Sharon wrote: To my surprise I haven't heard a single comment about the characteristic things lacemaking teachers say. My guess is that since this is a public forum the question may feel indiscreet.
This is not a characteristic comment (at least I hope not). No names no pack drill.
When I was first learning on my own (about 2 weeks in with no access to pillow, lacemaking thread, pins etc), I heard of a group getting together with a teacher from another city. I wasn't able to go to the whole weekend, but decided that I'd take what I'd done and have a few words and see if she had any bobbins for sale, or thread. When I got there and watched her flitting round the room from person to person advising them - work c-t-c or whatever to that next pen then I'll be back it stuck me that some of them would be stuck when she wasn't there to tell them what to do to get to the next pin. When she spared me a couple of minutes she looked at what I'd done, sniffed, turned her nose up and said "Not very good is it. But of course, you can't make good lace unless you use linen thread and you are using cotton (last word said in a very derogatory tone)." Unfortunately, I didn't know enough about lace at that time to challenge that, but I do remember making a lot of lace in cotton before I even ever thought about getting some linen thread.
Some of the ladies from that class and I formed the very first lace group in Ottawa and some of them were still struggling with the bookmark months later because nothing had been explained that they were doing cloth stitch diamonds, or whole stitch fans or whatever. A couple of them became my first students so they could finish. Unfortunately, many of them dropped out and never came back.
Malvary in Ottawa where it is a lovely sunny day.
- 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/
