Lacemaking, knitting and scrapping!

I am the only one in my family that enjoys craftwork, so I'm guessing it isn't genetic! I have never been artistic, cannot draw a straight line with a ruler but I seem to have ability in more 'crafty' things.

• I think that my first creative influence must have been Mrs Hockley, my needlework teacher at Secondary School, who showed me that with a bit of effort, you could make something very wearable from a bolt of fabric. My friend Jill and I were keen dressmakers from about the age of 16 and there was a time when I made most of my own clothes, even went on to get an A level in Textiles and Needlework. Sounds a bit 'geeky' now but in the late 70s it wasn't that unusual!
• I did go through a knitting stage in my early 20s and was often known to bring half finished items into work to get advice from a knitting supremo called Doris. She taught me all manner of stitches and cabling, working with 6 different colours of wool and how to spot where a dropped stitch had gone - more to the point, how to pick it back up without undoing 6 hours work!
• When I was first married I made friends with a girl called Linda who had married a guy that I went to school with and lived in the same street as us. As our friendship developed, we discovered a mutual interest in crafting and we enrolled at the local school for evening classes. We had expected to be doing lacemaking, but somewhere along the line we got in the wrong queue and so for the first term we discovered the joys of crotcheting! But we finally made it to lacemaking classes and due to the patience of Mrs Lenthall, we actually made progress. We were by far the youngest there - by about 40 years - but we really enjoyed it. The class was fairly quiet, due to the concentration needed but Linda and I sat at the back like naughty schoolchildren and chatted away. The equipment for lacemaking is so pretty, the beads and the engraving on the bobbins - I think that was half of the appeal.
• My last creative influence has to be my friend Denise who introduced me to scrapbooking. She has made some amazing pages and her handmade cards are so beautiful. Denise and I have been friends for about 28 years and she is one of those people who is a true friend. We may not see each other as often as we may like, but as soon as we get together we pick up from where we left off. And thanks to scrapbooking, and her encouraging me to take various classes, hopefully we will see more of each other in the future.