We were unexpectedly buzzed by the postman this morning. He did not come up and ring our door buzzer, but rang our buzzer downstairs by the outside door to let us know that he'd left a parcel. It was a book Bill had gotten for me. He thought it was going to arrive on Friday, so it was quite early. No reason to complain about that though!
This book was quite a surprise to me--it is basically a knotting dictionary. I am in love with stitch dictionaries of various sorts--knitting, crochet, embroidery, cross stitch motifs, and now knots. As I looked through it I was thinking that I'd had a very limited idea about what macrame is--there is so much interesting stuff in this book and so many possibilities. There are some things/designs/knots that I would recognize as macrame, based on my own experience of it in the 70s. And when we moved into our cabin in North Pole, Alaska, there was a macrame owl hanging on the enclosed porch. They mention the iconic macrame owl in the introduction, but this book goes well beyond that. It was published in Japan in 2011, which is not surprising because many interesting lace books--covering both tatting and crochet--are published there. It was published in English in 2013.
Japanese publications are great for using diagrams along with text to illustrate things and this book is no exception.
My learning curve is steep with this. The stitch used in tatting is the same as one of the stitches used in here, but the technique is different and the rest is all new to me. I will be sitting with my string and my book and fumbling through a lot of practice knots. I am sure I will have
some many frustrating moments. But there is so much creative potential here that I will get through all that. It's been many years since I learned a new stitching technique, so it should be fun. All of the stitching that I do involves things I have taught myself from books, so it will be good to do that again.
Later on Bill went into one of the local charity shops and found this book, which also looks like fun, but in a linguistic sort of way.
A quick flip through this surprisingly heavy little book indicated that it is a description of a dialect spoken in County Antrim. I love this kind of stuff, so I am looking forward to reading it.
Books--what a great way to start a week!
Happy Monday!
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