I am a Kyivan who loves her city, her profession and her art
I was born in Kyiv and have lived there for 50 years. I have two degrees: I graduated from the Kyiv Institute of Foreign Languages and Krok University and taught German at school for some time. For the past thirteen years, I have been working in the Project Management Office at a Kyiv-based pharmaceutical company. I have two grown-up children.
My whole life is connected with creativity, I always make something with my hands.
I remember when I was a little girl my mother taught me to knit. At the age of 10, I joined a macramé class. I took up crochet at a very young age, knitting cosy shawls that make you feel at home.
A little over a year ago, beading came into my life. And this is my love, my way of making the world a little better in this terrible hour when there is so much sorrow and destruction.
I packed an anxious suitcase. But how can you be prepared for an occupation?
I remember very well what the day of 24 February 2022 was like. It seems to me that many of us knew somewhere inside that a full-scale war was coming. Of course, I was hoping for a miracle, but subconsciously I understood that this trouble was coming to us.
We prepared: packed our anxious suitcases, filled up the car. Physically we were almost ready, but psychologically it’s impossible to be 100% ready. It was a day of desperation, of not knowing what to do and how to do it, when all the news and messages came in.
From our home in Kurenivka, Kyiv, to the town of Gostomel, it is 15 kilometres in a straight line. My son and I could hear the endless shelling of Gostomel, which had been going on since the 24th. My mother and daughter were at their dacha near Bucha. And on the 24th, although there were explosions and tearing up nearby, it seemed that they could not come very close to Kyiv. But the very next day it became clear that we had to go and get our relatives from the dacha because the fighting had reached there. It took us 10 hours to drive the 50 kilometres, because the road to the dacha goes through Gostomel and the bridge over the Irpin river, which had already been blown up.
But we could not go back. It was such a terrible time… Probably the most terrible of all during the almost two years of the full-scale invasion. We were under occupation. We were lucky that our little village was surrounded by forest on three sides and a big lake on the fourth. That’s why the Russian troops did not enter the streets of the dachas. But we left there on 6 March, already through occupied and destroyed territory, through a Russian checkpoint. And when I hear now that it doesn’t matter what language, it doesn’t matter what flag, I can’t agree with these statements. Because when I saw our boys, our flag, heard the Ukrainian language, it was an indescribable happiness and an incredible realisation: I am among my own (crying).
Acting for victory
The need to act for victory was there from the first day of the full-scale invasion, even when we were under occupation. At that time I went with women and the local terrorist defence to a neighbouring village to buy food for families with children, because there was no food in the dachas in winter. There were 241 people left in the village and I realised that only we could help each other, there was no one else.
In early June 2022, my daughter and I went for a walk in Kyiv. It was my first walk since 24 February. I finally got out of the jeans that had been in my life for months, I wanted to be pretty, to see my favourite city and talk to it.
So I posted a photo of St Andrew’s Descent on social media and shared my emotions about Kyiv, which was still not crowded and the tension in the air was ringing, but passers-by were still smiling.
In response to the post, my colleague Lyubov Vdovtsova wrote: “We were nearby, near the golden-domed St Michael’s Monastery. We hold weekly fairs there, selling sweets and handicrafts – we want to help the military a little. Come along.” (We wrote more about the fair here).
And the next Sunday I went to see them.
There was a time in my life when I made natural stone jewellery because I couldn’t find any that I liked. So I collected all the necklaces and bracelets I had left over and gave them to the organisers. That evening Lyubov wrote to me: “All yours are sold out, give me some more”. I replied: “You got it!” I had some stones and beads, so the next Sunday I made more jewellery.
And then I wanted to make something so beautiful that it would immediately catch people’s eyes and make them want to pick it up and come back for more.
So I went on YouTube, found a masterclass on beaded bracelets and started learning. It should be noted that I had never made beads before and thought that people who did had an extraordinary level of skill. About 15 years ago I wanted to learn how to make tourniquets and tried about ten times. But it didn’t work, it just didn’t work. Even though I was already good at crocheting big things, so it wasn’t a new technique for me. And I even decided that maybe it was “not meant to be”.
And the beads obeyed!
For the fair I decided to try again. And the beads did! It was something of a miracle that the beads obeyed me after so many years.
Two months later, after choosing the size of the hook and the thickness of the thread (each craftswoman has her own), I started making bracelets for the fair. As the fair developed, I wanted to invest more and more, because the results were there and it stimulated and motivated me. After all, the money raised was used to buy cars, mavicars and kamikaze drones for the army.
At some point I wanted to do something new, something more than a bracelet. I decided to make a lariat, a long tourniquet with a clasp, combining my long-standing passion for natural stones with my current passion for beads.
The lariat is not traditional Ukrainian jewellery, but I like it because of its variability: you can tie it and braid it however you like, to suit your mood, your look, and you can be different with the same jewellery every day.
However, in my own work I add a Ukrainian flavour, a story that refers to our inner Ukrainian. For example, I have a red and black motanka necklace. The motanka dolls in it are made of cold porcelain, they are made by a craftswoman from the Odesa region, Liubov Kryzhanovska.
I put each lariat in a jewellery box, which is individually decorated for each piece by Anita Kozhushko, a craftswoman from the Lviv region.
My works are at least 150 centimetres long. While it takes 3-4 hours to weave a bracelet, a necklace can take up to a week, as I only work in the evenings or at night.
As for the number of beads, it is impossible to count the bracelets, and I have already made 36 lariats and about 20 short necklaces.
Handicrafts unite and go beyond the borders of Ukraine
A favourite activity unites people and new people appear in your life, charged with the same energy of creativity. That’s why, in addition to the fair on Mykhailivska Street, I have a story about another fair in Brovary, organised by a local resident, Oksana Ivanenko. I send her my products and Oksana sends me wreaths with ribbons and motanka. This unity supports and inspires me.
And at the beginning of this summer, a friend who now lives in Germany (for whom I made the first lariat) asked me to send her products for a fair she was organising to help Ukraine. This request turned into an incredible project.
At that time I was already familiar with the creative community “Bead Council”: Ukrainian League of Bead Weavers”.
Its members take part in various charity events and a percentage of their sales goes to support our military. “When I asked the artisans to take part in the fair in Germany, I received so many parcels from all over Ukraine that the postmen were surprised to see so many of them. The fair took place and, in addition to financial support, it helped to promote Ukrainian culture. I call it people’s diplomacy. Because when foreigners buy Ukrainian gerdans, for example, the sellers tell them about our traditions, our art, our craftsmen. It is a direct exchange of information.
They destroy and I have to create!
When we went to the village at the beginning of April last year, to my grandmother’s house, the first thing I did was to buy paints and start painting everything: the veranda, the windows, the fence, the posts. It was an inner need, an inner cry: the occupiers are destroying, burning, leaving burning and misery, and I have to keep everything clean, painted, shiny. They destroy and I have to create! If I cannot warm the whole of Ukraine, I will at least warm this small piece of land and give it my love and make it beautiful.
This need to make the world around me beautiful has inspired my and, I think, will continue to inspire me to create beaded jewellery.
Two months ago I complained to an artisan that I was tired. For more than a year I have been either working or weaving, either on the computer or with a hook. And it’s an endless cycle. She said to me: “Do you want to relax? Hide everything so that you don’t even see it, take a rest. And you’ll see how long you can last. I had enough for four days. On the fifth day I wanted to get out my loops, hooks and beads, and a new piece of jewellery was born in my head.
This is my contribution to help our defenders. And when people ask me if I have any money left for materials, I say: after the war, when we are victorious. I might even open my own online shop then.
