Fourteen: Toying With Twine

I was perusing the pantry yesterday, hoping vaguely for lunchtime inspiration, when out of the corner of my eye I saw - twine! It lives next to the poster paints, on one of the few remaining household surfaces that can't readily be reached by scaling the kitchen cupboards or precariously stacking IKEA toy boxes. The paint is banished to a secure location because: This is not a once-in-a-lifetime photo op, but rather the inevitable outcome of every paint encounter. My DD is a remarkable and precocious artist, but she perceives paint as a primarily tactile medium, to be spread and splashed over the widest possible area, rolled in, walked through etc. It is washable, but there's only so much of any pigmented substance that one wants footprinted throughout the house. Consequently, paint is reserved for special occasions outdoors.

And the twine? That gets wound around the legs of every piece of household furniture, creating a remarkable resemblance to one of those laser beam grids that cat burglars are always shimmying through on their way to the treasure. Generally there is also a second layer at doorknob level, which unfortunately happens to coincide with her brother's neck.

But I digress. The point of my interest in twine is that one of the many projects floating about in development is shopping bags. It is high time we gave up plastic (although it does come in handy cleaning up after two giant dogs) and I just can't bring myself to buy grocery bags. Besides, it's the sort of project that cries out for something fun and funky and imaginative (never mind that we've carried on with plastic for an extra year already waiting for just the right funky and imaginative idea to come to fruition). I have a series of handprinted cotton canvas bags in the works, but I'd also like to develop something knitted. What fun it would be to knit a shopping bag in a traditional lace pattern, rather than plain boring mesh. I could just buy cotton yarn, but the idea of lace done in something as humbly utilitarian as twine appeals to me.

Not, however, in this: It made my hands itch, and my wrist still hurts this morning. Seems I'll be making a trip to Canadian Tire this weekend.