Bye bye Bernina...

Today was a sad day: I said goodbye to the sewing machine I've had for over half my life. It was a Bernina model from the 50s or 60s, which I inherited when I moved into the flat of some friends. Back then I had been traumatised about using a sewing machine by our domestic science teacher, who regularly made pupils cry. Whatever day of the week we had needlework, I had a migraine that evening!

My then boyfriend, luckily, hadn't been similarly traumatised, knew how to use a machine, and taught me. And until I got my lovely new machine, as a Christmas present from my current partner, everything I've ever sewn was made on my old Bernina. It was quite limited; despite knobs to the contrary, it could only sew forwards in a straight line. It weighed a ton too. But how many things do you own for half your life?

There I was, embroidering in the V&A...

At the weekend I went to the Power of Making exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum. You've got plenty of time to see it: it finishes on January 2 2012.
Guest curator Daniel Charny defines the urge to make things like this: "For many people, making is critical for survival. For others, it is a chosen vocation: a way of thinking, inventing and innovating. And for some it is simply a delight to be able to shape a material and say ‘I made that’. The power of making is that it fulfils each of these human needs and desires."
The last one does it for me: the simple act of creating something that didn't exist before.

Exhibits include a gorilla hand-twisted from wire coat-hangers, a crocheted bear (life size) and a ceramic eye patch - lots of fascinating things to gaze upon...

Ele Carpenter was hosting an Embroidered Digital Commons workshop. She's two-thirds of the way through this project - a year to go! The project's aim is to 'stitch a concise lexicon of/for the digital commons. The term being embroidered, in short phrases, at the V&A was 'vector'. As Ele explains: "The term 'Vector' seems appropriate for an exhibition where the vectors of objects and ideas connect and touch, porting through different sites and zones."
I took over a hoop with the last phrase of the paragraph, which had been written on the fabric by a young boy earlier. He'd only managed to stitch the first two words, so I finished it off for him. Quite a surreal experience, feeling like a museum exhibit myself, as visitors paused to watch us at work. It was a bit of a rush job towards the end...

Nice Iceland

One of the (many, many) wonderful things about Iceland is the attitude to traditional crafts like knitting (ordinary people going about their ordinary everyday business wearing the traditional Icelandic jumper, or lopapeysa), and sewing: check this pic of a woman embroidering on the 5,000-kronur note

I also saw a couple of examples of yarn art in Reykjavik (and if anyone speaks Icelandic or knows what they mean, I'd be grateful for a translation/explanation)



If you fancy knitting your own lopapeysa, you can find free patterns at the Nordic Store. And if you're off to Iceland, one of the best places to buy one is the Handknitting Association of Iceland, with a shop in the street Skólavörðustígur in Reykjavik ("scowl-a-fore-thust-ee-goor"). There are lots of other funky shops selling handmade stuff on this street, and in Laugavegur round the corner