la Belle anniversaire pour la belle Jane

Funny how some people get – mention them once in a blog and they so enjoy the glare of the spotlight, however fleeting, that they come to crave on-going publicity.  So, today is Jane’s birthday. The lovely, serene, auburn-haired Jane with the understated elegance and subtle sense of humour that can only be achieved with polished maturity. Here are three old school friends: Jane on the left and Karen on the right, I’m in the middle. We were at La Belle at the Alphen Hotel, and the reason why the food display behind us looks so depleted is because we had just eaten up all the cheesecake and lemon pies.  Jane had many other friends there to celebrate with, but I was the only pleb with a camera.

 
The other really nice thing that happened today was meeting Letitia* for coffee in the afternoon. An erstwhile colleague and belly dancer, she is looking for unusual and amazing tassels with which to embellish her dance ensembles. I have seen photos of Letitia and her dance group doing their stuff, they really are extraordinarily gorgeous and flamboyant.  These are two “tribal” tassels which had to be imported, apparently they are hard to find in South Africa (you don’t say?) so I’m going to see if they can inspire me to come up with something a bit different myself.

I have no cowie shells, but I do have lots of bells, whistles, beads and glitter. It’s my challenge for the evening. Pic soon.

To be continued… 

* Not her real name.

At Jane’s house

Yesterday afternoon I visited Madame Jane Butters of Constantia, in my capacity as Tassel Maker Extraordinaire. The Butters have a new and very large house with many rooms, each of which has a door with a key which is crying out for a decent tassel to add some colour and verve.  Not that the house doesn’t already have verve – it is in fact already a very vervacious house – but a house with tassels becomes a home. A classy one, actually, and I should know, coming from Blackpool as I do.

This orange tassel was our starting point - height and body weight are good but the ribbon and too much bright orange isn’t going to work, so I’m going to tone the new ones down a bit. Creams, neutrals, ivories, a touch of pale rose and sea green here and there. Nothing like playing with beads to keep me happy.

There were some nice things at Jane’s house, notably the happy little pot of purple petunias on the windowsill, the exquisite mosaiced brick doorstop (wonder who made that?), and the view of the Constantia vineyards from the end of the road.  It’s like a piece of heaven. I’ll have to invite myself back one day soon.

To be continued…

 

tassels for Africa

So Anne asked me the other day what I’d done with all my tassels. I went through a huge tassel passion about 8 or 9 years ago, going so far as to run tassel workshops! It seems they had been wrapped in tissue paper and stored in a box in the garage all this time. A bit like bulbs, and hopefully – like bulbs – they will now come back to life.

I’d forgotten how very much I like them, and how very much I liked making them. Seeing the zebra one made from a cotton reel makes me think I could use other waste things in tassels to come.
The others have special wooden shaped heads, which were made by a very handy man called Laurie who used to live next door to my first shop in Rosebank. He had all the right carpentry equipment and used to turn some really beautiful shapes for me.

A woman asked me one day what on earth a tassel was, and when I showed her, she then asked what on earth it would be used for. [No imagination, some people.] Think of them as house jewellery, I said, just for starters.

To be continued…

Back to tassels

I forgot how much I love making tassels until Anne reminded me the other day. Last night I foraged for beads and thread, and it all came back to me! Karen came round and worked on her blanket but we were both quite tired so it was an early-ish night.

To be continued…