vintage loops

I have always loved creating. Always. Throughout my life I have tried (and sometimes worked in) all sorts of creative activities from patchworking to bookbinding to floristry to knitting to sewing to embroidery to millinery to collage to screenprinting to calligraphy to garden design to graphic design to crochet... the list goes on and on! The upshot is, I love making things in a real hands-on way. I should have been a textile designer really. My mum taught me to sew at a very young age and by my teens I was either buying vintage pieces or making my own clothes. I had a very individual approach to dressing then - I didn't own a pair of jeans until my 20s. My grandmothers knitted and crocheted. I learnt a tiny bit of knitting from my mum, but didn't really do anything with it. I made a few scarves about 6 years ago. And then last year the bug bit me... hard!! However, it was crochet I always secretly yearned for. But I just couldn't 'get' it. All those confusing terms and impossible-to-follow diagrams. And then, one day, I found a video on youtube, and like a child, I learnt my first simple granny square.


It was a revelation! And I haven't put my hook down since. I'm still learning, and of course always will. In recent weeks I have sat myself down and tried my hand a vintage doilies. More for the exercise than anything else, but the results are truly beautiful. No, doilies are no longer just for grannies!