Bev, what a delightful idea! Thank you for thinking of it! At present I am cut up into three parts, with nothing left over for real life: Part 1 isn't lace at all, but a piece of canvaswork embroidery, an adaptation of the Ardebil Mosque Carpet (the real thing can be seen in London at the V&A). I have been working at this, off and on, for at least four or five years, and recently (for who knows what reason) it has just taken hold of me and I am racing along with it as fast as I can go. I am doing it, not in Oriental-carpet colors at all, but in sort of French-decadent lilacs and lavenders and pale-greens, etc. However, my heart is indeed in 14thCentury Persia, at least it is for a couple of hours every morning.
Part 2 is a necktie that I am doing (Beds lace). The design is partly my own, and just sort of growed out of my desperate need for a necktie. It is based on Barbara Underwood's cuff pattern (in "Traditional Bedfordshire Lace," it has a central rose shown with a Bucks Point filling). I made the pattern by eliminating the footside, doubling the headside, and then doctoring the design where necessary. It is such a strain on the brain (on mine, anyway) that I can't do it for longer than about an hour a day, but I have learned a lot. I only have one more ninepin to go! When it's finished I will do it again, and hope that the workmanship next time will be a lot classier. And Part 3 is a dear little green frog that just came into my life a couple of days ago. He is going to be a gift to a friend of mine, a wonderful embroiderer, as an appliqué for a quilt she is making. Froggie is made of a tape lace silhouette taken from Sebastiana van den Herik's "Dieren en Kleur," but the technique, unlike hers, is not Russian, and I will give him a Honiton filling, probably 4-pin. I am just rounding him down to his front toes this evening, and then the momentous decision about the filling will have to be taken. He is made of dark and light greens, with a glittery gold thread showing up at the back of his neck and the top of his head. And an aside to Jazmin: my son, a marvelous lace knitter, is also doing the Rose of England, out of Marianne Kinzel. He is a cardiologist; so he is using angioplasty wires for the needles (must be equivalent of size 00000), and 200/2 silk thread. - To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
