worth all the tears.

We're planning on decorating the stairwell wall in the bus with photos, printed and wall-papered on, and this special lady will be up there with all our other memories. And this couldn't make me happier. After spending time yesterday going through all of these photos, I woke feeling a little lighter today. The relief of not having lost her for good.

This hasn't been the easiest of blog posts to write, and I'm sorry if I've made you cry. Crying is a release, it's good. And as much as I try not to look back in life, sometimes we have to, to remember the good parts amongst the bad.

I'm sure by now many of you will be familiar with Karie Westermann's fascinating Kickstarter project, This Thing of Paper. Before the blog tour to support the project even started, the kickstarter was fully funded and the amount pledged continues to climb, and that's testament to the amazing support of knitters for this intriguing project. The fundraiser is open for two more weeks, finishing June 22nd, and every penny raised will be appreciated and put to very good use in bringing this book to print.

Karie's project will be a beautiful book of knitting patterns inspired by the age of Gutenberg.

Text and textiles are inexplicably linked. They both tell stories, fact or fiction, and it only seems fitting then that Karie should bring these subjects together again in this way. The knitting patterns will be accompanied by essays, and the book will be divided into 3 main areas:

Story 1: Manuscript. The story of handmade manuscripts and the people who worked on making them. This story features one garment and two accessories.

Story 2: Invention. The story of the period in which Johannes Gutenberg transformed book production. This story features one garment and three accessories.

Story 3: Printed. The story of when printed matter became more commonplace and helped spread information across Europe. This story features one garment and two accessories.

It goes without saying that I'm curious about the Hat projects that will be part of the 10 patterns! Naturally Karie wants to keep details under wraps, so as to not spoil the big reveal upon publication. She was though happy to talk about one of the Hats in the collection (there will be two) and her inspiration behind it.

“This Hat is part of a Hat & glove set inspired by type setting. I’m playing around with the idea of a pattern scaled in different ways across the Hat & the gloves. Construction-wise, it will be worked from the brim up.”

Stitches as words, as characters. Mixing and matching them to create different expressions, different pieces of code, each combination resulting in a different outcome. Something that's always fascinated me from a design perspective is how changing one thing, one simple component of a design can result in an entirely different new design. By switching the direction of a twisted stitch, or it's occurrence, you change the narrative. I'm absolutely fascinated to see what Karie does with this Hat design!

As we talked, Karie explained a little about her design process. She tells me she works heavily on paper, starting with the story and concept before any swatching occurs. This is rather different to my process, whereby yes, I'll have a concept, usually structural, but I'll generally work on the needles and let the story develop organically, and it got me thinking again about not only how we tell our stories as designers/artists/writers/creators, but the value in knowing and understanding our different voices. Karie's voice is strong in this project; the concept is undoubtedly hers.

This Thing of Paper is due to be published in spring 2017, and it will be an interesting journey to watch. I do hope Karie keeps us all updated through her blog as she explores bringing this book together and working through the many challenges a project like this will present! In the meantime, the next stop on the tour is Tom of Holland. You can catch the full list of blog tour participants here, and it's a wonderful collection of different voices, each offering their own perspective into the project - very much worth a read.

Thoughts on cats and bobbins

This Thing of Paper

The Button Museum

Light reading

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