Spiders, Patty's message below has reallly hit home.
Yesterday, I went along to a new lace group - yippeee!! I am doing a procrastination piece - you know the kind of thing - I should be making the honiton for Dad's 80th birthday so in order to achieve this I'm making something else. Anyway, off I go to the lace group with my big pillow and a pricking that I found in my storage - well, that's not exactly true - I found 1/2 the pricking in my storage and made up the other half from that. It's a large piece - about 20" long by about 14" wide and is a mix of beds and bruge. Now what is interesting here is that I have no picture of the lace. So, I start it and got to about 14 pins into the first spiral and realise that there are two things I needed to have done - firstly my initial thoughts that it needed more pairs when I started were right. Secondly, it needed a whole stitch and twist done the edges in order to keep the shape. So, I just stopped making the lace and sat and looked at it thinking. (Ok, I chatted a bit with the other lacers too) One of the ladies sitting with me mentioned the same things I was thinking and I agreed. We had a chat about it and we chatted about the different threads I could use but agreed that what I had chosen was probably about the best choice. I then said that I was going to undo the lace and start again and if that didn't work, I'd have another go. She agreed but a couple of the people attending the group were surprised that I would undo the lace in order to save the thread and start again (especially as I had about 50 pairs already wound and only need about 14 at a time with this pattern). But as I said, I don't have a picture to study so I will just use the pattern and see how it feels as I make it. When I first became good at making lace I could look at a pattern and feel how it needed to be made and I have made some excellent pieces because of this. However, I went about 3 years only producing a few pieces a year and got out of doing this - especially when you get such excellent patterns that have instructions that tell you everything. So, I'm back to wing and a prayer lace making or as my other half calls it - extreme, no safety net, lacemaking. And now, I just can't wait to make the piece and if it works, make it again with variations. Love to you all Liz In a message dated 06/09/2003 08:11:36 GMT Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: > Subj: [lace] Lacemaking without a net > Date: 06/09/2003 08:11:36 GMT Daylight Time > From: <A HREF="mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]">[EMAIL PROTECTED]</A> > To: <A HREF="mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]">[EMAIL PROTECTED]</A> > Sent from the Internet > > > > The recent discussion of Beds at its more interpretive end of the spectrum > really comes home to me right now. > I took a class in Advanced Beds with Holly Van Sciver at the IOLI > convention. Of course I chose a rather complicated cuff (and finished a > good half inch). The interesting point in this is that I don't have a > working diagram and I don't have a picture of the finished lace. > Having worked some Binche pieces with precise working diagrams complete > with color code where I could know absolutely where every pair should go, > the Beds (without a net!) has been a very liberating experience, kind of > like the Twilight Zone, I control the vertical, I control the horizontal > and where the threads go and when to add them and when to throw them > out. (Maybe I am just a control freak in disguise.) It's been a real > different experience. > So I have achieved a good measure of independence, which is what I was > looking for primarily and my piece will look progressively better as I get > better control (there's that control thing again.) There are six leaves > from end to end of the piece. The first one is considerably less dense and > more "winkie pin" than the succeeding ones, which are fuller in the Honiton > cloth work tradition. One thing that concerns me is that I have been so > flagrantly adding and throwing out pairs that there is a veritable river of > ends to do something with eventually. I suspect that I have not been > making decisions in the traditional way. > > Contemplatively > Patty Dowden Regards Liz Beecher - To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
