Woven wall hangings: no such thing as a new idea...

Woolly wall hangings are a quick and popular way of making a piece of wall art (instant gratification? I'm there...). Basically, take a piece of wood (twig/dowelling, straight/curved, rough/smooth, doesn't matter), then loop doubled lengths of yarn around it, leaving the lengths to hang down. If your yarn is chunky and/or has an interesting texture, you can leave it at that. If not, or you want to take a little more time, you can weave more yarn in and out of the vertical lengths.

I'd ben toying with the idea of making something along these lines for a while, but (so many ideas, so little time) hadn't quite got round to it. And then I visited Malta, went to Valletta's National Museum of Archaeology, and saw this bang-up-to-date piece, which actually dates from the Bronze Age (2400-800BC).

Back then, of course, this wooden frame was used to weave cloth, to make clothes and use for trade, not to decorate the wall. But seeing this, so similar to something we consider a new craft idea made me stop and think by the display.

And if you're wondering who said 'no such thing as a new idea', it was Mark Twain:

'There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope. We give them a turn and they make new and curious combinations. We keep on turning and making new combinations indefinitely; but they are the same old pieces of colored glass that have been in use through all the ages.'