Porcelain and Crochet

Yesterday I was fortunate enough to see a demonstration by a very talented lady called Tania Tuominen who specialises in hand made ceramics in porcelain. Her current range is called “Women of Influence”- a range of contemporary hand built ceramics in Southern Ice porcelain with a fresh look at the art of crochet. Tania uses crochet doilies to imprint the porcelain and most of the doilies were made by her Finnish grandmothers over 30-50 years ago. She has named the pieces after the women in her family who have most influenced her creative life and they all have interesting Finnish names such as Maija Liisa and Iida Vappu. A short narrative of four of these women is included with each tea light or vase Tania sells, so the customer can appreciate and share in the sentimentality of the work. I fell in love with a pretty medium sized tea light which is big enough to also be used as a little bowl for sweets, potpourri etc.  Isn’t it pretty ....

Here it is with a lit candle inside

I love how the glow from within shows the pattern so beautifully.

Tania’s whole range was awesome –

 I would have loved the lamp but it was a little out of my range.

My crochet (and a little bit of knitting) this week has been a bit of this and a bit of that – wasn't motivated to work on my baby blankets and just needed to fiddle.  I have fallen in love with the flowers – don’t know what I’ll end up using them for but they’re such fun things to make. The green and white thing on the left is a coaster which is part of a set featured in Simply Crochet - totally not worth the effort so I won't be making the placemat and serviette ring !!

If you're interested in Tunisian crochet, Bev from One Yarn After Another is having a crochet-a-long to learn the mitered square stitch. Bev has had a lovely baby's blanket pattern using this stitch published in the February 2013 issue of Crochet World. I'm sure she'd welcome anyone wanting to join in.

Hope you enjoy the rest of the week.

xoxox