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| Beautifully tied with old buttons |
And still they come! Tea bag strings, in a range of hues and coloured tags that are a reflection of the diversity of my friends and family and the Stirling Street Arts Centre ladies happy to support a bit of creative madness. From Liptons to Twinings, green tea to Earl Grey. Some have quizzes on their tags, some have funny quotes. tea bag tags and strings from Bunbury, Donnybrook, Warnboro, Margaret River and even some carefully collected in Eastern Europe (who strangely all seemed to be named after men!
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| First balls of thread |
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| Lace |
To make thread, you first have to remove all the tags. Enter my mother. Now blind and quite restricted by arthritis, misses her knitting and sewing and is always interested in what I am doing. I had taken my tea bag string scarf for her to 'see' and she wondered if there was someway she could help. I had a shopping bag full of tags in the car. It didn't take long for a crowd to gather to see what we were up too and as mum pulled the tags off I knotted the strings as the ladies swapped craft stories. Ever since, detagging has become a part of mums world and she gets regular deliveries from me!
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| Scarf |
It takes 2 golf ball sized balls of thread to make a small scarf and one to make enough crocheted lace to decorate the neckline of a dress. I have no idea how many. The colours have the same subtlety of variation of the tea itself, from dark browns to cream and a few pink ones from herbal teas and the knots add texture. Use needles and hook that create a loose result - it becomes too hard to work around the knots if you work on small needles. 3-4mm work for me.The scarves are soft to touch, warm to wear... worth the effort.
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| String of flowers |
