I am working on a Chantilly fan and I am thinking about pins. None of my
lace books talk about this subject.
I have three boxes of pins:
38 x .40 mm long and thin
30 x .50 mm --> my usual <--
17 x .45 mm short and thin
Recall that Chantilly is a "you can never have too many bobbins" sort of
lace.
This particular piece uses about 85 pairs and is I guess is about 7 footside
per cm
{17 footside per in). Since previously my maximum was 50 pairs and I worked
at 14 ft/inch, you see that I am being ambitious. Also, I do not actually
know how
to make Chantilly, so I am pretending it is Bucks Point.
This piece is very simple and consists mainly of large blocky half-stitch
figures
and ground.
Method might be relevant, so I say that I am using a big octogonal block
pillow
(9 blocks, corner blocks are triangles, blocks move in all directions). It
is 23 inches
wide. This is my main pillow; almost all my lace exercises have been done on
it,
from the very beginning up until now. The bobbins, all spangled Midlands,
lie flat
on my pillow while I work( ie hands-down). I hate it when the ends of the
bobbins
dangle off the end of the pillow. I always pre-prick.
Since I can only actually work with 10-15 pairs of bobbins at a time and
Bucks
Point usually uses more than that, I need a way to get rid of all those extra
bobbins. I use spring stitch holders, which are thin plastic rods with
stretchy
metal closures. They hold about 9 pairs, 10 if I push it. All my unused
bobbins
are bound in holders and thrown over to the left and right top sides of the
pillow, out
of the way of my working area. When I started I used holders even when I only
had about 15 total pairs since it is so nice to really focus on the
particular motif
I'm working on, secure in the knowledge that the unused bobbins can't possibly
become disarranged. Besides, they need to go in holders anyway when I finish
my session and put the pillow down.
Preparing for my new Chantilly project, I became worried that my usual pins
were too thick. The holes in the pricking are so close together! Surely
they are
about as close as the diameter of a pin. So I decided to try smaller pins.
I bought
the short and thin box and started the lace.
The short and thin pins didn't last more than two rows of lace. They were
horrible,
absolutely horrible to use. The threads kept on looping over the tops of the
pins and
becoming disarranged. After two painstakingly tedious rows I gave up and
went to
my usual pins. It was such a relief to no longer have to intensely
concentrate on my
threads' not hopping and to just zip quickly along, lacing away.
So I decided that maybe short pins are bad for Chantilly/Bucks Point. Maybe
when you have any type of lace that uses lots of bobbins which need to be
thrown
back and stacked, then short pins are bad because the threads of the
thrown-back
bobbins naturally rise up a little and so loop over short pins. Could this
be true?
So I bought a box(actually, tube) of the long and thin pins. When I got
them I
was disappointed becuase there weren't very many of them (about 150) and they
were so thin that they hurt my fingers when I pushed them in.
I contemplated my pricking more carefully. It seemed to me that in fact
my usual
pins could be used in the ground (17 ftsd/in, remember), although it does
make for a
particularly impenetrable pin thicket--no possible way of spotting mistakes
until they
get out of the thicket. The problem was the half-stitch figures, which in
many places
were almost twice as dense as the ground (ie two half-stitch pins for every
ground
stitch that goes in and out). So I decided to use the long and thin pins for
the figures
and my usual pins for the ground. That way my fingers got a bit of rest from
pushing
the thin pins and I wouldn't use very many thin pins at a time so I wouldn't
run out.
What made this idea particularly feasible is that the difference in the
lengths of the
pins meant I could easily distinguish between the two types when I was
reaching into
the thicket for a new pin.
So, just as I finished off the starting rows of the fan and approached my
very first
figure, I switched to the ground->usual, figure->thin method.
Now it is several weeks later and everything has worked out well. The only
problem
is that I find that the long and thin pins bend. I bet that about a third of
them are
severely bent! I've been using my usual pins for years and the most heavily
used
ones have only a mild bend. These new pins have gotten all beat up after
just a few
pushes!
I think a lot of the bending is due to my not placing the pins accurately
and so
sometimes not being centered in my pre-pricked pricking holes. Also, because
the
holes are so very close together and hard to see, there are times when I miss
the prepricked holes completely and force the pin thropugh the pricking.
Regardless,
clearly these pins bend too easily. It is all for the best therefore that I
am not also
using them for the ground.
My finger has gotten callused so the thin pins are no longer painful to
push in.
Although lately that hasn't been an issue anyway since I've been using two
hands
to push the pins in (one hand at the base to steady the pin so it doesn't
bend).
The holes have gotten much farther apart and easier to see as the weeks
have gone
by. Now I'm thinking that maybe I could have used my usual pins on the
half-stitch
figures after all? Well, I don't know. The most dense parts really are very
close.
So that is my pin story. So what is going on here? How do pins fit into
the grand
scheme of things? I mean, what is the theory about which types to use and
how does
it all tend to work out in practice? I had problems with the short pins, but
perhaps that
was only because I wasn't used to them and is not characteristic.
Third comments. Some time ago spiders spoke about putting a hatpin into
the
pillow and a 45 degree angle and having the threads of the thrown-back
bobbins go
under the pin. At the time, I was working with 26-50 pairs of bobbins and
this
completely failed to register with me. A few weeks back this topic came up
again,
and, working with 80 pairs of bobbins, this time I was intensely interested.
Yes, with
80 pairs I do have the problem of the threads of the unused pairs rising up
and possible looping over the tops of the pins. I tried flipping my sping
holders over 3 or 4 times
before laying them down and this helped but I still had problems. The
situation is much
better now that I try to make the threads go under a pin. I'm using my usual
pin since I
don't have a hat pin and I still see great improvement. Things will get even
better once I
buy a bigger pin, maybe a divider pin of something.
Second, it seems to me that people have said that there is a limit to the
number of
bobbins you can handle with the stitch holder method. Apparently, 80 pairs
is nowhere
vlose to that limit. I can envision my pillow easily handling another twenty
pairs. So I
don't yet have to try any of the more advanced methods, which is good becuase
I have
forgotten what they were (just like I totally forgot about the 45 degree
pins. It is good for
me that the subject came up again).
Third, this project has a most amusing rhythym to it. I like ground, but
sometimes it
seems a bit boring. With this project, I have to focus so carefully on
finding the tiny
figure border pinholes and on making sure my incredibly wide and dense
half-stitch
rows (up to 26 pairs wide so far!) don't become disarranged, then it is a
pleasant
change of pace to go to the ground. And the ground works up particularly
quickly
because it is only half as dense as the figure. So the rhythym is: focus,
focus, don't
let the bobbins hop over each other, find the tiny pinhole, concentrate; ah,
relax, stretch
out, relax, relax, relax; focus, focus, concentrate, concentrate ; relax,
stretch, take it
easy. So it's sort of fun to have a project with two different pinhole
densities. Usually
ground is easier and faster than figures, but, because it is the same density
as the
figures, I don't get that relaxing stretching out feeling when I switch to it.
Julie Baltimore MD
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