In 2025, I’ll manage to write an article for the March issue of Handwerken zonder Grenzen. An article in the women’s magazine Margriet would also be great. I sent an email, and if they had any thoughts, I’d be notified, the reply said. After waiting a month and still no email, I’ll email Libelle. Again, the same response from the DPG Group, which owns both magazines. Then, on August 27th, I received an email asking if I wanted to participate in The Winter Fair with Margriet and Libelle. That was fantastic news. They asked me to give six one-hour workshops to 12 women every hour, six groups a day. That’s 72 ladies per day The workshops had to be free.
That’s a lot, BUT a fun and exciting challenge. It meant making lots of needle-binding needles and some projects for the fair. On Thursday, November 21st, I had my stall and workshop spaces ready.
The festivities kicked off on Friday, November 22nd. I received the participant lists at 9:00 AM, listing the names of the six groups, totaling 72 women a day I received these lists from Rika van Vemde,.She’s also very friendly and attentive. It was so much fun teaching the workshops. I taught them the Oslo stitch, and the ladies often created their own stitches. This resulted in a beautiful chain stitch or other lovely creations. We had a blast, the ladies and I; in the end, there were 514 ladies in one week 🙂 After a few days I let those odds and ends and other creative stitches and mishaps go through my head and I made a new video called:
Basis naaldbinden. and I put it on my YouTube channel happy needlebinding.
The video is very easy to follow even if the video is in Dutch
I’m happy with the little things that inspired me to create a “new” stitch I’ve named it :
Nalbinding Bert’s Behind Stitch.
(There are 5,000 stitches to choose from in needle binding.) My new stitch is a large one and very easy to needle bind, even easier than the Oslo Stitch.
The video is on my YouTube channel, happy needlebinding.
I haven’t made a project with this stitch yet, but here’s a picture.
I made a beret 🙂
You can also wear the beret like this.
Or like this.
Another new stitch emerged during the evaluation of the 514 workshops where the women learned the Oslo stitch. I named it the skip stitch, which is created by skipping the thumb loop of the Oslo stitch. The skip stitch is wider than the Oslo stitch. I’ve uploaded my new video about the skip stitch to my YouTube channel, happy needlebinding.
Here are some more examples of the skip stitch.
The top row of stitches is the Oslo stitch.
The bottom row is the skip stitch.
A few more skip stitch projects (I still need to finish them).
A children’s hat in the making.
