[lace] Before Lace

[Alan & Sheila Brown]

Like most people life revolved around the family, getting back to work, 
knitting, crochet and embroidery.  Remaking gardens on moving into a 
different house(twice before lace, now up to five!); helping DH build 
wardrobes etc. indooors  Outside we laid patios, built decorative walls 
- to keep the cattle out who wandered down from Epping Forest and loved 
our flowers.    This latter problem may seem strange when you realise 
that we lived in a London suburb.   It has been allowed from time 
immemorial for farmers  in the area to graze their cattle in the 
forest.  Imagine what happens when they stray onto the roads!
Then in 1976 we moved to Hertfordshire, another house and garden, only 
this time it was an early C17th one.   A joy but a lot of work in 
looking after it especially as, here in England, houses pre- 1700 are 
all 'listed', so that they are maintained and not 'modernised'  too much.
It was suggested that to get to know people I should go to Adult 
Education Classes in the evening.   Fine!  However I refused (a) to 
trundle a small sofa on a wheelbarrow to the venue for upholstery 
classes(DH had the car for work);(b) the usual classes for 'women' ie 
typing, dressmaking etc did not appeal, but lacemaking did.
Thirty plus years later, a  fellow novice and I still make lace 
together.   Our tutor was Tordis Berndt, our textbook Maidment and 2 
Swedish books of photos and the number of bobbins/thread needed.   But 
NO patterns!  And so we had to work them out on graph paper which gave 
me a grounding in how the threads moved;  a great help when going onto 
Bucks.
In 1980  I started  teaching  Adult classes as well as in schools, and 
finally to writing teaching manuals for these.  And then to the pleasure 
of designing Point Ground.
In between , Alan(DH) and I sold craft books and organised Lacemaking 
Weekends. Amazing what a house  move can bring forth!
Our pockets are several thousand pounds lighter, but the joy of holding  
lovely bobbins and trying to  make lace worthy of them
makes it all worthwhile.   The new friends that one makes in person and 
over the net adds an  extra plus to life.
Lurking certainly brings out the memories and  Alan and I bless the day 
we decided to come north otherwise we would never have found lace and 
all its pleasures.

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