The word ‘crafting’ has been included in this prompt. I will be interested to see how you interpret the term.
Prompt 39
What is your favourite crafting technique?
The answer to that is probably: which ever one I am working on at the moment 😀
The very first craft I remember learning to do is french knitting. Remember those toadstool look-a-likes? Mine was wooden with a white ‘stem’ and a red top with white dots on it. If I remember correctly it took absolute ages to get an anywhere near long enough piece to do something with. I must have made egg cosies  and possibly some doll’s stuff with it. No samples survive. Probably just as well.
A couple of years back I saw them in hobbycraft and bought one again. This time a see-through plastic one. Guess what I made …. yep! some more egg cosies. From the images on google I see that the ‘dollies’ come in all shapes and sizes and that far more sophisticated things can be made. So maybe it is worth investigating a bit more.
This was made on a ‘dolly’ with quite a few pegs on it so the strips become larger … I’d like to try that … it is not so difficult to make your own ‘dolly’ either.
Think I learned crochet and knitting next. We had lessons in primary school one hour per week where we learnt to knit and sew and things like that. I made a doll’s dress (it was red) and my tension was soooo tight it could stand up all by itself and was probably more suited to keep the teapot warm. Another fascinating item we made was a crocheted wash mitt. Oh how we hated that lesson!
My mum knitted, crocheted and she sewed some of our clothes too. Her choice of yarn and colour was thankfully more inspiring or I may have dropped these crafts altogether. I learned all sorts stitches from pictures in magazines mainly and later from books too. I still love knitting and prefer to work with lots of colours. I still need to catch up with the more sophisticated techniques in crochet. An image is still lingering in my head that refers to grannies making baby bonnets in pastel colours. This needs updating. Found a marvellous site on Pinterest with things made by Sophie Digard.
Gorgeous and outstanding crochet!
Look at the subtlety of this design
Just love the colours in this
My mum did embroidery too. I remember finding a pile of never finished tablecloths in the cupboard. She was good at starting things, just like me fascinated by the look of it and the pretty colours, but not necessarily in for the finishing as a new piece had attracted her attention. I definitely have my stack of unfinished symphonies but am trying to rescue those by assembling them into one new piece. One of the pieces is a sampler I started when I was 16 or so, working with ladies of our Dutch W.I. version.
Sampler
Mmmmm  … this could turn into a very very very long post if I don’t cut it down to size.
I still love knitting, and crochet needs to now live up to the standard set by the above Sophie Digard, and I still sew all sorts of things but not so much clothes now. Apart from some up-cycling I have ideas for. Thing is that  I fell for patchwork a few years back. Blame Kate Grenville and her book ‘The Idea of Perfection‘!!! In this she describes one of her characters going about designing a patchwork quilt with old found fabrics … I was fascinated and made my first one that summer. From fabrics I had in my cupboard.
Since then I made more and once I found Youtube learnt lots of the techniques and how to-s by just watching and practising. Again though it is the playing with colour that always and forever attracts me. Â I now play with dyes, paints and printing a bit too … making pictures with paper and lots and lots of ways of colouring the stuff.
Fabrics and threads and yarns will be my mainstay though. I especially love sitting and knitting or crocheting, embroidering or sewing bits and pieces by hand while slowly a pretty piece of worked fabric comes into being. The machines help for the big slapdash things that may be used as a background but there is nothing like the slow pace of hand work. Which is what we call it in Dutch. Knitting, embroidery ….all of it it is gathered under the name Handwerken = Working by Hand.
Summer Journal Journey 