On Nov 23, 2004, at 15:42, Sherri Butler wrote:
I first got interested in bobbin lace many years ago - in the 1970s, when I was sill in my teens. In addition to buying some bobbins, I got some linen thread at that time too. I know that some of it is 140/2, which, I believe, is not made anymore. Am I right in thinking that I should save that thread for when I know what I'm doing?
Definitely save it. Linen is very nice to work with and the results are delicious, but it's not easy, and the quality has been declining steadily, making things even more difficult. If you'd bought yours in the 70ties it might be OK, if it had been kept in decent conditions (my firs cone, bought in '89 was almost OK, but the next one, bought in '91 was horrible), but it would still be too fine to start learning on. Keep it for finer Beds and for Flanders.
For now, use cotton, thicker, and in colours by preference, like Patty said. When I first started (January '89), I used perle 8 and 12, because they were easily available - the golden era when Lexington still had a needlework shop :) - and the balls were not too big. Within a couple of weeks, I scaled down to tatting cotton (80, but 6-ply), which met the same requirements (many colours, small put-ups).
I liked working with tatting cotton because it didn't fray/break easily (being 6-ply and tightly twisted), the resulting lace was nice and crisp, and the colour palette was wonderful. It was only when I started to move away from Torchon and Russian Tape, that I began to appreciate the "fuzzier" threads - linen and 2-ply cottons - which filled the motifs (solid areas) better.
Patty, which size Finca has colours?
Brenda, in your new edition of the thread guide, would it be possible to add that information (ie which size has, and which doesn't have colours and how many)?
--- Tamara P Duvall http://lorien.emufarm.org/~tpd Lexington, Virginia, USA (Formerly of Warsaw, Poland)
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