Your lace may very well be as good as, or even better than, lace made by someone who has had a teacher. Or not.
Some people can have the best teachers and still produce bad lace. Some don’t tension well. Some have short attention spans. Some people can’t see as well as they think they can. Many people aren’t good at comparing what they’re making with the examples they’re shown. There are so many factors at work - are you conscientious, do you take care to make your lace look like what’s in the book, do you read attentively and how well do you understand what you’ve read, how well do you follow the instructions, do you take the trouble to find thread the right size for the pricking. Having a teacher means you get set up nicely with well-matched thread and pricking and any mistakes or bad habits are pointed out to you. The secrets a teacher passes on - well, they’re not really secrets, just lace lore, and what gets passed on depends on the teacher, the time available, and the questions that are asked. A lot of learning stems from the other students in the class - somebody might ask if they can substitute 100/3 for 60/2, and the teacher might use the situation to talk about thread sizes and things to think about when switching threads, or the teacher might just answer yes or no. Each teacher has different strengths and weaknesses that may or may not be a good fit for you. So you can’t know for sure that you’d make better lace if you had a teacher. And if you did have a teacher, you might learn better from a different one. I guess what I want to say is that in-person instruction is a good way to learn, but in-person instruction from several different teachers is even better, and one person working off the grid in a cabin in the woods with the single worst instruction book ever printed may still learn to make good quality lace. Just my 2 cents. Adele West Vancouver, BC (west coast of Canada) > On Nov 24, 2018, at 2:53 PM, Ann Humphreys <ann.humphr...@talktalk.net> wrote: > > I’ve never had a lace teacher. I’ve learned from books and videos. > Will my lace not be as good as those who have had teachers. What are the > secrets that lace teachers pass onto their pupils? > Just curious. > Ann - To unsubscribe send email to majord...@arachne.com containing the line: unsubscribe lace y...@address.here. For help, write to arachne.modera...@gmail.com. Photo site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lacemaker/sets/
