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Net benefits
Nov. 21st, 2025 10:44 amI can't remember exactly when I first learnt to net, but I'm pretty sure I was somewhere in my twenties at the time. I bought a craft magazine which had a couple of rather ghastly blue plastic netting needles on the front as a freebie, and there was an article within which explained how to use them. I recall making a string bag; it wasn't nearly as good as the ones I make these days because I didn't know much more than the basic knot, so I had to improvise a bit. Nevertheless it was serviceable, and I'm pretty sure it got lost rather than wearing out.
Fast forward a few years, and for some reason I got the fit to go to Manchester (I must admit I do miss the days when I could just get the fit to go somewhere or other and hop on a train). So I did, and there was this bookshop, and in the window there was a book about filet lace. I had no idea what filet lace was, but I already did bobbin lace, so I was interested. I leafed through the book, and it turned out to be embroidery on net. Well, I could make net... at least, possibly I could still recall how to do it. I bought the book.
It soon became very clear that I couldn't make net suitable for filet work. You need quite a fine gauge, and my awful blue plastic needles were not up to that. At the time it was possible to get filet netting; it was very expensive to buy it by the metre, but I did order a batch of samples from a German company which no longer exists, and I worked on those. After all, I wasn't doing any really large designs.
In 2016 I was ill and very nearly died; to be more precise I had acute bowel ischaemia in two separate places, with a side order of full-body sepsis. By all rights I shouldn't still be here, but I am, albeit with Sibyl the Stoma. It took me a very long time to recover fully, and I didn't do much in the way of crafts during that period other than knitting, which takes very little physical or mental energy. But eventually I decided it was high time to reprise the filet, and, to my great delight, I found that great strides had been made in the manufacture of netting needles over the last few years. Traditional ones are boat-shaped, which is fine if you're making a fishing net or a string bag, but they tend to be too wide to make finer-gauge netting (though I do now have a small bamboo one which might work). These modern ones are steel and have a pair of flanges at each end, set close together, to hold the twine/string/yarn/thread; so you can get the gauge as fine as you need, as long as you have a suitable mesh stick.
There was just one little problem. It had been so long since I'd netted that I'd forgotten how to do it. Websites, in general, were no help; the instructions were either annoyingly vague or just plain wrong. But, eventually, I found this: https://archive.org/details/net-making
This book is great! It isn't just the perfect refresher course; it's so clear that I'd have no hesitation in recommending it to a complete beginner (and indeed I've done just that a few times). Not only that, but it teaches a number of very useful subsidiary techniques, such as how to start from a grommet (highly useful for string bags and the like), how to make bag handles, how to use a headrope (an essential technique if you need to make a flat diagonal-mesh net), and so on. And once I learnt to make a really good string bag, there was no stopping me. I now make them at the rate of one a week for the local food bank, where I volunteer. These things go down a storm, because for one thing we're always short of bags in any case, and for another they're big and very strong. They will easily swallow 10 - 15 kg of tins, bottles, jars, packets, and the like. And because they're jute, they're totally environment-friendly, too.
Today I'm expecting a parcel. It's another 4 kg of jute twine, which will make, very roughly, 37 string bags. So that'll be me sorted till about July, then.
Fast forward a few years, and for some reason I got the fit to go to Manchester (I must admit I do miss the days when I could just get the fit to go somewhere or other and hop on a train). So I did, and there was this bookshop, and in the window there was a book about filet lace. I had no idea what filet lace was, but I already did bobbin lace, so I was interested. I leafed through the book, and it turned out to be embroidery on net. Well, I could make net... at least, possibly I could still recall how to do it. I bought the book.
It soon became very clear that I couldn't make net suitable for filet work. You need quite a fine gauge, and my awful blue plastic needles were not up to that. At the time it was possible to get filet netting; it was very expensive to buy it by the metre, but I did order a batch of samples from a German company which no longer exists, and I worked on those. After all, I wasn't doing any really large designs.
In 2016 I was ill and very nearly died; to be more precise I had acute bowel ischaemia in two separate places, with a side order of full-body sepsis. By all rights I shouldn't still be here, but I am, albeit with Sibyl the Stoma. It took me a very long time to recover fully, and I didn't do much in the way of crafts during that period other than knitting, which takes very little physical or mental energy. But eventually I decided it was high time to reprise the filet, and, to my great delight, I found that great strides had been made in the manufacture of netting needles over the last few years. Traditional ones are boat-shaped, which is fine if you're making a fishing net or a string bag, but they tend to be too wide to make finer-gauge netting (though I do now have a small bamboo one which might work). These modern ones are steel and have a pair of flanges at each end, set close together, to hold the twine/string/yarn/thread; so you can get the gauge as fine as you need, as long as you have a suitable mesh stick.
There was just one little problem. It had been so long since I'd netted that I'd forgotten how to do it. Websites, in general, were no help; the instructions were either annoyingly vague or just plain wrong. But, eventually, I found this: https://archive.org/details/net-making
This book is great! It isn't just the perfect refresher course; it's so clear that I'd have no hesitation in recommending it to a complete beginner (and indeed I've done just that a few times). Not only that, but it teaches a number of very useful subsidiary techniques, such as how to start from a grommet (highly useful for string bags and the like), how to make bag handles, how to use a headrope (an essential technique if you need to make a flat diagonal-mesh net), and so on. And once I learnt to make a really good string bag, there was no stopping me. I now make them at the rate of one a week for the local food bank, where I volunteer. These things go down a storm, because for one thing we're always short of bags in any case, and for another they're big and very strong. They will easily swallow 10 - 15 kg of tins, bottles, jars, packets, and the like. And because they're jute, they're totally environment-friendly, too.
Today I'm expecting a parcel. It's another 4 kg of jute twine, which will make, very roughly, 37 string bags. So that'll be me sorted till about July, then.
