Threadings

Thank you, Nels, for explaining about Thanksgiving. Clearly there's far more to it than I ever suspected.


After a long wait on a wet chilly station on Friday evening, a late train and a hundred yard sprint across Leeds station, I ended up cosy and warm at the House of the Sunshines. Biri acknowledged my existence and told me to rub her face, and by the morning she was talking to me.

I was staying with the Sunshines so that Lady Sunshine and I could go to The Knitting and Stitching Show in Harrogate on Saturday. If you think that's even less exciting than a late train to Leeds, let me explain. There were

Pictures made up with layer after layer of gauze and finished with unbelievably lifelike embroidered butterflies

Hand-knitted designer clothes

Embroidered, applique and collage pictures on a theme of coal-mining that shone with depth and mystery

the knitted village, complete with houses, church, fire station and engines, the children's playground, and gardens full of flowers and rows of vegetables, and a farm

graduates' final year display pieces

and stall after stall after stall of fleece, yarns, ribbons, felt, beads and buttons, fabrics, lace, thread, and everything you need for jewellery making, marbling, knitting, sewing, millinery, dressmaking, quilting, garlands - anything from a packet of pins to a tapestry for the wall, and I'm sure if you wanted to knit yourself a back garden and a puppy you'd find everything you needed. Lady Sunshine and I arrived about 11.15 and left at 5.30, and only then because it was kicking out time.

All day I was aware of a small figure somewhere around. No, not Biri. I had a feeling that Needle the hedgehog, Needle of the Threadings, Companion to the King, was with me, giving respect for crafstmen and women where it was due and turning up her nose at anything cheap and showy. She looked over my shoulder at the displays by the Embroiderer's Guild and the Royal Schools of Needlework. There were many times when even Needle gasped with admiration, and times when she gently steered me away from the things too difficult or too time consuming for me. I don't have neat paws, but I do like playing with fabrics.

Apart from anything else, it was a day when roly-poly Northern grannies and wild-haired art students mingled with a common purpose.

LOS came to meet us afterwards, and we went to the famous Betty's Tea Rooms. In front of us in the long queue was an American family with three lovely children of different ethnic origins, all beautifully behaved and wonderfully patient. Finally, we walked back to the car past the Christmas lights.

Absolutely lovely. Except that LOS had a few stressy moments regarding a car park, a payment machine and a time limit, but that might keep for another day.