Gleipnir, a magical rope

 The rope to bind Fenrir the wolf is complete and now becomes the next piece in my series of charms,the first being 'Sheela-na-Gig', a charm against crazy people. Gleipnir is a binding charm for beasts of all kinds.

more charms to come..........

Happy Christmas to you all!

Gleipnir: a bear's nerves

Nerves look more like white elastic but here I made a furry bear coloured twin stemmed piece.

Now the set is complete and the rope to bind Fenrir is ready to be made.....

Gleipnir: a fly's saliva

'difficult not to be a little disgusted by this one! But then I got to use some super fine stainless steel thread and my favourite off centre beads.

The steel thread is caught into the stitches all along the stem, gathering in the bends and meanders.

(if this is you first sight of this piece please read the previous posts to make sense of it all!)

Gleipnir: a fish's breath

  Embroidering a fish's breath ...........air passing through red gills,bubbles rising.

Gill red thread stitches between each silver bead as it loops around,some grow into gills of their own.

Gleipnir: a cat's footsteps

and so we come to the footsteps of a cat. A silent thing, an invisible thing. Four little shadow paws grew from the stem using chaining buttonhole stitches and they don't make a sound.

Gleipnir: a woman's beard

 The second part of the mythical magical rope requires a woman's beard but how to represent that in needlelace? I wanted elegant linear structures which symbolised their 'ingredients' so with this one I imagined what womens' beards would be like if the beauty business got hold of them! 

  This piece has a looped back chain structure hanging from the main stem and a single glass bead at the very tip. The subtle shades of this deep red cotton gave it some female wisdom......

Gleipnir: the roots of the mountain

 I have been fascinated for a while now by the tale of Gleipnir in Norse mythology. It is a magical rope made to bind the great wolf Fenrir and is made from six extraordinary things:

1.the roots of the mountain

2.a woman's beard

3.a cat's footsteps

4.a fish's breath

5.a fly's saliva

6.a bear's nerves

so I made them in needlelace.....or rather decorative cordonnet work with raised sections along the length. I used cotton covered wire from a cake decorator as the cordonnet and simply covered the lengths with buttonhole stitch. For the first time I used vellum as the backing.

  Here you see the first of the six, the roots of the mountains, made using space dyed threads with french knots scattered along the branching stem.