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.