I've completed a Hollie Point needlelace exercise! Great, right? On to the third exercise! Except, suddenly I feel disenchanted with my thread. It's Tanne 50, a cotton thread. Should I try a different thread? I guess threads are either cotton, linen, or silk. Or any of those types right out of the question for Hollie Point, or needlelace in general? What do I look for in a thread? I'm dissatisfied with the Tanne 50 because it looks great coming off the spool but it gets really beaten up after I've been sewing with it for a while. I think that's natural? Needelace is hard on thread because the thread is constantly being pulled through the narrow previous stitch. Also, something about the motion of needelace seems to add a twist to the thread so it gets more and more kinked up as I work. Also, being a beginner I occasionally make mistakes and have to unlace, which is extra rough on the thread (of course unlacing is bad for thread in bobbin lace, too, so that's not news). I think maybe there is a natural conflict in needlelace between wanting the thread to be really long, so you are not constantly tying off old thread and starting new threads, and needing the threads to be sort of short, so that by the time you get to the end of the thread you aren't sewing with dingy pathetic shreds. So, just naturally I've been reducing my thread lengths as time has gone by, in response to the thread being so mangled by the time I get to the end. Having a shorter thread also helps with the problem of kinking. I countertwist my thread when I notice it begin to kink, but I am hindered there because, and I 've really tried, I am unable to figure out what direction I should counterturn the thread. "Clearly clockwise" I finally decide. Then a little while later "why did I think clockwise? Clearly counterclockwise". Still more later "no, clockwise was right in the first place." And on and on forever. One time I decided that for my newest piece of thread I would once and for all end the twisting problem by diligently countertwisting at almost every stitch, and I totally overdid it and the thread actually ended up falling apart in my hands. Wow, I didn't even know thread did that. OK, so I have respect for the way needlelace chews up thread. Nonetheless, I am wondering if maybe some threads stand up to the abuse better than others and Tanne 50 is not the sturdiest choice. Also, what about the final result? Do some threads give nicer final results? And what about the feel of thread as you work with it? In bobbin lace I enjoy the way different thread material feels differently as I work with it. My book mentions "Brok 160 or Egyptian Cotton 120". How do Brok and Egyptian Cotton compare with Tanne 50? What size thread should I be using anyway? Brok 160 and EC 120 are, according to my thread chart, significantly smaller than Tanne 50. It is important to me that my needelace be portable, since if I am at home I can make bobbin lace. In Hollie Point the number of stitches in a piece is fixed and the size of the piece is just whatever you end up with when you make that number of stitches. The exercise I just did was about 160 stitches wide and it is a little over 3 inches long, call it 153 stitches for three inches, 51 stitches per inch. About 8 centimeters, so 20 stitches per cm. At this size, I can make needlelace in good light but not in mediocre light. Also my stitches are just a little bit smaller than my size 26 tapestry needle. I am afraid that if I go any smaller than I would only be able to do it in excellent light, so it would no longer be portable. Also I guess I would have to find smaller needles, I guess some sort of sharp, but I could learn to deal with! that. Should I stick with threads the same size as Tanne 50 or would I find that I can after all make needlelace in good light with a smaller thread? In general I am the sort of person who likes lace to be fine. I get bored with coarse lace.
It's a surprise to me to be doing this third exercise at all. In Hollie Point, the idea is that you have a simple rectangle and you completely fill it with stitches to end up with a solid, boring rectangle of knitted-looking cloth, in my case a 160 stitch by 37 row rectangle. Except! Except the rectangle isn't boring after all because as you work it you strategically occasionally leave out stitches, which causes visible holes in the cloth. You place the holes in such a way as to form a delicate picture. So Hollie Point is like counted cross stitch, except that the picture is formed not by contrasting colors of thread but by the contrast of hole and stitch. My book is "Chapter 2: Hollie Point" of Catherine Barley's "Needelace Designs and Techniques Classic and Contemporary". The entire time I was doing the first exercise, a simple diamond inside a diamond, I was dissatisfied. "If I want to do counted cross stitch", I muttered, "I would rather do real counted cross stitch with bright colors than this inferior fake cross stitch." Ugh. And I ended up doing the first exercise twice, first in Tanne 50 and then in coarse cordonnet thread, since my first attempt came out tilted and I couldn't figure out what I'd done wrong. Even though I didn't like it much, I felt obligated to do the second exercise since there had been a several year gap between my doing the first chapter of the book (Venetian Gros Point; lots of fun) this second chapter. So I wanted to be thorough in order to get myself back up to speed. Possibly this rustiness contributed to my not liking the first exercise-- I had to start and restart it several times b! efore I got the hang of it. Fortunately the first exercise is very small and simple, I think just so it is easy for a beginner to start over while trying to get the hang of things. So I thought I would just do the second exercise and then move on to the next chapter of the book. The second exercise is much bigger and more intricate than the first, and I call it "Diamonds Galore" because there are diamonds everywhere. Big diamonds, little diamonds, diamonds inside of diamonds. I started the exercise in a grudging mood, but at about the fifth row of the exercise, once I started really seeing all the diamonds, I began to have a good time. The exercise got more and more enjoyable and I was really pretty happy by the time I was finished. So I am going on to the third exercise after all. It took me several weeks to do this exercise, so I had a lot of time to think about it, and I think that Barley cleverly constructed this exercise to be easy and enjoyable for a beginner. SO this exercise has increased my faith in this book. At first sight it looks dauntingly intricate. However, a big problem in Hollie Point is that if you have to make a lot of st! itches in a row without any holes, then it is easy to lose count of the stitches. It is very tiresome to be constantly counting and trying not to lose count. By having lots of lines in her diagram, Barley makes it so that you never have to count very long before you get to a hole. Diagonal lines, hence diamonds, are particularly easy to make since the holes in the new row are right next to the holes in the old row, so it is easy to check that you haven't gotten lost. Since the pattern is wide (154 stitches) and fairly regular, the rows tend to fall into a rhythm: one row might be "2 stitches, hole, 5 stitches, hole, 2 stitches hole, 5 stitches hole" etc while another might be "8 stitches, hole, 8 stitches, hole, 8 stitches hole" etc. Falling into a rhythm is much more pleasant than the stressful experience of having to make a different number of stitches every time you have a stretch of stitches. The only problem with falling into a rhythm is that then you might absen! tminded go right place the places where the rhythm is broken (that has to happen at least a few times every row or the pattern would be boringly completely regular). I guess the new plan of action is to go back to the first exercise and do it with a couple of different types of thread and see how it goes. I don't feel really inspired. After all, I'm already three rows into the third exercise. Maybe you guys will talk about threads andmake me feel inspired to try new ones. Julie Shalack Laurel, Maryland, USA - To unsubscribe send email to [email protected] containing the line: unsubscribe lace [email protected]. For help, write to [email protected]. Photo site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lacemaker/sets/
