Positivity a connecting thread

Author Rosemary McLeod shared the treasures of needlecraft with more than 100 women on Sunday at the Masterton launch of her latest book on the subject.

Her book is titled With Bold Needle and Thread: Adventures in Vintage Needlecraft and comes after five editions in the Rosemary McLeod Craft Series, and her 2006 Montana Book Award-winning title Thrift to Fantasy: Home textile crafts of the 1930s-1950s.

McLeod owns an extensive collection of women's domestic handcrafts that formed an exhibition she curated at the Dowse Art Museum a decade ago.

She also curated the contemporary embroidery exhibition No Rules at Auckland's Objectspace in 2008, while her textile work has featured in a number of textile craft exhibitions.

McLeod is a writer, journalist, cartoonist and columnist who grew up in Wairarapa, and was surprised at the size of the standing-room-only crowd on Sunday at Hedley's Bookshop, outside of which at least one husband had been left to cool his heels.

She had joked with her husband ahead of the afternoon launch that the turnout may be modest, she said, but had brought along a bag of needle-crafted items which were gladly received by the audience.

"Needlecraft is an incredibly positive thing for women.

"They love doing it, they love looking at it, and they love sharing it.

"Women make friends over it. It's a kind of networking thing for us.

"Most of the things women do in the course of their normal day lack a completion point, but here is something that has an end where you can say 'I did that, I've got something to show for it'."

She said needlecraft offered the reward of achievement, "particularly in the domestic context - it's the domestic stuff that interests me the most".

McLeod said needlecraft buffs also brought a positive feeling. "In the book there's photographs of pottery and we can look at that and say, 'well that's Tuscan pottery' and we know where it comes from. You can also look at needlecraft and it speaks really strongly of a time and a place and it's always associated with positive feelings," she said.

"And when you've worked in journalism, for example, and interviewed some very difficult people it's actually really nice to do something like this that gives you only positive feelings."