The conundrum may well be in part quality versus quantity. Is it really faster to make 'quantity' but with backtracks for mistakes or work a bit slower for quality?
Today, most of us focus more on quality because we have the time to do so. Our lace forebears didn't have that luxury, so they focused on quantity, but quality was important. Poor lace got low pay or no pay. How much you produce can be affected by all manner of things. The number of interruptions to your session; how skilled you are; how wide the piece is; how complex; how well you know the pattern; how long a repeat is; how you are feeling on any given day; how well you can focus on the task at hand on any given day; whether it's a continuous lace or non-continuous (like Honiton) lace; how frequently you work on the piece; how long your sessions are; and so on. In the past, some lacemakers only ever made one pattern or maybe 2 in their lifetimes. It's known that if a girl was marrying a man from another village, she would have to stop lacemaking for 2 years so that she forgot her pattern, and not take it to the other village, and then she'd start to learn the new pattern after 2 years. They also worked full time on their lace, as time was money, and would alternate parts of the day when they would talk, when they would chant lace tells, and when they would be silent - they'd set goals (helps alleviate the boredom), and they may have decided not to speak until they'd put in 20 pins. It's an interesting question. If you're curious about your progress, using striver pins is a good way to measure your progress. You can get an idea of the length of time it takes to make 1 head, and you can see if you can still work as accurately yet a little faster the next time you sit down to the piece. I find that the 2 pieces of yardage I have on the go, are slow going at first until I get back into the rhythm of the pattern. One is a fairly straightforward edge on my travelling pillow from an old Anna pattern from the late 1980's. The other is a wide piece of beds that's slow going. Cheers, and thanks for an interesting line of thought, Helen, sunny Duvall, WA - To unsubscribe send email to [email protected] containing the line: unsubscribe lace [email protected]. For help, write to [email protected]. Photo site: http://community.webshots.com/user/arachne2003
