Hi All, My apologies if this isn't lace-y enough to be here.
I was recently in the US to give a presentation on European bobbin laces at a textile/needle arts festival that my mother helped organize in Hammondsport, NY, and also took one of my pillows and some bobbins so that I could do some demonstrating. Nearly all of my slides were from the V&A's wonderful collection in the open galleries. OK, so they have a lot of needle lace, but it was useful to be able to show the differences between various types of lace (crochet, tatted, NL, BL). One thing for those of you perhaps planning to photograph in those galleries: you can use flash, although not having the reflection of the flash show up on the glass can be difficult. If you ask ahead, you can arrange a tripod permit, and that will let you shoot without a flash. The lighting in the gallery is fluorescent, so if you do not use flash but want colors to be normal rather than the disgusting yellow-green that film gets under fluorescent, you need tungsten-balanced film. I used Kodak (no ties at all to the big yellow box people, just a satisfied customer) 160T, so the ASA was 160. Using a tripod and no flash, I could do half-second exposures at f-stop 2.8, and generally get a good exposure. One hint, though, a shutter release cord is good! There are a lot of my slides where my "ghost" shows up in the glass. Oh dear. Anyway, I helped hang the exhibit (quilts, lace out of my collection, and various types of stitching) on Friday 30th April. I was expecting someone to make a comment during the exhibit itself about tatting, but NO. One of the other volunteers and I were discussing where I live, why I had come all the way back to the US for just 5 days, and so on. I explained that I would be demonstrating bobbin lace all weekend and was looking forward to the time at the pillow. She told me that evening as she left that she hoped I enjoyed my tatting! What topped it off, though, was one of the first visitors through the door on Saturday 1st May. This one walked up to my mother, who was sitting working on a needlepoint canvas, and said "oh, my such lovely tatting you're working on!" Oh dear. It really was quite fun. I worked on Wedding Bells from the Cook/Stott 100 Traditional Patterns book, and managed to get a whole repeat and a half done in two days. what progress! But it was a good time; I managed to really intrigue some people, including a college junior who will be spending the coming school year in Brussels, and who wanted to see bobbin lace being done and ask questions so that if she was interested enough she could actually get stuff and find a class while in Belgium. Great fun to see someone her age so fascinated by the whole thing. Unfortunately, I didn't get the Beds lace cap done that I had started. In fact, I ended up stealing bobbins off of it and my Honiton piece, which is lesson 1 from the Thompson book, so that I could have enough bobbins to demonstrate with. But, many thanks for the suggestions on working it. Someone on this list a while ago said that Beds lace was an exercise in bobbin management. Whoever you were, you were right! I've got 120 pairs mounted, and I feel like I spend more time shuffling heaps of bobbins (strapped to flat pieces of wood, don't worry) than doing anything else. Regarding Honiton, I apologize, I don't remember who asked about getting all new toys for doing Honiton. Anyway, all of my pillows when I started playing with Honiton were about 26"/66cm squares, and that just wasn't something I was interested in trying to deal with. So I cut out a circle of styropor* that's about 12-15"/30-38cm across, cut two circles of fabric larger than the pillow, and pinned the circles to the pillow with them overlapping on the sides. My first project I don't remember what thread I used, but it was thicker than what Thompson recommends, so I had to reduce the number of pairs. Pain in the neck, that is! I have now gone and gotten some real Honiton thread from the Honiton Lace Shop, and am now using I think 170/2 for the same little flower. It's astounding how fine it is, and how darned easily it snaps. For bobbins, I've been using unspangled Midlands bobbins. I CAN NOT (and I have tried!) work with spangled bobbins, but unspangled Midlands let you pack a lot more bobbins onto a pillow than the Continentals. I have found, though, that the completely smooth Mids bobbins are hard to grab, both for picking up between the thumb and forefinger and for grasping between the fingers of my clawed hands for tensioning. It's much easier when they have a tiny bit of decoration on the spangle end. I haven't had any problems with them snagging on anything, although the only Honiton I've done is the flower one-and-a-half times, and the hanky corner 1/3 of the way. * Styropor is I think the name for what I'm using; it's sold here in Europe, or at least in France, in about 70cm x 140 cm sheets, and is a very fine-grained polystyrene or something. I'm not a chemist, but I play one in the office sometimes. It is about 2"/5 cm thick, and comes now in yellow. It's made by BASF, and usually has that name stamped across it. Anyway, hope that helps, and now I am crawling back under my rock for another 2 years, having used up ALL my words! Best regards, Elizabeth Leverkusen, Germany - To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
