[lace] thread for Hollie Point

2016-03-21 Thread jsyzygy
  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", 

Re: [lace] blocking silk scarf

2016-02-08 Thread jsyzygy
I am so sorry, spiders. Two weeks ago I posted and said I was just about to
wash and block my newly completed Torchon silk scarf. This turned out to be
lies. I did finish my scarf but it has not been washed or blocked. After I
took it off of the pins, I looked at it and it looked ok and all my desire to
wash it just drained away from me. And I had gone to all the trouble of buying
blocking mats, too! My new plan is wait until it gets dirty to wash it. This
might happen relatively soon since I've been wearing it all over the place
and, when taking it off, absentmindedly been tossing it into a crumpled heap.

Thanks for all your insight into the matter.

On the bright side, even though I didn't get to experiment with washing and
blocking, I am really happy with the scarf. I'd never made a scarf before. It
is model 11 with one colored pair from Brigitte Bellon's Kloppelmuster fur
Schals und Tishlaufer. It is silk, bright red with the colored pair being
pastel variegated. It seems to be a different length every time I try to
measure it my best guess is that it is five and a half feet long, not
including the fringes.

When I was making the scarf I occasionally felt disappointed that it looked
like a table runner instead of a scarf. I defiantly said that if Scarlett
O'Hara could call a curtain a dress then I guessed I could call a table runner
a scarf, but that was just whistling past the graveyard. However, now that I
actually have the scarf in hand I find that I really like it. It is really
neat to wrap myself up in big oversized bobbin lace. Usually bobbin lace is
really tiny and I am huge, so having this really coarse lace around me is like
a giant has made bobbin lace and given it to me. Like Gulliver being dressed
by the Brobdingnagian giants.

The Bellon scarves are different in that, instead of starting at the top of
the scarf and working down vertically until you are done, you work across
horizontally. You work horizontally to the end, make a U-turn around the
corner, work horizontally back in the opposite direction, make another U-turn,
work horizontally in the original direction, etc, until you are done. When I
originally asked you all for scarf advice last October, Antje GonzAilez said
that she thought this method of working made Bellon's scarves more fun to make
than normal yardage. I've never made another scarf so I can't compare, but I
did find Bellon's method to be lots of fun. I likes having the subgoals of
"making it to the next U-turn" and alternating horizontals and U-turns broke
up the tedium a bit. I did finally get tired of making the scarf (I don't
think I'm really a yardage type of person) but just as I was thinking that I
really had to put the scarf aside and do something else for a while, I
measured the scarf and found I was done! Perfect timing!

A bonus for me is that I've always fairly fine straight continuous lace and
I've always really dreaded sewings. With Bellon, as you work across, making
the horizontal strip, you need to sew the new strip into the previous strip as
you go along. This was an intimidating prospect to me, but I thought that
maybe sewing would be easier with really coarse lace. It turns out sewings are
amazingly easy with really coarse lace. In fact, there was one time where I
had to do some unlacing to fix an error and I actually just unmade 3 sewings
to back up to my error. So the sewings were fun and I think I have a much
better understanding of sewings to carry back to my point ground work. I had
thought over the years that doing some exercises in coarse lace could help me
with sewings, but I find coarse lace to be so boring to do that I could never
bring myself to do that. With this scarf I finally had a coarse project that I
really wanted to do, and enjoyed doing, and just happened to have a lot of
sewings.

Julie in Laurel, Maryland USA

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[lace] blocking silk scarf

2016-01-24 Thread jsyzygy
Hi all
I am about to start the last repeat of a red and pink silk Torchon scarf (from
Brigette Beldon's book). I bought a package of "Knitter's Pride Blocking
Mats", which are like blocks of soft styrofoam. When I finish the scarf
(tonight??) I plan to submerge the scarf in warm water mixed with a little
Ajax dishwashing liquid, swish it around a little, and then submerge it in
warm clean water and swish again. If the colors seem to be running (I don't
know if that is a thing that happens) then I'll run more warm water over it
until the water is clear. Then I'll roll the scarf into a towel to absorb the
water so the scarf is just damp and not dripping wet.

Then I am going to lay the damp scarf nice and straight on my new "blocking
mat" and put pins in all the pinholes on the outer edges of the scarf (not
into any of the inner pinholes). I think it would be hard to keep the scarf
straight if I put the pins in consecutively so I figure I will first put in
pins really far apart from each other, like a foot apart, and then fill in the
middle so that the pins are half a foot apart, and then fill in again so they
are 1/4 of a foot apart, and so on. Is it important to put pins in every
pinhole or can I get bored and stop when I've only pinned, say, every other
pinhole?

Is this a good plan or is it a really awful plan and all of you out there are
cringing in horror? I've never pinned a piece of lace. Until this past summer
I'd never washed lace at all. This past summer and fall I've washed (as
described above, except I laid the dripping wet lace on a paper towel instead
of the big cloth towel I plan to use on the scarf) two very narrow cotton
bucks point exercises and one small and sturdy cotton needlelace exercise (the
Venetian Gros Point exercise from chapter 1 of Catherine Barley's great book)
but I didn't pin either of them. I washed the bucks edgings because I wanted
to practice sewing lace to cloth and I was told to always wash both the lace
and cloth before attaching together, and I washed the needlelace because I'd
carried it in my handbag for a long period of time and it was really dingy.
The needlace was colored cotton (Madeira Tanne 50) and the colors didn't run
together at all when it got wet-- the only change was that the needlelace went
from being dingy and dirty looking to bright and pretty.
Julie Shalack
All snowed in in Laurel Maryland USA

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[lace] Must I push down pins?

2015-11-11 Thread jsyzygy
I'd like to make a lace scarf because why not?  I've never made a lace scarf 
before.  I'm using a design, design 11, from Brigitte Bellon's Kloppelmuster 
fur Schals und Tischlaufer.  Bellon's scarves are not worked by starting at the 
top and working down in one long vertical strip.  Instead, the scarf is worked 
in horizontal strips.  I turn my pillow so the horizontal is oriented 
vertically, work the horizontal strip, turn the pillow 90 degrees, work a 
triangular strip that has the effect of sending all the bobbins into a U-turn, 
turn the pillow 90 degrees, and start working a new horizontal strip in the 
opposite direction from the first one.  As the new horizontal strip is worked 
and its edge touches the edge of the old horizontal strip, the new edge is sewn 
into the old edge.

I approach a sewing with fear and loathing and once the whole ugly ordeal is 
over I try to put it behind me and forget it at soon as possible.  I make only 
continuous lace (specifically, point ground) so I only have to sew when I am 
making something like a handkerchief edging and endings have to be sewn into 
beginnings.  SO I was a little worried about doing this scarf.  "But", I tried 
to encourage myself, "this scarf is really really coarse.  Maybe you hate 
sewings because the cursed little 15-footside-per-inch holes are so tiny.  
Maybe it will all be different with this project."

At this point I have completed two horizontal strips, so I have made one 
complete column of sewings, and it is in fact all different!  Hooray!  The 
sewings are a piece of cake.  Moreover, since I can actually see the twists in 
the thread I can finally really see why my sewing book says the sewing eats a 
twist and I need to put in an extra twist after the sewing.  I am happy and I 
am hoping that all this practice sewing in coarse lace will make sewing in fine 
lace easier.  My crotchet hook is too fine for such coarse thread, so when I 
sew I make sure the thread is positioned above the hook and doesn't split on 
the sharp point of the hook, but that it easy to do.

So, having done a full column of sewings, I couldn't help put notice the large, 
obtrusive wall of pins on the left side of my pillow the entire time I was 
working the second horizontal strip.  Having the left side of  my pillow cut 
off from me unpleasantly constrained my working area.  I laid a small piece of 
cloth over the pins so I could throw my bobbins there when I wasn't using them, 
and that worked fine and I had no problem with threads tangling in the pins, 
but when I was crossing and twisting it didn't feel natural to try to scale the 
bobbins over the wall of pins and onto the cloth, so the bobbins I was working 
with were all over to the right side.  Which felt crowded.  Also, the 
tensioning direction was wrong, so after the stitch I kept picking up bobbin 
pairs and pulling them all the way over to the left so that tension was in the 
correct direction, in particular so that cloth stich passives didn't bunch up 
over on the right side of the cloth trail.

By the way, I am working on a flat block pillow and I work in the closed 
English fashion.  I put a towel or something under the pillow so it is a little 
tilted, although honestly I have never noticed much difference between working 
at a slant and working totally flat.

I only work continuous lace.  When I first learned about bobbin lace it never 
even occurred to me to do anything else.  Continuous lace just seemed so 
immediately appealing.  I really love the way the bobbins all draw up out of 
the ground, make a motif, and then vanish back into the ground again.   I like 
thinking of the ground as a great ocean which throws up bobbins to the surface 
and then sinks them down under again. I like the way that making a motif is 
constrained by the bobbins you have available and you have to logically 
organize things so the exact number of bobbins are available when you require 
them.  Such constraint is like poetry.  It is romantic.  Sure, the rules get 
broken and extra bobbins are added to fill in the motif and a gimp occasionally 
is cut off instead of working across the lace to the next place it is needed, 
but overall there is logic in the construction.  So piece lace just never 
looked appealing and I've never tried it.

So, now, here I am, doing a piece lace sort of thing--sewing--and Iseem to 
remember something about pushing down pins so they don't get in the way?  Is 
that what I really need to do to get rid of the wall of pins on my left?   ALL 
the pins?  There are so many!  And then I will have to dig them all up again to 
remove them from the lace!  Instead of pushing them all down, should I remove 
most of the pins when I finish the horizontal strip and just leave in a few 
columns of pins along the edge, pushed down?  How many columns (this is 
torchon)?  I have a pin pusher (I like to push down headside and footside pins 
in point ground) so it won't hurt my fingers.  I think I mi

[lace] Multi-part prickings tricky; skeins also tricky

2015-11-04 Thread jsyzygy
I'd like to make a lace scarf because why not? I've never made a lace scarf
before. I'm using a design from Brigitte Bellon's Kloppelmuster fur Schals und
Tischlaufer

Last Saturday morning I decided to devote the weekend to prep work--making a
pricking and winding bobbins. The day before I had gone to the photocopy store
and made 6 photocopies of the design (at 120% size; thanks for the spiderly
advice). I thought that was an excessive amount to make, but I wanted to have
piles in order to make sure I didn't have to make another trip to the
photocopy store. As it turned out, I ended up using all six. I barely had
enough.

I thought making the pricking would be easy. So I just went and cut the
pricking templates from the photocopies. The templates didn't fit together. I
tried again more carefully. They still didn't fit. Realizing that I apparently
couldn't just sit down and start cutting, I got out a piece of paper and
carefully wrote down what I was doing. This resolved the problem. However,
even armed with a working planI still managed to mess up one more attempt
before finally getting templates that worked.

Here's what I found out when I wrote things down: for a scarf, I need a
beginning pricking, an end pricking, and two middle prickings for vamping the
yardage in the middle. I want the two middle prickings to be identical because
that is more aesthetic and also so I don't have to decide ahead of time
whether my scarf will use an even or odd number of middle repeats. It looks
like the book wants me to use the same part of the design for both beginning
or ending (a little hard to tell since the book is in German and I can't read
German), so I just need one pricking for beginning and end both. So here is
what I start with, when the prickings are all laid in order next to each
other:
start--middle1--middle2--end
XX-- XX -- XX -- XX The "X" represent the unknown left and right edges of the
prickings.
Now I start cutting. I cut out the right edge of the start pricking. Call that
edge A: XA -- XX -- XX -- XX
Now since the start has to interlock with the middle, the left edge of the
middle pricking is determined. Call B the edge that interlocks with A, and
remember that the two middles are identical: XA -- BX -- BX -- XX.
Now the two middles have to interlock and the left edge is B so the right edge
must be A again: XA -- BA -- BA -- XX
Now the ending has to interlock with the middle so it must be B: XA -- BA --
BA -- BX
Ta-da! So the start and the ends have different edges. I can't use the same
pricking for both start and end. Or more accurately, I can both use the same
pricking for start and end and also use the same pricking for both middles.
Either the middles are different or the start and ends are different. I think
with some thought maybe I could have figured out how to make A=B, like maybe
if I maybe the edge absolutely straight instead of wavy, and then I could have
made both the middles be the same and reuse the same pricking for start and
end. I'm happy enough with separate prickings for start and end.

I usually use the insides of cereal boxes for prickings. I cut up the cereal
box, tape the photocopy on the box, prick, remove the photocopy, and with
colored pens draw in the pricking markings. However, because this is my
SPECIAL scarf lace project, the first scarf I have ever attempted I went for
the fancy-schmancy blue prickings. I laid the photocopy onto blue cardstock
and then covered both with sticky (on the bottom) transparent bluish plastic
cover, so that the photocopy was sealed onto the cardstock. I didn't put any
additional markings on the prickings (the photocopy already had markings) but
if I had wanted them I would have had to draw them on the photocopy before
sealing with the plastic. The prickings were so big that I used up all the
blue plastic I had had lying around unsused from many years ago. I'll have to
remember to buy more form my bobbin lace supplier.

After finally getting the prickings done (I haven't actually pricked the
second middle piece with the pricker, but I don't need that to start the scarf
so I can do it at my leisure) I started on bobbin winding. The scarf design
has a trick to it so I only need 24 pairs of bobbins even though the scarf is
three times that wide so you would expect it to need 72 pairs (much thanks to
spider Antje for pointing that out to me BEFORE I started winding bobbins!).
Many, many hours later I'd gone through a skein and a half and had wound 18
pairs. That night, Sunday night by now, as I put my stuff away an unexpected
old fragment of memory from many years ago drifted to the surface of mind.
Back then I spent a few months learning how to weave. I suddenly remembered
that my how-to-weave class spent a fair amount of time teaching us not to
dress a loom directly from the yarn skein. So on Monday I searched the
internet and found lots of posts from knitting sites emphatically instructing
that you should never knit directly from a skein (also 

[lace] pricking size for scarf

2015-10-28 Thread jsyzygy
I would like to make a silk scarf because why not?  I've never made a scarf.  I 
have a design and I have silk yarn.  However, I don't know how much to 
enlarge/reduce the pricking so as to fit the yarn.  I have made teeny samples 
of various sizes but I don't know what to look for.  What?  What am I looking 
for?

The design is Model 11 from Brigitte Bellon's Kloppelmuster fur Schals und 
Tischlaufer. That's a book of Torchon(?) scarves and table runners.  It's in 
German (which I don't speak) and there aren't any diagrams for how to make 
stitches, but the prickings are marked (for example, the cloth trails and 
spiders are clearly marked) and there are very clear photos of each piece.  
This scarf looks like just Torchon ground, cloth trails, and a few spiders 
thrown in.

I got the book and yarn from Holly Van Sciver.  She said, oh, this pricking is 
too small for this yarn, you will have to enlarge appropriately.  I said, how 
do I know how big to make it?  She said, make little samples with various 
pricking sizes.  I said, what, you mean I have to go make an entire pricking 
and wind up all those bobbins and then start working the scarf and then stop 
after a short time so all that work was for nothing?  She said no, not at all.  
She said put the photocopy directly on the pillow--no pricking-- and just work 
with a few bobbins.  Easy-peasy.  So I went home, made a bunch of photocopies 
of various sizes, and wound up 12 pairs of bobbins.  I started at the beginning 
of the scarf, but the beginning of the scarf is just ground and I wanted to see 
how the yarn behaved in cloth stitch.  I ran out of bobbins well before I got 
to the first cloth stitch. So I found a likely section of the design that had 
both ground and cloth.  I made an imaginary 7 by 5 !
 pin diamond.  I put pins on the top left and top right sides of the diamonds 
and hung a single pair on each.  Then I worked the inside of the diamond, 
which, as I said, had both ground and cloth trail.

So now I have teeny diamonds of various sizes.  What am I looking for?  This is 
a scarf, so I guess I want it to be soft.  Maybe lace will naturally be soft 
because it has lots of holes in it?  Also, won't it be impractical as a scarf 
since won't the holes let all the cold air in so it won't keep you warm?  
Should I make it extra long so the wearer can wrap it around a few times to 
keep the cold out?  Or are lace scarves only worn wrapped once, for maximum 
decorativeness?  How long should a scarf be, anyway?

I guess the tighter the lace the more stiff and study it is?  So how stiff and 
sturdy do I want a scarf to be?  Surely a really loose lace will fail to hold 
its stitches and be more likely to catch and distort when touching another 
object?  But I do want it to feel nice to the touch.  All the other lace I make 
is just edging exercises and stuff so it's not big enough that I care how it 
feels like in my hand.

For the 100% diamond the cloth stitch was resistant--I felt like I had to 
really pull the threads to get them through and the threads felt rough and 
not-wanting-to-slide.  Off the pins, the cloth stitch looks a little lumpy and 
the sides where the weaver bends around looks unattractive.  So, fine 100% is 
definitely too small.  105% is better.

110% is pretty reasonable.  The cloth stitch looks smooth and it was easy to 
work.  The threads no longer feel rough and resistant.  Except maybe when I am 
pinning the weaver. 

At 115% the cloth stitch starts looking like it has some space in it.  
Breathing room.  Man, it look like dense half stitch to me but I know for a 
fact that I used cloth stitch.  I think maybe that's due to the fact that the 
cloth stitch goes diagonally when I hold the diamond in the natural way, 
instead  of going horizontal.

I think I'll try a couple more sizes and see if I can get something that is 
definitely too big.  Right now I guess I like the 115%, as it feels the 
softest.  But the diamonds are really small.  Maybe a much bigger piece of lace 
has qualities to it that I miss in a smaller piece, qualities like the softness 
and sturdiness. 

I wonder if I should use one twist when putting the weaver around the pin 
instead of two twists?  Holly sold me some extra large pins, but she still 
seemed dubious about their size.  I don't know why she is dubious; I don't know 
what happens if torchon pins are too small.  But I wonder whether the reason 
the thread feels resistant going around the weaver pin is not that the pricking 
is small but rather that the pins are so small that it hard to fit two twists 
inwhen circling around the pin.

I'm excited at this idea of figuring out for myself how big to make the 
pricking.  I am not naturally adventurous, not at all, so I always use the 
thread specified in the book or in Holly's sizing chart, slavishly following 
the directions and afraid to explore for myself.  I am really pleased at how 
quick and easy it is to just churn out several diamonds.  It is

[lace] Mechlin, where did the pins go?

2005-03-23 Thread JSyzygy
Hi Spiders

  My background is Torchon and Bucks Point and now I am trying to do the 
first exercise in the Mechlin book Rita Thienpondt's "Syllabus Mechelse Kant 
I".  
Thank you for answering my questions about terminology last week; it was very 
helpful and motivating.
  I am not having any problems with the exercise, everything is going well,  
but I want to check that I am not missing anything obvious.
  The first exercise is just a long strip of (ice) ground (CTCTCTCTT)(that's 
two cloth-stitch-with-a-twist and an extra twist at the end).  It uses 50 
pairs.  Horizontally it is 9 plaits across, so 18 pairs (2 pairs per vertical 
line) and diagonally it is 20 pairs across *one pair per slantedt line).  So it 
is 
a narrow strip.
   The pins are missing!  There are no pins in the ground!  How do I tension 
without pins to pull against?
   In cloth stitch I might make many stitches before sticking in a pin, but 
once I put in the pin then I tension all the stitches since the last pin.  So 
the pins are not missing in cloth sttich in the sense that they are missing 
here.
   Here, the stitch is very heavy so it is impossible to tension after the 
stitch is done.  All tensioning must be done at the moment the stitch is made.  
It is impossible to alter the stitch afterwards.
  Think of lace ground, a  mesh, as a collection of little holes.
   Everything is fine at the edge pin where I start making ground but then I 
have a long journey (18 pairs, remember) before I reach the other edge pin.  
At first I tensioned too hard--the circles were small-- and when I got to the 
end of the journey my lace did not reach the edge pin.  However, this wasn't 
obvious until I had done several rows.  After several rows I could see the lace 
reaching up from the edge.  So then I had to make a really ugly row of great 
big circles in order to realign myslef with the edge pins.  Now I seem to have 
tensioned too loosely as my lace is overhanging the edge pins,  So I guess now 
I will hav to make some rows of really tiny circles in order to align myself 
again.
   You might think, well, why not just look at the ground as you make it and 
check that the holes are the right size (since the holes can only be corrected 
at the moment of making because stitches can't be tensioned afterwards)?  
However I can't actually see any holes while I am making the ground.  All I see 
is a tangled mess of thread.  At the edges I see some holes, but the middle is 
just hopeless.  It is not until a couple of rows later that the mess resolves 
itself into perfectly lovely (but mis-sized) circles.
   So does it sound as if everythng is going the way it should be going or am 
I missing something?  Do I still work done the diagonal, just as in Torchon 
and Bucks?  If I worked across instead of diagonally then there would be fewer 
stitches between pins. Should I be somehow be prodding the stiches with pins 
while I make the stitches?  Right now, I tension by pulling the bobbin pairs 
aparte (pulling the right pair to the right and the left pair to the left 
simultaneously) after the first cloth-stitch-with-a-twist and again after the 
second 
cloth-stitch-with-a-twist, but I don't do anything else while making the 
stitches.
  The Mechlin book has a bunch of pictues of lace with huge swathes of 
ground.  How do they make so much ground without any pins to tension against?  
   One thing about this exercise is that it made me realize how much I like 
pins.  I love pulling the threads tight against the pin.  Here are the threads, 
messy and formless right after making the stitch...I pull the threads ...they 
slide across the pin...voila! Nice clean straight thread lines forming a 
pretty stitch.  I like the way I always pull bobbins down and the pins change 
the 
direction of my force vector so that the force is applied at exactly the 
location and direction that is needed.  I provide raw brute force and the pin 
cleverly turns the power into something useful.   This is not interesting, it 
is 
rudimentary, but it touches on interesting subjects like levers and mechanics:  
the subjects of indirect manipulation of forces.  Manipulating forces is a key 
to civilization.  Archimedes was so impressed with levers that he said, Give 
me a lever long enough and a place to stand and I could move the world.so 
it is much more fun to have use pins to change vectors--subtle indirect 
manipulation--then to just position your hands so that the vector is in the 
right 
position to start with--boring direct manipulation.
  I like thinking of lace as the interaction between pins and thread.  Pins 
are all rigidity and threads are all malleability.  Take some malleabililty 
from the threads, so that you have beautiful interesting designs, and some 
rigidity from the pins, so that the lines of the design are crisp and elegant 
instead of loose and messy, and together you end up with lace.
  On the other hand, after all the thousands and thousands of pins i

[lace] Mechlin terminology

2005-03-16 Thread JSyzygy
Hi Spiders
  I just bought a "How to Make Mechlin Book".  It is Rita Thienpondt's 
"Syllabus Mechelse Kant I".  It looks like fun.  Right now it is fairly 
impenetrable, but I think I'll be fine once I assay a few exercises. 
  To make it more fun for me, could someone explain some of the terminology 
instead of leaving me to fend for myself? I know nothing about Mechlin; I know 
Bucks Point.

   In Section 1, Thienpondt does not define the stitches.
 Linen stitch is a standard name, I assume it's cloth stitch CTC
 Half-stitch is a standard name, I assume it is CT
 Twisted stitch I assume is...is well, that's where I have a problem. 
 I have no idea what twisted stitch is.  Thienpondt does define a complicated 
stitch "Plait of 4 bobbins"(Ground stitch?) as CTCTCTCTT and the picture 
looks like half-stitch-colored line with two twisted-stitch-colored lines 
attached 
to it.  So maybe twisted stitch is CTCTCTT?  (It was good that Thienpondt was 
explicit about the ground stitch.  I feel all revved up to start the first 
exercise, which is just a bunch of ground stitches.)

   In Section 1 Thienpondt refers to a "ring pair".  What is that?  I think 
she doesn't mean the gimp.

  In Section 2, Thienpondt says: " b Making an in- or output with a picot 
(see techniques)".
  Techniques are Section 1.  I looked there and saw on page 15 a detailed 
thread diagram of a picot; it looked just like the picot I use in Bucks Point.  
There were lots of twists, then an entanglement, then two twists afterward.
  I looked carefully at all the loops by the gimp in the photograph of the 
worked exercise on the first page of Section 2, but none of these loops looked 
like picots.  They all looked to me as if the pair had just been twisted twice 
and a pin put under it.  So where are the picots that Thienpondt referred to? 
Julie 
Baltimore MD

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[lace] Re: failure of brownies to appear

2005-01-17 Thread JSyzygy
Hi Tamara
  Did you remember to leave out a bowl of milk?
  Maybe you could try putting the bowl of milk near your lace pillow?  As a 
sort of hint as to what the desired behavior is?

>> And, it turns out that the pesky question - *why*, after a whole repeat 
>> which went smoothly with pairs "just so", do I suddenly, on the very 
>> last pin, have one extra pair with no place to send it - has not 
>> resolved itself quietly in the 4 hrs I was gone 

   Julie  
   Baltimore MD

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[lace] pair or two singles

2004-12-01 Thread JSyzygy
Hi Spiders.  I thought I would take a break from the slow progress on my 
Chantilly fan and make a post.

   When adding in a pair of bobbins at the gimp in point ground lace 
(Chantilly, Bucks Point),  should I add in a pair of bobbins or 2 single 
bobbins? Does 
it matter?
   A pair of bobbins is two bobbins connected together.  You make a pair by 
taking a long piece of thread and winding half on one bobbin and half on the 
other bobbin.  Then you hang the pair over the gimp and, presto, it's added in.
  A single bobbin is a bobbin wound with thread which ends in a loose thread 
end.  You add this by attaching the loose thread end to the gimp and letting 
the bobbin hang.  While the bobbin merrily works its way through the lace, the 
loose end stays with the gimp until the gimp has worked three or four 
"stitches".  Then the loose end is thrown back, later cut off close to the lace.
   The obvious way to attach the loose end to the gimp is to knot the loose 
end to the loose end of a spare bobbin--to give yourself a leash--and attach 
the spare bobbin to the gimp bobbin (or just remember to work them as one 
unit). 
 Then throw back the spare bobbin before you reach the knot.

  I think it must be better to add in a pair of bobbins, since then there are 
no loose ends in the lace.  Surely it is bad to have loose ends in the lace.  
Even though they've been secured by three ot four stitches, won't they tend 
to unravel over time and so cause the whole lace piece to fall apart?  I would 
always add in pairs if it wasn't for the problem of winding thread.
  Here is the problem.  Suppose you start out with a pair of bobbins with 
each bobbin's having a good amount of thread.  This pair works through the lace 
for a while and eventually is thrown out and cut off.  Now you come to a place 
where you need to add bobbins.  The obvious bobbins to add are the ones that 
were cut off.  But now your original long unbroken piece of thread has been cut 
in half (half is now on each bobbin) so instead of a long unbroken thread you 
have two threads each half the size of the original thread.  So you discard 
one thread and share the other between the two bobbins.  Now you have a pair 
with each bobbin's having a not-so-good amount of thread.  Perhaps now the 
bobbins have too little thread and you'll have to, ugh, replace them when they 
run 
out of thread (that puts loose threads into the lace again!).
  I could just throw out lots and lots of thread and always put long pieces 
of thread on pairs of bobbins, so the thread problem is not unsurmountable.  
But it is unpleasant to constantly be throwing out thread and winding bobbins.
  If I add in single bobbins then there is no winding at all to be done.  I 
just grab the bobbin and add it in.

  So you see that I would like the convenience of adding in bobbins as 
singles, but I am afraid that that is a bad idea because of all the loose ends. 
 
It's bad enough that I have dozens of loose ends from cutting off bobbins, 
without also having them from adding in.
  What is the common wisdom on this question?
  
  This is a new problem for me.  I have been learning lace from Nottingham's 
_Technique_Of_Bobbins_Lace_Revised_Edition_ (excellent book for learning lace) 
and in the Bucks Point exercises that I've done so far (I've done 2/3 or so 
of them) only one or two pairs have ever been added in.  I didn't mind adding 
in the bobbins as pairs when there were only one or two of them.  However in my 
Chantilly fan (the fan from Lohr's _Hausdragon_ box of patterns), pairs are 
constantly being cut off and added in.  A pair--if not two pairs-- is added in 
whenever a half stitch figure is started and cut off when the the figure ends. 
 It got to be really burdensome, constantly endlessly rewinding bobbins do as 
to add them in as pairs.  I got sick of it.

  I am almost half-way done with my fan!  This is slow progress since it is 
the only piece of lace I work on and it's been several months.  It is full of 
mistakes.  The mistakes in the figures are particularly noticeable since a 
mistake in half-stitch causes a "run in the stocking".  I used to think, how 
could 
anybody make a mistake in half-sttich?  Half-stitch mistakes are so easy to 
catch.  Ha Ha.  I got my comeuppance.  Also I notice the ragged and gappy look 
of the borders of the figure due to putting pins in the worng pinholes or 
maybe pricking the holes badly.  Less noticeable is the fact that I just can't 
seem to fix in my mind how many twists to use in footside and so just twist 
randomly.
  Fortunately, it turns out that I don't care about the mistakes.  No, I look 
at the lace, my heart lifts up,  and I think it is beautiful.  Just as flower 
can be beautiful without being perfect.  However, I am really worried that my 
lace will fall apart because of all the loose ends.  I am constantly cutting 
off bobbins and I don't know if I secure the ends well enough before I throw 
them back and cut off close to 

[lace] Enthusiasm about Lohr design

2004-08-19 Thread JSyzygy
--
-
In a message dated 8/19/2004 3:33:08 AM Eastern Daylight Time, Tamara Duvall 
writes:
she's been tackling - for several months and unfrustrated - a Chantilly fan, 
then she must have accumulated plenty of good judgment (lace-wise) in her 
"tool kit" already. One isn't able to continue with a project of that magnitude, 
unless one's quite experienced. It was time for her to do as she liked, 
whatever the diagram said...
--
-
  Tamara mentions above my being "unfrustrated" by a project.  This has made 
me think about how much fun my current project is.  It has got the most 
wonderful easy-to-follow diagram.
  My current project is the black Chantilly fan from Ulrike Lohr's box of 
patterns "Hausdragon".  In basic concept and in most of the details, this is a 
very simple piece: it is just large blocky half-stitch figures surrounded by 
ground.  Some honeycomb thrown in.
   It's good that most of the piece is simple because that allows my mind to 
really focus on the complicated part:  the boundary where half-stitch meets 
ground.  This is orders of magnitude more complicated then I've dealt with 
before.
   The half-stitch weavers do the most amazing things.  Sometimes the weaver 
changes into a passive and a new weaver take over.  It does this at places 
where the figure forms an L-shape--I'd seen that before--but also at various 
places where the weaver is running along the top or bottom of the figure.  
Sometimes it seems as if the weaver had tried to make it all the way across the 
figure but just got tired and dropped into being a passive.  Sometimes the weaver, 
having gone through many passives, stops and makes a stitch--apparently 
gasping for breath--and the plunges forward again instead of bouncing back in the 
direction it came from. There are lots of 'J' shaped figures where two separate 
weavers meet and then some decision has to be made about which weaver drops 
out and which keeps on.
   At the beginning of each figure, some random number of pairs are added in. 
 Why?  Clearly it's to increase the density of the half-stitch so that it is 
more aesthetically pleasing, but how does Lohr figure out exactly how many 
pairs to add? She could have made all the figures many times, experimenting with 
different numbers of passives (this would be appropriate behavior on the part 
of a beginner), but surely it is more likely that she is using some general 
rules of thumb that she has devised over the years or which are standard to 
Chantilly.  I wonder what they are?  I wonder if there is some sort of ratio of 
half-stitch density to ground density that she is trying to achieve.
   I've almost finished the first fifth of the fan, whis is a bird head and 
neck. The neck has "fins" sticking out of it.  When I first looked at them, I 
thought that all the fins were exactly the same except for each one's being a 
little bigger than the one above it.  The diagrams reveal, however, that each 
fin is actually tilted at a slightly different angle, which causes each fin to 
have a different weaver pattern. It amused me that these fins, which looked 
identical by eye, turned out to be so diferent by execution.
   Now I'm approaching the wide bottom of the neck and the weaver seems about 
to go into another one of those  "I'm too tired to make it all the way 
across, so I'm going to be constantly stopping and making stitches".  
  Oops, this message got too long.  I could go on--the interesting behavior 
of the honeycomb column that hugs headside, having extra pairs travel with the 
gimp instead of cutting them off, half-stitch going at twice the speed of 
ground-- but I'll cut it off.  The point is, I am really impressed with how easy 
Ulrike Lohr has made this.  Here she is, doing just amazing stuff, and yet it's 
been completely easy to do.  I have not been at all frustrated.  That's the 
mark of a really well-designed thing: it should seem really easy and obvious.
   The weaver is complicated because Bucks Point is based on a grid and the 
figures here are not grid-shaped (ie, they aren't diamonds). To an advanced 
lacer this might all seem blindingly simple and dull, but, to someone with no 
experience in floral Bucks Point, this project is like a virtuoso demonstration 
of ways to gracefully pull irregular shapes out of the ground.  Being 
grid-based does not mean that you have to restrict the shapes of your figures.
However, it's for intermediate Bucks Pointers, not beginners.  It's quite 
fine.  She assumes that you know how to add in and take out pairs.  She 
doesn't give gimp diagrams, which is ok since the gimp is easy, but so far I've run 
into two sections that were impossible to do because of the gimp (lacking 
guidance, I used gimp loops).   She doesn't explain w

[lace] completed favor re Ulriker Lohr's Hausdragon

2004-08-18 Thread JSyzygy
  Thank you Spiders for your overwhelming and prompt reply to my request for 
copies of two pages from Ulrike Lohr's Hausdragon box of patterns.  An 
important request to me because I am now deep in the middle of making the pattern and 
I think the pages will be helpful.
   It turns out that I was wrong to ask for a photocopy; I was not being 
up-to-date with modern technology.  The modern way to do it is to scan the pages 
into the computer and email the scanned picture.  This had completely failed to 
occur to me.  I suspect that the scanned image might not be as clear as a 
photocopy (because of the quaility of my printer) but the pictures looked quite 
clear to me and now I have the additional option of looking at them on my 
computer, which blows them up and lets me see every detail.  So it was a really 
good idea.
   The pictures turned out to be even more enlightening than I had hoped.  It 
turned out that my missing back page of the pattern booklet contained 
blow-ups of the completed lace.  So it is now clear that the figures in the pattern 
are in fact half-stitch and that the gimp is very thick.
   Some Spiders took the time to say a few things in response to my request 
for people to say things about what Chantilly is like, and I really appreciated 
that.
  I forgot to mention in my previous post that the pattern is a lot of fun.  
I have been having a great time with it.  Apparently a good pattern for an 
intermediate Bucks Pointer interested in fine lace.
  
Julie,  Baltimore MD

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[lace] A favor re Ulrike Lohr's Hausdragon

2004-08-17 Thread JSyzygy
   I have a favor to ask.
   Could some obliging American spider who has a copy of Ulrike Lohr's 
Hausdragon box of patterns go photocopy the first page of pattern #12, a black fan 
with 2 bird heads and two dog-like heads, and mail it to me?  Email me for my 
address.  I can pay, although I'm thinking it will only put you out about 60 
cents.  The favor is the inconvenience of doing this.  The last page of the 
pattern booklet would also be nice, although not as important.
   That's the important point of the post.  Now here's just some random lace 
babble:  
I decided a few months back to try to make this pattern.  I therefore 
went to my local Office Depot to make several photocopies of the pricking.  
Lamentably, my original copy of the pricking somehow got lost in the process.  So I 
have the pricking--the photocopies of it--but I don't have the stuff that was 
on the back of the page that had the pricking.  The stuff on the back was the 
first and last page of the pattern booklet.
   The first page of the booklet has a picture of the completed fan.  I think 
I would like to have that.  The last page in the entire box of patterns also 
has a picture of the fan, but that picture is too small to make out details. 
   I've been working on the fan for a few months now. Today I was looking at 
what I've done so far and I thought, boy, that gimp sure is thick.  Is it 
really supposed to be that thick?  I wonder if I've got it right.  Maybe a good 
picture of the completed results would clear this up.
  I think I'm using the right threads, although I can't doublecheck since the 
names of the threads are on the first page of the pattern booklet.  My thread 
is Van Sciver's "Danish Silk 250 3-ply Chantilly Silk unboiled" which, 
bizarrely, comes in a film canister.  This thread seems to fit the pattern 
reasonable well.  My gimp is Piper's Silk 6-fold 140/2 spun silk.  This is the thread 
that seems really thick.  I use it just the way it comes off the spool.  I've 
wondered if, instead of using all 6 folds, I was supposed to separate the folds 
and only use 1 or 2 or 3 of them instead of all 6.  Against this idea is a 
gimp diagram (although it is for the coarser motif and not the fan) which shows 
the gimp thread forking into 2 pieces, with a "3"  written next to it.  This 
implies that the original gimp used all 6 folds and now was being separated 
into 2 pieces of 3 folds each.
   The other thing that bothers me is that I somehow got the idea that all 
the figures were supposed to be done in half-stitch.   So I've been doing them 
that way.  They've been easy to make since Ulrike Lohr provides an extremely 
clear and comprehensive working diagram.  However, the working diagram clearly 
shows cloth stitch, not half-stitch.  The passives all go down vertically, as 
with cloth stitch, not slanted, as with half-stitch.
  Now, one might think that if the working diagram shows cloth stitch then 
the question is definitely answered.  Ha, no.  Each line in the diagram 
represents a pair of bobbins, not a single bobbin.  This is important, since the 
diagram would be unreadably cluttered if each bobbin got its own line.  If each 
line represent a pair of bobbins then what is the best way to illustrate 
half-stitch, a stitch which splits the pairs?  It seems to me that the best way, the 
clearest and easiest-to-follow way, would be to make half-stitch use the same 
working diagram as cloth stitch.
  So I feel fairly sure that I am right to be working in half-stitch, but 
maybe the picture would clear it up.  I'm not sure that it will, since the 
figures are so dense that they might come out just as a solid black patch in the 
picture.
I said I "somehow got the idea" that the figures should be in 
half-stitch.  More specifically,  I've been told that Chantilly lace is exactly the 
same 
as Bucks Point with the following characteristics: 1) uses black thread, 2) 
footside sometimes has twists, 3) headside often has so many threads in the 
reservoir that threads are bundled instead of being woven through individually, 4) 
kat stitch used, 5) beautiful scrolling flower patterns, and 6) solid figures 
always done in half-stitch.
This pattern has characteristics 1,2, and 3 but does not have 4 or 5.  
Therefore, I voted that this was Chantilly Lace and all figures should be 
half-stitch. 
   Speaking of half-stitch, here is a question.  Do I actually need to make 
all the figures in half-stitch?  Why can't I make some of the figures in 
half-stitch and some of them in cloth stitch?  Or for that matter, all the figures 
in cloth stitch?  
   The easy answer to this is that of course I can do anything I want.  
That's not exactly what I mean.  I want to know what people's experiences are.  Why 
is Chantilly done completely in half-stitch?  Does something bad happen when 
you throw in cloth stitch?  Is it more pleasing aesthetically to make all 
figures the same way?  Is half-stitch more sturdy or something than c

[lace] pins

2004-08-13 Thread JSyzygy
  I am working on a Chantilly fan and I am thinking about pins.  None of my
lace books talk about this subject.
  I have three boxes of pins:
   38 x .40 mm  long and thin
   30 x .50 mm  --> my usual <--
   17 x .45 mm  short and thin
  Recall that Chantilly is a "you can never have too many bobbins" sort of 
lace.
This particular piece uses about 85 pairs and is I guess is about 7 footside 
per cm
{17 footside per in).  Since previously my maximum was 50 pairs and I worked 
at 14 ft/inch, you see that I am being ambitious.  Also, I do not actually 
know how
to make Chantilly, so I am pretending it is Bucks Point.
  This piece is very simple and consists mainly of large blocky half-stitch 
figures
and ground.
   Method might be relevant,  so I say that I am using a big octogonal block 
pillow
(9 blocks, corner blocks are triangles, blocks move in all directions).  It 
is 23 inches
wide.  This is my main pillow; almost all my lace exercises have been done on 
it,
from the very beginning up until now.  The bobbins, all spangled Midlands,  
lie flat 
on  my pillow while I work( ie hands-down).  I hate it when the ends of the 
bobbins 
dangle off the end of the pillow.  I always pre-prick.
  Since I can only actually work with 10-15 pairs of bobbins at a time and 
Bucks
Point usually uses more than that, I need a way to get rid of all those extra 
bobbins.  I use spring stitch holders, which are thin plastic rods with 
stretchy 
metal closures.  They hold about 9 pairs, 10 if I push it.  All my unused 
bobbins 
are bound in holders and thrown over to the left and right top sides of the 
pillow, out 
of the way of my working area. When I started I used holders even when I only 
had about 15 total pairs since it is so nice to really focus on the 
particular motif
I'm working on, secure in the knowledge that the unused bobbins can't possibly
become disarranged.  Besides, they need to go in holders anyway when I finish
my session and put the pillow down.
   Preparing for my new Chantilly project, I became worried that my usual pins
were too thick.  The holes in the pricking are so close together!  Surely 
they are
about as close as the diameter of a pin.  So I decided to try smaller pins.  
I bought
the short and thin box and started the lace.
  The short and thin pins didn't last more than two rows of lace.  They were 
horrible,
absolutely horrible to use.  The threads kept on looping over the tops of the 
pins and
becoming disarranged.  After two painstakingly tedious rows I gave up and 
went to
my usual pins.  It was such a relief to no longer have to intensely 
concentrate on my
threads' not hopping and to just zip quickly along, lacing away.
  So I decided that maybe short pins are bad for Chantilly/Bucks Point.  Maybe
when you have any type of lace that uses lots of bobbins which need to be 
thrown 
back and stacked, then short pins are bad because the threads of the 
thrown-back 
bobbins naturally rise up a little and so loop over short pins.  Could this 
be true?
  So I bought a box(actually, tube) of the long and thin pins.  When I got 
them I
was disappointed becuase there weren't very many of them (about 150) and they
were so thin that they hurt my fingers when I pushed them in.
I contemplated my pricking more carefully.  It seemed to me that in fact 
my usual
pins could be used in the ground (17 ftsd/in, remember), although it does 
make for a
particularly impenetrable pin thicket--no possible way of spotting mistakes 
until they
get out of the thicket.  The problem was the half-stitch figures, which in 
many places 
were almost twice as dense as the ground (ie two half-stitch pins for every 
ground 
stitch that goes in and out).  So I decided to use the long and thin pins for 
the figures
and my usual pins for the ground.  That way my fingers got a bit of rest from 
pushing
the thin pins and I wouldn't use very many thin pins at a time so I wouldn't 
run out.
What made this idea particularly feasible is that the difference in the 
lengths of the 
pins meant I could easily distinguish between the two types when I was 
reaching into
the thicket for a new pin.
   So, just as I finished off the starting rows of the fan and approached my 
very first 
figure, I switched to the ground->usual, figure->thin method.
  Now it is several weeks later and everything has worked out well.  The only 
problem 
is that I find that the long and thin pins bend.  I bet that about a third of 
them are 
severely bent!  I've been using my usual pins for years and the most heavily 
used 
ones have only a mild bend.  These new pins have gotten all beat up after 
just a few 
pushes!
  I think a lot of the bending is due to my not placing the pins accurately 
and so 
sometimes not being centered in my pre-pricked pricking holes.  Also, because 
the 
holes are so very close together and hard to see, there are times when I miss 
the prepricked holes completely and force the pin thropugh the pricking.  
Regardless,

[lace] Re: pricking too big

2004-04-28 Thread JSyzygy
  A couple of weeks ago I sent a post saying that I had a point ground (Bucks 
Point, Chantilly, whatever) pattern that was too big to fit on one piece of 
pricking.  I was delayed in starting this project, but now here is a follow-up 
post.
  You spiders were great!  Your replies were just what I needed.  I was so 
worried about this problem.  I think I might have been excessively worried 
because I envisioned spending weeks on this project, finally getting to the 
half-way point, and then finding out that, because I'd done the pricking joining 
wrong, the whole thing was hopeless and would have to be scrapped.  Or maybe I 
would spend weeks and weeks and actually finish the whole thing and then find 
that there was a hideously visible distortion where the prickings joined.  
Anyway, I really wanted some advice on this problem.
   Spiders were negative about the idea of overlapping prickings.  Top 
suggestions were:
1) Get a bigger piece of card so that pattern fits on one pricking
2) Make two pricking pieces that fit snugly next to one another (abut each 
other)
3) Make two prickings and a flimsy paper "bridge" to connect them
4) Make two pricking pieces that overlap.  When the time comes, move the lace 
from one piece to the other.
  I went with suggestion (2), prickings that abut each other.
  Having decided to cut my pattern in half, the next question is: Where do I 
cut it?  3 choices come to mind:
1) cut across the ground
2) cut across a figure
3) cut along a boundary, ie along a gimp line
  I decided to cut along a gimp line, since hiding problems in the gimp 
seemed like a very Bucks Point-ish thing to do.  However, I am curious about the 
idea of cutting across the ground.  Would that cause a line of distortion to 
appear in my ground?  Well, of course the answer is no, it wouldn't, since I am 
not the world's greated pricker so my lines aren't straight at the best of 
times.  I mean_theoretically_ would it cause a distortion?  Tamara didn't seem to 
think so in her post.
  To make my pricking, I cut photocopies of the pricking so that I had two 
overlapping pieces.  I glued them to the card.  I cut one piece mostly along a 
gimp line.  I put this piece over the second piece and traced in a sharp pencil 
the place where the cut did not follow the gimp.  Then I cut the second 
piece.  In both cases I first cut sloppily with big scissors and then used little 
scissors to snip the card right up to the line.  Then I covered both pieces of 
card with contact paper and cut the contact paper off at the edges I'd made ( 
Somehow something has gone wrong here...).
   Then I pricked an inch or at the  edges since I was afraid that pricking 
wouldn't work when the pinholes were right at the edge of the pricking.  
Everything went fine.  However, I wonder if next time I might try pricking an inch 
or so of the soon-to-be-edges before I cut.  No, wait, that wouldn't work 
because the contact paper wasn't placed yet.  Maybe I could put the contact paper 
on before I cut, except I don't know if I can draw pencil lines on contact 
paper.
  Anyway, everything seems to be fine and the two pieces fit snugly against 
each other.  I am delighted.  I was so anxious and now it's turned out not to 
be hard at all.
   Some people asked what my project was.  It is a black fan, pattern #12 
from Ulrike Lohr's Hausdrachen box of patterns.  It is narrow but a bit long, 
slightly too long to fit on a standard letter-sized card (it would have fit on 
A5).  It is good that it is narrow, since as it is it uses 80 pairs of bobbins, 
which is twice what I am used to (my maxumum amount so far was 50 pairs).  I 
am excited to try this because, except for a pretty little Torchon handkerchief 
last fall, I have never made lace that was not an exercise from my lace book. 
 I wanted to do something different because I want to take a break from 
abstract designs.  I like this fan 
because: it has recognizable pictures, it is Bucks Point (the only laces I 
know how to make are Torchon and Bucks Point), the design is simple (it's just 
lots of ground with some big half-stitch figures), and it is fine.  
  As simple as the pattern is, I see as I look at the working diagrams that 
there are all sorts of things going on that I don't understand.  So I expect 
I'll make all sorts of mistakes and end up with something that does not look 
like the picture in the booklet.  So what if I do?  At this point I've made 
enough lace exercises know that I will love the result anyway.
  Logically, the right time for me to make a follow-up post would have been 
after I finished the project and found out whether the abutting prickings had 
actually worked, but, geez,  that seems awfully far in the future, so now is 
the time instead.
  
  Julie 
  
  Baltimore MD

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[lace] [lace} pricking too big

2004-04-07 Thread JSyzygy
  I want to make a piece of Point Ground (Bucks Point, Chantilly, whatever) 
but 
the pricking is too big to fit on one piece of cardstock.  What should I do? 
Be 
very specific.
  It seems to me that I've heard people talk about putting a pricking on two 
pieces that 
fit together, but I don't see how to do that.  The holes are so close 
together that holes 
would fall into the gap in the best case.  Is it really possible to do this 
with a type of 
lace with so many holes so close together?
  If I use two overlapping pieces, then what is the best way to make sure the 
overlap 
line up?  I was thinking that I could start the pricking on one peice and 
then, as I 
approach the end of the piece, put the other piece underneath so that both 
pieces are
pricked simultaneously.
  Maybe I can just find a really huge piece of cardstock somewhere.
  
Julie  Baltimore MD

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[lace] Technical Nottingham Bucks headside question

2004-01-11 Thread JSyzygy
  Hi Spiders!  This is a staggeringly technical question, but I would like to 
know the answer and can't think of who else to ask.  I'm sorry.  I'm hoping 
the Arachne pool is large enough that someone will know.  If you reply by 
posting, make sure not to paste this whole message in your reply.
  I am working through Chapter 3 Bucks Point of Pamela Nottingham's "The 
Technique of Bobbin Lace Completely Revised New Edition".  I started a new 
exercise today, Fig 215 Cloth and Honeycomb Fan Pattern, and I worked through the 
first repeat without consulting the diagram.  This was proper, since Nottingham 
encourages this.
  When I then consulted the diagram, I found that my headside was done wrong. 
 I was sure, however, that I had done it correctly.  So I looked really 
carefully at all the previous exercises and found, to my surprise, that Nottingham 
makes headsides in two different ways (it might be clearer to say "3 ways").  
Here are the ways of  doing headside:
  1) This doesn't really count.  This is the situation where there is no 
problem with headside since there are the same number of picots as there are 
outgoing pairs.  Work one picot with each outgoing pair, going through pairs from 
left to right.  An example of this is Fig 212 Kidney Bean.  There are 5 
outgoing pairs, call them 12345, and picots are worked top to bottom: 
  1  2   3   4   5  
Sheeps Head and Pheasant's Eye also fall into this category, but they 
have their own type of weirdness since extra honeycomb stitches are put into the 
headside.
   This case doesn't matter.  The aspect of headside I am concerned with is 
the problem of what to do when there are more picots than there are outgoing 
pairs.  When that happens, some pairs must make two picots, and that is the 
situation the next 2 cases deal with.
  2)  There are more picots than there are outoging pairs.  Work a picot for 
each outgoing pair, going through pairs from left to right.  When done, the 
last picot worked is the pivot picot P. P comes AFTER the most indented (bottom 
of the valley?) picot.
  Now perform the pivot.  Count the number of picots that still need to be 
worked and separate that number of pairs from the left side of your group of 
outgoing pairs.  Work the picots by going through the pairs from left to right.  
  Examples of this are Fig 196 Church Window and Fig 200 Little Heart.  For 
both of these there are 4 outgoing pairs, call them 1234, and the picots are 
worked top to bottom:  
1  2  3  4(P)   3.   It turned out that the most indented picot was the 
first one for pair 3.
   This is the method that Nottingham told me to use!   She describes it on 
page 122, in the section for Church Window.  She does not mention anywhere else 
in the book any other way of dealing with the "more picots than pairs" 
problem.
3)  There are more picots than pairs.  We force the pivot picot P to be the 
most indented picot.
   Work picots with outgoing pairs, going through pairs from left to right, 
until the pivot picot P is worked.  At this point, some pairs on the right have 
not yet worked any picots.  Dedicate these pairs to the very last picots in 
the section.  So think of these picots as being assigned to pairs, even though 
you won't actually work them until the end.
   Now perform the pivot.  Count the number of picots that still need to be 
worked, remembering not to count the very last picots which have been 
dedicated.  Separate that number of pairs from the left side of the group of outgoing 
pairs and work the picots fgoing through pairs from left to right.  Now bring 
in the unworked pairs (which are all the way on the right) past all the other 
pairs and work the very last picots going through the pairs from left to right.
   Examples of this are Fig 203 Ram's Horn and Fig 216 Cloth and Honeycomb 
Fan.  It looks as if Fig 220 Pattern Interpretation and Fig 250 Cloth Stitch 
Diamond With Four Pin Buds do it this way also.  For Cloth and Honeycomb Fan, 
there are 7 outgoing pairs, call them 1234567, and the picots are worked top to 
bottom:
  1  2  3  4  5(P)  4  3  6  7

  Ok, so that's what I saw when I looked carefully at all the headsides.  I 
haven't gone into the details of moving pairs around since that would obscure 
the main point, so just accept that everybody is moving around so that it all 
comes out as in Nottingham's diagram.  If you actually read through all this 
and don't know Bucks Point, please understand that this is all MUCH easier to 
actually do in practice then it is when I try to explain in words all the steps, 
so don't be put off.
   So, first, am I correct about this?  Method 2 and method 3 really seem to 
me to be truly different.  Am I misunderstanding something?
  Second, if I am correct, then why does Nottingham switch methods?  She gave 
very clear instructions about method 2 , implying that this is a method that 
she likes, but every single one of the later patterns uses method 3, which 
implies that sh

[lace] Re: wide floral Bucks Point

2004-01-03 Thread JSyzygy
>> And my lace content:  I'm struggling to finish pricking a wide floral Bucks
>> handkerchief edging - I'm coming down the fourth side now.   It'll be a 
relief
>> to start working it, after all this pricking!
>>
>> Ruth Budge (Sydney, Australia)

I wish I could make floral Bucks.  I've been ages working very slowly 
through my 
how-to-make-Bucks book.  What does your edging look like?  How wide is it?  
How
many bobbins does it use (it's exciting to use lots of bobbins; the most I've 
ever used was
50 pairs)?
Did you get it from a book?  
What size thread and how many holes per inch?  I'd like to aim for making 
Bucks at the
standard size but it is not clear to me what the standard size is.  My books 
don't go into that.  I'm pretty sure the size at which I now work, using 
Egyptian Cotton 80/2, is too big.
Should I be aiming for cotton 100/2?  120/2?   I don't know what my goal 
should be.

Julie  Baltimore MD
 

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