Tuesday 6 January 2009

Sidetracked

I dearly love tatting and prefer it to any other needlecraft/general craft that I have tried over the years (and there have been many!!!) but I really love trying new things and my new diversion is temari. I have found some really great sites online

-TemariKai
-temari.com
-TemariMath

to name just a few but would really love to "see" the Japanese temari books (the ones written in Japanese). Unfortunately, we are not in a position for me to spend money on a whim, but I would really like one of the Japanese books. I will not buy something fairly expensive (with the rate of exchange SO horrible at the moment and added postage from either Japan or the US as there does not seem to be a UK supplier) without having a least seen one first (that is the only disadvantage of online shopping that I have found so far - that particularly with books I like to see what I am buying first!).

Amazingly, according to TemariKai there is someone about 20 miles from here [according to the people south of the border - we live in the outerreaches of civilization ;)] who does temari and is possibly prepared to teach/tutor which would be wonderful but I have heard nothing since I emailed TemariKai for them to pass on my details to the lady in question, so maybe she is no longer involved.

To explain my comment above - I live in Aberdeen, which is the 3rd largest city in Scotland (population in 2005 = 202000+) and we can boast the oldest medical school (and fifth oldest university) in the English-speaking world, but for some reason on the UK national news and weather reports when they talk about the "north" they are meaning northern England or at a push as far as Edinburgh - it seems that the UK ceases to exist from Edinburgh northwards!!! Strangely enough, even though the main source of income for the north-east was traditionally fishing (and thus alot of net-mending), if you mention "tatting" up here nowadays you are met with blank stares, whereas it must have been very common not so long ago.

Has anybody else tried temari before? Please let me know, thanks.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Well, I'll have to check out your latest diversion sometime! I like to keep my mind challenged from time to time. Cute, what you mean when you say "south of the border" my "south of the border" is Mexico! LOL! That must be frustrating to be treated like you're not there "up north".