Carly has long been a lover of learning new crafts. When she was at school, she wanted to go to an evening course to learn how to patchwork, but it was full. Carly wasn’t patient enough to wait for her space by calmly remaining on the waiting list. Oh no. That is just not how Carly is or was back then – over 4 decades ago. But the lacemaking class had spaces. It might have been more helpful to learn touch typing but she signed up for that another time. Useful and sensible but hardly creative. However, making lace really is incredibly slow and tedious and requires a whole load of specialist equipment. This includes a hard board for the base under the ‘lace pillow’, hay under some cotton (for the lacemaking area), pins, cotton thread to make the lace and bobbins. These last items could be either super functional, modern, and easy to ‘throw’ or utterly gorgeous and antique, but they were often wonky. For sure, they were all made from wood and usually decorated with beads to weigh them. However, not only was lacemaking slow and fiddly as a process, but it also needed immense attention to detail. Carly made some lavender bags, several bookmarks and half a Peter Pan collar. Lugging around the lace pillow and stopping the various lace bobbins from getting tangled up meant that Carly only committed to this for a number of years.
When she was studying clinical medicine in London, she found a patchwork class mid-week that had spaces. Whoo hoo. She really excelled at this, but her fellow medical students thought she was just a party pooper. Every Wednesday, after the statutory sports events all afternoon, the whole year group would meet at the Union Bar and get totally rat-arsed. Thursday morning lectures were almost always a write-off. Only Carly and a few students weren’t hung over. And Carly would be able to use her wonderful patchwork pencil case but there would be nobody there to admire it. Only the other ‘uncool’ students, who refused to get blind drunk the night before, were in attendance or at least in a fit state to learn. However, Carly does love a drink. She did then and she does now. However, back then the Union Bar was opaque because of all the cigarette smoke and Carly could never abide this.
Carly isn’t quite sure when she learnt to weave. But really… Just how complicated can it be to have strings going upwards and downwards (warp) and then having to put some other threads leftwards and rightwards (weft)? Certainly, much less complicated than knitting and crocheting, that she’d been doing since she was a child. She had a really tiny loom that could make something not much wider than a braid but was easy to transport about the place. Not as easy as a backstrap loom but that needed to be tied around a tree or pillar – not always readily available in the NHS! Being able to weave, reduced the tedium of being with women in labour whilst they took hours to ‘dilate’. This was during her obstetrics attachment as a medical student in Newham General Hospital in the 1980s. She made a memorable pair of braces where she managed to work out how to put letters into the weave. They said “Ades’ Braces” for the left hand one and “by Fertleperson” on the right hand one! They were black and white with red leather straps with buttonholes to attach to her then boyfriend’s trousers. All the midwives told her she couldn’t really give them to him as a present as they would smell of hospital. But some soap would sort that all out! She does wonder where they are now. And, anyway, no one really wears braces much anymore. She does still have some of the plain braid with her to fix all her dangly earrings on and it is still doing a good job all these years on!
Carly does love these craft holidays and for many years she went on knitting holidays. To chateaus, gites and hotels. She went on workshops and to retreats all over Europe and even to India. When Carly was much younger, she went on several weaving holidays to deepest, darkest west Wales. She had quite a lot of weeks of holiday once she was working as a junior doctor. Far more than her then lawyer husband, Ades. So off she went with her equally craft-obsessed friend Jordane to stay with a family who offered residential holidays where you could weave at all hours in their adjacent barn. Keith was a committed weaver and ran holidays to supplement his income from his chosen craft.
Jordane and Carly were fairly early on in their medical careers. They had worked together at Norman Cross hospital for their very first job when they qualified. They were called ‘house-officers’ then. They are both sure that if the surgeons had chosen, they would have been ‘house-men’ but what on earth could Jordane and Carly do about their gender? At that time there were no terms in common use like non-binary, genderfluid, cisgender, agender, genderqueer, gender nonconforming, pangender, two-spirit, third gender and transgender. There probably should be an etcetera at the end of this list.
They both worked so hard and laughed and giggled the whole time. And then they went away to weave. The most memorable thing about these holidays was that Keith exclusively wove in orange and brown. It is hardly surprising that he needed to supplement his income by having a couple of renegade doctors come to stay!
When Carly went to India for her sabbatical before the pandemic, she made a list of 133 crafts to tackle. This number is the product of her two favourite prime numbers, seven and 19. In her blog she displayed all 133 in alphabetical reverse order as she likes to support the underdog. A and B get far too much recognition. She knew someone at medical school who changed his name to be the first on the list. Originally his name was Omar Sheik, and he changed it to Omar Al-Sheik, but he didn’t foresee a student coming in, partway through the course, called Simone Alacrity. “Ha”, thought Carly and her friends. Serves him right for being so conniving.
Back to her list of 133 crafts;
- Yoga
- Yarn bombing
- Woodwork
- Window art
- Weaving
Weaving was number five. Carly isn’t really sure why Yoga counts as a craft. Really it is a physical activity but maybe she had in mind she would introduce some new poses like ‘The Knitting Pose’ where you twist your arms around each other and ‘The Weaving Pose’ where you interweave your fingers! She did complete the other four. She yarn bombed a tree in Pushkar, Rajasthan and recently returned after a five-year absence to see some of it still there. She was delighted her yarn decoration had survived – even more so as the materials were natural – for sure acrylic would still be there but real craftspeople like Carly prefer natural fibres. She also did some woodwork although it was pretty rudimentary as she didn’t really have the requisite tools. She also spent some time doing window art using some special pens but had to leave them on windows where she made them. At least someone is enjoying them – well so she hopes! She did, however, seriously consider how she was going to weave in India.
She knew that there would be lots of home looms of all sizes as India is a country of sumptuous weaving, but their looms would not be available if they were mid-way through a project, which they usually were. And she didn’t stay that long in any place where they had these large looms. In the end, she had an idea that she wanted to do a small spiral weaving project using the string she had brought with her. She had her sabbatical theme of purple and spirals and wanted to make a hanging incorporating this. So, she used a cardboard shoe box to make the loom! Once she had secured the purple warp on a stick just inside the box, she tied down the bottom end and used a tapestry needle to thread magenta coloured string in and out to make a spiral. And then it was easy to make. She finishes it off with her signature tassels at the bottom.
Sometimes, Carly wove the fabric for other projects. She found a cool weaving establishment in Hackney, London where the very kind owner, Filomena, had already set up and threaded the warp on the loom and all Carly needed to do was load thread onto the bobbin and with a speedy throwing motion, chuck, yes literally chuck, this from side to side whilst operating the pedals to raise alternate warp threads before whacking back the heddle between each throw to bed down the weft. Carly felt she might be in a weaving sweatshop, but she was paying to do it and not being taken for a ride as many young people in factories are in less affluent countries.
And then joy of joys. Filomena turned up as a contestant in another one of Carly’s beloved TV reality series, ‘Interior Design Masters’. This one was still on the BBC unlike GBBO (annoyingly now on channel 4 with loads of annoying repetitive adverts). In this series, the contestants are tasked with remodelling a room or a larger space either individually or in teams. Filomena wore the most bizarre of outfits, including a clown ensemble, often looking like an overgrown toddler. She stayed in the competition longer because she was truthful, whilst her fellow contestant wasn’t. Liars will usually get their comeuppance. Especially when caught on camera. Carly smiles ruefully. Unfortunately, however, Filomena didn’t win.
Carly will continue to learn new crafts as it is part of her very being. That is how she is, and this is great for her to stave off dementia!
