On Sun, 12 Aug 2007 16:49:09 -0700, bev wrote: >Case in point, our own basic lacemaking terms of 'cross' and 'twist' - to >the non-lacemaker, the one doesn't necessarily mean left over right, nor the >other right over left :D At North West Lacemakers (UK) on Saturday I was sitting with Kay doing her second piece of lace. She had done a good section of half stitch, but was struggling very hard with a twisted edge pair in cloth stitch. After talking her through the edge a couple of times it dawned on me that to her 'cross' and 'twist' meant take two bobbins and put one over the other, with no direction reference. So I taught her the vocabulary, she got the hang of the edge eventually, and the book she was working from should have made a bit more sense. As I saw she was still struggling I took her off to the library (against her protestations) and found her Rosemary Shepherd's beginner book *with line diagrams of each thread*. It was great seeing the lightbulb go on - the wordy descriptions in the other book just hadn't worked. Why is it that some beginners seem to think that a library isn't for them, when it's just the point in a lace career when it's most useful?
Picking up another point from Clay: >So the bottom line was that even for Germans, the descriptions in books which >are written in German do not necessarily make a lot of sense! It would seem >that people in Germany, who learn to make lace, learn it first from a "live >person" who teaches them the vocabulary, and from there, they are able to >progress with books. That's how I learnt lace German, although of course it was easier because I could already make lace. Some of the technical stuff translates word for word e.g. twist and cross (drehen und kreuzen) and some doesn't. The worst examples I can think of are "windmill" and "Rohrstuhlgrund" which require translations of a sentence and a paragraph respectively, having no direct equivalent in the other language. By the end of my first day of lacemaking in Germany I'd given up on the idea of mentally translating, and just treated every term as new words. Besides, how do you translate bolletje (Dutch or Belgian) from German into English? -- Money can't buy everything. That's what credit cards are for. Steph Peters [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tatting, lace & stitching page <http://www.sandbenders.demon.co.uk/index.htm> - To unsubscribe send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] containing the line: unsubscribe lace [EMAIL PROTECTED] For help, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
