I took a class in Cantu from Vera Cockyut several years ago at the
Lace Museum in Sunnyvale, California and received her book as part of
my class materials. While her self publications are pretty basic on
the printing side, their content is quite comprehensive.
A clearly remember my reaction to several aspects of working Cantu
for someone who had only worked Torchon previously.
The patterns are just lines! EEk! Faint! Okay, I am getting up off
the floor now.
The stems, which are tapes -- with ATTITUDE, are worked fairly free
hand, no matter what your style -- in your hand or on the
pillow. After working the weaver through the passives, with the
passives under tension, like a loom, you can set the worker at will.
Also, to keep your stems orderly and proceeding as intended, you
simply stab them to the pricking (if you want to call it that!) to
keep them from wriggling off. No restraints from edge pins. You
just make some stem and eyeball it to the pattern, tug a passive or 2
to curve it one way or the other, stab, and proceed.
The left side of the tape is a bundle, a small number of pairs,
loosely braided to keep them from rioting. When you work across the
stem, when you get to the bundle you just wrap the workers around the
bundle and work back to the right side which you turn without benefit
of a pin, a net, or an ambulance.
The curling shapes of Cantu, it was suggested, are a reference to the
ancient Roman stone work littering the countryside. I guess if you
grow up among Corinthian columns, you make lace that looks like it.
When It comes time to ornament your swirling, stabbed stem, some
number (terribly precise, yes?) goes frolicking off to the left or
right and becomes a flag, a flower or merely connects back to previous frolics.
I was shocked, amazed, intrigued and my orderly concept of pin-to-pin
lacemaking went out the window completely.
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