As a youngster, Luise Elsing was forced to learn crochet in home economics classes. It wasn’t a success.
“Everything was rejected and I just thought, ‘I’m shit at this’,” she says. “I was always hopeless.”
Fast-forward nearly 50 years and Elsing is riding high in the crochet world and preparing for an exhibition of her extraordinary creations that are about as far from traditional doilies or antimacassars as is possible.
Luise Elsing’s massive Blaze is inspired by Del Kathryn Barton’s film of the same name. Credit: Janie Barrett
Elsing’s return to the traditional craft came about 10 years ago after she was told to keep her hands moving because Dupuytren contracture, so-called Viking Disease, runs in both sides of the family.
“I went to the doctor and they said do something with your hands,” she says. “I thought I’ll take up crochet again and I loved it. I found it very therapeutic.”
Perhaps because of that early experience at school, Elsing was determined the work she made wouldn’t be practical in the conventional sense.
“I just started making stuff really for the feel of it and just moving my hands. I wasn’t even looking at the product. It was the process. I enjoyed the colours, I enjoyed the fabrics. I didn’t even think about an end product.”
For a while the pieces mounted up, stashed away in cupboards, until she got the idea of putting them together into larger creations. The turning point came when she read best-selling author Holly Ringland’s book The House That Joy Built, which celebrates the power of creativity and encourages those who think they don’t have a creative spark.
“I read that book, I just thought, ‘What have I got that’s creative?’” says Elsing, who lives in Woollahra where she is a long-time local councillor. “And then I opened up my cupboard and saw all of my stuff and I thought, right, I’m going to get it out and I’m going to show it.”