The second installment of the Ithaca report as promised/threatened...
As I'd said in the "general" report , the lace is too young and too badly documented to have developed too many "unbreakable rules", and there are plenty of little "pockets" where one can use one's own judgement (indeed -- horror of horrors -- one is encouraged to <g>). There still seems to be enough of the "no man's land" in it, to allow a "mess-up" to be labelled as a "revolutionary breakthrough" <g>. Even in the 17-18th c and mono-chromatic, there were variations; the ground had always been very, very, fine and made in silk, but the motifs were thicker or thinner depending on the market (the densest was destined for Spain). The Polychrome as we know it now (motifs in colours different from the ground) was introduced during the Art Nouveau period which, in general (and in Western Europe), meant the end of the 19th c, carrying over a bit into the 20th. Then, the products got dispersed, the patterns got burnt in the general cleaning up of the building and what *had* been left (some samples, some patterns) was sent "for safekeeping" to another village where it got bombed and destroyed (while Courseulles was left untouched). So, the Bouvots, and Pompi Parry, and many others are doing work almost from "ground zero"...
As far as I could gather, *The* "wrinkle" peculiar to Courseulles Polychrome is:
the motifs can be executed in *either* hst *or* cloth st -- the *traditional* Blonde had cloth motifs.
Everything else, I'm not sure of, never having done any "Blonde proper", but the weird specifics we learnt in class are these (in no particular order):
1) the picots are single thread. Pompi called them "Beds", but I know them from Russian Tape and The Cook Book (Practical Skills in BL) calls them "single, knotted". They do not develop "rabbit ears" the way double thread ones tend to do -- Hallelujah! :) But, like all picots, they'll be a major nuisance to the washer/ironer. And, being made in organzine (very, very, fine silk), they're barely visible... I think getting rid of them entirely will be the first thing on my agenda, when I start adapting :)
2) There's a *single, twisted* pair between the footside and the ground. The worker passing through it from the ground has a single T each side of it. The footside worker pair (in waiting) gets 3T (total).
3) There's a *single* pair in the headside that remains throughout to keep the shape; pairs which come out of the motif to make the picot pass through it without any twists whatsoever on either side. Once the pair has made the picot and is "retired" (either to "just past the 'maintaining' passive" position or back to the motif), the 'maintaining' passive gets 2T (ie 2T on the headside edge passive between the picots; "the better to space them, grandma" <g>).
4) The connection between the ground and the footside has no catch pin; the pair coming from the ground makes a *cloth stitch* with the pair coming from the foot, then the pair going into the ground gets 3T, the one going into the foot (via the twisted passive) gets 1T, and the pin goes *under both*. Something similiar happens in some of the older Tonder patterns and I've always liked it better than a catch pin, so I had no problem with *that*, but it had a lot of us confused...
5) There's *no twist* between the gimp and the motif; the gimp "hugs" the same way as it does in Flanders. So you have to *undo* a twist on exiting pairs (if your motif is in hs)
6) Pairs get carried with the gmp when not needed and "fed" back into work as necessary. But that's typical of all French PG laces, I think.
That's all I can remember, off-hand (not everything is unpacked as yet), of the do's and don't's for those unfortunates who didn't make it to class.
Other assorted comments on Courseulles and my own first experience of it:
The book I had used 6 plies of the coloured thread for the gimp, 4 for the workers. That went out the window the moment we started winding the coloured threads; even for the cloth stitch motifs, where we had a whole *pair* going back and forth, we still used 6 plies. IMO, way too much for a *pair*, though perfectly OK for a single worker in hst. At any rate, *my* piece developed wrinkles, and I was told to use fewer plies in the future (but fewer plies allow for less colour-play... :( I think I shall enlarge the piece, keep the number of plies, and use something other than organzine for the base thread; it's way too fine to my peasant eye anyway <g>)
We added new pairs "inside out". It may be "old hat" for the rest of you, but it was new to me... Because of the single-thread picots, you cannot make the false ones while adding pairs, the way one does in Bucks. So, you place a temporary pin (or not. If you're skilled enough, you do it "in hand" <g>) with the new pair on it before the 'maintaining' headside passive, clt st through that passive, make the picot, cl st back, 2T to the 'maintaining' passive, feed the new pair into the work.
The first sample/pattern was an edging: an oval "blob"(surounded by gimp and workedith a coloured worker or worker pair), followed by an oval "blob"(ditto) with 3 honeycomb rings (surrounded by gimp) nestled in the nook between two oval blobs.
I tried to follow the diagram -- dot by dot, and line by line -- and got so flustered, that the piece was a *total mess*. Unfortunately, I did not manage to get it lost before Pompi asked for all the samples to be gathered and displayed for eveyone's amusement... I collected it afterwards from the "shame table" but can't find it now so, hopefully, it died in transit :)
The second sample was a real *piece*; starting at a point, it widens - slowly -- on both sides, and then rapidly narrows to a point (*just* as I managed to remeber how to make single, knotted, picots on the rh side, I had to learn how to make them on the lh side too <g>), with three leaves within it (net above them, HC ground below). I knew I wasn't going to finish it in class (not enough bobbins, and not enough thread... Holly sold out of the Pipers 80 floss for the colour work by 9:15 Saturday; by the time I finished my post-breakfast cigarette, there were only about 5 shades left <g>), so I wasn't stressing out -- will remake the piece one day anyway since I like it... So I let go of the diagram, except for the very beginning (hanging in the first few pairs), and "winged it". Surprise, surprise, it was better than the "follow the dots" one... :) I ended up with the correct number of pairs where I needed them, and the two extras (which I'd added at the very top of the leaf) in betwen the two gimps, which is where they ought to have been (for easy losing later on)... 10 minutes before the final class was over, too <g> I was gobsmacked :)
PS My favourite "exchange" with Pompi: She seemed to be worried, throughout the workshop, that I'd either disappear (out for a smoke fix), or would sit, eyes fixed firmly on the blue-yonder; she was afraid I wasn't getting enough out of the class... There was no way to reassure her of my personal happiness, though I did my voluble best (and felt silly for being so voluble, and in a strange accent, too). At one point, she caught me with a mouthfull of pins (for the *ground*; you use finer ones within the motif. Keeping track of what's what is a *bitch*) and said: "don't keep spare pins in your mouth". I looked at her (bringing myself back from wherever I went away to), took the offending pins out of my mouth and said: "that's the only thing that keeps my trap shut". She left my workplace actually *laughing*... :)
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Tamara P Duvall
Lexington, Virginia, USA
Formerly of Warsaw, Poland
http://lorien.emufarm.org/~tpd/
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