I have just come back from a four days workshop on Flanders that included many hours of colouring in working diagrams following the Belgian colour code. With participants of several nationalities attending, we quickly adopted 'purple' (CTC),'red' (CTCT) and 'green' (CT) as avoiding the 'whole stitch' ambiguity and less tongue twisting than a sentence of 'C's and 'T's.
The BCC (Belgian Colour Code; *not* "before computer crash" <g> ) *is* lovely but, once it had been "sprung" on lacemakers, it began to evolve, so it is no longer "pure"; every country has its own "Middle Ages Latin" version of it, with *sub*-"philosophies" within the overall pattern/rule... :)
As I understand it, even the "red" and "green" aren't 100% foolproof ("purple" *is*); the extra twists -- when they occur -- are shown depending on whether you use the open or the closed method (the "hatches" will occur before or after the stitch).
Then, also, the original "language" had *many* colours -- the whole Code, afterall, was intended for *teaching teachers*, and was drawn, with chalk, on a *black*board. When it appears in book/magazine publications where the background is *white*, the gimp/single thread (yellow) tends to disappear. So, it's often replaced with "poop"/orange, which shows off better. But orange and light brown, originally, "meant" something else... *Two* "something elses", as a matter of fact...
An interesting "aside" comes up in conjunction with the "single thread movement"... When i't *not* a gimp... does it move as a C, or as a T? <g>
Additionally, the quality of colour *printing* is "not as it used to be" now that it's easily available via 'puters and other pixilating devices (see what happened to lace when the machines were invented <g>); "purple" often shows as "dark blue", "green" as "almost light blue" etc... So, the *original* light blue of a plait can no longer be depended on... The Danes (or is it just: "Danes"? Polish has no articles, and they do defeat me <g>) have developed an "alternative solution" for a plait: a narrow, zig-zagging line, in black. It has the "added attraction" of showing up even in a b&w print (still cheaper, despite the overall deterioration of colour-print quality)... But I've not seen that "notation" anywhere else
For me, BCC is, *basically*, "the answer"... But it doesn't stop me from muttering "CTTT, pin under both" to myself while I work on a pillow :)
----- Tamara P Duvall Lexington, Virginia, USA Formerly of Warsaw, Poland http://lorien.emufarm.org/~tpd/
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